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Title: Maxspeak on Thomas Friedman
Author: Kevin Carson
Date: June 28, 2005
Language: en
Topics: neoliberalism
Source: Retrieved on 4th September 2021 from https://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/06/maxspeak-on-thomas-friedman.html

Kevin Carson

Maxspeak on Thomas Friedman

According to Max Sawicky, Tom Friedman’s been getting rich off

protectionism:

Of course, Thomas Friedman is a huge supporter of protectionism, it has

made him a relatively wealthy man, he just doesn’t realize it.

How is Thomas Friedman a protectionist? Well, for one he sells books

that are protected by copyrights. Copyrights are GOVERNMENT imposed

monopolies. The government will arrest me if I make copies of Thomas

Friedman’s books and sell them like any other good (or in the Internet

Age, I make it available for free on the web).

Actually, this is quite consistent with what Friedman means by “free

trade.” It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to realize that

when Friedman talks about the neoliberal version of “free markets,” he’s

fully aware that they’re a statist construct.

For globalism to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty

superpower that it is....The hidden hand of the market will never work

without a hidden fist-McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell

Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the

world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States

Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

In other words, what Thomas Friedman means by “free trade” would make

Cobden and Bright roll over in their graves. His idea of “free trade”

has fallen afoul of Joseph Stromberg’s acid wit:

For many in the US political and foreign policy Establishment, the

formula for having free trade would go something like this: 1) Find

yourself a global superpower; 2) have this superpower knock together the

heads of all opponents and skeptics until everyone is playing by the

same rules; 3) refer to this new imperial order as “free trade;” 4) talk

quite a bit about “democracy.” This is the end of the story except for

such possible corollaries as 1) never allow rival claimants to arise

which might aspire to co-manage the system of “free trade”; 2) the

global superpower rightfully in charge of world order must also control

the world monetary system.

Contrast that to real free trade:

The formula outlined above was decidedly not the 18^(th) and

19^(th)-century liberal view of free trade. Free traders like Richard

Cobden, John Bright, Frederic Bastiat, and Condy Raguet believed that

free trade is the absence of barriers to goods crossing borders, most

particularly the absence of special taxes – tariffs – which made

imported goods artificially dear, often for the benefit of special

interests wrapped in the flag under slogans of economic nationalism.

That was the point, for instance, of the Anglo-French treaty of 1861

which abolished a whole array of restrictions.

Classical free traders never thought it necessary to draw up thousands

of pages of detailed regulations to implement free trade. They saw no

need to fine-tune a sort of Gleichschaltung (co-ordination) of different

nations’ labor laws, environmental regulations, and the host of other

such issues dealt with by NAFTA, GATT, and so on. Clearly, there is a

difference between free trade, considered as the repeal, by treaty or

even unilaterally, of existing barriers to trade, and modern “free

trade” which seems to require truckloads of regulations pondered over by

legions of bureaucrats.

The present neoliberal project of “free trade” dates back to

FDR/Truman’s Grand Area, and the global economic order enforced by the

Bretton Woods agencies:

....I think we can deduce that when, from 1932 on, the Democratic Party

– with its traditional rhetoric about free trade in the older sense –

took over the Republicans’ project of neo-mercantilism and economic

empire, it was natural for them to carry it forward under the “free

trade” slogan. They were not wedded to tariffs, which, in their view,

got in the way of implementing Open Door Empire. Like an 18^(th)-century

Spanish Bourbon government, they stood for freer trade within an

existing or projected mercantilist system. They would have agreed, as

well, with Lord Palmerston, who said in 1841, “It is the business of

Government to open and secure the roads of the merchant.” British

historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson have referred to this as

“the imperialism of free trade.” Quite so, provided we don’t confuse it

with the genuine free trade espoused by anti-imperialists such as Cobden

and Bright. (You know that the other side has done well in the semantic

war when you have to put words like “genuine” in front of formerly

uncontested concepts.)

Tell me about it. I ought to have a separate key for “genuine free

markets” to save myself time.

According to Oliver MacDonough,[1] the Palmerstonian precursor to

Friedman’s neoliberalism was utterly loathed by the Cobdenites. The sort

of thing Cobden objected to included the “dispatch of a fleet ‘to

protect British interests’ in Portugal,” to the “loan-mongering and

debt-collecting operations in which our Government engaged either as

principal or agent,” and generally, all “intervention on behalf of

British creditors overseas” and all forcible opening of foreign markets.

Cobden opposed, above all, the confusion of “free trade” with “mere

increases of commerce or with the forcible ‘opening up’ of markets.” I

suppose this is my cue for a gibe at the Adam Smith Institute. Consider

them already gibed at.

[1] “The Anti-Imperialism of Free Trade,” The Economic History Review

(Second Series) 14:3 (1962) .