From the above book (reviewed here)
[T]o use Marxist language to make a point contrary to Marx, the state, not the private capitalist, was the true expropriator, and increased national and state power was both the end and the means of this expropriation.This is one powerful reason, among many others, why the Marxist solution to the problems of Hobbesian political economy has failed so badly: by appealing to the original agent of expropriation for salvation, it puts the fox in charge of the chickens. Seizure of the means production by the state does not alter the fact of expropriation; rather, it replaces one class of exploiters, the monopoly capitalis ts and their political lackeys, with a "new class"of appartchiks and commissars, such as the corrupt nomenclatura that ran the former Soviet Union. 111
The free market is therefore an ideological fiction. Not only did the market system have to be created by the government in the first place, but it can continue only to operate with continuous government intervention and support thereafter. However, because of the disproportionate power of corporations, the economic tail wags the political dog. The upshot is the worst of both worlds: a top-heavy and heavy-handed state bureaucracy layered over a distorted and somewhat corrupt market economy. 118
An especially pertinent point:
Ironically, the supposed "conservatives" of American politics, that complain the loudest about many of these changes, especially moral decay, are the most laissez-faire with respect to the economic enterprise and technological innovation that produce them. In return for higher levels of production, we have to pay the price in lost social cohesion and political autonomy, as the values of "efficiency" and "exchange" implicit in achieving greater productivity have invaded the sociopolitical realm. (The supposed "liberals" of American politics are just as deluded as the "conservatives": equally addicted to material progress, they also want to conquer nature with technology; but they foolishly believe that economic production as possible without economic power, that ordinary citizens can call the political and social tune when, in fact, it is economic and technological enterprise that pays the piper. In short, with the collaboration of all parties, the technological servant has become the political master.) 171
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,” [Madison] famously wrote in Federalist No. 51, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
The word “suggestion” is derived from the Latin word “suggestus,” which has for its base the word “suggero,” meaning: “To carry under.” Its original use was in the sense of a “placing under” or deft insinuation of a thought, idea, or impression, under the observant and watchful care of the attention, and into the “inner consciousness” of the individual.
The social question began to play a revolutionary role only when, in the modern age and not before, men began to doubt that poverty is inherent in the human condition, to doubt that the distinction between the few, who through circumstances or strength or fraud had succeeded in liberating themselves from the shackles of poverty, and the labouring poverty-stricken multitude was inevitable and eternal.
[Homer-Dixon details a] grim list of economic, social, and environmental challenges. But our societies [some argue], especially the rich ones, will generate and deliver enough ingenuity to solve many of them. As for the problems that can’t be solved easily, we will often learn to live with the consequences. Usually this won’t be too difficult, because human beings are very good at adjusting to new conditions. Wealthy countries will build more secure frontiers to keep out poor migrants. Strict quarantine procedures will isolate patients who don’t respond to drugs. We will wear hats to protect us from the sun, modify our crops to survive in eroded soils, and grow fish in huge aquaculture ponds. Some problems, like the loss of biodiversity, won’t have much immediate effect on our quality of life: we will easily and comfortably adjust to a world without jaguars, frogs, gorillas, and many of the species alive today.
To me [Homer-Dixon], though, there is little cause for optimism in these remedies. Nor do I think we have to accept such a future.
And its relentlessly optimistic temperament (what the anthropologist Lionel Tiger has called our “biology of hope”) shortens our time horizons and instills in us a potentially fatal imprudence.
After sketching his ideas about probability, he [Keynes] moved on to suggest that it is more rational for people—and society itself—to pursue small goods with a high probability of attainment than it is to strive for grand utopias with minute probabilities of attainment.
It’s part of historical consciousness to learn the same thing: that there is no “correct” interpretation of the past, but that the act of interpreting is itself a vicarious enlargement of experience from which you can benefit.
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