Thomas Frank: One Market Under God-- Extreme Capitalism

"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."

Ryszard Kapuscinski

But they maintain a firm grasp on information and power, for their own sake, and sidetrack and stifle any meaningful reform.

In October 2000 Thomas Frank published a prescient critical social analysis titled, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy.

In the video below from 2015, Thomas Frank looks back over the past 15 years to when he wrote this insightful book, and ends with this observation.

"I want to end with the idea that the market is capable of resolving all of our social conflict, fairly and justly.  That is the great idea of the 1990's.  And we all know now what a crock that is.  I think what we need in order to restore some kind of sense of fairness is not the final triumph of markets over the body and soul of humanity, but something that confronts markets,  and that refuses to think of itself as a brand."

The book was not received well at the time in the waning days of the Clinton revolution and the birth of the era of the neo-cons in foreign policy and neo-liberals in economics.

This religion of the markets had yet to suffer the serial failures and decimation of the real economy which it would see over the next sixteen years.

This is an ideology, a mindset, and as Frank calls it a religion, of taking market capitalism to such an extreme that it dispenses with the notion of restraints by human or policy consideration.   It comes to consider the market as a god, with its orthodoxy crafted in think tanks, its temples in the exchanges and the banks, and its oracles on their media and the academy.

This extreme form of market capitalism, also called neo-liberalism in economics and neo-conservatism in foreign policy,  has worked its way into the mindset of the ruling elites of many of the developed nations,  and has taken a place in the public consciousness through steady repetition.  I has become the modern orthodoxy of the fortunate few, who have been initiated into its rites, and served and been blessed by their god.

It is the taking of an idea, of a way of looking at things, that may be substantially practical when used as a tool to help to achieve certain outcomes, and placing it in such an extreme and inappropriate place as an end in itself, as the very definition and arbiter of what is good and what is not, that it becomes a kind of anti-human force that is itself considered beyond all good and evil, like a natural law.

It is born of and brings with it an extreme tendency that kills thought, and stifles the ability to make distinctions between things. If not unfettered capitalism then what, communism? The adherents become blind by their devotion to their gods.

This is not something new.  It is a madness that has appeared again and again throughout history in the form of Mammon, the golden idol of the markets.  It is a way of looking at people and the world that is as old as Babylon, and as evil as sin.

Henry Giroux On the Rise of Neoliberalism As a Political Ideology

"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Mammon in the City of London, 1889

Are they incapable, or merely unwilling?  That is the credibility trap, the inability to address the key problems because the ruling elite must risk or even undermine their own undeserved power to do so.

I think this interview below highlights the false dichotomy between communism and free market capitalism that was created in the 1980's largely by Thatcher's and Reagan's handlers.   The dichotomy was more properly between communist government and democracy, of the primacy of the individual over the primacy of the organization and the state as embodied in fascism and the real world implementations of  communism in Russia and China.

But we never think of it that way any more, if at all.  It is one of the greatest public relation coups in history.  One form of organizational oppression by the Russian nomenklatura was replaced by the oppression by the oligarchs and their Corporations, in the name of freedom.

Free market capitalism, under the banner of the efficient markets hypothesis, has taken the place of democratic ideals as the primary good as embodied in the original framing of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. 

It is no accident that the individual and their concerns have become subordinated to the corporate welfare and the profits of the upper one percent.  We even see this in religion with the 'gospel of prosperity.'   In their delusion they make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that after they may be received into their everlasting habitations.

The market as the highest good has stood on the shoulders of the 'greed is good' philosophy promulgated by the pied pipers of the me generation, and has turned the Western democracies on their heads, as a series of political leaders have capitulated to this false idol of money as the measure of all things, and all virtue. 

Policy is now crafted to maximize profits as an end to itself without regard to the overall impact on freedom and the public good.   It measures 'costs' in the most narrow and biased of terms, and allocated wealth based on the subversion of good sense to false economy theories.

Greed is a portion of the will to power.   And that madness serves none but itself.

This is a brief excerpt. You may read the entire interview here.

Henry Giroux on the Rise of Neoliberalism
19 October 2014
By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout

"...We're talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs; the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship.

But even more than that, it upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring all social relations: not just the economy, but the governing of all of social life...

That's a key issue. I mean, this is a particular political and economic and social project that not only consolidates class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the assumption that economics can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn't have to deal with matters of ethical and social responsibility, that these things get in the way.

And I think the consequences of these policies across the globe have caused massive suffering, misery, and the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income. Moreover, increasingly, we are witnessing a number of people who are committing suicide because they have lost their pensions, jobs and dignity.

We see the attack on the welfare state; we see the privatization of public services, the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the selling off of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal to tax the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ruling class, the elite class, what the Occupy movement called the one percent. It really has created a very bleak emotional and economic landscape for the 99 percent of the population throughout the world."

 

Thomas Frank: Pity the Billionaires, Marxism for the Master Class

“Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society....to justify and extol human greed and egotism.”

Gore Vidal


"It is not Man but nature that raises into one class those who are chiefly intellectual, in another those who are marked by muscular strength and temperament, and in a third those who are distinguished in neither one way or the other, but show only mediocrity -- the last-named represents the great majority, and the first two the select. The superior caste -- I call it the fewest -- has, as the most perfect, the privileges of the few...

The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the highest types -- the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all. A right is a privilege. Everyone enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of existence.

Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of equal rights."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Der AntiChrist

In light of the recent outcries by billionaire Tom Perkins for fair and loving treatment, I thought it might be interesting to explore the mindset that pictures the doyens of Wall Street, and those who have taken fortunes out of the dot.com and housing bubbles, as the real victims of the financial collapse and The Recovery™.

I think that part of this comes from the phenomenon that for some people, gratitude is their natural response to good fortune, even if it has come from hard work. Whereas others are possessed by a restlessness, an insatiable spirit, and their response to everything is 'I deserve more!.' 

Tom Perkins not only wishes his wealth, and his banal collection of toys, but he wishes to have public adulation as well, or at least the power to compel people to defer to him.

Mr. Frank thinks that this time around the cultural response to a Great Depression is 'backwards,' as compared to that of the 1930's, and one might tend to agree. There certainly has not been the rising of a national sympathy for victims, or a proper outrage at the arrogance and excesses of the financiers.

But this might overlook the fact that the US was a bit of an outlier back then, as only a few countries turned towards progressive reforms, while other developed nations embraced the hardness of totalitarianism, and even went so far as systematically murdering the weak.

But it is a mistake that the US is some sort of paragon, if one recalls John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The allure of selfishness and evil is a natural tendency that we overlook in our economic models, among other things. And we certainly ought not overlook the consecration of the country to the principle that 'greed is good,' or more plainly to Mammon, in the latter part of the last century.

I agree with him that Obama has been a pivotal disappointment, and I was interested to hear the reasons why he thought this was so.  Overall I found his perspective to be interesting, as though he was not an American historian and journalist, but some foreign observer sharing an exterior perspective of wonderment.

I have started the tape beyond the introductory remarks and welcomes at this talk he gave in Seattle.

"Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.

This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist

Weekend Reading: God and Mammon, Fear and Love

To my way of thinking, the inordinate desire for wealth, in excess and for its own sake, is just a manifestation of the will to power, which underlies most evil.

Fear, in excess or obsession, is often the spur to power, a means to seek to control that which we fear and resent. Perhaps it is part of the character, or the result of uncaring or abusiveness from our past.

There is a substantial difference between fear and respect, the latter of which is a high and proper regard, but intermingled with love and mutuality. We respect our parents, for example, if our relationship with them is proper, but we do not fear them as we would an enemy.

The will to power was the first sin of pride of the fallen angels. As John Milton said, 'Better to reign in hell, than to serve in heaven.'

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." 1 Cor. xiii

"...Our Lord says, 'If you love Me, keep My commandments;' but they feel that though they are, to a certain point, keeping God's commandments, yet love is not proportionate, does not keep pace, with their obedience; that obedience springs from some source short of love. This they perceive; they feel themselves to be hollow; a fair outside, without a spirit within it.

It is possible to obey, not from love towards God and man, but from a sort of conscientiousness short of love; from some notion of acting up to a law; that is, more from the fear of God than from love of Him. Surely this is what, in one shape or other, we see daily on all sides of us; the case of men, living to the world, yet not without a certain sense of religion, which acts as a restraint on them.

They pursue ends of this world, but not to the full; they are checked, and go a certain way only, because they dare not go further.
This external restraint acts with various degrees of strength on various persons. They all live to this world, and act from the love of it; they all allow their love of the world a certain range; but, at some particular point, which is often quite arbitrary, this man stops, and that man stops.

Each stops at a different point in the course of the world, and thinks every one else profane who goes further, and superstitious who does not go so far,—laughs at the latter, is shocked at the former. And hence those few who are miserable enough to have rid themselves of all scruples, look with great contempt on such of their companions as have any, be those scruples more or less, as being inconsistent and absurd. They scoff at the principle of mere fear, as a capricious and fanciful principle; proceeding on no rule, and having no evidence of its authority, no claim on our respect; as a weakness in our nature, rather than an essential portion of that nature, viewed in its perfection and entireness.

And this being all the notion which their experience gives them of religion, as not knowing really religious men, they think of religion, only as a principle which interferes with our enjoyments unintelligibly and irrationally. Man is made to love. So far is plain. They see that clearly and truly; but religion, as far as they conceive of it, is a system destitute of objects of love; a system of fear. It repels and forbids, and thus seems to destroy the proper function of man, or, in other words, to be unnatural.

And it is true that this sort of fear of God, or rather slavish dread, as it may more truly be called, is unnatural; but then it is not religion, which really consists, not in the mere fear of God, but in His love; or if it be religion, it is but the religion of devils, who believe and tremble; or of idolaters, whom devils have seduced, and whose worship is superstition,—the attempt to appease beings whom they love not; and, in a word, the religion of the children of this world, who would, if possible, serve God and Mammon, and, whereas religion consists of love and fear, give to God their fear, and to Mammon their love."

John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 5, No.23

Neoliberalism: Rise of the Machine

Miranda: O brave new world that has such people in it!

Prospero: 'Tis new, to thee.

The Tempest Act 5, scene 1

In my reading today I came across this relatively good description of Neoliberalism in economics excerpted below, and its implications for society.  The name for this school is often confusing to some, because it is a school of the right, more akin to political neoconservatism than anything commonly known as liberal.

Here is the schoolbook definition of neoliberalism in economics:

"Neoliberalism is a label for economic liberalizations, free trade, and open markets. Neoliberalism supports privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation of markets, and promotion of the private sector's role in society. In the 1980s, much of neoliberal theory was incorporated into mainstream economics."

I have to reiterate my own perspective that economics is not a physical science with rules generally tested by replicable experimentation on the macro level, but is at most a 'social science' that attempts to approximate a complex human reality, like sociology.

Microeconomics 'works' because it is less dependent on the human element, and involves itself with mechanical processes and pricing functions. By 'economics' I am discussing what is called macroeconomics, or the economics not of a discreet process or set of processes called a 'business' but of a broad economy with enormous sets of variables and processes that are far too complex to represent well mathematically.  They most often trim and crush reality to fit some compactly useful model, as in the manner of Nassim Taleb's Procrustean Bed.

When it ventures into the realm of public policy discussions, economics often resembles a belief system very much like a religion.   It is easily twisted to serve the desires and actions of its acolytes while conferring an aura of logic.  But there is almost always some 'leap of faith' made that spans the enormous gulf between the model, its assumptions, and reality.

Economics is only as good as its assumptions, which may in fact be terribly distorted with each step towards a more general application from a simple a priori observation that sounds self-evident at first.  Economics is a veritable cornucopia of non sequiturs encased in obscurantist terminology.

People are reasoning, therefore in their actions they act reasonably. And in the mass of financial transactions that is the market, these rational actors and their actions impute a natural rationality to the market that makes it efficient. Therefore the law of supply and demand and the perfect clearing price of the market, which are central tenets of market efficiency, are not to be interfered with by outside forces, like regulation and government.

And what makes this believable is that this can be true, if people are as good and perfectly wise and uniform in their actions as angels; but they are not, not a one of them, but especially those who are drawn to making their money from money, and especially from speculation in the markets.  This type of activity attracts people from the tails of human behaviour, like most sources of wealth and power.

This assertion  of natural market efficiency sounds good, especially when it is delivered by academics in nice suits with lots of degrees and titles, backed by a multimillion dollar PR campaign that contains well crafted, thinly disguised appeals to more visceral emotions.   But it is a theory that is easily shown to be founded in fantasy to anyone who has driven on a crowded multi-lane highway in rush hour.

And a corollary to this is that the system grades or objectively and perfectly evaluates people on their merits. If one suffers some misfortune or fails to rise 'to the top' of the heap, then this is an objective judgement on them and their value, their character, their worthiness as a human being.   And some would say that this speaks to their status as a fully valued member of that society, to have rights and to vote, to receive food and vital medical attention, and to have families and to procreate.

Because the system is perfectly efficient and rewards the best, the most successful are sanctified by it. I am wealthy, therefore I am among the elect, whether it is marked by an aristocratic title or an enormous bank account.  I am above all the rest, and this proves my value, and provides all the things which are stuffed into my hollowed being.

One can certainly and legitimately use economics, among other things, to support their particular policy arguments to estimate effects. But the listeners should accept this with plenty of skepticism, because the proofs are largely based on statistics, or statistically based models, that are filled with often unspoken assumptions, questionable estimates, and too often critical omissions, both conscious or inadvertent.

But to take an economic model out of its place, and put it above the discussion as policy maker in the manner of a computing machine which spits out the ultimate solutions, to capitalize 'Market' as a type of god on earth, to put that false idol as an unfettered decision-making machine above the individuals of a society and the rule of law, is inhuman, and ultimately a tyranny of the anti-human.

Economics is a tool, in some implementations better than others, but overall not a particularly reliable one.  It is better in 'explaining' than predicting; its explanations are more often rationalizations founded in its malleability and lack of rigor, especially in its use of correlations and assumptions.

The elevation of macroeconomics today reminds one of the perversions of the discoveries in biology that led to the theories of eugenics and the race worship, the mythology of the blood that motivated much of the social thinking and many serious political movements at the beginnings of the twentieth century.   It was when the intelligentsia and the professions, the doctors and lawyers, threw in their lot with the financial and industrial elite that European society began to quickly fall apart.

"I believe that if a canvass of the entire civilized world were put to the vote in this matter, the proposition that it is desirable that the better sort of people should intermarry and have plentiful children, and that the inferior sort of people should abstain from multiplication, would be carried by an overwhelming majority...

Indeed, Mr. Galton has drawn up certain definite proposals. He has suggested that "noble families" should collect "fine specimens of humanity" around them, employing these fine specimens in menial occupations of a light and comfortable sort, that will leave a sufficient portion of their energies free for the multiplication of their superior type."

Source: H.G. Wells, Mankind in the Making

People forget that a whole range of intellectuals and popular thinkers, from George Bernard Shaw to H.G. Wells and a large measure of the economic, professional and political aristocracy of the day, embraced the notion of the natural superiority of certain human types, and the scientific necessity of encouraging their proliferation, and the dominance of the untermensch as not only their right but their obligation.

The medical profession disgraced itself, amongst the first of those in Germany, with their willingness and devotion to implement euthanasia based on these 'scientific principles.' And the elite in the West broadly looked at this movement with quiet compliance and even admiration for the will to make these 'hard decisions.'  It was only when the definition of the master race became increasingly narrow and their methods madly brutal that they recoiled in horror.  But by then it was too late, although many adherents to the basic principles remained sympathetic in England and America.

Science serves at its best, but it does not rule well, except to blind the heart and the mind to madness.

And one might look at these people from the past with revulsion and wonder, but the self-proclaimed ruling class of the West is doing the same thing today, largely by financial means for now. Their rhetoric and reasoning is filled with it, a sense of the obligation of their natural superiority. And if they steal from you, it is a privilege. And if a little of their spoils trickles down, you should be grateful.

There are plenty of believers in the ascendancy of a new master class, as long as they think they are a part of it. You may see them and their ideas on display this week from Brussels and Berlin, to Tampa and Jackson Hole. And they are not members of learning organizations, but protectors and promoters of the status quo.

"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."

Ryszard Kapuscinski

If one wishes to have an oligarchy or even a dictatorship based on power and unscrupulous behaviour in which the 'superior,' as one may choose to define them, use the weak as servants and prey, then decide to do so and say it, and hope the people will support it.

But it seems particularly hypocritical and cheap to set up a god of economic science which is elevated to speak these same words as an inspired dictum from above, but which is in reality a false idol carrying the calculated whisperings of its high priests, and then expect the people to bow to it forever without any eventual reaction. 

The Tyranny of Neoliberalism

Unapologetic in its implementation of austerity measures that cause massive amounts of human hardship and suffering, neoliberal capitalism consolidates class power on the backs of young people, workers, and others marginalized by class, race, and ethnicity. Neoliberal capitalism appears to no longer need the legitimacy garnered through its false claim to democratic ideals such as free speech, individual liberty, or justice—however tepid these appeals have always been.  (cf. Glenn Greenwald - Jesse)

In the absence of alternative social visions to market-driven values and the increasing separation of global corporate power from national politics, neoliberalism has wrested itself free of any regulatory controls while at the same time removing economics from any consideration of social costs, ethics, or social responsibility. Such a disposition is evident in the fact that neoliberalism's only imperatives are profits and growing investments in global power structures unmoored from any form of accountable, democratic governance.

The devastating fallout of neoliberal capitalism's reorganization of society, the destruction of communities and impoverishment of individuals and families, now becomes its most embraced mode of expression as it is championed, ironically, as the only viable route to economic stability.

In this widely accepted, yet dystopian world view, collective misfortune is no longer interpreted as a sign of failing governance or the tawdry willingness of politicians to serve corporate interests, but attributed to the character flaws of individuals and defined chiefly as a matter of personal responsibility. In fact, government-provided social protections are viewed as pathological. Matters of life and death are removed from traditional modes of democratic governance and made subject to the sovereignty of the market.  (Don't feed the 'losers' or the undesirables - isolate and then euthanise them, indirectly at first - Jesse)

In this new age of biocapital, or what Eric Cazdyn calls "bioeconomics," "all ideals are at the mercy of a larger economic logic" —one that unapologetically generates policies that "trample over millions of people if necessary." Neoliberalism's defining ideologies, values, and policies harness all institutions, social practices, and modes of thought to the demands of corporations and the needs of the warfare state. They are as narrowly self-serving as they are destructive.  (The individuals, even in their millions, must die if not for the good of the state or the race, then for the good of the market and corporate profits.  - Jesse)

As collective responsibility is privatized, politics loses its social and democratic character, and the formative culture necessary for the production of engaged critical agents is gravely undermined. An utterly reduced form of agency is now embodied in the figure of the isolated automaton, who is driven by self-interest and eschews any responsibility for the other.

As Stuart J. Murray points out, neoliberalism's totalizing discourse of privatization, commodification, deregulation, and hyper-individualism "co-opts and eviscerates the language of the common good." The ascendancy of neoliberal ideology also manifests in an ongoing assault on democratic public spheres, public goods, and any viable notion of equality and social justice.

As corporate power is consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, ideological and structural reforms are implemented to transfer wealth and income into the hands of a ruling financial and corporate elite.  This concentration of power is all the more alarming since both Canada and the United States have experienced unprecedented growth in wealth concentration and income inequality since the 1970s.

Henry Giroux, Days of Rage: The Quebec Student Protest Movement