Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

[Rather long and quite complete. If you were thrilled to see
the end of Friedman but haven't followed the disastrous misery
he and his "Chicago Boys" left in their wake since his heyday
destroying Chile, Bolivia, the USSR, etc. with their rapacious
application of "shock therapy," you willfind plenty of depressing and
updated material on South Africa, Haiti, and Iraq. Gluttons for
punishment might be sorry about the lack of foodnotes. -NYTr]

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/10/capitalism-and-freedom-unmasked.html

"Capitalism and Freedom" Unmasked

by Stephen Lendman

An era ended November 16, 2006 when economist Milton Friedman died. A
torrent of eulogies followed. The Wall Street Journal mourned his loss
with the same tribute he credulously used when Ronald Reagan died
saying "few people in human history have contributed more to the
achievement of human freedom." Economist and former Treasury Secretary
Lawrence Summers called him a hero and "The Great Liberator" in a New
York Times op-ed; the UK Financial Times called him "the last of the
great economists;" Terence Corcoran, editor of Canada's National Post,
mourned the "free markets" loss of "their last lion;" and Business Week
magazine noted the "Death of a Giant" and praised his doctrine that
"the best thing government can do is supply the economy with the money
it needs and stand aside."

Rarely had so much praise been given anyone so undeserving in light of
the human wreckage his legacy left strewn everywhere. He believed
government's sole function is "to protect our freedom both from
(outside) enemies....and from our fellow-citizens." It's to "preserve
law and order (as well as) enforce private contracts, (safeguard
private property and) foster competitive markets." Everything else in
public hands is socialism that for free-wheeling market fundamentalists
like Friedman is blasphemy. He said markets work best unfettered of
rules, regulations, onerous taxes, trade barriers, "entrenched
interests" and human interference, and the best government is
practically none at all as anything it can do private business does
better. Democracy and a government of, by and for the people? Forget it.

He preached public wealth should be in private hands, accumulation of
profits unrestrained, corporate taxes abolished, and social services
curtailed or ended. He believed "economic freedom is an end to
itself....and an indispensable means toward (achieving) political
freedom." He thought state laws requiring certain occupations be
licensed (like doctors) a restriction of freedom. He opposed foreign
aid, subsidies, import quotas and tariffs as well as drug laws he
called a subsidy to organized crime (which it is as well as to CIA and
money laundering international banks earning billions from it) and
added "we have no right to use force....to prevent (someone) from
committing suicide....drinking alcohol or taking drugs," while saying
nothing about major banks and CIA partnering for profit with drug lords.

He favored a constitutional amendment requiring Congress balance the
budget because deficits "encourage political irresponsibility." He
claimed taxes were onerous and was "in favor of cutting (them) under
any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever
possible...." and make corporations entirely exempt from them. He
opposed the minimum wage, supported a flat tax favoring the rich, and
believed everyone should have to buy his or her own medical insurance
like any other product or service. Can't afford it? Too bad. Get sick?
Let the market heal you.

He opposed public education, supported school vouchers for
privately-run ones, and believed marketplace competition improves
performance even though voucher amounts are inadequate and mostly go to
schools emphasizing religious education or training. Further, evidence
shows teaching quality suffers in for-profit schools except in elitist
ones. Most others stress cost-cutting and fewer services for bigger
returns on investment.

He ignored the fact that Christian fundamentalist schools harm
democracy and violate the constitutional separation of church and
state. They also threaten public education's future that's been the
bedrock of primary and secondary schooling throughout our history until
Friedman first proposed vouchers in the 1980s as one of his core free
choice objectives.

He was a vocal opponent of trade unions, claimed they were "of little
importance (historically in advancing) worker (rights and gains) in the
United States," and ignored clear evidence to the contrary in spite of
corrupted union officials who could and should have done more for their
rank and file and still don't. He also claimed "the gains that strong
unions win for their members are primarily at the expense of other
workers (and believing otherwise) is a fundamental source of
misunderstanding." It all came down to supply and demand for him - "the
higher the price of anything, the less....people will....buy."

Sounds reasonable up to the examples he gave: "Make labor of any kind
more expensive and the number of jobs of that kind will be fewer. Make
carpenters more expensive, and fewer houses....will be built (and the
ones that are will) use materials and methods requiring less carpentry.
Raise the wages of airline pilots (and) there will be fewer jobs for
them (because) air travel will (cost more and) fewer people will fly."

Bottom line for Friedman - high union wages harm everyone, including
union members. They make consumer products and services more expensive,
he believed, notwithstanding the fundamental law of pricing every
marketing executive knows but Friedman ignored. It's to charge what the
market will bear, no more or less so, costs aside, prices reflect what
buyers will pay, no more.

Friedman also opposed government-run Social Security that he called
"The Biggest Ponzi Scheme on Earth" in an article with that title. He
described the current system as "an unholy combination of two items: a
flat-rate tax on earnings up to a maximum with no exemption and a
benefit program that awards subsidies that have....no relation to need
(forgetting it's our most successful poverty-reducing program) but are
based on (criteria like) marital status, longevity and recent earnings."

He wanted it privatized, abhorred the "tyranny of the status quo," and
agreed with Barry Goldwater that it be voluntary which, of course,
would kill it. He added it's "hard to justify requiring 100% of the
people to adopt a government-prescribed straitjacket to avoid
encouraging a few (many millions, in fact) 'lower-income individuals to
make no provision for their old age deliberately (even though most
cannot), knowing they would receive the means-tested amount.' "
Addressing only eligible retirees, he ignored millions of others
getting Social Security benefits. They include disabled workers and
spouses and children of deceased, retired or disabled workers. They
comprise around 37% of all recipients, are left out of Friedman's
calculation, and would get nothing under a privatized system.

For Friedman, we're on our own, "free to choose," but unequally matched
against corporate giants and the privileged with their advantages. The
rest of us are unequally endowed and governed by the principle, "To
each according to what he and the instruments he owns produces," in a
savage world where economic freedom trumps all other kinds. This was
right from Friedman's 1962 laissez-faire manifesto, "Capitalism and
Freedom," that's long on free market triumphalism and void on its
effects on real people.

He opposed social or any market-interfering democracy, an egalitarian
society, government providing essential services, workers free from
bosses, citizens from dictatorship and countries from colonialism.
Instead, he perversely promoted economic freedom as a
be-all-and-end-all, limited government, and profit-making as the
essence of democracy. He supported unfettered free markets with
political debate confined to minor issues unrelated to the distribution
of goods and services he wanted left to the free-wheeling marketplace.

This was Friedman's best of all possible worlds with people in it no
different than disposable commodities and government not obligated to
fulfill its minimum constitutionally-mandated function as stated in the
Preamble and Article I, Section 8. It's that "The Congress shall have
power to....provide....for (the) general welfare of the United States"
- the so-called welfare clause Friedman believed conflicted with
"capitalism and freedom" and our "freedom to choose" that ranked above
the law of the land for him.

The School of Thought in the
University of Chicago's Economics Department

Friedman grew up in New York, got his BA at Rutgers, an MA at the
University of Chicago, and his doctorate at Columbia. Surprisingly, he
was a Keynesian early on, but Friedrich Hayek's teachings changed him
into a free market fundamentalist who'd become what the Economist
called "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th
century (and) possibly all of it." He returned to the University of
Chicago Economics Department in 1946 and became its charismatic leader
on a mission to revolutionize his profession and the world.

The doctrine was simple at its core - unfettered free market pure
capitalism works best, and Friedman and his colleagues set out to prove
it scientifically in a set of mathematical equations and computer
models they developed. They promised that left on their own, markets
are magical. They produce the right amount of products and services, at
the right prices, by the right number of workers earning the right
amount of wages to buy what's produced. In short, a win-win for
everyone....paradise. There was only one problem. It's voodoo science,
sounds good mathematically and doesn't work. Friedman and his "Chicago
Boys," however, believed it did but needed a real life "Chicago School
state" to prove it.

He got many, called them models of free market magic, and justified
repression believing ends justify means and free choice offered "more
room for individual initiative....a private sphere of life (and a
greater) chance (authoritarian regimes he supported would in the end
make it possible) to return to a democratic society." He countered his
critics claiming "economic freedom is an essential requisite for
political freedom" and that transitional pain was worth it for the free
market paradise he promised would emerge. He and his mentor, Friedrich
Hayek, called social democracy, collectivism, socialism and welfare
state economics the "road to serfdom" producing "bondage and misery"
and "coercion rather than freedom."

It was pure baloney, but who could argue in the face of huge corporate
backing, heavy funding and the dominant media in tow calling market
fundamentalism the new orthodoxy and repression freedom. On the ground,
it was different. The record of Chicago School fundamentalism is in the
human wreckage it left everywhere.

THE HUMAN TOLL OF CHICAGO SCHOOL FUNDAMENTALISM

Every nation Friedman's ideology touched took pain, but it wasn't the
well-off who suffered, just ordinary working people targeted for profit
in pursuit of "economic freedom." Early on, his dogma was considered
quirky, on the margins of mainstream economics, and out of step with
the Keynesian post-war golden age of capitalism. It lasted until the
1970s when recession, stagflation and high unemployment changed
everything. Keynesian economics was unfairly blamed, and Friedman got
his chance to prove government intervention is the problem and
unfettered free markets the solution. It was pure nonsense and about as
scientific as alchemy, but long ago people thought that worked until
they finally understood they couldn't make gold out of lesser metals.

THE FIRST TEST CASE IN CHILE

Chile under Augusto Pinochet became Friedman's first test case to prove
what we now know is flimflam. The results were disastrous and Chileans
to this day haven't recovered from the September 11, 1973 coup d'etat
and aftermath that ended the most vibrant democracy in the Americas and
ushered in Friedman's magic.

The playbook promised paradise but delivered the junta's "Caravan of
Death," hyperinflation, the economy contracting 15%, wages cut,
unemployment at 20%, labor unionism destroyed, social services gutted,
severe poverty, ghostly factories and rotting infrastructure,
out-of-control corruption and cronyism, a massive transfer of public
resources to private hands, and a repressive military and secret police
targeting dissenters with detention, torture and death. It was hell for
Chileans but nirvana for the privileged and foreign investors reaping
big profits from the masses they took it from. It was just the
beginning with Friedman-style "shock treatment" on to the next target.

One of many was Bolivia with predictable results and Friedman
unrepentant. Food subsidies were ended, social services gutted, price
controls lifted, wages frozen, oil prices hiked 300%, deep government
spending cuts imposed, unrestricted imports allowed, and state-owned
companies downsized costing hundreds of thousands of jobs before
privatizing them.

There was more. Real wages dropped 40%, poverty soared, but a
privileged elite got rich. Public anger grew with repression the
antidote. Tanks rolled in the streets against striking workers, and
police targeted dissenters in union halls, a university and factories.
"Freedom" for Friedman was hell for Bolivians. It would soon get worse.

THE TRAGEDY OF POST-COMMUNIST RUSSIA

The Berlin Wall's fall should have been a triumph but instead was
tragic for Russia's people. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March,
1985 with political and social change in mind but wasn't around long
enough to lead it. He liberalized the country, introduced elections,
and favored a Scandinavian-style social democracy combining free market
capitalism with strong social safety net protections. He envisioned "a
socialist beacon for all mankind," an egalitarian society, but never
got the chance to build it.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, he was out, Boris Yeltsin became
Russia's president, he supported a corporatist state and adopted
Chicago School fundamentalist "shock therapy" masquerading as "reform."
Its former apparatchiks cashed in big along with a new class of
"nouveaux billionaires" (called "the oligarchs") who strip-mined the
country's wealth and shipped it to offshore tax havens. For the Russian
people, it was another story. They didn't know what hit them in what
was one of the greatest ever crimes by a government against its own
people who still today are crushed by it. The toll was devastating and
pandemic:

-- 80% of Russian farmers bankrupt;

-- about 70,000 state factories closed causing an epidemic of
unemployment;

-- 74 million Russians (half the population) impoverished; for 37
million of them conditions were desperate, and the country's underclass
remains permanent;

-- alcohol, painkilling and hard drug used soared, and HIV/AIDS
threatens to become epidemic with a 20-fold increase in infections
since 1995; suicides also rose and violent crime as well more than
fourfold; and

-- Russia's population is declining by around 700,000 a year;
unfettered capitalism has already killed off 10% of it; it's a
startling condemnation of Chicago School orthodoxy and the man who
triumphantly spread it in the name of freedom that's fake, ferocious
and fatal.

THE CURSE OF PREDATORY CAPITALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA

As in Russia, opportunity for progressive change became tragedy under
neoliberal Washington Consensus policies far worse than apartheid
repression. Nelson Mandela pledged to support black economic
empowerment and seemed poised to lead it when ANC candidates swept the
1994 elections and he became president. Instead, political power came
at the expense of economic surrender. The former white supremacist
government and industrialists secured their wealth and privilege by
keeping unfettered capitalism unchanged under harsh shock medicine
rules.

It was unforgivable from a man like Mandela with charisma and political
capital enough to have prevented it. Instead, he chose not to and
brushed off later criticism saying "....for this country, privatization
is the fundamental policy." The toll on his people was horrific:

-- double the number of people living in desperate poverty on less than
$1 a day from two to four million;

-- the unemployment rate doubling to 48% from 1991 - 2002;

-- two million South Africans losing their homes while the government
built only 1.8 million others;

-- nearly one million South Africans evicted from farms in the first
decade of ANC rule; as a result, shack dweller population grew by 50%,
and in 2006, 25% of South Africans lived in them with no running water
or electricity;

-- the HIV/AIDS infection rate at about 20%, and the ANC government
denies its severity and does little to alleviate it; it's a major
reason why average life expectancy in the country declined 13 years
since 1990;

-- 40% of schools with no electricity;

-- 25% of people with no access to clean water and most with it can't
afford the cost;

-- 60% of people with inadequate sanitation, and 40% no telephones.

Freedom for black South Africans came at a high price with political
empowerment traded for economic apartheid and no relief in sight for
the millions affected. It's more evidence of Chicago School economics
failure and the human wreckage it leaves everywhere.

FREE MARKET REPRESSION IN HAITI

Haitians enjoyed a brief interregnum of freedom in the 1990s up to 2004
under Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Rene Preval in his first term.
Haitians were only once earlier free when the first-ever independent
black republic was established January 1, 1804, but it didn't last.

Freedom again was lost for one of the longest-ever-oppressed people
anywhere. It ended February 29, 2004 when US Marines abducted Aristide,
in a shocking middle of the night coup d'etat, and flew him against his
will to the Central African Republic. Haiti is small, around three
times the size of Los Angeles, with a population around eight million.
It has some oil, natural gas and other mineral wealth, but its main
value is its human resource that corporate giants want as an offshore
cheap labor paradise for Wal-Mart's "Always Low Prices."

Under President Aristide and Preval in his first term in office,
impressive social gains were achieved, but they're are now lost in the
wake of the 2004 coup. Haiti is once again a free market paradise with
freedom sacrificed (despite an elected president) and real reforms
gutted for the poorest people in the hemisphere:

-- thousands of public sector workers were fired;

-- many more thousands killed, jailed, disappeared or forced into
hiding;

-- many thousands of small businesses burned and destroyed as well as
homes for large numbers of the poor;

-- unemployment and underemployment rampant with up to two-thirds of
workers without reliable jobs; destruction of the country's rural
economy an enormous problem with displaced poor people migrating to
urban areas but finding no work;

-- the lowest public sector employment in the region at less than .7%;

-- education and health care greatly deteriorated and mostly provided
by NGOs, including church-based ones;

-- life expectancy at only 53 years; the death and infant mortality
rates the highest in the western hemisphere;

-- the World Bank places the country in its bottom rankings with its
deficient sanitation systems, poor nutrition, high malnutrition, and
inadequate health services;

-- the country is the poorest in the hemisphere with 80% of its
population living below the poverty line; it's also the least developed
with lack of infrastructure, severe deforestation and heavy soil
erosion;

-- half its population is "food insecure" and half of all children
undersized from malnutrition;

-- less than half the population with access to clean drinking water;

-- the country ranks last in the hemisphere in health care spending
with only 25 doctors and 11 nurses per 100,000 population and most
rural areas having no access to health care;

-- the highest HIV/AIDS incidence outside Africa;

-- the World Bank estimates Haiti's per capita income at under $450;
the prevailing sweatshop wage is around 11 - 12 cents an hour; the
official minimum wage is about $1.70 a day (with most Haitians getting
less) with no benefits and inadequate help from weak unions;

-- restructuring and privatizations, like what's intended for the
state-owned telecommunication company, Teleco, cost thousands of jobs
from downsizings;

-- human rights repression is severe under a UN paramilitary MINUSTAH
occupation masquerading as peacekeepers; they were illegally sent for
the first time ever to support and enforce a coup d'etat against a
democratically elected president; political killings, kidnappings,
disappearances, torture and unlawful arrests and incarcerations are
common forms of repression so real Haitian democracy can't emerge under
its elected president, Rene Preval, in his second term; he's impotent
against the power of US-orchestrated plunder under Chicago School
fundamentalist rules. Another Friedman legacy of failure, this one
close to home.

FREE MARKET FUNDAMENTALIST DESTRUCTION IN AFGHANISTAN

September 11 erased the familiar world, created mass disorientation and
regression, and made anything possible under collective shock that
didn't take long to unfold. The "war on terror" was launched in a
climate of fear with Afghanistan first targeted. It inaugurated a brave
new post-9/11 world. Its horror continues. War rages, its ferocity
intense, and no end is in sight for a people and nation journalist John
Pilger describes as having been "abused and suffered more (with less
help than any other) in living memory."

War and conquest were planned well in advance with 9/11 the pretext to
launch it. It was part of a grand strategic plan to control Central
Asia's vast oil and gas reserves, then on to the grand prize in the
Middle East with Iraq its epicenter. It began October 7, 2001,
continues, and has now intensified at an enormous cost to the Afghan
people who've been torn by endless war and internal turmoil for over
two decades. The toll is horrific and rising:

-- half the population unemployed with no improvement in sight nor is
any planned under fundamentalist market rules;

-- half the population earning around $200 a year with those in the
booming opium trade doing marginally better;

-- poverty soared post-invasion, one-fourth or more of the population
needs food aid, and regional famine risks remain;

-- life expectancy is one of the lowest in the world at 44.5 years;

-- the infant mortality is the highest in the world at 161 per 1000
births;

-- one-fifth of children die before age five;

-- an Afghan woman dies in childbirth every 30 minutes;

-- an estimated 500,000 homeless are in Kabul alone including people
living in collapsed and unsafe buildings;

-- only one-fourth of the population has access to safe drinking water
and adequate sanitation;

-- only one doctor is available per 6000 people and one nurse per 2500
people;

-- 100 or more people are killed or wounded by unexploded ordnance each
month and rising violence kills many more;

-- children are kidnapped, sold into slavery or murdered for their
organs bringing high prices in the "free market" where everything is
for sale including body parts;

-- less than 6% of Afghans have electricity only available sporadically;

-- women's literacy rate is about 19%, conditions for them are very
harsh, they're forced to beg on the streets or turn to prostitution to
survive; many must remain veiled;

-- schools are burned and teachers beheaded in front of their students;

-- basic services don't exist and essential ones like schools, health
clinics and hospitals are in deplorable condition with no aid provided
to improve them as all of it goes for profit;

-- as in Iraq, occupying forces operate outside the law with impunity
that includes the use of indiscriminate force, arbitrary arrests,
indefinite detentions and free use of the harshest types of torture
unreported in the mainstream;

-- under military occupation, democracy in the country is pure fantasy;
the puppet president is a caricature of a man and willing US stooge
with no support or mandate outside Kabul;

-- lawlessness is rampant, war raging, violence increasing, the drug
harvest and trafficking uncontrolled, corruption massive, Sharia law
reinstated, and life overall intolerable in this free market
fundamentalist paradise.

THE EPICENTER OF THE "WAR ON TERROR" IN IRAQ
FOR MARKET FUNDAMENTALIST "FREEDOM"

Iraq has the misfortune of lying at the heart of the oil-rich Middle
East where two-thirds of proved reserves are located and the greatest
potential amount of them untapped for lack of development. Its
potential remained frozen in time the result of intervening wars since
1980, economic sanctions until 2003, and now occupation and conflict
for the most sought after real estate on earth and a no-brainer why it
was targeted.

At its core, the plan was simple - a bold new experiment to erase a
nation and create a new one by invasion, occupation and reconstruction
for pillage. It would transform the nation into a fully privatized free
market paradise with blank check public funds for profit but none for
Iraqis for essential needs, a sustainable economy or critical local
infrastructure.

The record of unfettered capitalism is consistent. It leaves mass human
wreckage everywhere. In Iraq, it turned a bold new experiment into a
horrific disaster:

-- an inferno of uncontrolled violence throughout the country with new
British O.R.B. independent polling data estimating over 1.2 million
Iraqi deaths since March, 2003 on top of about 1.5 million deaths from
the Gulf war and economic sanctions in place until the current war; the
true toll may be even higher with huge uncounted numbers of daily
violent and non-violent deaths that one estimate by Gideon Polya places
at 3.9 million from 1990 to the present; no one knows for sure;

-- the International Rescue Committee and UNHCR estimating four million
displaced Iraqis, including those internally displaced, with 40,000
additional Iraqis fleeing their homes each month; these figures may be
conservative with true numbers much higher;

-- a near-total breakdown of essential services like electricity,
drinking water, sanitation, medical care, education, security and food
for many;

-- mass unemployment and extreme poverty in what was once "the cradle
of civilization" now erased for profit;

-- an overall humanitarian disaster of epic proportions that continues
to worsen with a July Oxfam International and NCCI network of aid
organizations report of other grim findings:

-- eight million Iraqis needing emergency aid - one-third of the
population;

-- four million without enough food;

-- 70% of Iraqis with no adequate water supply;

-- 80% lack adequate sanitation;

-- 28% of children malnourished;

-- underweight baby births tripled;

-- 92% of Iraqi children with learning problems due to fear; and

-- a mass exodus of around 80% of doctors, nurses, teaching staff at
schools and hospitals and other vitally needed professionals.

In addition, local Iraqi industry collapsed, kidnapping for ransom is a
growth industry, the country is a wasteland, its nation creation
project bankrupt, and Iraq today more closely resembles hell than "the
cradle of civilization."

Iraq above all other nations today is a ghoulish testimony to the myth
of free market magic, but it's even worse than that. It proves
Friedmanomics a crime against humanity and the man who led it a Nobel
prize-winning fraud whose legacy is failure. His real-time record is so
horrific, it's unrevealed in the mainstream to suppress it.

It's endless foreign wars, mass killing and destruction, detentions and
torture, contempt for international law, and total disregard for human
rights and social justice everywhere. At home, it's just as bad short
of open warfare:

-- democracy is a fantasy in a corporatist state placing profits over
people;

-- the prison-industrial complex is a growth industry;

-- social decay is increasing as well as real human need;

-- social justice, civil liberties and human rights are non-starters;

-- an unprecedented wealth disparity exists in a rigid class society
with growing poverty in the richest country in the world that's also
the least caring;

-- government is the most secret, intrusive and repressive in our
history;

-- the rule of law is null and void;

-- a cesspool of uncontrolled corruption prevails with no
accountability;

-- a de facto one-party state exists with no checks and balances or
separation of powers and a president claiming "unitary executive"
powers to do as he pleases and does with impunity;

-- suppression of all dissenting ideas and thoughts;

-- an out-of-control military-industrial complex bent on world
dominance; and

-- a mainstream media serving as national thought control police
gatekeepers glorifying wars, defiling democracy and supporting imperial
conquest and repression.

This is the legacy of the man The Economist called "the most
influential economist of the second half of the 20th century (and)
possibly all of it." Once anointed, well funded and nurtured, he could
never admit he was wrong or apologize to millions of victims who proved
his ideology was hokum. Never have so many suffered so much to reveal
the flimflam of one man and the movement he led until his death. That's
the dark side of "capitalism and freedom" unmasked that his torrent of
eulogies left out.

[Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
. Also visit his blog site at
sjlendman.blogspot.com ]

*