The Lessons We Can Learn from Freemarket Idealists
by Jeff Nall

In my book Perpetual Revolt I start off with an essay that beckons people to realize that we are only assured of constant change in our struggle for peace and justice; that there are no permanent victories and there are no permanent defeats. While some may find this idea frustrating, I find it hopeful, particularly at this time. History, with its radical shifts, can sometimes be a source for such hope. Those of us seeking to fundamentally alter the prevailing unfettered capitalist system may think the task is impossible. Interestingly, the granddaddies of freemarket fundamentalism had the same fear.

Frustrated for having his freemarket fundamentalist ideas laughed out of the room when Keynesian economics ruled the day, Frederick Hayek, mentor to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan, proposed a radical new kind of liberalism which sought to duplicate the success of radical socialists. In order to prevent the move toward socialism, Hayek called on his brethren to enact “a new liberal program which appeals to the imagination. We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible.”

Hayek went on to write that this radical liberalism requires “intellectual leaders who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. The practical compromises they must leave to the politicians. Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may arouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere "reasonable freedom of trade" or a mere "relaxation of controls" is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm.” Hayek was calling for perpetual revolt against the prevailing order; he was calling on people to look beyond immediate victory.

Hayek’s belief in the possibility of implementing a new economic system may have been inspired by the foretelling words of his intellectual master, Ludwig Von Mises – a guy who opposed the New Deal! Toward the end of Mises’ book, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, he writes about the endlessness of change:

In the universe there is never and nowhere stability and immobility. Change and transformation are essential features of life. Each state of affairs is transient; each age is an age of transition. In human life there is never calm and repose. Life is a process, not perseverance in a status quo. Yet the human mind has always been deluded by the image of an unchangeable existence. The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and permanent calm.

Mises was dead right. Nothing is forever; history does not end; and, as Zamyatin wrote, “There is no final revolution; no final number.”

Ironically, today it’s the freemarket fundamentalist who speaks of his system as the utopia of economics. The pendulum has swung and now it is unfettered capitalism that is receiving many of the same criticisms previously employed by capitalists. Indeed, freemarket fundamentalists are the ones declaring that history is over and that neoliberal globalism is something with which we have nothing to do but accept.

It’s time that those of us on the left heed Hayek’s advice. It’s time that we leave our tepid “liberalism” for a radical, MLK-styled socialism, an ideal which strives to create a society which feeds, clothes, educates, and houses its people. King had it right when he wrote: “Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. The kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of Capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It's found in a higher synthesis that can combine the truths of both.”

And it’s not like we don’t have a good crowd to join. Albert Einstein, George Orwell, Upton Sinclair, Helen Keller, and King were all socialists. The days of arguing that we are atomistic entities disconnected from the lives of everyone around us are over. There’s no denying the reality of our existence being firmly rooted in a community of people we live amongst. We may be individuals, but our individuality is firmly rooted in the context of our society. And so we demand something more than pure capitalism; something that acknowledges the reality of competition but also something that disavows the atomistic view of human beings and acknowledges that we are social creatures. Something that acknowledges that the only reason we theoretically signed on to the social contract is so that we would enjoy greater freedom and prosperity.

As Adam Smith wrote in the Wealth of Nations: “…what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.”

No more polite requests from the grandfatherly political elite. We should not be humbly asking for an end to war and poverty, we should be demanding it!

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