p06 Friedman as Freedman

All-Men Economics

By John Taylor; 2008 March 12, 11 Ala, 164 BE

Last night Pat Cameron spoke at our monthly public meeting in the Dunnville Branch of the Haldimand Public Library on the problem of teaching literacy. She described how several Baha'i-inspired literacy and youth initiatives that she visited in Guyana are proving effective because they work on a local level, using local materials. The inspiration for her talk was the following, from the Writings of Baha'u'llah,

"All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization. The Almighty beareth Me witness: To act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man. Those virtues that befit his dignity are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness towards all the peoples and kindreds of the earth. Say: O friends! Drink your fill from this crystal stream that floweth through the heavenly grace of Him Who is the Lord of Names. Let others partake of its waters in My name, that the leaders of men in every land may fully recognize the purpose for which the Eternal Truth hath been revealed, and the reason for which they themselves have been created." (Gleanings, 214)

She emphasized that the first two words of this quote, "all men," are in her view the most important for us to pay attention to. Today we ignore the fact that many of the basics, like health care and literacy, are not available to all. There is no drive to see that all human beings have the opportunity to participate at all in the advancement of civilization, and that should be the goal of development effort.

Here is what I think are the implications of the first two words of this statement of Baha'u'llah that Pat brought to our attention.

Universality, "all men," is surely as basic to economics as one plus one equals two is to mathematics. You cannot bandy about words like freedom, equality or justice until all men, everywhere, have the same opportunity to at least something approximating equal access to food, work, education, health care, and so on. Until that happens economics is mere conjuring, it is a superstition as useless as mathematics would be without understanding one plus one.

Here is an example. The hotshot economist Jeffrey Sachs is one of the bad guys in the book I am reading, Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine." He was the leading "transitionologist" in the two decade long establishment of shock capitalism in poor countries around the world. Yet after so many years as the most prestigious economist in the world, giving advice in how to set up new economies based on the headless, world government-free global order that has put us where we are, at last he started talking about one plus one equals two. Here is an interview with Sachs that appeared several years ago in Discover Magazine,

"Good Health, Good Wealth," 04.01.2002 http://discovermagazine.com/2002/apr/breakdialogue/?searchterm=sachs

In this interview Sachs discusses the bare basics of "all men" economics, such as spending a modest amount to cut back on the preventable diseases that are crippling millions in poor countries like Malawi. But, now that I have read Klein's important work, I can see the holes in his seemingly benign argument. You can see that Sachs is not talking to the localities where these people live, or even the nations that are surely in the best position to supervise the recovery program he proposes. They have already been strangled into irrelevance by economists like himself. No, he is addressing the globalist elites who now have all the real say in economic policy, thanks in large part to himself. And what he is asking is a pittance, a thimbleful of water to put out a roaring inferno. Yet, in spite of Sach's prestige in the eyes of the elites, even that pittance has not been forthcoming over the six years since that interview. The question I now ask when I hear Sachs talk to this unelected world leadership is: if as you say basic health care is so basic to economic advance, if it is as basic as one plus one equals two, why did you spend decades on non-basics, like trade "liberalization," and so forth?

Baha'u'llah never varied from the position that, from the outer, material point of view, government is the most effective and legitimate player in development. His Kitab-i-Aqdas hands power over to the people, and in His Will and Testament he makes their prime executive operator government: God rules the heart, He says, and government the bodies of mankind. This decisively outlaws the now-predominant libertarian agenda, which belittles the role and legitimacy of government.

There is an unforgettable image of Milton Friedman in his famous television documentary, which is available on line. He stands in the middle of an American sweatshop; row upon row of Chinese garment workers are slaving over sewing machines for minimal pay. Standing by workers who do not have the right to so much as look up from their sewing machines, Friedman defends his warped idea of freedom. He says that the air in this factory may be a little stuffy but his mother immigrated to a sweatshop just like this, and his parents were happy of the opportunity to get away from Hungary to a new land where they had a hope of bettering themselves. He reaped the benefit of their sacrifice. We should be grateful that the benevolent owners of this sweatshop deigned to hire them, and we should encourage these entrepreneurs in every way we can.

Several questions strike me when I see this learned mouthpiece of the wealthy wading through this paradise of freedom. Why does anybody have to be exploited? Is a sweatshop not a place where we can expect progress? If Friedman's parents suffered such a miserable, difficult life, why did he not as an economist devote his career to seeing an end to the economic deprivation they suffered? If that is not a one plus one of economics, what is? Why is it so unspeakable to relegate sweatshops to the history books? Why should it be even necessary to hold out a slim, false hope of freedom, wealth and power to millions of exploited workers, not even for themselves but for their children sometime in the distant future? If Friedman values freedom so much, why not see to it that nobody has to undergo misery and exploitation? Surely the love of freedom is all the sweeter when it is loved for its own sake, rather than the better of worse evils.

In the introduction to this documentary, Governor Arnold of California affirms that he came to America to get away from the supposed socialist ideal of mediocrity. He wanted to be the best of the best, and America could give him that. Interestingly, he did not choose to enter a sweatshop in order to get there. His fingers would have been too big and clumsy anyway, and he would not have made it as far as he did.

I often thought of Milton Friedman as I was reading the first several books of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." That is because the term "freedman" was a part of daily life, as it is in every slave owning society. A freedman was a slave who had gained his freedom. Compared to other slave owning economies, Rome was among the more liberal when it came to its freedmen, which probably explains why Rome lasted as long as it did.

A freedman usually remained financially dependent on his former master and on manumission took his name. But his were only limited legal rights and privileges; for example, freedmen could own land but public office or promotions to a high rank in the army were both out of the question. Honors were denied them. Like the immigrants in Friedman's sweatshop, a freedman could aspire to full citizenship only after several generations, and then only if he was lucky. Like the poor in America, freedmen constituted a permanent underclass, the difference being that only about five percent of Romans were freedman whereas America's permanent underclass is more like sixty percent of the population, thanks in large part to the ideas of Uncle Milty Friedman.

Milton Friedman's idea of freedom is, just like the Roman freedmen were in the eyes of full citizens, stunted and contemptible. It is a negative material freedom, a limited liberation from gross tyranny. Just as there are no freedmen without a slave owning economy, there would no freedom of Friedman's kind without exploitation. A freedman is defined in relation to slavery, just as an enslaved soul is defined in relation to the oppression of this material world. This freedom Kant called heteronomy, negative freedom born of dependence. That is present economic order, based on Friedman's negative freedom; the Master called it nothing less than industrial slavery.

Compare negative freedom to the kind of positive spiritual freedom that Kant called autonomy. His understanding of freedom sustained Abdu'l-Baha through all of His difficulties. He said,

"Freedom is not a matter of place. It is a condition. I was thankful for the prison, and the lack of liberty was very pleasing to me, for those days were passed in the path of service, under the utmost difficulties and trials, bearing fruits and results.

"Unless one accepts dire vicissitudes, he will not attain. To me prison is freedom, troubles rest me, death is life, and to be despised is honour. Therefore, I was happy all that time in prison. When one is released from the prison of self, that is indeed release, for that is the greater prison. When this release takes place, then one cannot be outwardly imprisoned. When they put my feet in stocks, I would say to the guard, 'You cannot imprison me, for here I have light and air and bread and water. There will come a time when my body will be in the ground, and I shall have neither light nor air nor food nor water, but even then I shall not be imprisoned.' The afflictions which come to humanity sometimes tend to centre the consciousness upon the limitations, and this is a veritable prison. Release comes by making of the will a Door through which the confirmations of the Spirit come." (ABL 119)

A listener to the Master found this concept rather too similar to the traditional justification of the miseries of this life foisted by priesthoods to placate the masses while stifling development. So, she asked, "What do you mean by the confirmations of the Spirit?" In response, Abdu'l-Baha gave his famous definition of genius.

"The confirmations of the Spirit are all those powers and gifts which some are born with (and which men sometimes call genius), but for which others have to strive with infinite pains. They come to that man or woman who accepts his life with radiant acquiescence." (ABL 121)

All-men economics is now at our fingertips. Indeed, the whole point of Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha's imprisonment was that we, mankind, no longer need see one another as slaves, as freedmen or as superior citizens. Baha'u'llah ordained it: All men have an equal right and obligation to participate in the progress of civilization. From the imprisonment of these Holy Souls, we are freed, now we have new capacity. We can enter an age of true enlightenment and positive freedom based on friendship, as the Master declared,

"... for this century is the century of light. It is not like former centuries. Former centuries were epochs of oppression. Now human intellects have developed, and human intelligence has increased. Each soul is investigating reality. This is not a time when we shall wage war and be hostile toward each other. We are living at a time when we should enjoy real friendship." (Promulgation, 222-223)