09.30.07

Birth of the Shock Doctrine? (ca. 1803)

Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy, History, Evolution at 8:45 pm by nemo

The ’shock doctrine’ actually is born in the period just after the brief aura of the seemingly ‘revolutionary’ or radical Adam Smith past away and was conservatized in the next generation, witness this passage from history-and-evoluton.com, and World History and The Eonic Effect, Critique of Evolutionary Economy:
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As one author notes, “Classical political economy presents an imposing façade. For more than two centuries, its professed adherents have been grinding out texts to demonstrate how a market generates forces that provide the most efficient method for organizing production. The concept of primitive accumulation—that is, the process of depriving people of their means of producing for themselves—seems far removed from the literature of classical political economy.” Michael Perelman, Classical Political Economy (London: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), p. vii, and p. 171.

Are we to suppose that Darwin mistakenly borrowed an ideological cover story, yet succeeded in producing a science? The author also cites the often-quoted comment of a Francis Horner, a Captain of Industry if there ever was one, from 1803, declining to review a reissue of Smith’s text,

I should be reluctant to expose S’s errors before his work had operated its full effect. We owe much at present to the superstitious worship of S’s name; and we must not impair that feeling, till the victory is more complete….[U]ntil we can give a correct and precise theory of the origin of wealth, his popular and plausible and loose hypothesis is as good for the vulgar as any others.

I think we should do well to suspect the equally complete cynicism in some quarters in the social promotion of Darwin’s theory. Perhaps we have cut and paste ‘S.’s errors’ for D’s. Is the whole game a hack? How utterly convenient. Economic agents with legitimate selfishness in theory are blessed as the breaking front of evolution and the champions of economy both.

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