Deepak Lal's Reviving the Invisible Hand: a review

There's very little political debate these days. Most people merely talk to their own tribe of converts. If they recognize an opposing position at all, it's only as a target of cheap abuse.
Deepak Lal has fallen into this bad practice in his Reviving the Invisible Hand. His aim is a noble one - to restate the case for classical Smithian liberalism against the anti-globalization movement.
The trouble is, he fails.
The challenge for classical liberals is to justify free markets to those who fear they will lose from them. And - contrary to Tim's claim - markets do create losers, if only temporarily, simply because, as Schumpeter recognized, markets are destructive as well as creative processes; they throw people out of work.
What does Lal say to these? This (p232):

As the northern losers in the new liberal interational economic order are the unskilled, there is a simple means for them to maintain and raise their incomes: go to school.

This is great advice for a 10 year old. But it's just ridiculous for a 50-year-old.
Lal also opposes redistribution to maintain the incomes of the poor (p189):

Unless the coercive power [to levy redistributive taxes] is voluntarily and unanimously given by free agents to the State, its exercise would be unjust.

He's speaking here of justice in the sense of ensuring people have liberties (Lal is dismissive of "rights") to do as they will. What he never answers is the question which the poor might ask: "why should your conception of justice - which is only one of many - trump my need to continue living?"
And why are the poor poor? Lal has the decency to acknowledge that in some (many?) cases, it's because they are victims of past thefts of land. But he denies - as Robert Nozick did not - that they are entitled to rectification (p186):

Though the claim may be morally just, it is not expedient. For most societies throughout history have recognized the chaos that would be caused by seeking to redress any fault in the historical descent of every current title to property...They have, therefore, correctly applied some form of statute of limitations.

Well, this is a good game, isn't it? When the poor claim an income on grounds of expediency, justice triumphs. And when they claim it on the grounds of justice, expediency wins. Cynics will say Lal is merely defending existing inequalities and speaking only to the winners.
And they've other evidence for this.
Lal consistently calls digisime (his favourite word for his perceived alternative to classical liberalism) a "dogma", oblivious to the fact that liberals can be as dogmatic as dirigistes.
He is silent on the most egregious example of how the new global economic order is founded upon injustice - the emergence of Russian oligarchs.   
There's a contemptible slur upon John Roemer (p193).
And there's a curious omission in his assault upon dirigisme. He blames massive chief executive pay upon regulations against hostile takeovers (p201). What he never says is that CEOs are dirigistes par excellence - they claim to be able to manage complex affairs from the centre.
What Lal seems to be doing here is speaking only to the converted. This will get him an appreciative audience. But it will not advance the classical liberal case one jot.
I find all this tribalism especially depressing because Lal makes so many good points. His analysis of the gains from trade, the misuse of global poverty statistics, climate change and the influence of NGOs are all valuable. Sadly, though, liberalism's opponents will regard these not on their own merits, but merely as defences of existing inequalities.
If liberalism is to triumph - and I hope it does - its advocates will have to convince egalitarians.  Lal fails to do this.

Comments

[dearieme]

"And why are the poor poor? Lal has the decency to acknowledge that in some (many?) cases, it's because they are victims of past thefts of land." That's plausible, but, on the other hand, I have done a bit of reading on the two most-publicised British cases of land-theft - the Highland Clearances in Scotland and the Parliamentary Enclosures in England. It turned out that, as far as I could see, the popular case is bogus.

[Rob]

"He's speaking here of justice in the sense of ensuring people have liberties (Lal is dismissive of "rights") to do as they will. What he never answers is the question which the poor might ask: "why should your conception of justice - which is only one of many - trump my need to continue living?""

You don't even need to change the question. The poor are perfectly entitled to ask why they should be denied the liberty to do as they will by not being able to afford it.

[Tim Worstall]

"This is great advice for a 10 year old. But it's just ridiculous for a 50-year-old."

Why? Over the past 18 months I’ve just changed my career completely. OK, I’m not 50 but I’m well over 40.

[Tim Worstall]

BTW, you’ve done a much better job with this review than I did for one of the dead trees.

"Most people merely talk to their own tribe of converts. If they recognize an opposing position at all, it's only as a target of cheap abuse."

All too true.

[emmanuel.goldstein]

Dearieme,
[I have done a bit of reading on the two most-publicised British cases of land-theft]

Yeah, maybe you should read this then: Hughes, Lotte (2006). "Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure" Palgrave Macmillan.

[dearieme]

EG: why? There isn't a popular factoid account of that: as far as I know, anyone who has views on the matter agrees that the Masai were pushed off the land just as if they were Red Indians. [Or, indeed, Palestinians?]

[Bob B]

The worrying insight is that this observation by George Orwell in his seminal book on poverty in the north of England in the 1930s: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), still holds true of many (insular) working class communities in Britain now:

"The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly."
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html

How come that in parts of Yorkshire that Orwell was writing about the second person singular (thou, thee, thine - all transformed to "tha") still survives in the local dialect?

Compare:

"The schools minister Jacqui Smith admitted that the number of 16 year olds who stay on in education in the UK is lower than in other countries and asked them to consider studying A-levels or taking an apprenticeship."
http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,16086,1555547,00.html

"Truancy rates in England's secondary schools rose by over 10% last year, according to government figures. Despite £900m spent on anti-truancy initiatives, the annual figures show the highest truancy rates since 1994."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4265536.stm

"THE death rate among young drivers has doubled in the past five years, prompting demands for greater restrictions on those who have recently passed their tests. The steady improvement in road safety across the general population is masking a sharp increase in the number of drivers aged under 20 having fatal crashes, despite a tougher driving test."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3223-2116254,00.html

"London, England (AHN) – New research has revealed that the art of conversation is slowly dying because families do not spend enough time talking to their children. More and more children in school are barely able to communicate and instead speak in monosyllabic ‘grunts’, according to researchers."
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7003049482

"The British are Western Europe's biggest binge drinkers, a new study has revealed. According to market analysts Datamonitor, drinkers in Britain consume 6.3 units of alcohol - equivalent of 2.2 pints of lager - each time they visit the pub."
http://www.999today.com/health/news/story/3014.html

[Kevin Carson]

One possible avenue of appeal to egalitarians on the issue of unemployment from outsourcing/technological advance is to point out the extent to which the two-tier labor force results from state intervention. The state subsidizes capital accumulation, R&D, and technical education, thus skewing production toward capital- and skill-intensive forms, and resulting in deskilling and income polarization in the labor market. As just one example, consider David Noble's Forces of Production on the role of the military-industrial complex in funding development of all the prerequisite technologies for numeric control technologies in the machine tool industry, and the initial introduction of such technology in Air Force contractors.

[David]

'digisime' Maybe it is you who needs to go back to school ey? Sonny jim? ey? ey?

[top pills]

in this theme is a little bit complicated to give a correct opinion, you have to take into account many points, negative and positive, pro and cons, all points related with this.