it makes me laugh. we”re so stupid and we love accepting what we”re told without questioning the basics. ( what! you mean this doesn”t apply to just religious people?)
what”s so “free” about the free market? please someone can you explain that to me and give me some simple answers?
there is no such thing - i for one, have always had a libertarian vision of society - the way it should be - not the state of affairs we”re lumbered with.
and a free market? well im in favour of a free society - and since a market is a part of society - im in favour of free markets. duh - you”d think that was obvious to a two-year old. How can anyone have a free market without a free society? ( well if you don”t see markets as part of society ..) Venn diagrams people - think carefully. next edition of this rant will be fully equipped for those of you who can”t see what i mean..
im most bemused by how people say we”ve got free global markets when a) we”ve not got a “free” society and b) in order to have a fully global free market surely you”d think one would have to have full free global movement for the social actors partaking in these so-called free global market. ( which we don”t - for those of you not sure what i mean - please refer to earlier rants on the fact that your global movement depends on your “group” aka that wonderfully “liberating” social unit - the Nation State.)
oh no. and then of course - perhaps people don”t understand “markets” and “social institutions” or governance or government. we are told a free market is a sign of a “laissez-faire” approach - hands off government regulation! it”s “free”. oh yes - it”s “free” - is it now? Even if there”s no government regulation - does it mean it”s free of all forms of regulation? for what is regulation if not “control”? and if anyone”s saying oh yes free markets are free of “control” ill laugh like a wild hyena. oh yes free of control - from social institutions who”re not “government” but how “free” is that - is the big question. is someone saying there are no “forces” out there controlling the situation? yes they squeak - it”s all marketforces - that”s the point. right in that case, we haven”t got free markets, last time i looked folks like the world bank and imf and the WTO and the powerful nation-states ( looking after their own interests 
nothing wrong with that) didn”t look too much like a market but more like big powerful institutions to me. why pretend ?
so yeah - its pretty clever -focus on govt. “regulation” - and stick the power in the hands of shadowy complex non-accountable organizations - non-national (so it gets past the oh we cant have regulation by national governmental institutions) probably global - ( think IMF! World Bank - again) and hey presto! we all think we”re not “regulated” but free! free as a bird. oh yes…
like i said, it makes me laugh. clearly most people don”t think about social organization. we”re trained to think about “government” — well governments at the end of the day are a form of governance. why we imagine that non-government institutions don”t have power over our lives ( the other thing of course is the term regulation, its very “official” and people don”t really think about how our lives are socially regulated by norms and groups ( aka institutions) even in the absence of “formal” regulation. ) me i”m a fan of as much individual liberty as possible - hence my anarchistic focus on social regulation - ( no point in just looking at formal “regulation” per se) - and that”s precisely why i”d like the spotlight to be on our oh-so-tightly controlled and regulated societies - when institutions have “power” over our lives - whether they”re our group of mates or the world bank - then i think we need to look at these social dynamics.
so the point is this. in societies with no “official” government and “formal” regulation - do we seriously imagine the dynamics are a) free b) not controlled by any “social forces” ? hah.
don”t imagine that cabals, cliques, coteries with power aren”t “regulating” the “market” - because they”re “regulating” the society - so naturally that affects the “marketplace”. who can do what, who can sell what to whom, who gets a preferred price, who gets no access to the market cos they”re a social outcast - you get the picture? the emphasis should be on the social context that the “market” is situated within.
Social forces - why aren”t we looking at that?
chances are if you”re an economist, you won”t get any of this - you”ll bleat - but the market the market! what”s this about the social ? ( no offense to the “enlightened economists” - of course you know that you”re a rare breed
or a conformist - what? you mean all this talk about free markets and we haven”t got any? But..!! ooh dear - shock horror. yep, we need free collaborative markets -where you, me and any tom dick and harry- i.e. individuals can trade with each other without having to worry about what a bunch of uninvited big institutions think about what we ought to be doing. if a group of people organize themselves and want to trade with each other - good for them. why should i let some global institution which is not accountable to me democratically tell me what i can or cannot do based on my membership of that awful construct - the nation-state? Phooey to that - and we”re told that”s “liberalism” of some kind ( ha!!?? ) and “free”.
oh yes - “free” - for those of us in the “right” groups - the ones with the power that is.
not free as in the way i define free. not free for any random individual. oh no!
then again - its like any of these things. some folks thing something is “liberal” and some folks think ..what! ( like religion :-))
Bottom line - some people have laid the groundwork so that any discussion on freedom and markets are carried out without any consideration of the social context and the social organizations and institutions we”re saddled with. which shape the social forces we operate within. taking nation-states for “granted” as some “god-given” social unit with perfect legitimacy and as some wonderfully “free” and equal unit - not as a highly flawed social construct that spawns major global inequalities. oh no.
so of course in the context of that discourse, “free markets” - are all about markets based on national denominations. then the focus is always on this country can”t regulate itself - it must give it self up to “invisible” global regulation. i.e. let”s pretend if there is no “national” regulation, there is no regulation full stop. ( why who”d spot differently!!) of course the emphasis is never on the fact that certain other institutions somewhere else have worked very hard to ensure the current state of play - now that doesn”t sound very “laissez-faire” to me or “free from control and manipulation”. the point - as David Harvey makes - the neoliberals have some very “strong” institutions pushing through their agenda.
Anyhow - i am going to push my agenda - which is that markets aren”t free, and we need free markets - not ones that pit individuals against each other in nasty big cliques and focus on the health of the “nation-state” or big fat institutions-aka big business.fuck that - but free collaborative markets - where individuals are free to barter, exchange, and collaborate with each other. whether that is me as in moi, or me in my voluntary social collective of some sort - you know - the type you actually choose to join and have some democratic involvement in and has accountability to its members - and not some coercive focred social contract.
Liberty and free societies - and thereby - free markets - one day hopefully.
Well said. I’ve dugg it!
http://digg.com/links/Free_the_market,_please...
http://digg.com/links/Free_the_market,_please...
Let’s see if it works this time.
Nope. Well you can get there via my digg page. Does this prove some kind of conspiracy? Arghhhh! No, it’s just Friday.
Comrade, you ought to leave for Cuba instantly. Castro is old and on verge of death (thankfully so) and your above piece makes me think that you might be the best person to take over from Castro.
Bloggerwise, there are two types: linkers and writers. [There is, as always, a grey area where types like myself belong]. You seem to be an excellent writer with powerful analysis. Keep up prolific commentary… and thanks for commenting on my blog..
you’re welcome tasneem - you had some interesting stuff on your site. i like the bits about anarchy and open-source..so stick around!
freedom from and freedom to
Nice article, your anger and impatience shows through - think how you’d feel if you had studied economics at university and had to read truckloads of articles making the same assumptions about free market economies and coming to the conclusion that societies should change in order to benefit from this great treasure.
Anyway, I’ll try to suppress my bitterness. In fact, by drawing on the stuff I studied, I will deploy an observation about the nature of the collaborative free market you suggest. It would have to be embedded in a kind of society which we are systematically destroying in order to make an atomised society which is important for the kinds of free markets which seem to work so well in econometric models.
The kind of society where there is trust between people within the market - built on what? Many-sided relationships, repeated interaction, common internalised values…. These sorts of things require enduring relationships with people and long-term expectations of stability and subtle sanctions which can easily become oppressive and coercive in turn.
What kind of economy would such a society produce - probably one which develops more slowly and, let us face what we see happen to such societies now and in the recent past, vulnerable to destruction and dispossession by more rapacious socio-economic models.
Change needs to come about slowly - by taking back bits of control over what we as individuals and groups produce and consume. Living simply and using local resources as much as possible. Any new model we raise in opposition will have itsown problems as people do not fit into models and we hate the results of being forced to do so. Phenomenologically, a free market would be a market where people feel their decisions are not coerced. So many people feel free now as they naturalise their conditioning and take as given the conditions under which they make their choices. If you and I feel unfree, it is because we have questioned the conditions and criteria of choice presented to us - perhaps through an interest in the conditions in which production takes place, the impacts of our consumption of the environment or the limitation of choices to things which seem superficial and leave only unethical outcomes, or the power which it has given to impersonal organisations to construct the conditions under which we work, play and take political decisions.
Draw attention to these, and the game starts to unravel. The high priests of economics will have to compete with atheists and humanists just as all other religions have to. But please let’s not construct a new Marxist-like religion, for one thing it’ll be an excuse to create more modules of indoctrination at university to crush us! David Harvey is fun and provides radical critiques, but he still does not see that technological development can go in different socially conditioned directions which have power implications which aren’t neutral in their societal impacts. I reckon we should focus on the kind of society we want and let the economic theorists follow!