If you read TPM, you may have occasionally noticed that their TPM Cafe hosts regular book discussions. Sometimes they interest me, sometimes I gloss right over them. But the latest – concerning James Galbraith’s The Predator State – has had me reading every word. Today I picked up the book itself, and if it turns out to be as promising as it seems, I will certainly have a bit to say about it.
And why would I have anything to say about it? Well, in leading up to the book’s central claim – that “predator” industries have captured and manipulated the government for their own benefit – Galbraith examines the cover by which this goal was achieved. That is, wholesale acceptance of the good of the “free market.”
The “free market” is one of those things that so many of us educated in the US system (I may have grown up around the world, but I got a solidly American education) take as a fundamental given. The phrase might as well be “American as mom, apple pie, and the free market.” Despite the fact that most Americans’ last real conversation about economic theory occured in high school (or maybe a basic macro course in college), our political discourse is saturated with claims and suppositions about the “free market.” I don’t know how many times I’ve been in a discussion with someone who has no challenge in identifying the problem in excruciating detail, but when it comes to solving it, simply says “we’ll just leave it up to the free market!” And this just makes my head pop. Over and over again. Why?
As I have been saying for years, there is no such thing as a free market.
It simply does not exist outside of theory. It is as imaginary as philosophy’s Evil Demon (Ed) or perfect efficiency in physics. And yet it is a fundamental given in our common discussion. The Predator State examines and – as best I can tell – demolishes that myth. But first, it asks what the myth accomplished in the first place:
It serves here, as it did there, mainly as a device for corralling the opposition, restricting the flow of thought, shrinking the sphere of admissible debate. Just as even a lapsed believer kneels in church, respectable opposition demonstrates fealty to the system by asserting allegiance to the governing myth. This in turn limits the range of presentable ideas, conveniently setting an entire panoply of reasoned discourse beyond the pale of what can be said, at least in public, but reputable people. There is a process of internalization, of self-censorship. Once the ruels and boundaries prescribed by the myth are understood, adherence becomes reflexive, and at the end of the day people come to think only what it is permitted to think. The know when they might be “going too far.”
Indeed. If this piques your interest (and I really hope it has), start with Galbraith’s own post over at TPM Cafe, and read forward from there. If you’re feeling a bit cautious about it, that post contains a number of links to reviews of the book, and this article summarizes the aims of the book.
