[Marxism] The God That Failed - The 30 Year Lie of the Free Market Cult

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque - Saturday October 11, 2008
 
<http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1627-the-god-that-fail
ed-the-30-year-lie-of-the-market-cult.html>
 
Perhaps the most striking fact revealed by the  global financial crash -- or 
rather, by the reaction to it -- is the staggering,  astonishing, gargantuan 
amount of money that the governments of the world have  at their command. 
In just a matter of days, we have seen literally  trillions of dollars 
offered to the financial services sector by  national treasuries and central 
banks 
across the globe. Britain alone has put $1  trillion at the disposal of the 
bankers, traders, lenders and speculators; and  this has been surpassed by the 
total package of public money that Washington is  shoveling into the financial 
furnaces of Wall Street and the banks. These  radical efforts are being 
replicated on a slightly smaller scale in France,  Germany, Italy, Russia and 
many 
other countries.

The effectiveness of  this unprecedented transfer of wealth from ordinary 
citizens to the top tiers of  the business world remains to be seen. It will 
certainly insulate the very rich  from the consequences of their own greed and 
folly and fraud; but it is not at  all clear how much these measures will 
shield 
the vast majority of people from  the catastrophe that has been visited upon 
them by the elite. 

But  putting aside for a moment the actual intent, details and results of the 
global  bailout offers, it is their very extent that shocks, and shows -- in 
a  stark, harsh, all-revealing light -- the brutal disdain with which the 
national  governments of the world's "leading democracies" have treated their 
own 
citizens  for decades.

Beginning with Margaret Thatcher's election in 1979,  government after 
government -- and party after party -- fell to the onslaught of  an extremist 
faith: 
the narrow, blinkered fundamentalism of the "Chicago  School." Epitomized by 
its patron saint, Milton Friedman, the rigid doctrine  held that an 
unregulated market would always "correct" itself, because its  workings are 
based on 
entirely rational and quantifiable principles.  This  was of course an absurdly 
reductive and savagely ignorant view of history, money  and human nature; but 
because it flattered the rich and powerful, offering an  "intellectual" 
justification for rapacious greed and ever-widening economic and  social 
inequality, 
it was adopted as holy writ by the elite and promulgated as  public policy.

This radical cult -- a kind of Bolshevism from above --  took its strongest 
hold in the United States and Britain, and was then imposed  on many weaker 
nations through the IMF-led "Washington Consensus" (more aptly  named by Naomi 
Klein as the "Shock Doctrine"), with devastating and deadly  results. (As in 
Yeltsin's Russia, for example, where life expectancy dropped  precipitously and 
millions of people died premature deaths from poverty,  illness, and despair.)

According to the cult, not only were markets to be  freed from the 
constraints placed on them after the world-shattering effects of  the Great 
Depression, 
but all public spending was to be slashed ruthlessly to  the bone. (Although 
exceptions were always made for the Pentagon war machine.)  After all, every 
dollar spent by a public entity on public services and  amenities was a dollar 
taken away from the private wheeler-dealers who could  more usefully employ it 
in increasing the wealth of the elite -- who would then  allow some of their 
vast profits to "trickle down" to the lower  orders.

This was the cult that captured the governments of the United  States and 
Britain (among others), as well as the Republican and Democratic  parties, and 
the Conservative and Labour parties as well. And for almost thirty  years, its 
ruthless doctrines have been put into practice. Regulation and  oversight of 
financial markets were systematically stripped away or rendered  toothless. 
Essential public services were sold off, for chump change, to  corporate 
interests. Public spending on anything other than making war,  threatening war 
and 
profiting from war was pared back or eliminated. Such public  spending that did 
remain was forever under threat and derided, like the remnants  of some pagan 
faith surviving in isolated backwaters. 

Year after year,  the ordinary citizens were told by their governments: we 
have no money to spend  on your needs, on your communities, on your 
infrastructure, on your health, on  your children, on your environment, on your 
quality of 
life. We can't do those  kinds of things any more. 

Of course, when talking amongst themselves, or  with the believers in the 
think tanks, boardrooms -- and editorial offices --  the cultists would speak 
more plainly: we don't do those things anymore because  we shouldn't do them, 
we 
don't want to do them, they are  wrong, they are evil, they are outside the 
faith. But for the hoi  polloi, the line was usually something like this: 
Budgets are tight, we  must balance them (for a "balanced budget" is a core 
doctrine 
of the cult), we  just can't afford all these luxuries, sorry about that.

But now, as the  emptiness and falsity of the Chicago cargo cult stands 
nakedly revealed, even to  some of its most faithful and fanatical adherents, 
we 
can see that this 30-year  mantra by our governments has been a deliberate and 
outright lie. The money was  there -- billions and billions and billions of 
dollars of it, trillions of  dollars of it. We can see it before our very eyes 
today -- being whisked away  from our public treasuries and showered upon the 
banks and the brokerages.  

Let's say it again: The money was there all along. 
Money to build and generously  equip thousands and thousands of new schools, 
with well-paid, exquisitely  trained teachers, small teacher-pupil ratios, a 
full range of enriching and  inspiring programs. 

Money to  revitalize the nation's crumbling inner cities, making them safe 
and vibrant  places for businesses and families and communities to grow.

Money to provide decent, affordable and accessible health  care to every 
citizen, to provide dignity and comfort to the elderly, and  protection and 
humane 
treatment for the mentally ill. 

Money to provide affordable higher education to everyone  who wanted it and 
could qualify for it. Money to help establish and sustain  local businesses and 
family farms, centered in and on the local community,  driven by the needs 
and knowledge of the people in the area, and not by the  dictates of distant 
corporations. 

Money to strengthen crumbling infrastructure, to repair  bridges, shore up 
levies, maintain roads and electric grids and sewage  systems.

Money for affordable,  workable public transport systems, for the pursuit of 
alternative sources of  energy, for sustainable, sensible development, for 
environmental  restoration.

Money to support free  inquiry in science, technology, health and other areas 
-- research unfettered  from the war machine and the drive for corporate 
profit, and instead devoted to  the betterment of human life. 

Money  to support culture, learning, continuing education, libraries, 
theater, music  and the endless manifestations of the human quest to gain more 
meaning, more  understanding, more enlightenment, a deeper, spiritually richer 
life. 
 
The money for all of this -- and much, much more  -- was there, all along. 
When they said we couldn't have these things, they were  lying -- or else 
allowing themselves to be profitably duped by the high priests  of the market 
cult. 
When they wanted a trillion dollars -- or three trillion  dollars -- to wage a 
war of aggression in Iraq, they found it. Now, when they  want trillions of 
dollars to save the speculators, fraudsters and profiteers of  greed in the 
global market, they suddenly have it. 

Who then can believe  that these governments could not have found the money 
for good schools, health  care, and all the rest, that they could not have 
enhanced the well-being and  livelihood of millions of ordinary citizens, and 
helped create a more just and  equitable and stable world -- if they had wanted 
to?

This is one  of the main facts that ordinary citizens around the world should 
take away from  this crisis: the money to maintain, secure and improve the 
lives of their  families and communities was always there -- but their 
governments, and  their political parties, made a deliberate, unforced choice 
not to 
use  it for the common good. Instead, they subjugated the well-being of the 
world to  the dictates of an extremist cult. A cult of greed and privilege, 
that 
preached  iron discipline to the poor and the middle-class, but released the 
rich and  powerful from all restrictions, and all responsibility for their  
actions.

This should be a constant -- and galvanizing -- thought in the  minds of the 
public in the months and years to come. Remember what you could have had, and 
how it was denied you by the lies and delusions of a powerful  elite and their 
bought-off factotums in government. Remember the trillions of  dollars that 
suddenly appeared when the wheeler-dealers needed money to cover  their own 
greed and stupidity. 

Let these thoughts guide you as you weigh  the promises and actions of 
politicians and candidates, and as you assess the  "expert analysis" on 
economic and 
domestic policy offered by the corporate media  and the corporate-bankrolled 
think tanks and academics. 

And above all,  let these thoughts be foremost in your mind when you hear -- 
as you certainly  will hear, when (and if) the markets are finally stabilized 
(at  whatever gigantic cost in human suffering) -- the adherents of the market 
cult  emerge once more and call for "deregulation" and "untying the hands of 
business"  and all the other ritual incantations of their false and savage 
fundamentalist  faith.

For although the market cult has suffered a cataclysmic defeat in  the last 
few weeks, it is by no means dead. It has 30 years of entrenchment in  power to 
fall back on. And the leader of every major political party in the West  has 
spent their entire political career within the cult's confines. It has been  
the atmosphere they breathed, it has been the sole ladder by which they have  
climbed to prominence. They will be loath to abandon it, once the immediate  
crisis is past; most will not be able to. 

So remember well the lessons  of this new October crash: The money to make a 
better life, to serve the common  good, has always been there. But it has been 
kept from you by deceit, by dogma,  by greed, and by the ambition of those 
who have sold their souls, and betrayed  their brothers and sisters, their 
fellow human creatures, for the sake of  privilege and power.



Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting  from their worst 
motives, will somehow produce the most good. 
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