Like virtually everyone else on the liberal side of the spectrum I've been greatly intrigued by Naomi Klein's new book "The Shock Doctrine," which posits that economic elites practice "disaster capitalism" around the world by taking advantage of the disorientation caused by crisis. It's a very coherent and compelling thesis that gives many of us, for the first time, a framework from which to understand globalization, preemptive war and massive government failure, among other things.
But one of the things that I've found puzzling is the idea that the human motivation for this elaborate regime is plain old greed. Klein addresses this concern in a recent post on her blog:
Since I began touring with my book The Shock Doctrine, I have had a number of exchanges like this, revolving around the same basic question: When hard-right political leaders and their advisers apply brutal economic shock therapy, do they honestly believe the trickle-down effects will build equitable societies--or are they just deliberately creating the conditions for yet another corporate feeding frenzy? Put bluntly, Has the world been transformed over the past three decades by lofty ideology or by lowly greed?
A definitive answer would require reading the minds of men like Dick Cheney and Paul Bremer, so I tend to dodge. The ideology in question holds that self-interest is the engine that drives society to its greatest heights. Isn't pursuing their own self-interest (and that of their campaign donors) compatible with that philosophy? That's the beauty: They don't have to choose. Unfortunately, this rarely satisfies graduate students looking for deeper meaning. Thankfully I now have a new escape hatch: quoting Alan Greenspan.
His autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, has been marketed as a mystery solved: The man who bit his tongue for eighteen years as head of the Federal Reserve was finally going to tell the world what he really believed. And Greenspan has delivered, using his book and the surrounding publicity as a platform for his "libertarian Republican" ideology, chiding George W. Bush for abandoning the crusade for small government and revealing that he became a policy-maker because he thought he could advance his radical ideology more effectively "as an insider, rather than as a critical pamphleteer" on the margins. Yet what is most interesting about Greenspan's story is what it reveals about the ambiguous role of ideas in the free-market crusade. Given that Greenspan is perhaps the world's most powerful living free-market ideologue, it is significant that his commitment to ideology seems rather thin and perfunctory--less zealous belief, more convenient cover story.
[...]
Greenspan writes that as a student he had no interest in big ideas. Unlike his classmates who were in the thrall of Keynesianism with its promise of building a better world, Greenspan was simply good at math. He started doing research for powerful corporations; it was profitable, but Greenspan made no claims to a higher social contribution.
Then he discovered Ayn Rand. "What she did...was to make me think why capitalism is not only efficient and practical, but also moral," he said in 1974.
Rand's ideas about the "utopia of greed" allowed Greenspan to keep doing what he was doing but infused his corporate service with a powerful new sense of mission: Making money wasn't just good for him; it was good for society as a whole...
Rand has played this role of greed-enabler for countless disciples. According to the New York Times, Atlas Shrugged, her novel that ends with the hero tracing a dollar sign in the air like a benediction, stands as "one of the most influential business books ever written." Since Rand is simply pulped-up Adam Smith, her influence on men like Greenspan suggests an interesting possibility. Perhaps the true purpose of the entire literature of trickle-down theory is to liberate entrepreneurs to pursue their narrowest advantage while claiming global altruistic motives--not so much an economic philosophy as an elaborate, retroactive rationale.
What Greenspan teaches us is that trickle-down isn't really an ideology after all. It's more like the friend we call after some embarrassing excess so that they will tell us, "Don't beat yourself up: You deserve it."
I have written a bit about Randism here at The Big Con, (even in the context of "The Shock Doctrine") and wondered how much of this thinking has permeated our culture over the years. I think it's significant, and agree with Klein's pithy definition of Randism. But I don't agree that greed alone is what motivates disaster capitalism, even if Alan Greenspan is a high priest of Randy Conservatism.
I believe the answer lies closer to the orbit of Klein's original disaster capitalist guru, Milton Friedman --- with his equally revered (by right wing conservatives) colleague at the University of Chicago, Leo Strauss. I don't bring up Strauss to rehash the current discussions about his influence (or not) over the neoconservative movement's Hobbesian belief in kill or be killed (by an ever changing cast of enemies.) He had a vision of how to deal with these challenges. Strauss scholar Shadia Drury put it this way:
[Strauss'] solution is to create, in his own words, an aristocracy in the midst of mass society. To have an elite of supposedly wise individuals who know the truth, who know what people need, who know what kind of noble lies and pious frauds they need. To rule behind the scenes.
Doesn't that sound more like Klein's disaster capitalists than free market fundamentalist Milton Friedman? I think her evil vulture capitalists are at least as motivated by the desire to preserve the aristocratic regime. Disaster capitalism is just another tool of those who seek to maintain their prerogatives at the top of the human hierarchy and create conditions so that their offspring will inherit that position.
I don't think I was alone in wondering why in the world the king of the neocons, Paul Wolfowitz, wanted the job at the World Bank after his ignominious tenure as a leading figure in The War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq. He's always been a war guy, specializing in arms proliferation and space weapons and geopolitical military planning. Why would they give it to him? It didn't make any sense.
But maybe it does. It is perfectly reasonable that one of the primary designers of war that has no end would be the perfect choice to lead the international financial construct that was formed to exploit such "opportunities."
Of course, for a true Straussian disciple (perhaps even Strauss himself), the question must always be: Are you truly a member of this aristocracy or are you just another tool being used in service of your betters? I wonder what Wolfowitz thinks.
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