Barack Obama : Capitalism's Gorbachev?
Over the past few years it has become abundantly clear in Britain and in other Atlantic societies that free-market capitalism of an extreme sort and democracy are incompatible. Ideologues from the right, weaned on the champagne crystal-precision of Hayek and Friedman, of course, would dispute this. To paraphrase G.K.Chesterton, they would suggest that free markets are a great idea, if they were ever tried.
However, it isn't just the Iceland demonstrations last week that made me think of Poland in 1988 or so. Something is clearly moving underfoot. Governments elected with 22% support, like that in this country, are desperately throwing money at banks and madly moving their divisions across a non-existent future tax base. In America, those who let rip what will be seen as a disastrously unregulated and misunderstood financial experiment are taking their places at Barack obama's side, and insisting that the repair of infrastructure they propose as a stimulus is not public ownership. And the spread on bond basis points for government lending is climbing across states.
We are near a moment of crisis. I remember what the fall of communism--which I was happy at--looked like. I also recall the hopes for a humane, person-centred and common sense form of social ownership and modern democracy that proved vain.
I wonder, as I see the adulation blowing in for Barack Obama from across the sea, whilst banks are encouraged to consume each other in Ireland and consumers are being urged to spend money they don't have on things they don't need here-- is Barack Obama capitalism's Gorbachev?
Over the past few years it has become abundantly clear in Britain and in other Atlantic societies that free-market capitalism of an extreme sort and democracy are incompatible. Ideologues from the right, weaned on the champagne crystal-precision of Hayek and Friedman, of course, would dispute this. To paraphrase G.K.Chesterton, they would suggest that free markets are a great idea, if they were ever tried.
However, it isn't just the Iceland demonstrations last week that made me think of Poland in 1988 or so. Something is clearly moving underfoot. Governments elected with 22% support, like that in this country, are desperately throwing money at banks and madly moving their divisions across a non-existent future tax base. In America, those who let rip what will be seen as a disastrously unregulated and misunderstood financial experiment are taking their places at Barack obama's side, and insisting that the repair of infrastructure they propose as a stimulus is not public ownership. And the spread on bond basis points for government lending is climbing across states.
We are near a moment of crisis. I remember what the fall of communism--which I was happy at--looked like. I also recall the hopes for a humane, person-centred and common sense form of social ownership and modern democracy that proved vain.
I wonder, as I see the adulation blowing in for Barack Obama from across the sea, whilst banks are encouraged to consume each other in Ireland and consumers are being urged to spend money they don't have on things they don't need here-- is Barack Obama capitalism's Gorbachev?
Comments
I'm afraid probably not.
According to Ralph Nader, Obama received some of the highest corporate contributions that a candidate for President has ever had. That's not a sign of commitment to change.
Gorbachev failed because although he wanted to reform the system, he also wanted to keep the system. He was a Communist pragmatist. He failed because the system he wanted to keep was itself creaking. He didn't know his Tocqueville - an authoritarian system is most vulnerable when it attempts to reform itself.
Any economic reforms that Obama makes will be directed solely to keeping the flawed system in place - more immigration, more offshoring, greater shifts from labour to capital. Not much intellectual vitality there. If such reforms don't work, then he might indeed be a Gorbachev; but whereas Gorbachev attempted to make the USSR a slightly more open society's, Obama's hard left instincts will make him the precise opposite - in other words, more hate speech laws. He may just end up being the anti-Gorbachev.