Vulgar libertarianism, and The Mind of the Market - 1 comment

There's a great review of this book over at the Mutualist Blog. It's always a refreshing blog to read because it's built on actual philosophy and economics, and is thus free of assumptions about what and who are 'left' or 'right', and discussions about the 'characters' of individual politicians and potential leaders. You might point out that this detachment from 'everyday' politics is an unaffordable luxury; then again, it beats the current wave of Labour factionalism, and the attempts to define (or, more likely, resurrect) policy frameworks off the tops of people's heads, largely concerned as they are with reshuffling public spending, and marked by a lack of a consistent philosophical backing.

Anyway, who or what is a "vulgar libertarian"? Essentially, one who ostensibly supports the extension of - and removal of restrictions upon - economic and political liberty, but who does so assymetrically: (generally) targeting trade unions and those on state benefits, but allowing other powerful institutions, e.g. large companies, certain favoured institutions and individuals, to maintain those privileges unhindered. A Thatcherite, you might well say. So (my bold):

Shermer asks why people reject Adam Smith's theory of economics, despite its being so profound and proven. The answer just might be that the rhetoric of free markets, so closely associated with Adam Smith, has been misappropriated to defend a system of corporate power far closer to what Smith condemned than to what he supported. 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. [...]

Read the whole thing.