“Laissez-faire” is one of many terms that are consistently misunderstood, misused, and distorted.
The term originated in 17th century France. Under the rule of Louis XIV, France had a centralized, state-managed economy. Virtually all key economic decisions were in the hands of Louis’ intendant (“manager” is a better translation than “minister”), Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Colbert directed the country’s industries with absolute authority, punishing the disobedient with brutal sanctions. He suppressed what little labour organization there was. He encouraged the creation of giant corporations, and he gave out military contracts, monopolies, subsidies and privileges to those he liked. The corporations grew fat on the proceeds of Louis’ incessant wars. France was a sort of Haliburton’s Heaven. As a consequence, after a brief boom created by the initial concentration of capital, France’s technology and economy stagnated, the gap between rich and poor widened, and those at the bottom starved, just as it has transpired in all such dirigiste regimes.
As France’s decline became obvious, a group of smaller entrepreneurs ― the very ones who were most shackled and disadvantaged by Colbert’s worship of Big Corporations, approached Colbert with a petition. Colbert demanded to know what subsidies and privileges they wanted. One of their number responded “laissez-nous faire”. Leave us alone. Don’t favour us with subsidies and privileges. Don’t favour anyone with subsidies or privileges.
And that is what “laissez-faire” means. It is the doctrine that the State should not hand out gifts, favours, monopolies and special privileges to business, trades or manufacturers. Since that has been the principle activity of monarchs and governments throughout history, “laissez-faire” was a profoundly radical, revolutionary idea. The principle of laissez-faire is one, but not the only element that defines a free market. It is, however, a necessary element. A free market cannot exist without it. Another essential element is democracy. A free market can only exist in a functioning democracy, since a “free market” is by definition a market of free people. No state that is not a fully functioning democracy has a free market, or ever can have one.
Laissez-faire is NOT an idea favouring corporate power and big business. It is the exact opposite. It is NOT a claim that elected officials should never regulate business. Far from it. Implicit in laissez-faire is the necessity that government regulate business activities with clear, specific, objective laws, applicable to everyone equally, without exceptions. No subsidies, no monopolies, no free gifts. No tax credits, no tax incentives, no tax write-offs, no tax advantages; no “enterprise zones”, no kickbacks, no “inducements”, no government contracts, no bail-outs, no lobbies, no “self-regulation”, no “favourable business climate”. That is what “laissez-faire” means. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Conservative doctrine that government should be arranged to favour big business, or that corporations should have extraordinary powers, or that the rich should be favoured in tax laws, or that corporations should be allowed to engage in criminal activity (such as pollution), or any of the other sickening demands made by Conservatives. Today, the term is used by almost everyone to mean government favouring business, or government letting big business do anything it wants, or big business being allowed to operate without laws or regulations (or only those laws or regulations they desire). These are all profound distortions and falsifications of the meaning of “laissez-faire”. These falsifications are constantly planted in the public mind by Conservatives, and stupidly accepted by those who claim to be opponents of Conservatives. Laissez-faire is not a Conservative idea. No Conservative, or Corporate Power has ever advocated, sought, or practiced a laissez-faire economic principle.
Let me repeat: No Conservative, or Corporate Power has EVER advocated, sought, or practiced a laissez-faire economic principle. Conservative ideology is the opposite of laissez-faire economic theory. All Conservatives seek to acquire wealth and power through the intervention of the state, through special privilege, special dispensation, and special immunities. That is the essence of Conservative thought. The very existence of a corporation is a violation of laissez-faire principle, a fundamental transgression of free market economics. A corporation is a special form of collectivist property ownership, mandated and privileged by the state. It creates a “fictional person”, which is given special powers, different from those of ordinary, individual property owners, including immunity from critically important responsibilities, and the consequences of debt. The corporation is a pure example of mercantilist, dirigiste economic doctrine. The business corporation, as we know it, originated in state-managed entities created by Europe’s kings in the 17th century. Colbert’s state-run economy was an economy of big corporations. The intellectual leaders of the American Revolution understood this, and they were extremely hostile to the idea of corporations, considering them to be un-American threats to liberty. With the insinuation of the doctrine of the “corporate person” into the laws of many countries, the corporation replaced the baronial estate as the principle vehicle of aristocratic, collectivist economic power. Today’s “global” economy, dominated by large corporations, is a mercantilist, collectivist system, antithetical in every way to free market principles. It is the direct descendant of Colbert’s dirigiste system.
Let me repeat again: No Conservative ever has, or ever will desire or promote a free market, and no Conservative ever has, or ever will desire or promote a principle of laissez-faire. ALL conservatives seek to acquire their wealth and power through the active intervention of government in the economy, whether by the creation of special privileges, special dispensations, monopolies, gifts, loans, or subsidies, rigging the tax system, or using the state’s power to make war to their advantage. Corporate power is state power. It always has been, and always will be.
Conservatism and Corporate Power on the one hand, and free markets on the other, are absolute, irreconcilable opposites. There is no “middle ground” between them. There is no such thing as a “mixed economy”. The system is either fair and impartial, or it isn’t. One subsidy, one special privilege, one special immunity violates the total integrity of the system. The “level playing field” ceases to exist, and the idea of a free market vanishes, just as when one move in a chess game is a cheat, the “game” cannot be called a game.
The existence of corporations violates the concept of a free market so fundamentally that, the moment the modern corporation came into existence, the possibility of a free market ceased to exist. In the United States, that was in the 19th century, when the Supreme Court ruled that the “fictitious person” of the corporation possessed “civil rights”. Most countries have followed this notion in their legal systems. No country that I know of has ever yet practiced anything resembling free market economics, least of all the United States, with its vast array of corporate giveaways and subsidies, military pork-barrel, and armies of corporate lobbyists extorting special privileges from the government. The economy of the United States, is, in fact, virtually identical to that of Louis XIV in ideology and structure, right down to its primitive, savage “sun king” squatting on a throne. And it is no surprise to me that, just as in Louis XIV’s France, or the old Soviet Empire, its technology and economy are stagnating, while the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.
While Corporate Power cannot co-exist with free markets, it is perfectly compatible with Communism, which is the ultimate ultra-conservative ideology. In fact, it is the current doctrine and practice among Conservatives to treat existing Communist Parties according to their true nature: as big corporations. Conservative doctrines are not “at the other end of the spectrum” from Communism. This is a completely wrong-headed notion, the result of the conceptual confusion fostered by the idiotic “left/right” gimmick of totalitarian intellectuals. Conservative doctrines are very close to Communism.
At the bottom of the world of ideas, the lowest, both intellectually and morally, is the racist and genocidal ideology of Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. Today’s Conservative ideology is not as all-encompassing in its evil, but it is closely related to it. Conservatives peddle a watered-down version of Marxism, more concerned with lucrative exploitation and management than with “end-of-days” metaphysics or apocalyptic terror. But Conservatives are perfectly willing to employ all the terror-tools of the Marxists, and all their fraudulant intellectual gibberish, if it suits their purpose. Among those tools is the plain, straightforward lie. When Conservatives talk about “laissez-faire” or “free markets”, they are simply lying, just as Marxists are lying when they talk about “democracy” or “equality”, or televangelists are lying when they claim to be following the philosophy of Jesus.
The close relationship of Conservatism to Marxism should be apparent to anyone who has spent more than a few minutes talking to a Conservative ideologue. They at once betray the same ruthless disregard for human rights and individual human lives. They have the same confidence that glib formulas of pseudo-economic mumbo-jumbo trump justice, fairness, common sense, and concrete reality. They show the same arrogant certainty that the “laws of history” are playing out for them, and the same arrogant contempt for those they plan to exploit and manipulate.* They show the same delight in using words deceptively, with secret meanings embodying the opposite of what the listener is led to believe. Most of all, they have the same belief that they are the “revolutionary vanguard” and that the suffering of others (not themselves) is a purifying cleansing that will bring about a nebulous utopia. Like Marxists, Conservatives will lie to you, exploit you, swindle you, cheat you, and screw you, at every opportunity, while constantly bellowing a sanctimonious superiority. Like Communists, they masquerade as populist voices of the downtrodden, or as the champions of the common man, while scheming for absolute power. Like Communists, they spout “history” that is nothing more than a propaganda fantasy, endlessly mutable for strategic reasons. In other words, they are devoted to the same old, old, old, putrifying mental garbage that has plagued, tortured, and impoverished the human race throughout its painful history.
This resemblance is not co-incidental or superficial. It is genetic and structural. No “map” of ideas that does not place Conservative doctrines immediately close to Marxist ones is valid. Today’s Neo-Conservative ideologues are the direct intellectual heirs of the Communists and National Socialists, with the same mental furniture, the same fundamental ideas, and, most important, the same motives.
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* In 2002, Ron Suskind, a historian and senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000, net with a senior advisor to George W. Bush. Suskind recounts the meeting thus:
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
[recounted in Suskind, Ron — Without A Doubt — NY Times, October 17, 2004.]
This almost hallucinatory state of mind has been typical of the revolutionary cabal around Bush, and certainly typical of Marxist-Nazi thinking. It might as well have come from the mouth of Vladimir Lenin, Heinrich Himmler, or Pol Pot.
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