Jihad vs. McWorld - Benjamin R. Barber [207]
23. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (New York: Van Nostrand, 1949), p. 2. Andrew Bard Schmookler in his effective if overwrought internal critique of market economics perfectly captures the delusions of the marketeers in his title: The Illusion of Choice. Carl Kaysen, whom Schmookler cites (p. 37), is typical in his confounding of consumer choice with civic freedom: “People have preferences in respect to what kinds of goods they buy; where they live and work, what kinds of occupations they pursue … what kinds of mortgages, automobile loans, bank loans they owe. The working of the market, provided that it is competitive, makes the best possible reconciliation of these preferences with the technical possibilities of production, which in combination with these preferences … determine what jobs, goods, services are available.” But “preferences” do not determine anything except what consumers happen to “want” at a given moment. Social and political choices are not the expression of preferences but of deliberative choices made in the setting of common debate with fellow citizens trying to figure out what their communities value and need (see below).
24. Felix Rohatyn, cited in T. Friedman, “When Money Talks, Governments Listen,” The New York Times, July 24, 1994, p. E 3.
25. Just try to talk about citizens or comrades or neighbors or brothers in the lands that have finally rid themselves of communism. In too many of these countries, the failure of the Communist “we” has extirpated hope in the possibility of a democratic “we.” Back in 1990, then mayor Gavriil Popov of Moscow, at that time an “economic reformer” under Gorbachev, wrote: “If economic transformations are to work, we must create an effective apparatus for management, yet the masses have an intense hatred of any bureaucracy.” Since then, they have permitted that bureaucracy to cripple their democratic capacity to act in common to curb wild capitalism. Or, when fed up, have fallen into a nostalgia for governmental bosses who can fix everything (in return for the resurrender of recently won liberties).
26. Robert McIntyre, “Why Communism Is Rising from the Ash Heap,” The Washington Post, National Weekly Edition, June 20-26, 1994, p. 24. Too familiar with Stalinist government, many of Lenin’s abused children have come to regard democratic government as just one more variation on totalitarianism, the more dangerous because it wears the mantle of popular legitimacy. A cartoon by Margulies hits the mark when it depicts one Solidarity veteran standing in front of a Warsaw market after the 1990 elections in which Solidarity won overwhelmingly, and saying to another: “I’ve had it with bread lines, food shortages, and scarce housing … It’s time we got rid of this rotten government,” only to be reminded by his comrade, “WE ARE the government!” In the days of the Solidarity government; from The Houston Post, reprinted in The Washington Post, National Weekly Edition, January I—7, 1990.
27. Critics like Schmookler and Kuttner find markets wanting in their own right and by their own measures. Regardless of whether they are correct, it is when markets usurp political functions that they must necessarily fail.
28. Both quotes from Guillermo O’Donnell, “The Browning of Latin America,” New Perspectives Quarterly, Vol. 10, Fall 1993, p. 50.
Chapter 17. Capitalism vs. Democracy in Russia
1. Peter Reddaway, “Instability and Fragmentation,” in the aptly named symposium “Is Russian Democracy Doomed?” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 5, No. 2, April 1994, p. 16.
2. Michael McFaul, “Explaining the Vote,” ibid., p. 4.
3. John H. Fairbanks, Jr., “The Politics