Monday, October 26, 2015

Lyle Jeremy Rubin — Who Wants to Save Capitalism?


Soul-searching among the right-libertarian intelligentsia.

Jacobin
Who Wants to Save Capitalism?
Lyle Jeremy Rubin

3 comments:

Random said...

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34069222
Brazil austerity madness. Ex-President Lula criticises policy.

Ignacio said...

Interesting summary on the subversion in some of the fringe sectors in the right.

The intellectual right inherits from the Illustration and has been always elitist, but it still carries some of their initial ideological baggage and agenda. the more (paleo-)conservative right is, well, conservative, so that does not necessarily go with corporatist right agenda. they want to conserve the previous status quo by definition, while the neoliberal right is 'progressive' (does not want to conserve the status quo, it always moves forward and has it's own motivations, ultimately some sort of feudal status quo were the new feudal lords are the capitalists).

Unfortunately the fringe sectors got in the game with the mainstream corporatists, and helped build such a monster to defeat Statist communism that now have lost all control over the neoliberal monster. This does not bode well for the most conservative elements, as neoliberalism is, fundamentally, a nihilistic ideology (something they thought they were fighting against on the period of totalitarianism in the XX century) which only cares about power (power trumps everything, and money and property is the vehicle to impose power). The more intellectual right does not seem to be so uncomfortable to ally itself often with this corporatist agenda and hasn't in the past (flirting with fascism has been a trait of the 'libertarians' more often than not). So it raises a lot of suspicions as th article points out. i don't doubt some of the concerns of some authors are honest, but they probably are stilla fringe within the fringe, and more about PR than honest concern. And there is the 'bases' they attract ofc as the article points out, that have not much to do with the intellectuals. There is a tradition of right intellectuals that wanted to save capitalism from itself (most prominently Keynes himself), but they have gone so out of the way to combat 'socialism' that same tradition of intellectuals have been either outright rejected (Keynes) or selectively rejected (even Friedman, or Hayek themselves have parts of their ideas ignored or rejected selectively). It may as well be too late for a mass adoption and now the system is in slow-motion collapse mode.

I consider myself on the 'market socialist anarchic' tradition and while some elements may be shared with the libertarian thought I'm not naive, there may come the time to make choices and idealized thought is not going to be on the agenda (as it never is), and I for sure I'm not going to back up our corporate feudal overlords if the time comes.

They should have been less myopic back then, now it may be too late...

Random said...

http://www.winterspeak.com/2015/10/the-housing-bubble-involved-banks.html?m=1