The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.
The only place you can find an American Marxist these days is teaching a college linguistic theory class. But you can find all manner of free market fundamentalists still on the Senate floor or in Governor's mansions or showing up on TV trying to peddle the deregulation snake oil.
Take Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who went on Face the Nation and, with a straight face, said of the economic meltdown: "Unfortunately, it was allowed to be portrayed that this was a result of deregulation, when in fact it was a result of overregulation."
Or Gov. Mark Sanford, who told Joe Scarborough he was against bailing out the auto industry because it would "threaten the very market-based system that has created the wealth that this country has enjoyed."
If a politician announced he was running on a platform of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" he would be laughed off the stage. That is also the correct response to anyone who continues to make the case that markets do best when left alone.
It's time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is. If not, the Dr. Frankensteins of the right will surely try to revive the monster and send it marauding through our economy once again.We've only just begun to bury the financially dead, and the free market fundamentalists are already looking to deflect the blame.
In a comprehensive piece on what led to the mortgage crisis and the subsequent financial meltdown, the New York Times shows how the Bush administration's devotion to unregulated markets was a primary cause of our economy to ruin. But the otherwise fascinating piece puts too much focus on the "mistakes" the Bush team made by not paying attention to the warning signs popping up all around them.
"There is no question we did not recognize the severity of the problems," claimed Al Hubbard, Bush's former chief economic adviser. "Had we, we would have attacked them."
But the mistake wasn't in not recognizing the "severity of the problems" -- the mistake was the ideology that led to the problems. Communism didn't fail because Soviet leaders didn't execute it well enough. Same with free market fundamentalism. In fact, Bush and his team did a bang-up job executing a defective theory. The problem wasn't just the bathwater; the baby itself is rotten to the core.
William Seidman, the longtime GOP economic advisor who oversaw the S&L bailout in 1991, cuts to the chase: "This administration made decisions that allowed the free market to operate as a barroom brawl instead of a prize fight. To make the market work well, you have to have a lot of rules."
Even Alan Greenspan, whose owl-eyed visage would adorn a Mount Rushmore of unregulated capitalists, has begun to see the light, telling a House committee in October that he "made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."
But most Republicans are still refusing to see what's right in front of them. Especially Bush, our CEO president, who lays the blame not on the failures of the marketplace but on past administrations and corporate greed. "Wall Street got drunk," he says. Maybe so, but who made the last 8 years Happy Hour, and kept serving up the drinks?
Last week, Ben Smith reported that the GOP was launching "a new, in-house think tank aimed at reviving the party's policy heft." In a private memo explaining the think tank, RNC chairman Mike Duncan wrote: "We must show how our ideology can be applied to solve problems." But, of course, it's that very ideology that's causing the problems. It's like the old horror movie cliché: "We've traced the call -- it's coming from inside the house!"
We've got to do everything we can to make sure there will be no sequels to this political horror. The blame shifters cannot be allowed to make their case without the truth being pointed out at every turn. It's time to relegate free market fundamentalists to the same standing as Marxist ideologues: intellectual curiosities occasionally trotted out as relics of a failed philosophy.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
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Requiring banks to issue loans and mortgages to those who would not be eligible under a free market system is not only stupid, it is bad business.
If one were to check out the board of directors of any of the companies taking bailout money, you might be surprised at the connection
@Kevinabt, your initial response is right on the money.
Opposite world.
Look up CDS and get back to us.
The Bush Administra
http://rea
It could happen only if there were no government interventi
We've had socialism for business from day #1.
Protective tariffs for manufactur
Subsidies for railroads.
And on and on.
All this talk of the "free market" is just a ploy to confuse the rubes.
We don't have free market capitalism in America. We have corrupt cronyism. The old Soviet Union didn't have socialism, it had something much more evil and corrupt.
We should ditch both forms of corruption and take a look at the countries who have higher standards of living than ours. Perhaps we have something to learn.
1) stop teaching children to compete at the expense of their fellow citizens.
2) achieve zero population growth.
3) accept that resources are limited and need to be conserved.
4) stop the unnecessar
5) design buildings, vehicles, etc. to be easily repairable
6) stop making appeals to obsolete economic theories (i.e. neoclassic
7) make education reality based.
8) and many others.
I don't know what you'll call that.
What we are seeing now is not the failing of a free market but the natural and predictabl
TomSawyer, Nothing is wrong with laziness, except the unfairly negative meaning of the word. A lot of innovation is unnecessar
balance is the key.
controvers
class, whose only hope of security lies in such eliminatio
a fraudulent trustee, the bourgeois dreads nothing so much as an
impartial and rigid inquiry into the validity of his title deeds. Hence
the bourgeois press and politician
working class mind to fever heat upon questions outside the range
of their own class interests.
-James Connolly.
I would like to publicly thank Huffpost for allowing this debate to take place, for the most part, without censure. Only one of my posts was rejected, one in reference to the timely work of Henryk Grossman. In any event, the open space here contradict
I've also been amazed at the attempts to blame the financial troubles on over-regul
Even the autobahn has strictly enforced road rules.