Did Milton Friedman Make New Zealand a Nuclear-Free Zone?
Jesse Walker | October 14, 2008, 1:03pm
reason has a cameo in
Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein's recent
speech at the University of Chicago:
I think all ideologies should be held accountable for the crimes committed in their names. I think it makes us better. Now, of course, there are still those on the far left who will insist that all of those crimes were just an aberration--Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot; reality is annoying--and they retreat into their sacred texts. We all know who I'm talking about.
But lately, particularly just in the past few months, I have noticed something similar happening on the far libertarian right, at places like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation. It's a kind of a panic, and it comes from the fact that the Bush administration adapted--adopted so much of their rhetoric, the fusing of free markets and free people, the championing of so many of their pet policies. But, of course, Bush is the worst thing that has ever happened to believers in this ideology, because while parroting the talking points of Friedmanism, he has overseen an explosion of crony capitalism, that they treat governing as a conveyor belt or an ATM machine, where private corporations make withdrawals of the government in the form of no-bid contracts and then pay back government in the form of campaign contributions. And we're seeing this more and more. The Bush administration is a nightmare for these guys--the explosion of the debt and now, of course, these massive bailouts.
So, what we see from the ideologues of the far right--by far right, I mean the far economic right--frantically distancing themselves and retreating to their sacred texts: The Road to Serfdom, Capitalism and Freedom, Free to Choose.
Some of us distanced ourselves from Bush
long ago, Naomi! But it's nice to hear she reads
reason, even if she thinks we're responsible when the president follows the exact opposite of our recommendations. Maybe she saw Johan Norberg's devastating
review in our pages of
The Shock Doctrine. Her talk does address, or at least brushes against, some of Norberg's complaints:
[Friedmanites] will tell you, when I speak of Chile under Pinochet, Russia under Yeltsin and the Chicago Boys, China under Deng Xiaoping, or America under George W. Bush, or Iraq under Paul Bremer, that these were all distortions of Milton Friedman's theories, that none of these actually count, when you talk about the repression and the surveillance and the expanding size of government and the intervention in the system, which is really much more like crony capitalism or corporatism than the elegant, perfectly balanced free market that came to life in those basement workshops. We'll hear that Milton Friedman hated government interventions, that he stood up for human rights, that he was against all wars. And some of these claims, though not all of them, will be true.
But here's the thing. Ideas have consequences. And when you leave the safety of academia and start actually issuing policy prescriptions, which was Milton Friedman's other life--he wasn't just an academic. He was a popular writer. He met with world leaders around the world--China, Chile, everywhere, the United States. His memoirs are a "who's who." So, when you leave that safety and you start issuing policy prescriptions, when you start advising heads of state, you no longer have the luxury of only being judged on how you think your ideas will affect the world. You begin having to contend with how they actually affect the world, even when that reality contradicts all of your utopian theories.
There are so many levels of incoherence and inaccuracy in those passages that I won't try to address them all. Let's just zero in on the contrast Klein draws between utopian theories and real-world practice. It's a fair argument if you apply it properly: that is, if you look at the consequences of Friedman's policy prescriptions
where they are put in place. It makes sense, for example, to look at how Friedman's ideas about denationalization and free trade fared in Chile after they were put into effect. It doesn't make much sense to look at Blackwater's contracts in occupied Iraq, because -- try as Klein might to pretend otherwise -- they don't have anything to do with Friedman. (And of course, it's important to examine the ways Pinochet's Chile
deviated from Friedman's economic ideas as well as the ways it embraced them.)
At the same time, you have to consider how Friedmanism fared
everywhere some portion of it was applied, not just cherry-pick the most unappealing regimes that experimented with it. If the only place that adopted any of Friedman's economic ideas was Chile, then Klein might be onto something when she suggests there's a connection between libertarian economic policies and deeply un-libertarian ideas about torture, censorship, surveillance, and state-sanctioned murder. But the most sweeping free-market reforms of the last 40 years were not adopted in Pinochet's Chile, Thatcher's UK, or anyplace else addressed in Klein's book. They were enacted by the
New Zealand Labour Party in the 1980s. Far from fusing economic liberalization with political repression, the Labour government expanded civil liberties: It adopted a bill of rights, decriminalized homosexuality, improved the treatment of the native Maori. And while Pinochet signed on to the CIA's war against the Latin American left, New Zealand strained its relations with Washington by making itself a nuclear-free zone, a policy that effectively barred the U.S. Navy from New Zealand ports. By Klein's logic, these are all effects of Friedmanomics.
It shouldn't be surprising to find market reforms in a variety of political contexts: As Norberg pointed out in his review, almost every country on the planet has liberalized its economy in some way or another over the last few decades. (One of Klein's favorite economic models, the flexible manufacturing networks of
Emilia-Romagna, is itself largely a product of market forces -- though not of Milton Friedman.) So yes, it's important to look at how Friedman's theories "actually affect the world." Klein prefers to ignore those parts of world that don't fit her thesis, and to study the effects of measures that violated Friedman's theories instead of advancing them.
Kevin Carson | October 15, 2008, 12:36am | #
First of all, Jeremy, Naomi Klein herself blamed Marxists for Stalin and Pol Pot, and drew an explicit parallel in blaming libertarians for neoliberalism.
I have repeatedly defended the value of Disaster Capitalism (despite its theoretical incoherence on the difference between free markets and corporatism), as a concrete account of the Washington Consensus policies adopted around the world. I did so HREF="http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2007/11/naomi-klein-shock-doctrine.html">here.
But Klein's blockquoted remarks are completely asinine. It's as asinine to blame Rosa Luxembourg for Stalin and Pol Pot as it is to blame libertarians for George Bush.
Every ruling class in history has adopted a legitimizing ideology; and since it must justify itself primarily to the ruled, to the people it's exploiting and screwing over, to stay in power, its legitimizing ideology generally borrows heavily from the belief systems of--guess who?--the *ruled*. The Federalists managed to squeak their trojan
horse through the state ratifying conventions by using the anglo-republican rhetoric of the Anti-Federalists to package it.
Stalin legitimized his rule in Russia by misappropriating the language and symbolism of the classical socialist and movement, and falsely appealing to its values. And neoliberals, similarly, misappropriate the language and symbolism of "free enterprise."
And guess what else? The symbolism and language of Progressivism/liberalism were appropriated by FDR to sell corporatist policies drafted by GE's Gerard Swope and the Business Advisory Council.
So there! There's nothing clean. Any belief system with a high level of currency among the ruled populace is likely, in the natural order of things, to be misappropriated by the rulers, in order to secure popular compliance with their rule.
On the other hand, such belief systems--of all kinds--are contested terrain. They are grab-bags of values and symbolism to which rulers can appeal, true enough. But the very same values and symbolism can be reclaimed by the ruled and used to undermine their authority of the ruling class.
For example, working class resistance to the Soviet-imposed regimes in Eastern Europe commonly justified itself in libertarian socialist terms, and relied heavily on socialist symbolism and rhetoric. In East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1967, the Solidarity movement in Poland--in every case, the aim was workers' power, workers' control of industry, etc., and the instrument chosen was organs of workers' self-mangement in the factories and direct democracy at the neighborhood level. In other words, the working class of Eastern Europe resisted the Soviet Union with a battle cry of "All power to the soviets!"
This concept--using the master's tools to tear down the master's house--should be familiar to most people on the Left. I'd be surprised if Klein wasn't aware of it.
Anyone who can't see the parallel to the free market movement and crony capitalism--using the language of "free markets" as a weapon against crony capitalism, and demonizing the state capitalists in terms of their own falsely professed values--must be deliberately obtuse.
It's precisely *because* I see the value in Klein's work that I cringe at the sight of reprehensible remarks like those above.
Hazel Meade | October 15, 2008, 1:13pm | #
"Did you know what Marx thought of Lenin? Have you actually read anything Marx wrote, or do you just get your interpretation of it from Insta-sellout?
On the other hand, how much did Friedman talk to Pinochet? How much did Friedman (and his direct followers) advise Pinochet?"
Considering that Marx died when Lenin was, oh, 13 years old, it would be pretty difficult for Marx to have had any thoughts about Lenin. Unless maybe he thought he was a cute little tyke that showed up at a book signing.
How much did Friedman advise Pinochet? VERY LITTLE.
You need to read Johan Norberg's excellent piece debunking Klein's book:
"In fact, Friedman never worked as an adviser to, and never accepted a penny from, the Chilean regime. He even turned down two honorary degrees from Chilean universities that received government funding, because he did not want to be seen as endorsing a dictatorship he considered "terrible" and "despicable." He did spend six days in Chile in March 1975 to give public lectures, at the invitation of a private foundation. When he was there he met with Pinochet for about 45 minutes and wrote him a letter afterward, arguing for a plan to end hyperinflation and liberalize the economy. He gave the same kind of advice to communist dictatorships as well, including the Soviet Union, China, and Yugoslavia."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/128903.html
That's right. Pinochet sat in a roon for 45 minutes with Friedman. That's the extent of the relationship.
Validmir Lenin was a self-described Marxist who adopted Marx's revolutionary political program and devoted his life to advancing Marx's ideas.
quasibill | October 15, 2008, 6:26pm | #
"Lenin adopted Marx's ideas"
Maybe when you've actually read Marx, you'll see just how stupid that statement makes you look. Or maybe not, if your reading comprehension really is this poor.
If Insta-sellout claims to be a libertarian, it doesn't mean that anything that he says actually is based on the philosophy, even though I have no doubt he has read libertarian tracts thoroughly. Many people read Marx and tried to simplify his thought, and in doing so, mangled it horribly (perhaps the most famous example of such is the theory of dialectical materialism - a concept many "Marxists" butchered for their own purposes, and which Marx, while he was still alive, pointed out with disdain). Marx himself denounced many of the "Marxists" that came after him, calling them simpletons and the like. And Lenin, Stalin, and Mao *all* deviated significantly from what Marx actually advocated.
The major mistake Marx made was thinking that the state could ever be reformed from its function as the medium through which a narrow ruling coalition imposes itself on the majority. Anyone who grabs the reins of the state eventually falls prey to the temptations of power - proletarian or Pinochet.
Which, when you get right down to it, is the same mistake Friedman made and Klein makes.
And no, my argument was not what you re-stated it as. What it was that Lenin, STalin, and especially Mao, were less influenced in their actions than Pinochet was by Friedman. In both instances, the answer was very, very, little. But any honest objective observer, dealing with just the facts, as your statement did, would have to admit that if anything, Friedman had more direct influence on Pinochet than Marx did on Lenin, and especially on STalin or Mao.
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