Ok I keep writing similar things 🙂 but the variations might be useful.
The obvious first point is that capitalism does not allow a ‘free market.’ Free markets will always be prevented by the entrenched power and the patterns of behavior of those who benefit from the current market arrangement including: the corporate class, the hyper-rich, their networks of think tanks and their bought, or hopeful to be bought, political supporters.
Markets are always about politics. Even markets of ‘gift exchange’ tend to be about establishing alliances, relationships, obligation, dominance etc. which involves and manifests politics. Gift exchange economies have the advantage that the tend not to build up class systems, they are more ‘immediate’ and status cannot be inherited, and most people can participate in them if they want.
If a free market could exist, it would undermine itself politically. Such markets inevitably lead to plutocracy and to constant demands for ‘the people’ to subjugate themselves to bosses. The more talk of free markets, the more plutocracy, and the more markets are structured to favour those who are already a success and their children.
If a person really wanted free markets then there seem, in general, to be two ways of getting them. One is the Revolutionary way and one we might call the Neoliberal way
The revolutionary way to get a free market is to abolish and overthrow the currently existing market completely, as it is a market established, designed and built for the rich and their networks of exclusion – and it does not work to deliver general liberty, openness, equal opportunity, efficiency or prosperity.
This revolutionary approach would first get rid of huge accumulations of ‘private property’ and its power, as property is often stolen from original inhabitants and ordinary people. That property should be made common. Perhaps people could be allocated roughly equivalent housing and other essential property and start again more equally with a more level playing field with open access. This would help get rid of the wealth inequalities which would then get rid of the rich’s ability to buy markets, politicians and information. People would need to make it so the wealthy cannot structure the market to suit them and to stop a massively unequal accumulation of riches from ever happening again and destroying free and open markets through modes of inheritance and accumulation. People would need to remove all state subsidies for wealth and corporate pollution, although allowing equitable social insurance so everyone has some levels of protection against misfortune, fraud, and the capitalist boom and bust syndrome. You would also need to try and destroy the rich’s networks for ‘self-help’ and mutual backscratching, so people can operate according to their abilities rather than to who they know. And so on.
Libertarians will never take a revolutionary approach, because libertarianism is about protecting the liberty of the wealthy, protecting rich people from other people and from the State. Nothing more than that.
The Neoliberal (conservative political party) way is to protect all the inequalities, and roll back the State from helping anyone who is not rich. It aims to stop the State from protecting people though environmental or anti-pollution regulation, eliminating fraud, legislating minimum wages, minimum protections at work, social security and welfare and so on. They officially say this will increase liberty but it clearly won’t – it will just free the corporate sector to do what it likes to you, and make you more desperate to sell your life to a job.
Libertarians generally support this Republican approach, which increases the power of the rich.
The next post looks at some of what a realistic theory of economics needs to consider
Tags: climate change, Disinformation, economics, neoliberalism
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