[PEN-L:4380] Re: Re: Re: Open letter to Marc Chernick

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

William S. Lear wrote:

>Very nice riff there Doug, though I have one disagreement with the
>above.  Last night as I was leafing through volume 3 of Philip
>H. Burch's *Elites in American History*, I was reminded quite vividly
>that capitalism has very definitely not "split the economic and the
>political, market and state".  If you think about it, this take is
>very congenial to the views of someone like Paul Krugman, or Milton
>Friedman, who essentially sees the market as a self-organizing
>phenomena that only needs a tweak here and there to stay on course.
>What they fail to realize, and what the above quote seems to miss as
>well, is the immense amount of planning involved in the economy, the
>massive involvement of the state in the economy at every level, and,
>as Burch's multi-volume set shows quite clearly, the thorough staffing
>of the state with business owners and high executives who very
>decisively act to maintain a strong presence of the state in the
>economy.

Of course I agree with you here, but it appears to anyone who doesn't look
too carefully that market and state are separate, in contrast with feudal
society, where it wasn't hard to see to whom you were paying your bushels
of grain. On first glance, and even second, the market is that place of
liberty, equality, and Bentham that Marx said it was; the exploitation
isn't visible to the naked eye. I think one reason anti-statist attitudes
are so popular with the masses, at least in the US, is that state power is
obvious and centralized, while market/class power is subtle and diffuse.

Doug