← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Jack Cassidy
Thread ID: 16588 | Posts: 15 | Started: 2005-02-04
2005-02-04 18:06 | User Profile
Walter Yannis, Blond Knight, et al.
I know quite a few people on OD know their sh*t when it comes to economics and politics so I need your advice. I took some econ courses as electives for my undergraduate degree (Intro. toi Econ, Intermediate Microeconomic Theory, Int. Macro, etc.) but all I recall is I had to memorize lots of mathematical formulae. I.e., I couldn't tell you nuttin' 'bout nuttin' regarding economics, even though I got good grades in these classes. Now, while paleo-paleos are drawn toward a distributist economic philosophy, is possible to be a paleo and subscribe to a more libertarian economic philosophy, ala the Austrian School of Hayek, Von Mises, Rothbard ([url="http://www.mises.org/"]http://www.mises.org[/url])? There are two reasons I ask this. First, there are a bunch of MP3 audio lectures on politics and economics at the Mises.org site. Second, some of the people I most admire-- specifically the way they view the world, e.g., Paul Craig Roberts, Joe Sobran, Thomas Fleming, et al., are all part of this group.
Any and all advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
2005-02-04 18:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]Second, some of the people I most admire-- specifically the way they view the world, e.g., Paul Craig Roberts, Joe Sobran, Thomas Fleming, et al., are all part of this group.[/QUOTE] For the record, Thomas Fleming is not at all a libertarian, and has, in fact, written some rather pointed articles to make that point, such as [url="http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/January2002/0102Fleming.htm"]Abuse Your Illusions[/url] at chroniclesmagazine.org. While it may be possible to be a paleocon and also a Misesian libertarian (although I would personally contend that it is not), I think it is blatantly impossible to be a devout Catholic and a Misesian libertarian. Here are two more Chronicles articles regarding that thesis. [url="http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Storck/NewsTS0617104.html"]Economic Science and Catholic Social Teaching[/url] [url="http://chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Kwasniewski/NewsPK070504.html"]This Goes Way Beyond Free Markets [/url]
2005-02-04 18:46 | User Profile
Actually, I don't think Paul Craig Roberts is a Misesian libertarian, either. He may be influenced by Von Mises and Rothbard in some aspects of his thinking, but Roberts is a protectionist, which is grounds for excommunication from the Austrian School.
2005-02-04 18:59 | User Profile
Quantrill,
Thank you, this is the kind of bottomline I was looking for. I will resist the lure of all those free MP3 lectures. When you look at the list of faculty and members at Mises.org it is all very confusing.
2005-02-04 19:10 | User Profile
If Keynesian economics is heretical to this neo-cons and libertarians, perhaps it cannot be all bad? From what I have gathered from the bitching of mainstream conservatives, all the economics taught in American universities is Keynesian. From a paleo-con view it would seem this is not all that bad?
2005-02-04 19:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]If Keynesian economics is heretical to this neo-cons and libertarians, perhaps it cannot be all bad? From what I have gathered from the bitching of mainstream conservatives, all the economics taught in American universities is Keynesian. From a paleo-con view it would seem this is not all that bad?[/QUOTE] Keynesian economics, like Austrian and Chicago School economics, is deeply flawed. The main problem with all major strains of economic thought is that they seek to understand man in strictly materialist, economic terms, or as homo economicus. They devise elaborate schemes for how commerce and the marketplace should work, and then they try to make human societies, relationships, and families fit into these paradigms. Forcing an organic, human society into these ideological frameworks is similar to forcing someone into Procrustes' bed -- something important is going to get lopped off. Since you are a Catholic, I would recommend looking into Catholic Social Doctrine, starting with the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum. This viewpoint is one that recognizes the value of private property and commerce, but attempts to fit it into a holistic, Christian worldview. [url="http://www.ihspress.com/index1.htm"]IHS Press[/url] is an excellent resource for books along these lines. You should also talk to Walter Yannis, as this is one of his favorite topics, and one about which he is very knowledgable.
2005-02-04 21:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]Keynesian economics, like Austrian and Chicago School economics, is deeply flawed. The main problem with all major strains of economic thought is that they seek to understand man in strictly materialist, economic terms, or as homo economicus. They devise elaborate schemes for how commerce and the marketplace should work, and then they try to make human societies, relationships, and families fit into these paradigms. Forcing an organic, human society into these ideological frameworks is similar to forcing someone into Procrustes' bed -- something important is going to get lopped off. Since you are a Catholic, I would recommend looking into Catholic Social Doctrine, starting with the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum. This viewpoint is one that recognizes the value of private property and commerce, but attempts to fit it into a holistic, Christian worldview. [url="http://www.ihspress.com/index1.htm"]IHS Press[/url] is an excellent resource for books along these lines. You should also talk to Walter Yannis, as this is one of his favorite topics, and one about which he is very knowledgable.[/QUOTE] Thank you for distilling this stuff for me and directing me toward some solid resources. It is much appreciated.
2005-02-04 21:25 | User Profile
If you go to the forums page of originaldissent, you will see that Distributism now has its own thread, where Walter and many others have posted, including your humble servant.
2005-02-04 21:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Buster]If you go to the forums page of originaldissent, you will see that Distributism now has its own thread, where Walter and many others have posted, including your humble servant.[/QUOTE] Wow, yeah, there is enough stuff there to keep me busy for awhile. Thanks.:thumbsup:
2005-02-04 21:54 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Buster]If you go to the forums page of originaldissent, you will see that Distributism now has its own thread, where Walter and many others have posted, including your humble servant.[/QUOTE]
This was a welcome addition when I first noticed it.
2005-02-05 00:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]Thank you for distilling this stuff for me and directing me toward some solid resources. It is much appreciated.[/QUOTE] Jack, You are very welcome. When I first discovered this type of thinking, my whole viewpoint was just shattered. This was a very positive thing, because up until that point I had been trapped in the false dichotomy of godless communism vs industrial capitalism. These ideas were like a breath of fresh air. FYI -- there are a number of schools of thought clustered around this area. Catholic Social Doctrine and its followers (known as the Distributists) are probably the best known, but there were also the Southern Agrarians (of which Robert Penn Warren was one), and there are currently the Christian Agrarians (which is largely Protestant).
2005-02-05 01:58 | User Profile
Good answers from Mr. Quantril.
Some area's of interest may be a look back at the Greenback & Free Silver movements of the 1800's, also don't miss William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech: [url]http://www.tntech.edu/history/crosgold.html[/url]
In the 20th century one must look at those who opposed the Federal Reserve System. Check out Father Coughlin's speeches & writings from the 1930's: [url]http://www.stormfront.org/truth_at_last/books/Father-Coughlin-in-Action.htm[/url]
Check out the books from Emmisary Publications in their section on the money issue: [url]http://www.midnight-emissary.com/money.htm[/url]
There are quite a few other good books on this subject, I will try to compile a list of some of my favories when I get a bit more time.
Also, in Canada was the Social Credit movement. They must have been on to somthing, check out the rabid reaction from the usual suspects:
[url]http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/css/Css_38_1/BRsocial_discredit.htm[/url]
CANADIAN SOCIAL STUDIES VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1, FALL 2003 Janine Stingel. 2000. Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. Pp. 280, $39.95, cloth. ISBN 0-7735-2010-4. website: [url]http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/[/url] Peter Seixas
University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia.
Return
There is a tendency for Canadians today to understand anti-Semitism as simply one more form of ethnic discrimination and prejudice that might take its place next to anti-black, anti-aboriginal or anti-Asian expressions and actions. While these forms of prejudice have much in common, each also has its own particular content rooted both in distinctive mythologies and in the differing histories of their victims and perpetrators in Canada and beyond. Anti-Semitism in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s involved an image of Jews as international conspirators, secretly plotting world domination through an inchoate combination of international banking, communism and Zionism. In the mythology, based on the forged but widely circulated Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jews thus posed a threat to national sovereignty, property, peace and prosperity.
In the 1930s, Social Credit doctrine made its way from its originator, Liverpool's Major C. H. Douglas, to the Canadian West. As Janine Stingel demonstrates, Social Credit was "wholly dependent on an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory" (p. 13). Anti-Semitism was not a coincidental adjunct to this right-wing populist movement, but resided at the core of a paranoid vision of bankers and money-lenders swindling honest Canadians out of the wages of their toil. Depression-era Alberta was fertile ground for such a message, particularly when it came through the medium of a popular radio-preacher turned politician, "Bible Bill" Aberhart. Alberta thus became home to the only North American jurisdiction with a government that officially endorsed anti-Semitism.
Stingel's Social Discredit is constructed as a parallel history of two organizations: the Social Credit Party in Alberta (and beyond) and the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). The reorganization of the CJC in 1934, in response to heightened levels of nationally organized anti-Semitism, roughly corresponded to the origins of Social Credit in Canada (in 1935). The inclusion of the CJC enables the author to tell not just a story of Jews as victims, but to also give them voice as actors in response to discrimination.
That voice, as Stingel tells it however, was neither strong nor effective. The CJC leaders' first impulse was to proceed with a "positive" campaign, in the belief that moral suasion and education were the "key tools" (pp. 33-34). Thus, rather than seeking legal measures to bar public expressions of hate, the CJC published reports on the status of Canadian Jews, demonstrating that they were not all financiers. By the end of the war, with a new kind of knowledge about the potential impact of anti-Semitism, the CJC stepped up its campaign, shifting to "a broad-based appeal against all race hatred" (p. 87). Yet, it remained focused on the attitudes of non-Jews and, according to Stingel, "this assumption would greatly impede its public relations work regarding Social Credit's anti-Semitism" (p.87).
In the immediate post-War years, anti-Semitic expressions from Social Credit actually increased. Stingel chronicles several meetings between Social Credit and the CJC leaders which resulted in private expressions of sympathy ("some of my best friendsââ¬Â¦") followed by public statements that further raised the threat of international conspiracy. Even when leaders were demonstrating their commitment to disavow anti-Semitism, they ended up reinforcing it.
"'Max,' Social Credit leader Solon Low said to CJC agent Max Moscovich in 1946, 'you've known me most of my life-I am definitely not anti-Semitic'" (p. 105). Low promised to ensure that anti-Semitic statements would be eliminated from the Social Credit paper. A few weeks later he gave a national radio address on CBC:
Do you know that the same group of international gangsters who are today scheming for world revolution are the same people who promoted the world war? Do you know that these same men promoted and financed the Russian revolution? Are you aware that these arch-criminals were responsible for the economic chaos and suffering of the hungry thirties, for financing Hitler to power, for promoting World War Two with its tragic carnage? Do you know that there is a close tie-up between international communism, international finance and international political Zionism? (p. 105).
While Low did not mention Jews by name, anti-Semitic mythology was entirely intact. In the face of what was either Social Credit's deliberate duplicity or uncomprehending blindness, as Stingel tells it, the CJC continually failed to mobilize effectively.
By 1947, when the Congress finally started to move towards legal and electoral action, there were other more potent challenges to Social Credit's anti-Semitism. "Little did [the CJC] know that Social Credit's anti-Semitic foundations were already beginning to crumble" (p.121). There was intensive pressure from the regional and national press for the Social Credit leadership to disavow anti-Semitism publicly and to bar its most virulent proponents, like Norman Jaques, from its press. Party leader and Premier Ernest Manning went far enough in his purge of anti-Semitism, that splinter groups accused him of "selling out to the Zionists" in a bitter factional war.
Stingel concludes that "it was Social Credit, not Congress, that ultimately solved the Social Credit problem" (p. 161). The CJC's campaigns were "problematicââ¬Â¦at bestââ¬Â¦grossly ineffective at worst" (p. 163). Yet the appeal of and public tolerance for anti-Semitism decreased in the late 1940s. "By early 1949 Congress could safely relax its vigil on Social Credit" (p. 175).
Social Discredit is traditional organizational history in that it is based heavily in the archives of the two organizations, on the public press and on the organizations' own media. We spend a lot of time reading about who said what to whom at which meeting. Finally, having followed the leaders of the two organizations through a decade and a half, with Social Credit continuing to spout conspiracy theories and the Canadian Jewish Congress continuing to be ineffective, Stingel does not really offer an explanationââ¬âat this levelââ¬âof why the change in Social Credit came between 1947 and 1949. Apparently the answer does not reside in the speeches and press releases. However, if the causes of change lie elsewhere, in the larger story of the shaping of a vigorous anti-Soviet Cold War ideology and on the renewal of Western prosperity (p.189), the reader cannot help but feel a bit disappointed at having followed the organization men from meeting to meeting in such detail for two hundred pages.
Return
2005-02-05 06:40 | User Profile
Jack: I think that Q answered your question pretty well.
I would only add that even by their own lights these "corporate libertarian" types fall short. They all need to re-read Adam Smith.
Were they really for the free market where all actors internalize their own costs, they would resist those things that distort the free market by forcing economic actors to bear all their costs.
Modern capitalism distorts the free market in a number of ways.
First, and perhaps most importantly, the "corporate libertarians" pay no attention to social capital. Social capital is the moral health of the broader human society in which the economy adheres. But Smith and others forthrightly pointed out that a free market can only work where the great majority of people are honest in their dealings and restrained in their personal behaviour. Corporate libertarians and their ilk just can't count the social capital beans, and so they have no defense whatever against economic actors who seek to loot social capital and privatize it. This looting of social capital by corporations - especially through television advertising (television shows are just vehicles for selling ad spots) - is the taproot of our moral decline and loss of self identity.
Take for example the Calvin Klein kiddy porn ad campaign of about 10 years ago, one that was sufficiently shocking that even The Lecher of Little Rock condemned it. The ad campaign was "shocking" precisely because it was totally against Christian morals built up over generations and crossed lines that nobody even considered crossing before that. This made it a very successful ad campaign and sold lots of jeans, because there ain't no such thing as bad press. Calvin Klein effectively mined the moral commonweal doing irreparable damage to it on the way, and it privatized its value. Similarly, for example, consider confectionery manufacturers who launch multimillion dollar ad campaigns aimed at the most vulnerable sections of our society, like children and compulsive overeaters.
The corporate libertarians have no defense against this.
The public morals are one of Garrett Hardin's commons, and in order to avoid his "tragedy of the commons" - the moral hazard attendant upon allowing individuals to take as much as they can - our theory must first recognize the fact that the economy adheres within this moral commons. This is the fundamental failure of modern economics.
But their distortions of the free market don't stop there. Modern capitalism is built on the larcenous notion of limited corporate liability. The corporate organzational form separates owners from control of their property through a system of hired management, and then limits the liability of these passive investors to the extent of their investment. But this contradicts the very definition of private property - the bedrock institution of the free market - which is the unity of management, control and full personal liability for debts and torts. This distorts the free market heavily in favor of passive investment over active investment by allowing passive investors to externalize the social cost component of business risk. This fundamental distortion of the free market lies at the heart of modern capitalism's virtual reality mechanisms such as the stock and bond markets. The Soviet-style bureaucratic managerial system where the maagerial elite enjoy the benefits of property but share none of the risks attendant upon its use is the cause of the corruption scandals of Tyco, Enron, Waste Management, Shell, WorldCom, and on and on ad nauseum.
I have yet to hear one of these corporate libertarians even address these distortions of the free market. None of them condemn the routine use of the inherently larcenous corporate organizaitonal form. None of them (at least that I've heard) seek to ban television advertising, or at least to severely regulate it as to content. That's because their theory cannot quantify social capital. Remember these folks are bean counters to the marrow of their bones. So if they can't count it, they take a great leap of illogic and conclude it doesn't exist. None of these yahoos wants to talk about social capital - which obviously exists even though no doubt it's hard to quantify - for exactly that reason. Their theory can't accommodate it, so they blink real hard hoping it will go away.
And then they have the gall to call themselves free marketeers.
I take that back. Charlie Munger of Berkeshire Hathaway talked about this recently in passing. It's not like they don't know about the fact that capitalism is built on a lie called the corporation that was designed to mine social capital to line the pockets of corporate insiders.
Again, this was all discussed at length over at the Distributism forum. Perhaps you could review some of those threads and bump the ones you find interesting.
2005-02-07 02:26 | User Profile
Just came across the following article @ Asia Times.
[url]http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GB03Dj01.html[/url]
A few paragraphs from the article:
PART 1: The failed-state cancer By Henry C K Liu
It has been said that when economics turns serious, it becomes political. The Washington Consensus, a term coined in 1990 by John Williamson of the Institute for International Economics to summarize the synchronized ideology of Washington-based establishment economists, reverberated around the world for a quarter of a century as the true gospel of reform indispensable for achieving growth in a globalized market economy.
Initially applied to Latin America and eventually to all developing economies, the term has come to be synonymous with globalized neo-liberalism or market fundamentalism to describe universal policy prescriptions based on free-market principles and monetary discipline within narrow ideological limits. It promotes for all economies macroeconomic control, trade openness, pro-market microeconomic measures, privatization and deregulation in support of a dogmatic ideological faith in the market's ability to solve all socio-economic problems more efficiently, and to assert a blanket denial of an obvious contradiction between market efficiency and poverty eradication.
Financial-capital growth is to be served at the expense of human-capital growth. Sound money, undiluted by inflation, is to be achieved by keeping wages low through structural unemployment. Pockets of poverty in the periphery are the necessary price for prosperous centers. Such dogmas grant unemployment and poverty, conditions of economic disaster, undeserved conceptual respectability. State intervention has come to focus mainly on reducing the market power of labor in favor of capital in a blatantly predatory market mechanism.
2005-02-12 22:22 | User Profile
The Austrian school probably has the best economic system at present, but it, like every other economic camp, fails to take into account racial and evolutionary factors.