Honestly, James Delingpole? Has it really come to this?
Tedious and tiresome old 1960s types who imagine
that they are still enfants terribles (or ever really were), and who
bleat that “Communism did not fail, because it has never been tried”, have now
been joined by tedious and tiresome old 1980s types who imagine that they are
still enfants terribles (or ever really were), and who bleat that
“capitalism did not fail, because it has never been tried”.
Grow up, the lot of you.
Except that unlike those who say "communism has never been tried", the libertarians who argue that capitalism has never been tried can at least point to how they would do things differently. It may well be that outlawing fractional reserve banking and shutting down the Bank of England won't end the business cycle, but nobody can argue that they haven't been tried. Given that the Austrian School economists predicted the current crises and can produce explanations and analysis as convincing as the Keynesians, I think it is unfair to lump them in with tyhe more "mainstream" free-marketeers (followers of Friedman etc).
ReplyDeleteAnonymous @ 23:34
ReplyDeleteI think Mr. Lindsay is right, though. We have had actually existing communism and actually existing laissez-faire capitalism and they are both inferior to the record of real social democracy, as imperfect as it is.
I suspect that the only reason the Austrians have a bigger bullhorn than the Marxists is that they have backers with deeper pockets.