Carrol Cox wrote: > History is not a board game, economics is a sub-division of politics, > which is not a board game, and there is no way to set up rules to > protect against the same mistakes being repeated.
It's true that economics is a sub-division of sociology, which also includes politics as a subdivision, and that those two subdivisions cannot be separated hermetically but instead interpenetrate with each other. But that does not mean that there's nothing special about economics in this mix. What's different is that the existence of profit-seeking businesses in relatively competitive settings produces much more predictable results than do political and sociological processes. Within limits, the workings of markets are like the workings of nature in terms of predictability. Smith pointed to the relatively predictable (but unintended) results of purposeful action and hopefully asserted that it was as if an invisible hand were channeling greed to serve the "public" (even the poor, in the classic trickle-down theory). Marx pointed to the many ways in which greed and competition instead lead to negative results for the working class, again often despite the intentions of market participants. It also encourages the temporary self-destruction of much of the capitalist class, in the form of economic crises. The invisible hand regularly drops the ball. For both Smith and Marx, therefore, the workings of the economy involved a significant element of predictability. That does not mean we can do the kind of prediction that physicists claim to do (or social scientists think that physicists can do), because the social world can't be reduced to economics. But it does say that there is an element in the social process that can be relied upon, at least provisionally. There are some small islands of predictability in the midst of the rip current of unpredictability. Serious students of banking know that an unfettered financial system (i.e., one regulated to simply serve the short-term interest of financiers) encourages undue risk-taking, excessive leveraging, Ponzi schemes, and the like. As with Smith and Marx's predictions, this result is implied by a clear theory of how greed, competition, and markets work under real-world conditions (uncertainty, incomplete information, etc.) This in turn implies that the government can "set up rules to protect against the same mistakes being repeated." After all, the financial rules created under FDR stabilized the US financial system all the way into the 1970s. Some kind of similar system might do so in the future. (It would be difficult given the international dimension, but still possible.) Of course, once they've forgotten the Melt-Down of 2008, the financiers will push for changes in regulations that favor their short-term interests and so the system will start down a new road to financial calamity. Nothing is permanent. (Similarly, though social-democratic management of capitalism makes the system work better (more efficiently, more equitably) than does neoliberal capitalism, individual capitalists lobby for its end.) > In short, Lou's posts on Diamond, various posts on the Bush Administration, > Doug's exposes of financial idiocy, are all the 2009 equivalent of the > Weatherman idiocy of 1958 [1968?], grounded in the same kind of political > despair.< I can't speak for them, but I don't think Lou and Doug are in any way similar to the Weatherpeople. As far as I can tell, they don't think that moral critiques will suddenly change the world. In contrast, the Weatherfolk believed that they could light a prairie fire with a few sparks -- because they believed that US capitalism was right on the edge of catching fire. It's safe to say that neither Lou nor Doug believe that capitalism is near that kind of tipping point. That is, even if they might engage in moral indignation, their view of "objective conditions" is completely different from that of the Weathercritters. If it doesn't matter to political analysis what one's views of objective conditions are, then the whole issue boils down to the "moral rage" that Carrol is in a moral rage against. That suggests that he wants us to simply embrace the despair, to learn to love it. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die. I'll pay for the next round... In his novel THE JUNGLE (1906), Upton Sinclair has a description of the then-burgeoning socialist movement. Some of the speakers were moralistic (like Gene Debs?) while others were cold and scientific in their presentation (the Marxists). Why can't a new socialist movement have both? -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
