AN ideology is very important as a conceptual framework that helps us deal with reality. When one doesn’t have an ideology, they will find it difficult to deal with reality - there has to be a way of conceptualising your environment.
Ex-Chief of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, confessed last week that the developed world is facing one of the greatest financial crises in history and, contrary to popular opinion, admitted his fallibility as a financial guru.
Western governments – proponents of the separation of markets and the state – are dragged more and more into the private financial management arena and the distinction between markets and the state in blurring.
They are in panic mode as their try to devise ways of intervention – intervention that they argued against for a long time, in favour of laissez-faire policies. Could this be the demise of laissez-faire – of the Austrian School of economics and the Chicago School of economics?
If it is, what then replaces laissez-faire, in the Western quest of a replacement ideology? A new ideology has to replace this new reality. The current trend of picking up the tab for underperforming organisations is unsustainable. The market will run out of control if this trend continues.
‘The Chinese were smart.’ They practised protectionism when it was expedient to do so, protected the local industry, and opened up their economy when it was sufficiently cushioned to withstand global financial shocks – reducing their vulnerability.
One lesson from China is clear – government participation in markets is essential, but should not be heavy-handed. It should regulatory and facilitative and not punitive.
Now on the question of ideology, how did a Labour Government embrace laissez-faire? How did it move further to the Right with a greater level of taxation and economic control of the poor? Circa, 2008 we are witnessing the greed and economic imbalance of 1929; only that this time around Governments (through the reserve banks) are able to bailout. Or are they, if they have to borrow from those whose policies are opposed to their own?
One critic said the US was guilty of “reckless endangerment”, much like dangling of a baby on the balcony by Michael Jackson.
“So far as I know, ‘reckless endangerment’ only applies to possible physical damage to other human beings, not to their bank accounts,” said the critic adding that there “should be a law against ‘reckless endangerment of other people’s assets.’”
Surely the ideology exacerbated the problem – a failure to conceptualize the environment (the reality) – in reference to the Labour Government. Is it possible to have a free market with a social conscience?
Is this not what is being proposed in Zimbabwe? The MDC wants to privatize (as espoused in RESTART), but also wants to provide a safety net for the poor. Surely, privatizing a rural hospital increases the cost of provision – free market with a social conscience. Is this possible, reconcilable?
And how do you become part of the solution if you say you are not part of the problem? How do you understand that problem? Isn’t this reckless endangerment of an unsuspecting populace?
There should be an ideology that helps conceptualize and organize reality; otherwise the agenda is in tatters. Alan Greenspan admitted rather late, after “recklessly endangering” the poor.
The ‘mirage of the moment’ is when we believe those we think have an ideology when in fact they don’t.
philipmurombedzi@yahoo.com
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