carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (02/11/85)
------ First of all, would Dan McK. please post (or repost) a precise definition of a "Free Economy." We are talking in a vacuum until we are agreed on what this term means. Mr. McK. writes: > ...previously I have suggested that he read *The Triumph of Conservatism: > A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916* by Gabriel Kolko; > to this I would add Kolko's *Railroads and Regulation*, and Robert Wiebe's > *Businessmen and Reform*. Anyway, I'll sketch a couple of ways that > government intervention hampers market-performance. Persons wishing to use Marxist analysis to support libertarian positions should make very sure that they understand the Marxist analysis. I believe that Mr. McK. misinterprets Kolko, who extends and amplifies his arguments in his recent work *Main Currents of Modern American History*. In fact, I think that Kolko's arguments, properly understood, undermine Mr. McK.'s position. Kolko is precisely NOT arguing that the capitalist economy was doing just fine when along came some unscrupulous businessmen who grabbed government power and distorted the workings of the free market to serve their selfish ends. Rather, he locates the source of that government power, and of that intervention, in the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production itself--he is showing how capitalism generates its own undoing through government intervention in the market as well as other ways. This points to an extremely important difference between the libertarian/ anarchist view of the state and the classical Marxist view. Libertarians seem to believe that state power is a kind of magic ring of power: whoever holds it gets to be the ruling class. The solution, in this view, clearly is to destroy the magic ring or to reduce its power as much as possible--then we will have a classless society. The Marxist analysis, on the other hand, holds that state power is derived from the class struggle in society; the solution, on this view, is to eliminate the class nature of society, and then we will also have a stateless society. To judge from Mr. McK.'s interpretation of Kolko, I would say that he has not paid sufficient attention to the question of the *origin* of the government power which he decries. Kolko has written, in a letter to *Reason* magazine: "...If anything proves my thesis that American conservative ideology is more a question of intelligence than politics, it has been the persistent use of my works to buttress your position [libertarianism]....As I made clear often and candidly to many so-called libertarians, I have been a socialist and against capitalism all of my life, my works are attacks on that system, and I have no common area of sympathy with the quaint irrelevancy called "free market" economics. There never has been such a system in historical reality, and if it ever comes into being you can count on me to favor its abolition." Well said, Gabriel. [I think this discussion should be moved to net.politics.theory.] Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes