Showing posts with label Free Markets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Markets. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Kevin Carson: “Free Market Capitalism” is an Oxymoron
It’s pretty much standard for the chattering classes — both liberal and conservative — to refer to something called “our free market system,” also known as “free market capitalism.” To the extent that the right-wingers at Fox and CNBC or on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal advocate some purer form of “free markets” in contrast to the existing economy, what they mean is essentially the present model of corporate capitalism without the regulatory or welfare state.
But the form taken by the existing capitalist system that we live under owes precious little to free markets. From its beginnings in the late Middle Ages, it has been shaped by massive and ceaseless intervention and enforcement of privilege — much of it breathtakingly brutal — by the state. To adapt a phrase from Orwell, the past has been a boot stamping on a human face.
The state played a central role in creating the defining characteristic of capitalism as we know it: the wage system. Had free markets been allowed to develop peacefully, with the peasant majorities remaining in control of their land and with free access to the means of subsistence, labor markets would likely have taken a much different form. Employers would have had to compete with the possibility of self-employment, available to the vast majority of the population. But thanks to Enclosures and similar land expropriations over a period of several centuries, the majority of the population was turned into a landless proletariat totally dependant on wage labor for its subsistence.
As if this weren’t enough, the British state imposed totalitarian social controls on the working class in the early days of the Industrial Revolution to reduce the bargaining power of labor. The Laws of Settlement, for example, acted as a sort of internal passport system, forbidding workers to leave their parish of birth in search of better terms of employment without permission. The Poor Law authorities then came to the rescue of employers in the underpopulated industrial North, by auctioning off laborers — cheaply — from the parish workhouses of London.
Over a period of several centuries the European powers brought most of the Earth under their subjection and imposed similar land expropriations and social controls on the peoples of the Third World, and looted the mineral resources and raw materials of most of the world.
A wide range of thinkers, from the free market anarchist Lysander Spooner to the Marxist Immanuel Wallerstein, have pointed out historic capitalism’s continuities with feudalism. Capitalism, as a historic system of political economy, was really just an outgrowth of feudalism with markets grafted in and allowed to operate in the interstices to a limited extent.
The state also played a central role in the rise of corporate capitalism from the late 19th century on. The railroad land grants created a single national market in the U.S., externalizing the costs of long-distance distribution on the taxpayer, and led to industrial firms and markets far larger than would otherwise have existed. Patent law and assorted regulations passed during the Progressive Era served to cartelize markets under the control of a handful of oligopoly firms.
In the twentieth century, the state played a growing role in absorbing the surplus output of overbuilt industry or guaranteeing an overseas market for it. The leading industrial sectors were state creations: the automobile-highway complex, civil aviation, the miliitary-industrial complex and outgrowths like miniaturized electronics and industrial automation.
The neoliberal economy of the past twenty years is overwhelmingly dependent on the draconian enforcement of “intellectual property” law. The dominant sectors in the corporate global economy — software, entertainment, biotech, pharma, agribusiness, electronics — are all almost entirely dependent for their profits either on “intellectual property” or direct subsidies from the state. The central function of the U.S. national security state since WWII has been to make the world safe for corporate power through the overthrow of unfriendly governments.
Both the statist right and the statist left, for their own reasons, equate the “free market” to corporate capitalism, and promote the myth that corporate capitalism as we know it is what would naturally have emerged from a free market absent state intervention to prevent it. The statist right want to defend the legitimacy of big business, and the statist left want to make you think you need them to defend you against big business.
But the exact opposite is true. Big business has been a creature of the state from the beginning. And genuinely free markets would operate as dynamite at the foundations of corporate power.
And that’s exactly what those of us on the free market left want to do.
“Free Market Capitalism” is an Oxymoron
Center for a Stateless Society Research Associate Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist.
But the form taken by the existing capitalist system that we live under owes precious little to free markets. From its beginnings in the late Middle Ages, it has been shaped by massive and ceaseless intervention and enforcement of privilege — much of it breathtakingly brutal — by the state. To adapt a phrase from Orwell, the past has been a boot stamping on a human face.
The state played a central role in creating the defining characteristic of capitalism as we know it: the wage system. Had free markets been allowed to develop peacefully, with the peasant majorities remaining in control of their land and with free access to the means of subsistence, labor markets would likely have taken a much different form. Employers would have had to compete with the possibility of self-employment, available to the vast majority of the population. But thanks to Enclosures and similar land expropriations over a period of several centuries, the majority of the population was turned into a landless proletariat totally dependant on wage labor for its subsistence.
As if this weren’t enough, the British state imposed totalitarian social controls on the working class in the early days of the Industrial Revolution to reduce the bargaining power of labor. The Laws of Settlement, for example, acted as a sort of internal passport system, forbidding workers to leave their parish of birth in search of better terms of employment without permission. The Poor Law authorities then came to the rescue of employers in the underpopulated industrial North, by auctioning off laborers — cheaply — from the parish workhouses of London.
Over a period of several centuries the European powers brought most of the Earth under their subjection and imposed similar land expropriations and social controls on the peoples of the Third World, and looted the mineral resources and raw materials of most of the world.
A wide range of thinkers, from the free market anarchist Lysander Spooner to the Marxist Immanuel Wallerstein, have pointed out historic capitalism’s continuities with feudalism. Capitalism, as a historic system of political economy, was really just an outgrowth of feudalism with markets grafted in and allowed to operate in the interstices to a limited extent.
The state also played a central role in the rise of corporate capitalism from the late 19th century on. The railroad land grants created a single national market in the U.S., externalizing the costs of long-distance distribution on the taxpayer, and led to industrial firms and markets far larger than would otherwise have existed. Patent law and assorted regulations passed during the Progressive Era served to cartelize markets under the control of a handful of oligopoly firms.
In the twentieth century, the state played a growing role in absorbing the surplus output of overbuilt industry or guaranteeing an overseas market for it. The leading industrial sectors were state creations: the automobile-highway complex, civil aviation, the miliitary-industrial complex and outgrowths like miniaturized electronics and industrial automation.
The neoliberal economy of the past twenty years is overwhelmingly dependent on the draconian enforcement of “intellectual property” law. The dominant sectors in the corporate global economy — software, entertainment, biotech, pharma, agribusiness, electronics — are all almost entirely dependent for their profits either on “intellectual property” or direct subsidies from the state. The central function of the U.S. national security state since WWII has been to make the world safe for corporate power through the overthrow of unfriendly governments.
Both the statist right and the statist left, for their own reasons, equate the “free market” to corporate capitalism, and promote the myth that corporate capitalism as we know it is what would naturally have emerged from a free market absent state intervention to prevent it. The statist right want to defend the legitimacy of big business, and the statist left want to make you think you need them to defend you against big business.
But the exact opposite is true. Big business has been a creature of the state from the beginning. And genuinely free markets would operate as dynamite at the foundations of corporate power.
And that’s exactly what those of us on the free market left want to do.
Center for a Stateless Society Research Associate Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Finally, a leftist with SOME economic sense
Wow! The other night I came across a fantastic (and quite funny) article by David Schweickart that totally demolishes parecon (a ludicrous economic theory created by Michael Albert).
Despite being a "market socialist" (advocate of what could be considered a statist version of mutualism), many of Schweickart's criticisms of a non-market economy echo my own. And he is right: it would be the most unworkable mess you've ever seen if our society was insane enough to put these ideas into practice.
Despite being a "market socialist" (advocate of what could be considered a statist version of mutualism), many of Schweickart's criticisms of a non-market economy echo my own. And he is right: it would be the most unworkable mess you've ever seen if our society was insane enough to put these ideas into practice.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Walmart Loves You
Walmart "loves" you, this I know, for the Supercenters tell me so.
Whenever I enter through those automatic sliding glass doors I'm feeling pretty darn good. Almost happy sometimes just to be there and see all that abundance. It's an abundance that you'll never find under any form of real socialism (socialism, that is, that does not act parasitically on free markets to "spread the wealth", as in some so-called "socialist" countries in Western Europe) and that can only exist under what I'm still going to call capitalism.
I don't have a "Supercenter" (a giant Walmart that sells a full line of groceries as well as the usual general merchandise you find at all Walmarts) near the home where I spend most of the week, so I only get to visit a super Walmart about once a week. This week I could only purchase a few items (but then, due to my previous Walmart excursions, I currently have enough of all the other things I need) and one of those on my list was soda. It's very hot right now, and I don't have air conditioning at one home and we only use it in a limited fashion at the other home, so I have to have some cold soda pop in the fridge (mostly various diet sodas) at all times. I know water is better for you, and I do drink a lot of it when the weather is this warm and, yes, I drink it in bottled form ("Horrors!" I can hear the enviro-nuts scream) but I also still want something sweet and bubbling to cool me down too. Thus my constant quest these past few weeks to seek out and acquire the best tasting, most flavorful and positively thirst-quenching carbonated drinks on the market.
One of the first displays I saw was for Walmart's house brand Sam's Choice soda. They were selling six packs for one dollar (and no additional CRV fee like in Commie Califorina!) and even though I don't drink many regular sodas containing the dreaded HFCS, I put a couple in my cart. A heavyset gentleman came up with his own cart and asked me if they were really selling these for just a buck and I said yes. He started loading up with one of each variety offered. He couldn't find any root beer though, and boy, did he want root beer. He circled the display several times, lifting six packs right and left in his vain search, but no root beer was to be found. "Need some root beer too," he said.
He headed off in the same direction I did, to the soda and water aisle. He actually did find the Sam's Choice Root Beer in six packs there, also of course for only a dollar. I myself added a root beer to my cart, but also several 12 packs of diet soda.
The thing about Walmart is, you can have pretty much everything you see that you want on a given trip because things are at prices you can actually afford. This is why I have no Supercenters near my other home, the unions and the big supermarket chains have kept them out through local government rules on "big box" stores and laws limiting how many square feet can be devoted to food in a store that sells more than just groceries.
I had a short discussion the other day with a black woman from North Carolina who started in on Walmart. "I hates the Waltons!" she proclaimed loudly. "I hates Walmart and how they treat people. I from Detroit where they make the cars, and thanks to the unions people make decent money working, not like at Walmart." Yes, and look what happened to the American auto companies.
Forget all that nonsense about Walmart being evil. The truth is Walmart "loves" you. They love your business, sure, but they also love you inadvertently, by giving you what you want at prices you can pay. I know the difference every time I enter a regular supermarket and find myself unable to add some things to the old grocery cart that I want because the prices are so high.
The heavyset guy passed me a bit later, his cart full, and said to me with a big grin on his face, "Take care, have a good day!" He was happy and obviously was returning the love to Walmart and its other beneficiaries.
So thank you, Walmart. I love you too!
Whenever I enter through those automatic sliding glass doors I'm feeling pretty darn good. Almost happy sometimes just to be there and see all that abundance. It's an abundance that you'll never find under any form of real socialism (socialism, that is, that does not act parasitically on free markets to "spread the wealth", as in some so-called "socialist" countries in Western Europe) and that can only exist under what I'm still going to call capitalism.
I don't have a "Supercenter" (a giant Walmart that sells a full line of groceries as well as the usual general merchandise you find at all Walmarts) near the home where I spend most of the week, so I only get to visit a super Walmart about once a week. This week I could only purchase a few items (but then, due to my previous Walmart excursions, I currently have enough of all the other things I need) and one of those on my list was soda. It's very hot right now, and I don't have air conditioning at one home and we only use it in a limited fashion at the other home, so I have to have some cold soda pop in the fridge (mostly various diet sodas) at all times. I know water is better for you, and I do drink a lot of it when the weather is this warm and, yes, I drink it in bottled form ("Horrors!" I can hear the enviro-nuts scream) but I also still want something sweet and bubbling to cool me down too. Thus my constant quest these past few weeks to seek out and acquire the best tasting, most flavorful and positively thirst-quenching carbonated drinks on the market.
One of the first displays I saw was for Walmart's house brand Sam's Choice soda. They were selling six packs for one dollar (and no additional CRV fee like in Commie Califorina!) and even though I don't drink many regular sodas containing the dreaded HFCS, I put a couple in my cart. A heavyset gentleman came up with his own cart and asked me if they were really selling these for just a buck and I said yes. He started loading up with one of each variety offered. He couldn't find any root beer though, and boy, did he want root beer. He circled the display several times, lifting six packs right and left in his vain search, but no root beer was to be found. "Need some root beer too," he said.
He headed off in the same direction I did, to the soda and water aisle. He actually did find the Sam's Choice Root Beer in six packs there, also of course for only a dollar. I myself added a root beer to my cart, but also several 12 packs of diet soda.
The thing about Walmart is, you can have pretty much everything you see that you want on a given trip because things are at prices you can actually afford. This is why I have no Supercenters near my other home, the unions and the big supermarket chains have kept them out through local government rules on "big box" stores and laws limiting how many square feet can be devoted to food in a store that sells more than just groceries.
I had a short discussion the other day with a black woman from North Carolina who started in on Walmart. "I hates the Waltons!" she proclaimed loudly. "I hates Walmart and how they treat people. I from Detroit where they make the cars, and thanks to the unions people make decent money working, not like at Walmart." Yes, and look what happened to the American auto companies.
Forget all that nonsense about Walmart being evil. The truth is Walmart "loves" you. They love your business, sure, but they also love you inadvertently, by giving you what you want at prices you can pay. I know the difference every time I enter a regular supermarket and find myself unable to add some things to the old grocery cart that I want because the prices are so high.
The heavyset guy passed me a bit later, his cart full, and said to me with a big grin on his face, "Take care, have a good day!" He was happy and obviously was returning the love to Walmart and its other beneficiaries.
So thank you, Walmart. I love you too!
Monday, May 19, 2008
Capitalism vs. the Free Market
Adam Smith, like the other early classical liberals, was a revolutionary thinker who attacked the entrenched privileges of the landed oligarchy and the mercantile capitalists. It's almost impossible to go to a mainstream "libertarian" website these days without seeing the thought of Adam Smith misappropriated to defend the modern institution most closely resembling the landed interests and privileged monopolists of the Old Regime: the giant, state-subsidized, state-protected corporation.
As I suggested earlier, most people who display egalitarian reactions against existing inequalities and concentrations of wealth may well believe that what they hate is the "free market." But that's only because the rhetoric of "free markets" has been perverted, for the most part, by apologists for those concentrations of wealth which result from privilege and other forms of state intervention. What they hate, they rightly hate. They're wrong to believe that what they hate is the "free market." But it's hard to blame them, when you can't turn on the TV or read an editorial page without seeing a fundamentally statist economic system of special privilege and protection for big business and the rich described as "our free market system."
From:Review: The Mind of the Market, by Michael Shermer
at Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
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