Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
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> Anyway, the initial question begs a preliminary question: what would an
> anti-Economist even look like?
The Wall Street Journal -- powerful news coverage, and a vile policy in its opinion pieces.
One can only (a) defend capitalism while (b) maintaining an ethical perspective if (like Smith and Drucker) one in fact discusses a capitalism that only exists in the head.
I've been browsing a lot in old issues of Critical Inquiry overthe last 6 months, and yesterday I came across a collection of three articles in the Autumn 1999 issue that are fascinating in this context.
John Brenkman, "Extreme Criticism"
Then under Critical Responses:
Drucilla Cornell, "I. Enlightening the Enlightenment: A Response to John Brinkman" John Brenkman, "II. Reply to Drucilla Cornell"
Both, it seems to me, represent 'real' liberalism (the kind Andie says he adheres to) at its very best. I think they are well worth reading for anyone with access to CI. They cite Aristotle, Kant, Arendt, Rawls, J. Butler, Adorno & Horkheimer, Appiah, Henry Gates, Jr., Walzer, Arjun Appadurai & Carol A. Breckinridge (negatively), Stendahl, Frederick Douglass/W.E.B.DuDois/Martin Luther King, Jr. [contrasted ro Reid-Pharr], Habermass [mostly negatively]. And while they have some sharp disagreements (which I haven't quite grasped yet] they are agreed that what we need is freedom and equality (or close to it).
I learned quite a bit from the three articles -- but what I most (re)learned was the correctness of an either/or Mills proposed many decades ago, when he suggested that there were only two isms in the 20th c., Liberalism and Marxism. (Obviously one must define both pretty broadly, but I think the argument holds.) And on the basis of what Brenkman and Cornell have to offer, Liberalism at its best is living in cloud-cuckoo land, playing with the ineffable. The world hasn't really changed that much since Marx wrote Poverty of Philosophy.
Carrol