Ideology (was Re: Profit and Loss)

[Mike Weaver]

jbor wrote:

  "Utopian Marxism and Nazism were ideologies; there's no
such thing as "market ideology".

Michel replied
 > I think you're wrong on that one, jbor.

So Jbor repeated
No, there is no such thing as "market ideology".


The arguments that Charles and jbor have been making include a large 
component of just that - market ideology. If an ideology is the theoretical 
developments of a basic premise, the premise here is that the market is a 
natural force - which can be distorted by policies which block its 
flow.  Several of Charles' examples of the benefits of free trade were 
idealisations of somewhat compromised realities, i.e. ideological assertions.

I would suggest that the advocates of the benefits of free trade read _Late 
Victorian Holocausts_ by Mike Davis (Verso 2001)
Davis looks at the famines with devastated India, China, Africa and Brazil 
between 1876 and the early 1900s. He shows that the failure of monsoons, 
and the droughts that followed,were caused by climatic factors connected 
with changes in El Niño and related phenomena. The millions of deaths 
through starvation and disease were, he shows, far more a result of free 
trade policies -which put the price of available grain out of reach of the 
people who needed it - and colonial/market priorities - in the same year 
Victoria was invested as Empress of India, (cue feast for 68,000 ), several 
hundred thousand Indians died of starvation and disease. One famine year in 
the 1870's just under a million tons of grain were exported to feed the 
British workers, while hundreds of thousands died in India.
  20 years later the British Government blocked the collection of 
charitable donations for the starving Indians because its priority was 
public support for the Boer War.

Another book relevant to this discussion:

For those who regard globalization as a myth and feel confident that the 
U.S. government is a supporter of democracy around the world, I recommend 
Promoting Polyarchy (Cambridge 1996) by William Robinson. He shows that the 
policy change by the U.S. from supporting dictatorships to promoting 
electoral democracy was designed to retain the elite-based and undemocratic 
status quo rather than to encourage mass aspirations for democratization.