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December 20, 2004
market fundamentalism
Don Herzog: December 20, 2004
Okay, gang, quiz time. (Look, no moaning. You're reading a blog written by professors. What did you expect?) Identify the authors of these snippets. Using Google is cheating and will be savagely punished:
- Vanity drives the struggle for wealth. The rich want "to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves."
- Market society is profoundly inegalitarian. "For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many."
- There's nothing fair or evenhanded about the role of government in any of this. The government, "so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
- The division of labor is profoundly dehumanizing. "The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations ... generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become." Eventually he becomes "incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation [or] of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life." Instead of abandoning the workers to their "drowsy stupidity," the state ought to supply public education.
Some comments in threads on this blog dutifully recite decades-old and once-plausible right-wing indictments of The Leftist. This creepy character thinks the state a wonderful engine for designing society from scratch. He distrusts private initiative and longs for giant bureaucracies to run people's lives for them. I don't doubt that much of the Western left cozied up to the Soviet Union for much too long, or that you can still find people willing to say nice things about the Khmer Rouge or the glory days of Enver Hoxha's Albania. But please, people. We bloggers are not sketching evil cackling capitalists with top hats and watch fobs. Some of us lefties think markets are great. I sure do. Why?
The fundamental point is worked out in the debate about whether state socialism could be economically efficient. (I'm thinking of von Mises, Lange, Taylor, Knight, and others.) Decades later, Hayek wrote a profound distillation of the case for markets as vehicles for assembling farflung information that no central planner could conceivably get his hands on. I'm 100% sold on this case. And markets have other virtues. They are wealth-creating devices, and in a world where poverty remains endemic, no one should sneeze at that, no matter what you think about distribution. And -- a point Murray Rothbard has pressed -- if you get the state out of the business of handing out benefits to vociferous firms, they actually have to compete with each other instead of rent-seeking. There are yet more virtues of markets, which I'm sure readers here can and will produce, but in the meantime, let's continue the quiz: who wrote this?
- "The cruellest of our revenue laws, I will venture to affirm, are mild and gentle, in comparison of some of those which the clamour of our merchants and manufacturers has extorted from the legislature, for the support of their own absurd and oppressive monopolies. Like the laws of Draco, these laws may be said to be written all in blood." The state should be wary in responding to these capitalists, because they "have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the publick."
Now there's a huge literature debating when or whether markets fail -- will they provide public goods? and because of network effects and the like, will they create monopolies not disciplined by the threat of entry? And then there are questions about whether the state can improve on even failed markets. Leave that stuff aside. The real question, I think, is: what are the proper boundaries to the market? What do we want to buy and sell, and what do we want to allocate in other ways?
Once we bought and sold people. Slavery is one way to have a market in labor, and we rejected it. Now employers can purchase your labor, but not you. Richard Posner has proposed buying and selling babies, or "parental rights," to get rid of those noxious queues at adoption agencies: most of us flinch, even though he's got to be basically right about the queues. The state assigns each adult citizen the nontransferable right to cast one vote. We could have a market in votes: the state could assign initial property rights by mailing you a coupon that says, "bearer has the right to cast one vote." You could "consume" your property by casting the vote yourself; you could donate the coupon to the political charity of your choice; you could sell it to Ross Perot. But we reject any such market, and we don't budge when an economist observes that prohibiting free transfer generates deadweight loss. Citizenship itself isn't for sale. The usual way to get it is by being born here, which has nothing to do with merit or accomplishment or hard work or consumer demand. Fans of the Boston Red Sox had to wait for their team to win the right games at the right times to win the World Series; they couldn't pool together and raise enough money to buy the title from the Yankees.
The list of nonmarket goods is awfully long and wonderfully diverse. A liberal society isn't just a free market underwritten by a night-watchman state. It has lots of different institutions -- churches, universities, clubs, you name it. Market fundamentalists, as I'll cheerfully dub them, want to envision all of society in the market's image. There are other kinds of fundamentalists out there. A certain kind of participatory democrat wants all of society to be run democratically: she'll demand, why don't workers get to make decisions at firms? and why should the Roman Catholic Church be so hierarchical? Christians have occasionally suggested that all of society should run on an ethic of brotherly love. And so on.
We should reject all these fundamentalisms, and instead respect the idea of boundaries between different social settings. (That's not the same as maintaining whatever the current boundaries are. When the state ditches slavery or makes sexual harassment actionable, it redraws the boundaries of the market.) And we should reject the view that whatever the state does is coercive, and whatever society or the market does is voluntary. The state can write rules that expand our options, and no, not by grabbing and redistributing things that others are entitled to. The legal rules for writing a will let you do something magical and bestow your property after you're dead. And social relations can be coercive. Oh, if you're anxious about your grade, for extra credit you can identify the author of this passage:
- Labor markets are fundamentally coercive. Wealthy employers can outlast their workers in the event of disputes. "It is not ... difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms."
Notice the right-wing complaint that crazed political correctness is silencing people on campuses and elsewhere, even costing them their jobs. True or false, it sure does depend on the view that you can find coercion outside the state. Your action isn't voluntary if you had no reasonable alternatives, and it doesn't take a law to deprive you of such alternatives. Once we wrest free of market fundamentalism, we can see problems with state action and possibilities for it that have nothing to do with market failure, economic inefficiency, regulatory capture, and the like. And we can see a host of political problems -- controversies over the legitimacy of authority in farflung social domains -- that have nothing to do with the state.
Oh yeah, my quiz. I'll trust you to grade yourself with the answer key: every single passage is from Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. I wonder how many of those energetic young right-wing lobbyists sporting Adam Smith neckties know what he actually says.
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Comments
Posted by: Ted
Many of the same conservatives are also fond of Tocqueville - I have an edition with a little sunburst on the cover touting it as part of Newt Gingrich's reading list for members of Congress - and he has very similar things to say:
"While the workman concentrates his faculties more and more upon the study of a single detail, the master surveys an extensive whole, and the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that of the former is narrowed. In a short time the one will require nothing but physical strength without intelligence; the other stands in need of science, and almost of genius, to ensure success. This man resembles more and more the administrator of a vast empire; that man, a brute.
The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and their differences increase every day. They are connected only like the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills the station which is made for him, and which he does not leave; the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to command. What is this but aristocracy?"
Democracy in America, Book 2, Chapter 20
Posted by: Ted | Dec 20, 2004 9:04:56 AM
Posted by: Tom Pain
Churches, universities, clubs - how are these not private insitutions subject to the market? Are people forced to join or contribute to a church, university or club?
Reject all fundamentalisms? What about "civil rights fundamentalists" who say the law should treat all equally? Or "human rights fundamentalism" which say people across the board should all recieve "human rights" such as food, health care, etc?
Plus all those evil right-wingers also don't believe in the Labor Theory of Value created by Adam Smith. Clearly according to your "logic" they are either stupid or hypocritial.
Posted by: Tom Pain | Dec 20, 2004 9:07:50 AM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
Probably far more than the "Che" shirt wearing left-wing activists who have read Marx's Capital and certainly more than those in the latter group who have ever experienced first-hand the blessings of command-economy societies.
I certainly had no difficulty recognizing Smith in several of the quotes and just assumed the rest were his. Big deal. Let's remember that Smith was arguing against vested interests opposed free trade. He was hardly a defender of the status quo of his age.
Yes, of course, there are market failures, though far fewer than most liberals believe. And yes, of course, not all coercion is state coercion. The fire in the basement may not cause the leak in the sink, either, but one finds it much easier to deal with minor plumbing problems once the fire is extinguished and the fact that at least the fire was keeping you warm is not much of an excuse to let it rage on.
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Dec 20, 2004 9:25:30 AM
Posted by: ludwig
Some people are just utterly incapable of escaping the "market" metaphor of social arrangements, save when they face the exquisite fact that their anti "civil rights" ideas are not doing very well in the 'marketplace of ideas'. Heh.
Posted by: ludwig | Dec 20, 2004 9:25:49 AM
Posted by: McDuff
Churches, universities, clubs - how are these not private insitutions subject to the market? Are people forced to join or contribute to a church, university or club?The day a company manages to work out how to generate fervent and hereditary brand loyalty like religion does, the market for its goods will be as distorted and violent as the market for religious truth. As far as universities or clubs go, anything with restrictions on entry other than the size of your wallet is obviously not a free market. In theory, it shouldn't matter how much money you have, if you're thick then you can't get on the course.
I think you have a rather odd view of the full and necessary structures required for a market to be "free."
Posted by: McDuff | Dec 20, 2004 9:36:36 AM
Posted by: McDuff
D A Ridgeley
Yes, of course, there are market failures, though far fewer than most liberals believe.Really? How often do "most liberals" believe the market is failing? How often does it fail? Can you, ahem, back up this comparative assertion with anything concrete or is it merely rhetoric designed to pooh-pooh the concerns of people who have gained access to the temple and not been awed by the glory?
Posted by: McDuff | Dec 20, 2004 9:41:23 AM
Posted by: duus
"Yes, of course, there are market failures, though far fewer than most liberals believe." --D.A. Ridgely
I'm pleased we're having a conversation that's moved beyond stereotypes and is instead discussing substance and offering facts.
Look, I'll say it: Us liberals realize that we have virtually no power right now and that we can therefore be casually dismissed. That's life. But that doesn't make the casual dismissal accurate in any sense: it's just an expression of power.
Take care Ridgely. I hope you're doing well.
Posted by: duus | Dec 20, 2004 9:47:32 AM
Posted by: Tom Pain
McDuff:
Free market: Any transaction mutually agreed upon by both parties.
You must be against freedom of association too.
Snore...please tell me this isn't just going to be pimping of statist fundamentalism.
Posted by: Tom Pain | Dec 20, 2004 10:04:06 AM
Posted by: Stuart
This is a bit OT, but I want to thank the authors of this blog, and the commenters. I'm of a distinctly libertarian bent and I have been searching for an intelligent leftie blog that didn't sound like the doctrinaire rantings of 60s leftovers. The triumphalism of the right side of the spectrum is beginning to get tiresome, and until I found this place I was despairing of finding something to round out my daily required reading.
I'll just note that the quotes from Smith are fine, but they are libertarian, not pro-business and not pro-regulation, either. The concepts are distinct.
Posted by: Stuart | Dec 20, 2004 10:06:30 AM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
Let me back up a moment, having recovered from my flash of pique at Mr. Herzog’s rather condescending quote-fest, and acknowledge that his fundamental point is sound. Strictly speaking, property (as opposed to mere possession) exists only by virtue of the state. I didn’t pay enough attention in my trusts and estates class to discuss wills, but contract law truly is ‘magical’ – the fact that private parties can create binding legal obligations among themselves, promises that the state will enforce for us, is an absolutely requisite condition of any market worth having. The family is not (contra Posner) a ‘market,’ people are not property and the world is filled with many non-economic goods (which is not to say that economists can’t shed some light on how we enjoy or fail to enjoy such goods). All true.
But if ever a quote cried out for a ringing “Tu quoque!,” it is Mr. Herzog’s talk of “decades-old and once-plausible … indictments.” We may be above all that around here, but when exactly is the left going to let poor Herbert Hoover die or take responsibility for the far greater human misery and poverty caused by statist institutions (including both right and left wing sorts) or ‘fess up to the extraordinary failures of government institutions and programs in our own society in the past 40 years? When will it stop characterizing corporations and business people as heartless money grubbers indifferent to the plight of the poor or the ravaged ecology they are bequeathing their own children? When, for that matter, will they cease presuming (especially if they enjoy a string of initials after their names) that they are so much smarter than those who do not share their political opinions?
Life is not a business. But neither is a state a society, let alone a family or an individual, and most of us most of the time would be far better off with a “night watchman” state that otherwise minded its own business. If, as Mr. Herzog claims, there are a host of political (I would prefer ‘social’) problems that have nothing to do with the state, we have little reason to believe their solution will lie in more state action.
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Dec 20, 2004 10:08:04 AM
Posted by: Bernard
McDuff:
'As far as universities or clubs go, anything with restrictions on entry other than the size of your wallet is obviously not a free market.'
Which criteria does it fail?
Posted by: Bernard | Dec 20, 2004 10:09:14 AM
Posted by: Terrier
Thank you, Don, for expressing so effectively the sentiments I have long had when enduring the legion of libertarians on the internets. This is exactly why I bristle so much when these philosophers call me a Marxist. I am a Capitalist. I am not a treasonous anarchist. I can only conclude that they are either too cowardly to accept the course of action demanded by their own conclusions or they are just hypocritical liars. Now, I know some will say that I am being judgmental and name-calling (of course if I was calling the news media or the faculty liberal I wouldn't be) but when someone says to you repeatedly, "My house is on fire!" and they make no effort to put it out when you see no flames then what conclusion can you reach? Quite frankly, because of the brainwashing that has occurred in this country since the 60s, I wonder how America is going to continue to exist when so many citizens are clearly Anti-American and opposed to the principles of the country (as well as their own self-interest.)
Posted by: Terrier | Dec 20, 2004 10:23:18 AM
Posted by: McDuff
Universities fail to be free markets because they judge, or should do, on the criteria of how smart you are, or to be absolutely specific how smart you can prove you are.
Clubs can fail on all manner of things, not limited to but including the Happy Fun Tree House Syndrome which restricts access to many private members clubs to those without a penis. Note, I am not on a lefty rant and saying that this is a bad thing, just that it's not a totally free market.
Beyond this, though, I can see the elements of a slanging match starting to brew, and I'm not going to be party to that.
D A Ridgeley
We may be above all that around here, but when exactly is the left going to let poor Herbert Hoover die or take responsibility for the far greater human misery and poverty caused by statist institutions (including both right and left wing sorts) or ‘fess up to the extraordinary failures of government institutions and programs in our own society in the past 40 years?
Are you asking us to "fess up" to the fact that, for example, health care and education in the USA are a mess, or to the "fact" that this is because they have been undertaken by the government and are therefore bound to fail? The first is something I doubt you will find many on any part of the spectrum disagreeing with -- human progress is driven by dissatisfaction, after all -- the second is indeed worthy of scare quotes around "fact," because it is far beyond being even disputed orthodoxy; it is one theory, and the one with the least evidence to back it up.
Posted by: McDuff | Dec 20, 2004 10:31:47 AM
Posted by: DanielM.
I would guess that many of those "right-wing lobbyists" knew those quotes to be Adam Smith.
As a Republican, I must admit that I made a couple of wrong guesses, however. One of the quotes I was sure was from Mandeville, and another I was pretty sure came from Hume. But, seeing that Hume influenced his young friend Smith very much, and that Hume himself was very influenced by Mandeville (who was himself influenced very much by Nicole & Hobbes) - I guess I did a lot better than you thought I would.
Posted by: DanielM. | Dec 20, 2004 10:41:44 AM
Posted by: Tom Pain
MrDuff: A free market in club memberships or universtity entrance means the clubs/schools can have any restrictions they want. Free markets imply freedom of association and any group can freely decide on who to sell things (i.e. memberships or schooling) to whomever they want at whatever price they want, just as customers can choose to buy or not buy for whatever reason they want.
Posted by: Tom Pain | Dec 20, 2004 10:47:26 AM
Posted by: Terrier
“most of us most of the time would be far better off with a “night watchman” state that otherwise minded its own business” - ? This kind of statement reminds me of the fundamentalist Moslems that I once worked with who actually believed that the Caliphate was the glory days of humanity and only by returning to the rule of sharia could we have a fair and equitable state. The truth is, most of us are not so dogmatic that we give a damn about any utopian theories. Give us something that sorta, kinda works most of the time and we’ll muddle thru and survive. Near as I can tell, that was the sentiments of the founders and so far it has worked, that’s why I am proud to be an American. I reject radicalism in any form whether it comes from the left of the right.
Posted by: Terrier | Dec 20, 2004 10:47:41 AM
Posted by: Tracy
Why do socialist-tending thinkers bother posting these lists of quotes from Adam Smith? Do you seriously believe that advocates of free-marketers regard Adam Smith as biblical literalists regard the Bible, and thus will be completely thrown into confusion by finding words "from the heavens above" that disagree with their own thinking and arguments?
And have they missed the free-market motivated attacks on tarriffs and other forms of government support to businesses, and the theory of public choice that provides a pretty plausible explanation of how companies and unions manage to get such intervention from the government? The theory of rent-seeking has a long history in economics, and it's not just Adam Smith who worked on it. (I would actually be surprised if he was the first person to ever notice how merchants seek and frequently achieve laws for their own gain. Though I can't cite an earlier authority off the top of my head, it seems too obvious to have been missed.)
Someone can be in favour of free-marketers and admire Adam Smith's central insight without believing that angels attended his birth. Just as someone who knows something about physics can admire Albert Einstein immensely and find the Theory of Relativity very useful, and also use quantum mechanics on a daily basis without being burnt in effigy by their local university's physics department. Make your arguments on their own merits.
Posted by: Tracy | Dec 20, 2004 10:55:30 AM
Posted by: Tom Pain
McDuff: I should also note we are talking about buying/selling association and not necessarily cash transactions.
Posted by: Tom Pain | Dec 20, 2004 10:57:52 AM
Posted by: Bernard
McDuff, I agree with Tom. As far as I know, most every discussion on the merits of free markets is based on the distinction between markets free of or with varying degrees of government intervention.
You may well be right that other interpretations exist, but I believe that the above is overwhelmingly the most common.
Posted by: Bernard | Dec 20, 2004 11:06:28 AM
Posted by: dubious
The punchline of the opening post in this thread seems much like the theory laid out by Michael Walzer in his 'Spheres of Justice.' Walzer writes that there are many spheres of human endeavor (the market, education, religious institutions, political power) and that for one sphere to use its power outside of its own sphere is a sort of tyranny, so that confining political power to only the highly educated (Mandarins or mullahs) is a tyranny, as is buying a Ph.D. without the necessary study.
I think that's right. If one sphere dominated all the others, we would have some sort of 'fundamentalist' society that the opening thread critiques. There is an interesting passage on political power (pg. 309):
[QUOTE]Democracy requires equal rights, not equal power. Rights here are guaranteed opportunities to exericise minimal power (voting rights) or to try to exercise greater power (speech, assembly, petition rights). Democratic theorists commonly
conceive the good citizen as somone who is constantly trying to exercise political power, though not necessarily on his own behalf. He has principles, ideas, and programs, and he cooperates with like-minded men and women. At the same time, he find himself in intense, sometimes bitter, conflict with other groups of men and women who have t heir own principles, ideas, and programs. He probably relishes the conflict, the "fiercely agonistic" character of political life, the opportunity for public action. His aim is to win -- that is, to exercise unequaled power. In pursuit of this aim, he and his friends exploit whatever advantages they have. They make good account of their rhetorical skill and organizational competence; they play on party loyalties and memories of old struggles; they seek the endorsement of readily recognized or publicly honored individuals. All this is entirely legitimate (so long as recognition doesn't translate directly into political power: we don't give people we honor a double vote or a public office)."
[\QUOTE]
All this seems exactly right to me. This is exactly the sort of template we should use for each equality of rights within each sphere. To be specific, one can imagine a virtually identical paragraph with a few substitutions, detailing what 'economic democracy' would be.
Walzer, being of Leftish bent and having a mild case of traditional scholarly disdain for the market, goes on to add:
"It would not be legitimate, however, for reasons I have already worked out, if some citizens were able to win their political struggles because they were personally wealthy or had wealthy backers or powerful friends and relatives in the existing government. There are some inequalities that can, and others that cannot, be exploited in the course of political activity."
Walzer is willing to let those who have a dominance in the sphere of politics use that dominance to win their economic struggles, but not vice versa. This even though he admits that politics is the most powerful of spheres.
And so again, I believe the opening post was very much in the spirit of Walzer.
Posted by: dubious | Dec 20, 2004 12:04:55 PM
Posted by: Eddie Thomas
"I wonder how many of those energetic young right-wing lobbyists sporting Adam Smith neckties know what he actually says."
I'm not sure why you directed this comment only towards the right-wingers. How many self-identified liberals would think of Adam Smith as one of their own?
I could just as easily cull together a list of quotations from conservatives that people on the left might guess are from Karl Marx. Old-style conservatives didn't think much of capitalism either.
I don't see what any of this shows, other than the oddity that much of what American conservatism is attempting to conserve is a classically liberal regime, in which contemporary liberalism has a significant mistrust.
Posted by: Eddie Thomas | Dec 20, 2004 12:22:20 PM
Posted by: Bernard
'I don't see what any of this shows, other than the oddity that much of what American conservatism is attempting to conserve is a classically liberal regime, in which contemporary liberalism has a significant mistrust.'
Eddie, I think these things are always contextual. As a classical liberal I will automatically be conservative in the context of a classically liberal democracy, whereas i'd be extremely liberal in the context of a dictatorial former soviet republic. Likewise, American liberals tend to appear rather conservative to European liberals for whom the goalposts are quite different.
Posted by: Bernard | Dec 20, 2004 12:36:42 PM
Posted by: Terrier
Eddie, I am a self-identified liberal who thinks of Adam Smith as one of my own. I don't see what your post shows, other than the oddity that much of what American Conservatism is criticizing in contemporary Liberalism is a Marxist bogeyman that no longer (if it ever did) exists. I'm sure all modern Conservatives know more about the inner workings of the Politboro than the policies and issues that are important to Liberals today. Not a post goes by without the tiresome chanting of the well-worn formula "marxist, socialist: so I don't need to actually address your ideas!"
Posted by: Terrier | Dec 20, 2004 12:44:06 PM
Posted by: Trollwatch
Terrier, very poor trolls. Try harder! call him stupid and racist too.
Posted by: Trollwatch | Dec 20, 2004 12:51:23 PM
Posted by: Dave M
The Scottish enlightenment is much more important to the development of the American left than the American right. Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, James Callendor, Benjamin Franklin Bache, Thomas Jefferson, even James Madison - these "founders" were heavily influenced by (or were) Scottish. People like Adams and Hamilton treated Edinburgh with disdain.
The problem with this discussion, though, is the different way that the American left nd the American right treat their intellectual forbears. The left takes the ideas and discards the names, the right takes the names and discards the ideas.
Posted by: Dave M | Dec 20, 2004 1:13:54 PM