On Mon, 3 May 2010, SA wrote:
> http://theactivist.org/blog/the-ideology-problem
> We seem to be dealing with a very peculiar situation. Why does Schwarz
> (and this question should be applied not just to him but to liberals
> generally) so diligently avoid formulating the frontal and unabashed
> critique of the market that is the only viable point on which he seems
> able to rationalize his differences with the Right? It's true
> (obviously) that liberals are very far from being out to abolish
> markets. Their actions bear this out every day. But why, in principle,
> should that stop them from orienting their ideological discourse around
> a critique of markets? Let's look at it this way: Republican discourse
> is clearly - flamboyantly - oriented around a critique of "government";
> their rhetoric is studded with charges that government is wasteful,
> government is inefficient, government encroaches on freedom and
> government stifles prosperity. Yet no Republican has ever feared being
> mistaken for an anarchist. Republicans don't feel the need to interrupt
> their rants to assure their listeners that they still believe in police
> departments and fire stations. Why can't liberals
I think you've already answered your own question. Liberals can't use the critique of markets the way conservatives use the critique of government because they don't believe that. They don't keep interrupting their critique of markets with praise of markets (only) because they are afraid of being branded as socialists. They toss it in because they really believe it. They really believe -- just as much as conservatives do -- that markets are fundamentally great. Liberals see everything that distinguishes them from conservatives -- e.g., wanting more regulation, and wanting to set up programs to cover "market failures," i.e., what markets won't do -- as ways of fine tuning markets and making them better. But at bottom, their goal is a set of perfectly tuned markets, just as it is for conservatives. They're not against them, they're for improving them. And they want everyone to know that.
I think what you've done here is draw a line between liberals and the left. What makes liberals liberals is precisely that they do believe this.
And what makes the left the left is embracing solutions that replace the market with something better -- and being proud of it.
I think you may also have hit on an important part of why modern liberalism is so inherently mushy. This conception of markets and their frameworks, while truer, is also more complex and less clear than Markets Period. It gives you by nature a different complex solution in every case, rather than one simple solution -- and slogan -- for all time. And it debouches immediately by nature into an infinity of wonky details, since for liberals the whole brilliance of their solution lies in how brilliantly it's fine tuned.
Michael