The Tenacity of Free Market Fundamentalism

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Yves Smith

This is an important and wide ranging conversation about the history of economic ideas and how it played out in political discourse, specifically, how free market fundamentalism, an idea that appeared to be dead in the 1940s, survived and became dominant.

One of the themes in this talk between Fred Block, professor of sociology at UC Davis, and Rob Johnson of INET is the conflict between the idea of “freedom” at the root of free market fundamentalism, which means “freedom to be left alone” versus democracy. As this discussion makes clear, markets cannot self-regulate. They become bare-fisted brawls for assets and power. Perversely from the perspective of the free market fundamentalists, aka libertarian utopians, for markets to deliver the positive benefits ascribed to them, you need government intervention: good access to court systems to enforce contracts and other rights, regulation to contend with externalities and curb predatory practices which are purely extractive, as well as the accumulation of monopoly/oligopoly power.