This was the line that jumped out at me too:
- Is it April Fools\’ Day? This is the dumbest thing I have ever read, and here is the single dumbest phrase in the history of journalism…
\”Laissez-faire was not the result of any spontaneous process of social evolution; it was imposed on society through the use of state power. \”
Laissez-faire is the ABSENCE of state power, you blithering idiot.
Nah you’re wrong. But you’re not an economic historian so I’ll let you off.
For example, Limited Liability etc don’t count then?
Any look through the early modern history of England sees a vast amount of the old order being smashed by state power.
It didn’t just happen, markets happened of course, but a capitalist market national economy didn’t just happen, it was created.
Tim adds: Err, no. For the system that was smashed is one that depended upon state power. The Guilds for example….not really going to survive without the legally provided monopoly…..it was the removal of that protection, the reduction of state power, that led to their death.
Left Outside says it well. Gray was making his (not terribly controversial) point ironically. You may wish to reflect on who is and who isn’t a “blithering idiot”, if anyone.
Now, this guy is absolutely right in that the system of “markets” we are familiar to, and what is often called lassaiz faire, are statist to their core. Limited Liability is one example, as is intellectual property.
What they aren’t are free market.
“Tim adds: Err, no. For the system that was smashed is one that depended upon state power. The Guilds for example….not really going to survive without the legally provided monopoly…..it was the removal of that protection, the reduction of state power, that led to their death.”
Yep, some parts of the transformation required the removal of state power.
But, mostly the creation of a modern economy relied on the state actively planning on its creation, the construction of various legal instruments as a very basic example.
Other things required the extension of state agaisnt the state. For example, the destruction of the old parish system of aid to the poor needed the central state to break the “parish” state.
This isn’t a controverial idea. If the C17th English state had vanished then capitalism wouldn’t have flourished, something else non-capitalist would have taken its place.
Tim adds: Eh? Who is equating laissez faire with capitalism? And why? One is describing the non-intervention of the State, the other is describing a method of ownership of productive assets. We can equally have a laissez faire economy without it being capitalist….mutuals say, workers coops, whatever.
Ah, I see, sorry, I think we’ve been coming at the at cross purposes. Sorry.
John Gray is talking about actually existing Laissez-faire as it was shaped in the early C19th and the pseudo-laisez-faire since the 1980s, whereas I think you’re talking about an abstract Laissez-faire. So, annoyingly, you’re both correct.
I’m pretty sure he’s referencing a famous (to some lefties, economic historians and philosophers) Karl Polanyi quote. Brad DeLong discusses Polanyi here.
Trouble is, in the complete absence of state power- someone will take over and impose their own rules. The best we’ve done so far is to arrange that the state power is at least partly beholden to the rest of us.
The problem is that many people think of “lassez faire” as being the pseudo-Mercantilist stuff of the late British Empire. That doesn’t fit very well.
Lassez faire does not mean anarchy, either – it needs the law.
Tim,
You’re flailing about like a fish on a hook here, I think.
Les,
Bertrand Russell made a very good point very similar to yours. There is no such thing as the free market, if only because you are not free to murder your competitors.
My own, often expressed, view is that the diminution in civil liberties over the era of globalisation, whatever that phenomenon actually is or might be, is directly related to free market ideology; the market must be free but only for those who are able to control it, and the people must be unable to oppose what they do.
“if only because you are not free to murder your competitors. ”
You are perfectly free to murder your competitors, that however, may result in consequences worse than competing with said competitors. It is for that reason the again said cometitors have not already murdered you.
Quite how you manage to combine the lost of civil liberties, big business socialism and oppression of the masses into lassez faire is making my head spin.
“Quite how you manage to combine the lost of civil liberties, big business socialism and oppression of the masses into lassez faire is making my head spin.”
My apologies if my thought processes are above yur head. I can assure you that you’re not the first person I’ve ever come across who’s been too slow to be able to keep up with them.