Everyone has values. Values always have a temporal setting. Temporality, as Heidegger would remind us, has a stretch1. The root of crime is incongruent2 values. Incongruent values result in self-destruction and other-destruction. The work of life and the highest goal of thinking is congruency. Temporality certainly brings with it contemporaneous themes but also, universal themes. By universal themes I specifically mean the body. Not just the human body but body in the broader sense of organized (organically, physically, etc.), essentially interdependent and fundamental boundary conditions. In this sense, congruency means harmony. As such, human kind has completion, wholeness, telos3 in the Greek sense as fundamentally constitutive. Therefore, harmony is our ‘from which’ and also ‘to which’ of existence. As long as we exist, we are founded as origin (archê)4 and telos. However, equally co-constitutive with body is entropy. Entropy is cacophony. Entropy is the tear of temporality. It is radical alterity, exterior to body. Entropy is anarchy, without origin, anachronous5. For Anaximander:
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
We also have in Hesiod, writing of the origin, “First of all chaos came to be…”6
Therefore, values as congruency is temporized as the middle voice, as not mortal or divine as Eros, as harmony and cacophony, as interiority and exteriority, as being and radical other, impenetrable transcendence. Upon this plight, thought as existence: work.
Work is the movement of peras and aperion7, form and void (chaos as yawning gap). Body is the motion of work. As such, value is the promise of harmony and the yawning gap of cacophony. Neither can be without the other. Yet, if meaning is to be found in existence, if body is to be inherent, coherent, intact value is not optional. Death is the destruction of body, at least with regard to organism, to human body. However, body is overlapping bodies. As human body we live in historical, setting body. Human body also lives in matter, physics body. Human body belongs to political, community, labor bodies etc.. Body necessarily connotes “in”. By “in” we mean indeterminate, interwoven bodies. This aspect we call intermediate. Both harmony and cacophony are mediated, essentially and irrevocably. What this means is that there is never simply a binary totality except in utility and intermediacy. Some may call binary totalities ‘illusion’ in grander schemes but if that is the case, it is a necessary illusion in the semantic of utility. Grammar as the interplay of syntactic and semantic, sign and symbol, is body also which reflects harmony and cacophony, congruence and “in”-congruence. In grammatology, we also find the middle, the intermediate, the play of the same and other, body and bodies.
To radically shift modes…
I recently reflected on discussions I have had with Austrian Economists8. The Austrians are fundamentally devoted to radical laissez-faire capitalism. They reflect some of the current libertarian and right wing views in the United States. They believe that when ‘free market’ capitalism fails, systemically, it is because of government intervention. The only way to emphatically prove their point would be to eradicate government which would be an impossibility or, short of that, make it “small enough to drown in a bathtub” as some of them have stated. In this case, we have the body of enterprise, of a certain kind of market economy, which has been given an elevated status, a reified status of the proper over and against the body politic. Their belief is that laissez-faire body maintains itself more efficiently in the microeconomics of capital dynamics than the macroeconomics of large government regulation. One downside I have pointed out to them is that non-governmental body9 can have small companies and extremely large multinational corporations. Systemically, this means that extremely large multinational corporations can suffer from the same woes as large governments which regulate. They can also be bureaucratic and inefficient. They can also monopolize and regulate the market in every sense of the word10. Likewise, governments can be small like Switzerland or Austria with relatively large tax bases but distribute social services as efficiently as small companies would in the laissez-faire capitalism. Even very large governments like the United States can systemically be organized as large multinational corporations, as conglomerates or independent business units which give them the same type of systemic advantage as smaller companies. The National Park System, the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) and many other departments in the U.S. government provide ample proof of this.11 In effect what we have are intermediates at work in the body politic and the body market. The binaries break down except in the minds of dogmatically committed enthusiasts.
The Austrians believe that voting in the body politic is not at all like ‘free market’ competition. This, in spite of the fact that corporate boards are voted in, in large corporations. Perhaps, again the argument could be made that the small number of participates in corporate governance makes the process more efficient than general voting in, say a large government like the U.S., and therefore less likely to accrue professional politicians but anyone that has worked in a large corporation will readily tell you about politics in those corporations. It has occurred to me that, while the Austrians will not say it, they really do not believe in democracy. They believe that the reins of power in economics operate most efficiently when they are held by the few or by fewer folks than when many folks are involved. They hurry past the issues of body politic in body corporation and also wise corporate governance such as in conglomerates. They have setup binaries which define their most basic value system. While these binaries may be illusory and lead to far too reductionist conclusions, the real question is, could Austrian Economics serve as a protectionist strategy for the few? If we dismiss democracy as a viable means for governance aren’t we really left with the mercantilism that folks like Thomas Jefferson were so vehemently opposed to? Can democracy work? Can we have large governments with efficient social services just as large corporations can have efficient conglomerates? Sure we can also have inefficiencies in large government, large corporations and even small governments and small businesses. Perhaps less or more likely depending on the independent and dependent variable we setup in our statistical measurements.
To be fair, power does not necessarily reduce to elitism. It is commonly thought that money is power and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Well, Christians do not think the power of God corrupts and according to them, God is absolute. After all, Plato thought that the philosopher king would be the best answer to politics. Personally, I prefer everyone evolve to the level of philosopher king. In any case, there certainly has been examples in history of wise leaders, wise corporate leaders, etc.. However, without knowing any actual statistical studies on this, I would think that there is greater effects with corruption in greater concentrations of power12. I am not sure there is statistically any greater percentage of corruption with greater power. Many small businesses cheat on their taxes. Many folks lie with ease. The macro effects of these vices could only be corrosive on a large scale by way of accumulation. Examples of this would be countries where corruption is widespread and laws are commonly broken by average citizens. Those that control concentrated pockets of power and are corrupt can have great, catastrophic, macro effects as history is replete with examples. If my suspicions are correct, it follows that if corporations are people too (but not government curiously enough)13 and since they typically have more power, these concentrations of power would lend themselves to greater statistical negative effects from corruption. Of course, this can apply to governments as well.
The problem with the laissez-faire capitalists is that on one hand, when it comes to the ‘free’ market, they appear to completely ignore the effects of corrosive power on systemic capitalism and on the other hand seem to suggest that the government is the embodiment of absolute power and absolute corruption. This dichotomy is not mitigated in their analysis by intermediate factors such as when power is systemically used wisely as many Americans ‘say’ is embodied in the U.S. Constitution or when market players corrupt the competitive advantage (i.e., monopolistic tendencies). In the U.S. Constitution there are checks and balances against elitists consolidating power and corruption. The whole system is based on a representative democracy. If you believe that the U.S. government is a complete failure, it follows that you believe the checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution are negated by the corrosive effects of power. The laissez-faire capitalists oppose any corrective market intervention such as regulation. They offer no checks and balances to monopolistic tendencies by private corporations except the “competition of the market”. They believe that the only checks and balances needed in capitalism are completely inherent to the market itself. They typically ignore the same kind of regulatory effect that large, monopolistic multinational corporations have on the market. To eliminate competition, they believe that price fixing and collusion, supply side manipulation, buying or driving the competition out of business is a legitimate enterprise in big business. They would have vigorously defended the “robber barons” such as John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew W. Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt. The would have opposed the crony capitalism practiced by these folks as an example of government deformation of the natural business cycle. However, they appear to blame government for these deformations not the “robber barons”. They would never blame the capitalistic system which allowed these folks to acquire vast money and power and enabled them to buy off the government. How could they afford the government payoff before they obtained a high degree of wealth to even start down the path of cronyism? Could it be that they were corrupted by the capitalistic system before the government was ever implicated? This one-sidedness is exactly what shows the Austrian’s hypocrisy and blind dogmatism.
The fallacy of their analysis is that when it comes to large, multinational corporations, competition is systemically and artificially diminished by great wealth and great power regardless of laissez-faire-government interaction. In view of this, “competition of the market” becomes a kind of mantra which cannot be intrinsically corrupted from within the system, the ‘free’ market can only be corrupted from without, by governmental regulation. This kind of binary reduction makes fair competition a variable which, for them, cannot be diminished or increased except from within proper and legitimate laissez-faire capitalism. In other words, there are no unfair competitive advantages which are systemic to laissez-faire capitalism as long as government regulation is excluded. In their opinion, the Gilded Age was not an effect of laissez-faire capitalism but crony capitalism. The Great Depression was a result of government intervention in the stock market not a stock market free-for-all where the ‘all’ was the few. For them, true laissez-faire capitalism would have prevented these historical atrocities.
Competition cannot decidedly be corrupted from within but chiefly from without, the government. This myopia of the notion of competition has and will allow corrupted, concentrations of power to go unchecked. The Austrians fancifully and unrealistically believe that the ideal of laissez-faire ‘competition’ cannot be systemically, over the long term, compromised from within. This kind of blind dogmatism is what I refer to as elitism. It is a contradiction of values which cannot be brought to the light of day. This value cannot be made coherent by Kant’s categorical imperative. What kind of person would defend no limitations to absolute power, to pure economic Darwinism, to absolving absolute power of any blame as long as it triumphed competitively without government coercion. What kind of human value system could be harmonized with a ‘legitimate’ totalitarianism as long as it is acquired by ‘competitive’ laissez-faire capitalism.
Of course, the Austrians would claim that ‘real’ competition would prevent such an outcome. They would protest that monopolies were the result of corrosive government intervention into the market not any ability of the marketers to systematically and intrinsically manipulate the market and eventually the government, to obtain their empire. If the government did not exist or barely existed in pure market terms, the “robber barons” would have failed from market competition. For the Austrians, it would be impossible for laissez-faire capitalism to effectively become the government, to acquire that kind of power. It would be impossible for the government to be a byproduct of laissez-faire capitalism. For them, the original beast is the government. In the case of the United States, the government can only corrupt laissez-faire capitalism. It can never enhance the market. Representative democracy can only interfere and thwart ‘free’ enterprise. Freedom is not a result of government, it is a result of market dynamic. This reduction allows no intermediation, no checks and balances, no voting, no democracy. Democracy only sets the stage for government corruption and therefore, market deformation. In Austrian Economics’ terms, checks and balances are solely from within, intrinsic, the “in” without considerations for legitimate external contingencies. The market admits no exterior, no other, no proper and valid interruption outside its hermetically sealed body. In vernacular, this reduction allows the rich to get richer and the poor get poorer as long as the fittest survive without cronyism. Laissez-faire capitalism can only be corrupted by government, it can never be systemically, over time, corrupted from within due to pure market competition.
If this is the case, do we all to easily give up on democracy? Do we favor heroic elitism, triumph of the fittest, over common populism? I ask the reader, are these binaries beginning to show themselves in their artificiality? This is where critical thinking must and should come in. If, as Kant would have us think, our maxim of elitism were to be the universal law of ‘bodies’ human, would we be ok with laissez-faire capitalism as the Austrians envision it? Didn’t we and Thomas Jefferson crawl out of that kind of dark economic age? Are we all too willing to go back there? Why would it be different this time around? Here is where congruency, given the many different bodies, weighs most heavily. The work which thought places on us, which values require of us, is not to hide or apologize for our secretive values which cannot reach the light of day but to harmonize what we believe internally with what we think should be the maxim of society, of body politic, of value as coherent and congruent with body.
The artificial reduction of values into disparate, cacophonous binaries may simplify and stupefy the work of congruence, of allowing, defending and justifying dogmatic ‘differences’ without explicitly endorsing contradictions but letting them remain implicitly (albeit, convenient for some). The work of thinking is in proportion and magnitude as Aristotle would instruct us. Every time we vote each of us has that work laid upon us not from without but from who we are. That is what democracy is about. We are called to the work of democracy, harmonizing constitutive bodies from which we exist and allowing interruption from the other for which we have no already understood dogma or reduction. If we fail this, the elitists will be all to happy to do the work for us.
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1 See A Brief Introduction to Being and Time
2 not corresponding in structure or content
3 See Philosophy Series 7 – Eros
4 See Philosophy Series 6 – The Origin
5 See Thoughts on Heidegger and Levinas, also Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Emmanuel Levinas
6 See Philosophy Series 4 – Hesiod
7 See Aristotle and Modernity: The Eternal and Science
8 See An Email to Paul Krugman, Steve Horwitz and’Free Market’Fundamentalism, Theoria and Austrian Economics [from what I can see], Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School, Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School and Regulation
9 I use this grammatical rendition purposely to refer back to the previous discussion.
10 See The Free Market Ideal
11 See Free Market Either/Or Government?
12 There are those that believe power, whether used wisely of corruptly, is absolutely reductive of existence as one reading of Nietzsche might suggest. This analysis sets up and reifies another binary dichotomy as for example power and powerlessness and refuses the absolute interruption of the other. I think of this as yet another example of an enlarged amygdale. See The Conservative and Liberal Brain