Another argument for a new liberalism
Peter Beinart’s fantastic article encouraging the Democrats to firmly engage in the struggle against islamofascism reminded me of an earlier piece in TNR, one that equally impressed me, and perhaps had an even larger effect on framing my personal politics.
In the March 16th cover story, Eliot Spitzer and Andrew G. Celli, Jr. challenge the traditional argument on the government’s role in the economy.
We are told we live in the New Economy, an economy of computers and fiber-optic cables, capital without borders, and competition on a global scale. This is mature market capitalism, and its promise for human advancement–when combined with democracy and individual freedom–is rightly touted at every turn. But, if our economy is a creature of the twenty-first century, our thinking about government’s role in the economy is mired in the nineteenth.
Two essentially opposite viewpoints dominate today’s debate. On one side are those who see market capitalism, loosely regulated and unencumbered by the artificial interventions of government, as perfection itself. They argue: Leave the markets alone, let them work, and efficiency, choice, and progress will follow. On the other side are those who argue that, as miraculous as the capitalist experiment has proved to be, free markets cannot be left unchecked. To maintain a just and equitable society, they say, markets must be protected from their natural tendency toward excesses that lead to monopolies and unfairness. In this scheme, government’s role is to put the brakes on capitalism and to protect the public from market forces through its power to tax and regulate.
This conflict has often been reduced to caricature–heartless laissez-faire capitalists versus meddling government bureaucrats. But this characterization presents a false choice. If there is one lesson that can be gleaned from the New Economy, is that the government’s proper role is neither that of passive spectator nor lion tamer. The proper role of government is as market facilitator. ((emphasis added -nwm)) Government should act to ensure that markets run cleanly as well as smoothly. It should prevent market failures and right them when they occur. And it should ensure that markets uphold the broad values of our culture rather than debase them. In this vision, government action is necessary for free markets to work as they are intended–in an open, competitive, and fair manner. In this vision, government helps to create, maintain, and expand competition, so the system as a whole can do what it does best: generate and broadly distribute wealth.
The article concludes:
In a period of severe budget constraints, complex and shifting global entanglements, and a failure of political will, one of our most difficult choices concerns what role government should play in an economy that on the whole has proved astonishingly durable, efficient, and successful. It is a choice we must make as members of a democratic polity, as citizens of a global economy, and as Democrats for whom the old answers no longer satisfy.
President Bush has helped frame that choice. By pursuing policies that are cloaked in free-market rhetoric but fail to facilitate fair markets, he has surrendered to corporate constituencies. He has shown that his party’s rhetorical attachment to free markets is just that–a rhetorical attachment and nothing more. And he has done so at a time when it is clear that government nonintervention leads not to market freedom and a rising of all boats but to unrestrained corporatism, gross market distortions, inequitable accumulation of wealth, and economic stasis.
In trying to articulate a more constructive vision–one that is both fiscally and economically sound and that makes sense to the average American voter–Democrats should promote government as a supporter of free markets, not simply a check on them. Government action must be justified by its ability to define, catalyze, and facilitate the market’s core mechanisms; to prevent it from faltering under the weight of its own imperfections; and to uphold the underlying values to which the system is, or ought to be, dedicated. It is a vision consistent with trust-busting and other progressive market measures first enunciated early in the last century by Theodore Roosevelt, who said, “We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows.”
By taking up the mantle of efficient, forward-looking, and market-oriented government action, Democrats can move from being a party that simply opposes Bush’s tainted version of laissez-faire to one that advocates for the progress that comes with real market freedom. It is a powerful argument, a true argument, and it is ours for the making.
And I found religion.
Seriously though, Eliot Spitzer has been positioning himself politically for some time, and that such a popular figure within the Dems and the public can be so on the money in defense of (classical) liberalist views on the economy should lighten the step quite a bit.