Fascists can try to control markets, communists can try to eliminate markets, but there is "nothing new under the sun", only new names for the same phenomena repeating over and over. And that repetition always gives rise to the collective feeling "it's different this time".
One wonders whether Karl Marx would have proposed the deliberate end of free markets if he had come after Freud instead of before. It seems to me the entire idea of communism is a classic example of Utopian Thinking, which is always based on the belief or wish that reason is stronger than instinct. Which is a bit like saying the house is stronger than the foundation - you see what I mean? - at best a false dialectic, at worst dangerously wrong.
So. The latter half of my title borrowed from the title of a Leonard Cohen song, his poetic way of saying the instinct complex does not succumb to legislation. Or, biology isn't a negotiation, it is given, not invented. Marx might have at least considered this idea before giving himself over to Utopian Idealism if he had "read his Freud".
But he didn't, that would have been too easy, and as usual the progression of history (and herstory) is rather a mess. But it is as it should be, and is supposed to be, as it is the ongoing process of the biological, of which we humans are a full part, Freud's essential contribution, if we may boil it down to the one most important thing. We always find the way to deny the implications of "full", as the implication is not at all comfortable. Freud again: All neurosis is born in the instinctual fear of death.
One might say the Utopian Notion is equal to and the exact same as the notion we can and will rise above biology, our foundation, without the parametrics of that biology imposing limits. But the reality is a given foundation supports a certain load, and no more.
The markets, being an essential element for the condition of society, are interesting. They are continually being meddled with by the idealists (legislators), and the thieves (speculators). This is a stasis ripe with irony and paradox: many of the idealists are thieves in a state of rationalized self-delusion (regulators cum robber barons), and many of the thieves are the "healthy flora" of the gut, necessary for whole and healthy function.
In communism - the elimination of free markets and implementation of state planned production and distribution - there is no way for markets (society) to "find their way", as the model arbitrarily imposed on the biological condition is (infinitely?) too simple. Real (so called black) markets erupt spontaneously, else the biological condition would have nowhere to go, and in the form of that entity, it would die.
In fascism - the denouement phase of an established political order - we again find sweet irony and paradox: the market that is assured by the establishment to be safe may in fact be the most dangerous of all. It is the market wearing the assurance of health that is in fact a system in collapse and fighting for life. The collective immortality self-delusion becomes the danger to participants in that market, one can never be sure of survival (much less health) at the critical juncture. But we, being biological, will fight, then fight some more.
And the markets go round and round the merry. First the patient crashed, then was saved, then put on meds, then jump started with stimulus - a few times already! Can the patient be stabilized? It seems to have come back from death's door and emerged from coma. Or is that just the ventilator doing it's thing? Can it stand on its own two feet? If so that (crash and recovery) V on the chart is just an anomaly. We shall see, but in larger context it will probably take a few more years more to know.
No comments:
Post a Comment