The Free Market
Although every industrialised economy is capitalist in its basic form, using wages and prices and with capital out of democratic control, every industrialised economy is administered by a nation state apparatus in the interests of an owning elite.
Not only does free–market capitalism not exist in practice, but it couldn’t exist in principle. Pure capitalism wouldn’t last five minutes. Imagine if the rules were suddenly changed, and all state involvement in one national economy vanished overnight. Every substantial part of that national economy would immediately be at a disadvantage against more efficient, state–protected, foreign equivalents. Any capital invested in that economy would immediately be removed and invested in economies where the profits of owners are guaranteed by a powerful state.
This mechanism is visible all the time on a lesser scale, as minor improvements to the conditions of the general population in one nation state provoke the transfer of capital to other economies.
The only market mechanisms that are permitted are those which benefit the institutions and individuals with power, for obvious reasons.
Although it is purely a theoretical invention, the concept of a free market does have one use, as an ideological weapon:
- If a population starts to demand more control over its members’ lives, the doctrine of the free market is brought out to demonstrate the heresy.
- If there is an opportunity to plunder wealth from a third–world country, free market doctrine is used to justify the robbery.
- If a powerful industry is adversely affected by cheaper or better products from abroad, the doctrine is quietly forgotten as import tariffs are established.
Just as it is always easier to wage a military war if you have a tame archbishop, mullah or pope to convey the approval of a god, an essential part in waging economic war is to produce an economic god to justify it.