We are accustomed to thinking authority must be centralized. Even after Foucault, the idea that we are more ‘ruled’ by distributed forces or actors like the corporations in the market is difficult to grasp – it does not fit in our linguistic frame of ‘authority’ and ‘power’. To say that corporation X is oppressing us or has undue control over our lives I think would be a lot easier to comprehend and accept than the claim that ‘the market’ is. We don’t think of it as an actor, particularly one whose influence needs moral evaluation, and yet, that is exactly the case. Think of it this way: If you are walking in a labyrinth and you meet a guard who blocks your path, what is the stronger influence on your ability to move – the guard or the walls of the labyrinth?
We need a new linguistic frame that allows us to understand authority and domination (infringement of ‘autonomy’ if you will) is systemic. The reason it is so difficult to transfer our conceptions about limits of power from the political domain, where the constitution limits actions of the government, to systems like the market (but not just the market, climate and society might need similar evaluation) is that key elements of the frame – the authoritative/powerful actor – is missing. We are used to individuals wielding power from the beginning of our lives in childhood. Personifying the government is easy – the executive is a single person; other bodies are small groups of people. But how can we do this with ‘market forces’? This we tend to assimilate to luck or nature - forces beyond our control that we learn to not accord moral relevance as we grow up. Even Mill could only articulate the majority as a tyrant when it controlled the means of coercion – government (contrast this with accounts of social oppression of conformity in Ibsen and Sinclair Lewis).
One might respond that the real reason we don’t talk about the market the same way we do about government is that the latter coerces, while the market merely provides choices, or, at most, structures our choices. Government is thereby in a class of its own as threat. This sounds plausible because 'coercion' a part of the authority frame mentioned above. To notice it, we need to see an authority figure – we can’t imagine coercion without a coercing agent. In fact this response has strong appeal because the term itself (rather than just the frame within which it operates) has come to require intentional action.
However, the response misses the point because what is at stake is not coercion, but impingement on our life choices -- on our freedom. Centuries of having the government as the greatest threat to individual freedom has driven us to identify (intentional) coercion as the primary danger, but today, in many societies, this is no longer true. We are only concerned about coercion because it negatively affects our freedom – the latter is what matters. Coercion is sufficient, but not necessary to restrict our freedom. So let us recognize the new sources of this influence, such as the market, and come up with new linguistic frames that do not require a single authority figure and give us a clearer picture of reality and what affects our lives.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
King Market - Reframing Freedom
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11 comments:
How would you change the market? If you are comparing the capitalistic system to walls in a labyrinth, you are assuming that just like those walls the market can be altered. I understand that regulation can alter market behavior...but doesn't that just take you right back to the corporation or the government, a visible authority figure?
What I am suggesting is not another project Obama can tackle between healthcare and the jobs bill. This is a fundamental shift in social thinking. Practical outcomes might be further regulation, or less tangible changes. Board members might need to take on not just fiduciary but social responsibility.
But to the extent the solution is government, so what? I am not an anarchist who is suggesting we get rid of market along with government. I am suggesting we see that the market is a threat just like government and treat it similarly -- control its power, as the Constitution limits the government's power.
Our market today is something like the government in 17th century Europe -- it is under patchy limits, but under no overarching framework.
By the way, this identification of the market as a force of domination/impingement on us has been pushed for most of the 20th century by critical theorists. However, their influence in the halls of academic sociology and political science seems not to have translated into acceptance of the point by a wider audience. And I suspect this is again due to the foreignness of the concept to our daily way of thinking. To understand the market or technology or capitalist society as an oppressive force or agent requires the learning of new linguistic frames in which to locate 'authority' and 'power'. This learning (especially in this case) is quite taxing, taking years in graduate school to achieve anything near mastery because it is never done directly. In short, the sketching out of such a new linguistic frame must be the first step toward taming these historically recent obstacles to individual freedom.
Another explanation is that graduate students believe in a concept that doesn't exist.
Occam's razor - this is the simpler explanation.
Yes and Earth is flat because you can't readily see the curvature. Good thinking.
You CAN see the curvature. For example, when a ship leaves the mast is seen last.
How about an example of this so-called domination?
Similarly, you can the effect of the market on availability of jobs within a certain profession in a certain area, pollution in one's environment (carcinogens in the watersupply say), and effects of local monopoly like unavailability or extremely high rates for health insurance in certain areas of the country. These forces affect our lives as much today as what the government does. It's there, but just as with Earth's curvature, you have to know how to look.
Obviously you can see that the market as a whole has an effect on the availability of jobs.
Your post was about 'authority and domination'. Now can you explain how the lack of jobs is 'authority or domination'?
Pollution is not ONLY systemic - each pollutant is responsible for the pollution, and it's clear who that is.
As far as high health insurance rates, I would also claim that this is a product of government intervention. I advocated repealing the tax incentives for employers, mandates on coverage, and restrictions on out of state competitions, all since the beginning of the debate. Each of these government actions significantly contributes to the cost. Further, the govt contributes to researching expensive technologies, driving the cost up.
At the very least, it's a far cry from being obviously systemic risk.
sorry, cross off the word "risk" at the end
In fact, what is at stake is not even 'impingement on our life choices' as if we went through life, fighting against the external system of the market. This confuses the (synchronic) momentary viewpoint where we perceive ourselves as 'completed' bounded acting agents, where it is indeed correct to describe particular forces or circumstances as impinging on us, with the (diachronic) viewpoint of the duration of a person's life, where the market, society, government are all part of the environment in which the agent develops. There, questions of coercion or limits on freedom become those of wanted or unwanted influences on us.
I see the force limiting me in the synchronic sense when I fill up a glass of water from the tap filled with heavy elements increasing my risk for cancer, or when my business loan renewal is denied because banks have suddenly shifted from risk seeking to extremely risk averse. Here our attempts to assign responsibility fail - even pointing to the bank loan manager or polluting company executive does little good. They are simply operating under the constraints of the system.
Even more important, because more insidious, is the influence exercised on me by the system throughout my life, as I now see its effects intrinsic to my very identity. We have finely tuned ears for propaganda or brainwashing when they are concerted effort by the government, but much less so when they come from other sources. To be sure, especially strong cultural influences are often decried - the desensitization towards violence by movies, body type preferences, etc. But these are sporadic and largely ineffectual, because we have no concepts for characterizing and dealing with systemic influences. When government mandates something to be in a textbook it is scrutinized ruthlessly, but when the textbook manufacturers (yes, they are manufactured) make such decisions everyday, we say nothing - and when someone points it out, there are no tools for capturing, carrying and retransmitting it. Putting a government bureaucrat in charge of health insurance decisions is anathema, but having the same kind of bureaucrat in an insurance corporation do it (when he is one of many) is unobjectionable.
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