But there is a deeper reason for [former British New Right political philosopher John] Gray's [leftward] turn: By itself, the market could not sustain his affections. Without the Soviet Union and the welfare state as diverting symbols of Enlightenment rationalism, Gray could no longer believe in the market as he once had. The market, he now had to admit, sponsors a "cult of reason and efficiency." It "snaps the threads of memory and scatters local knowledge." He used to think that the free market arose spontaneously and that state control of the economy was unnatural. But watching Jeffrey Sachs and the International Monetary Fund in Russia, he could not help but see the free market as "a product of artifice, design and political coercion." It had to be created, often with the aid of ruthless state power. Today, he argues that Thatcher built the free market by crushing trade unions, hollowing out the Conservative Party, and disabling Parliament. She "set British society on a forced march into late modernity." Gray believes that "Marxism-Leninism and free-market economic rationalism have much in common." Both, he writes, "exhibit scant sympathy for the casualties of economic progress." There is only one difference: Communism is dead.
[Full text: http://www.linguafranca.com/print/0101/cover_cons.html]
Carl
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