Today I had the luxury of time, so I spent most of the afternoon mining through a stack of newspapers and magazines. Worthy of contrast are two ‘interview’ pieces on New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Slovenian Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek, published in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, respectively.
Prime Minister Key heads a government coalition poised to implement a program of tax cuts and regulatory restructuring—a recession-response agenda, which is, in its supply-side, Reaganomics-like foundations, very much different from those emanating out of Washington, Beijing, and Tokyo. The ideological framework of the Key plan could not be more different from the ideas of Slavoj Zizek, the subject of the FT piece.
Tellingly, I found more takeaways worthy of repeating in John Thornhill’s piece on Zizek. Thornhill writes:
[Zizek] insists, the financial crisis has killed off the liberal utopianism that flourished after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and all the grand talk about the “end of history”. The terrorist attacks of September 2001 and the financial meltdown have exploded the myth that the market economy and liberal democracy have all the answers to all the questions.
A fairly noncontroversial analysis from a man widely viewed to be among the most radical of public intellectuals. Indeed, I think we can all agree, political party or ideological affiliation notwithstanding, that capitalism—and its offspring, financial securities, markets, and multinational corporations—is undergoing a systemic crisis whereby units of production, or people, are suffering acute economic pain: bankruptcy, foreclosure and eviction, flagging savings, nonexistent credit, and other maladies.
Barring an upheaval in thinking, the arguments of Key will forever merit my sympathy—I will subscribe to the view that a lower and flatter tax curve, a lower corporate tax rate, and a reduced regulatory framework are essential steps toward economic growth and global competitiveness. But the points set forth by Zizek cannot go unnoticed. Even the most dedicated adherent to Hayek and Friedman must contend with capitalism’s massive capacity for destruction—with the time-proven inevitability of profit-minded savants to pervert a malleable system for personal gain, to manipulate financial markets by increasingly sophisticated means, to invent more complex and poisonous financial instruments and to birth ever-growing bubbles. One must answer to capitalism’s failure at addressing issues of environmental catastrophe, its impotence in the face of abuses of information technology, intellectual property rights and biogenetics.
Thornhill writes, “Zizek the modest Marxist says our times are so extraordinary that we need to understand fully what is happening before we can sensibly act.” With the wave of capitalistic carnage breaking, we would all be well-advised to heed Zizek’s advice: “We need to withdraw and reflect and think.” This week brought news that Judge Richard Posner, a legal theorist whose thought has heretofore been marked by an unflinching classical liberalism, is finalizing a book entitled “A Failure of Capitalism” in which he calls into question his own long-standing views. Such intellectual flexibility is admirable.
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On a somewhat related note, politics has disgusted me lately more than ever, as commentator-kingpins seem less willing than ever to entertain substantive discourse on the current crises. The Rush Limbaugh fiasco is foremost. That Mr. Limbaugh is making a mildly successful run at filling the role of ideological spokesman for the conservative opposition is frightening.
In a time of catastrophe—wherein most people, and nearly all of the non-ideological and politically uninformed, are tone-deaf to all but a substantive agenda with fast-acting policy proposals by which their economic ills might be alleviated—conservative leaders should project to an unsure populace an air of understanding and propose measured and sound solutions cloaked in bipartisan, non-ideological language. The election is over, so cut the garbage.
The shrill battle cry of Limbaugh and others of his ilk is symbolic of a political party in a state of decay, unwilling to admit its self-perpetuated failures and to address its lack of cohesiveness and effectiveness. That being said, I am tuning out most outlets of political information, save for those commentators, like Posner, who appear willing to submit ideas divorced from the crass punditry and zealotry dominating the airwaves.
