Do Free Markets Make Free Humans? Interview with Jeffrey Bercuson

Summary

Jeffrey Bercuson is author of A History of Political Thought: Property, Labor, and Commerce from Plato to Piketty.

This book does a whirlwind tour through the history of political thought explaining how different thinkers have approached the commercial or money-making part of human life. We talk about how attitudes have shifted from ancient scepticism about commerce in Plato and Aristotle to its celebration in thinkers like Hegel and Hayek.

Bercuson also explains how, even if we accept the arguments of some of capitalism’s biggest boosters, we still wind up on the left side of the existing political options.


Amazon link

Transcript

Note: this is transcribed using an online transcription service so it’s probably going to have a lot of errors. We do don’t have time to go through these all carefully but still thought that it would be more helpful than having no transcript at all. In this case, it keeps writing “high IQ” whenever we’re talking about Friedrich Hayek.

SPEAKERS

Jeffrey Bercuson, Clif Mark

Clif Mark  00:14

Today, commercial life in markets through the history of political thought, and why some of the greatest capitalist and free market thinkers of the tradition, think we should have more taxation, and more redistribution. I'm Clif Mark. This is good in theory. Today, I have with me my friend Jeffrey Bercuson, who has just written a book called A History of political thought, property, labor and commerce, from Plato to Piketty. The book is brand new, and it's kind of run through the history of political thought, there's 13 chapters, each devoted to a different author. You you've written a book called A History of political thought, and that is a very tall order, right, that there's a lot of material there. So So how have you narrowed it down? How is what is the focus of this particular history of political thought?

Jeffrey Bercuson  01:11

Sure, yeah. It is. It is an ambitious endeavor to be sure to try and tell my own version of the sort of canon of the history of political thought. But the way that I decided to make this task more manageable, was by focusing in on a central thematic concern. And that concern was market society, right, the role that markets and commerce play in the lives of individuals and in the lives of communities. So I decided that that was sort of be the theme running through the whole book, right? What do all of these canonical thinkers, some more canonical than others, but what do they all have to say about the effect that Commerce has on our lives? So again, I cashed that out in a lot of different ways. One of the big themes through the book is human nature. Right? So what do these philosophers have to say about human nature about what a well lived human life looks like? And in some cases, what we find is that engaging in commerce pulls us away from that good life. Right. And in other cases, it's an essential part of it. I spend a lot of time thinking about community, right? How does the existence of a market and of commercial activity affect the well being of communities? Right? Does it undermine the possibility of a deeper and more meaningful solidarity? And of course, I also want to think about the state, right? What is the appropriate relationship between the state and the market? So different thinkers have much different ideas about what the state ought to do, for example, when it comes to the regulation of markets, the redistribution of income, things like that,

03:24

okay, so,

Clif Mark  03:26

so maybe if I can summarize, like, you know, I've read this book, I really enjoyed it. what you've got is 13 chapters, a lot of really big names like Plato, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Locke, so on so forth. And, and what you're doing is you're taking each of them and instead of like going really in depth into their political philosophy, you look at their philosophy, through the lens of this, like, I don't know if I want to say capitalism, or excite but this specific aspect of human life, which is commercial activity, productive activity, earning a living, getting money, getting rich contracts, and stuff like that. And it's like conceived III, I'm just reading a bunch of words, because it's conceived in different ways. But there is this kind of aspect of human life. And there's a lot of different approaches to it. And different relations to like, as you said, your three big themes where I think, how it's related to human nature, how it relates to community and and what is the state's role in dealing with is that more or less?

Jeffrey Bercuson  04:32

Yeah, absolutely. I guess I just sort of had this lingering sense that this was sort of like a very useful sort of answer key that we can use to sort of map onto each and every thinker, and it provided. I think, I hope, valuable way to compare them right to see the differences to see where there are certain alliances surprised some surprised more surprising than others. Where there are deep disagreements? I think that when you sort of often learn this canon, I kind of found that that this question of markets and commerce and work and money was often sort of treated as a kind of side issue, right? Something peripheral, right to the center of things. And really actually, what I found is that when we plugged this idea of the market right into the the center of things, we were still able to get to the core of every thinker, but we also sort of began to see them in a new light. And I think a much more practical light, like so for example, someone like Hegel, right? It's, it's hard to imagine a more obscure and difficult thinker, but I think that when you center what he has to say about the ownership of property about getting a job and learning the skills necessary to do that job, these are like surprisingly, practical and intuitive and compelling claims, right? He's sort of like, it's a way to bring a lot of these thinkers down to earth in a way that is tangible, right? Because we're all still

Clif Mark  06:20

like Hegel, you're, you're more right about this with Hegel than I think any of the thinkers your book, because if you start if you want to learn what Hegel Hegel has to say about politics, and you start logically, with the logic, you're never gonna get anywhere, right? But if you if you want to learn about Hegel, and you start with the philosophy of writing, particularly this stuff on civil society, then that's where I, at least when I was learning this as an undergraduate, started, like, find my way in Yeah, what's going on. Um, but like, before we jump into Hegel, which is like, you know, in a way, it's old timey, but in a way, it's very modern. Um, I just want to give a little bit of an overview of like, the plot of the book, sure, sure. of like, the, the ups and downs of, of the reputation of commercial life within political. So the first, the first chapter you have is like, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, I believe, and it's, if I can, you know, be just slammed into a nutshell, it's like, why old timey guys hates commercial life?

07:33

Yeah. Right. So

Clif Mark  07:36

these older thinkers are really critical of this aspect of life. Can you tell us why and why for so long?

Jeffrey Bercuson  07:43

Sure. Sure. I yeah. So the very first chapter of the book is the sort of ancient and medieval background. And the overarching theme of that chapter is the deep seated suspicion about commerce that runs through this sort of key thinkers, right? in these areas, right. So that's certainly true. of Plato. It's true of Aristotle, though, I think that there's a little bit more nuance there. And it's certainly true of Aquinas as well. Right. But again, the idea of the chapter is that money making pulls us away from the things that really matter in life. Right, so like, like, what? So Plato? Yeah, I mean, in the Republic, there's, I mean, listeners of your podcast will know that there's a particular image of human flourishing, right, that informs the Republic, and that the money making motive, right is something that pulls us away. Right from that good life. Right? Yeah,

Clif Mark  08:48

we should be doing philosophy and studying triangles, not

Jeffrey Bercuson  08:50

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. More More, more triangles, less debits and credits, right. So I mean, in fact, I mean, a big part of chapter one of the book is discussing books eight and nine of the Republic where sort of the unleashing of the market and the unleashing of the commercial impulses that animate it is puts us on the path to tyranny. Right. It's an unimaginable tragedy. With Aristotle, again, as I said, it's a little more complicated. I think. He's a little bit friendlier to commerce. But at the end of the day, I think he shares Plato's suspicion, right? That unleashing this desire to make money pulls us away from the things in life that really matter. Right. Okay.

Clif Mark  09:49

So, obviously, as a guy who's making a podcast that so far has just been about Plato. I'm interested in what ancient thinkers and medieval thinkers have To say on their own terms. But that is not I don't think the only interest of your book, it seems to me that you make these historical thinkers speak to today's debates, contemporary debates. And so I'll just outline kind of the ideological landscape as I see it. And maybe we can talk about how your book applies to it. Now, do we I see, at least, you know, as I was growing up, and over the past 3040 years, the debate to me about commerce and Labor has been primarily between one side, which is a kind of laissez faire capitalism, very free market, some people call it Neo liberalism, this idea that markets should be completely free, they do a lot for us in states should be minimal, they shouldn't be interfering. And on the other side, you have a reaction or the other side, which is more intervention and sees a greater role for the state. And at the extreme, you might have some kind of totalitarian communism, that people, you know, would try to scare us with in in the Cold War. But, I mean, the essential debate seems to be between a kind of neoliberal laissez faire ideology in a more interventionist one on the other side. And you're bringing us a book that is full of historical characters like Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, how does your book speak to some of today's issues before we go on to the

Jeffrey Bercuson  11:31

Sure, absolutely. I think you're right, that we can describe our era as the kind of triumph of a kind of in my mind objectionable laissez faire ideology. Right? The last thinker that I cover in the book is Piketty. And he uses the language of neoliberalism. But fundamentally, what he's talking about is that sort of laissez faire attitude that you're describing, right, which is boils down to the state ought to do as little as possible. When it comes to the regulation of markets, redistribution of income monitoring of wealth and income passed down between the generations, etc,

Clif Mark  12:24

minimalist state nightwatchman, you might That's right.

Jeffrey Bercuson  12:27

That's right. And I guess if you read the book, you'll see that that is kind of

Clif Mark  12:37

simplistic, and borderline deranged view of some of the things that very smart people have said about how the state ought to govern the market. That's great. I think that's a really interesting part of your book is how it shows that a lot of the big pro market philosophers of the past might not look upon today's free market ideology. And be happy about it. And we shouldn't be surprised, because obviously, they were operating in a completely different context, which you do a lot to restore them to. But let's get back to that idea of looking at what very smart people in the British tradition have said about the relation between the state in the market. We talked a little about chapter one. And you got Plato and Aristotle and Aquinas and they're all very, very suspicious of all commercial life. Money Making is going to distract you from what's important. But then there is a shift in the early modern period, you start to canvass some thinkers who have more positive things to say about that market. So are to say about the market? And can you tell us a little bit about that historical moment? Even if that moment lasted a couple 100 years?

Jeffrey Bercuson  13:51

Yeah, sure. Well, my entry point here is with Machiavelli, right? And I, I interpret Machiavelli and Hobbes, I sort of lumped them together, despite their differences. And the reason I think that they belong together, is because I think they're the first important thinkers to start to question whether or not the platonic Aristotelian and Christian attitude towards commerce is actually good for us. Right. So we have all of these centuries of hostility to moneymaking and this emphasis on the need for piety. And Machiavelli and Hobbes are important and worthwhile, because it's possible for them to imagine a new way of doing things, right. A new foundation for social life, right? Not virtue, not piety, but commerce.

Clif Mark  14:56

Right, I get okay. Commerce. Well, I might Have my reservations about how specifically commercial Machiavelli and Hobbes are. But there's certainly I think, this term from, you know, Plato saying, focus, focus on the forms and Aquinas saying, focus on God. And then Machiavelli and Hobbs saying, you know, what, actually, maybe life on Earth this this life is worth is worth a damn, and commerce might play like a big role in our worldly happiness. So that I mean that, as I take it from your book is like the beginning of the shift where people start more and more to develop the positive side?

Jeffrey Bercuson  15:41

Yeah, I mean, I guess what we could say is we get a client of instrumental or practical or very pragmatic attitude towards commerce, right in Machiavelli and Hobbes, right? In the in the Christian tradition, it's right something to be feared and to eradicate, right, whereas Machiavelli and Hobbes, treat the impulse to accumulate as a fact about our nature, right, and a potentially useful pillar for building a new kind of life together. Like maybe we can live more safely together more peacefully, right, if we recognize that we possess these interests and give them a meaningful standing. Okay, great.

Clif Mark  16:29

So we go from ancient medieval thinkers thinking, you know, market bad, but then with Hudson Valley, there begins to be this recognition that there might be some practical instrumental benefits to commerce to market society. But there's also a lot more to the promarker argument. So where do we go from

Jeffrey Bercuson  16:50

there? Sure. Yeah. So a big so I guess we could say is that the really sort of meaty part of the book is when we shift from this sort of practical or pragmatic, right attitude towards the market towards a much more robust defense of it. Right? So in Machiavelli and Hobbes, right, there's sort of like this sense that if we just let people accumulate that property and live a quiet life and get rich, and if as long as the state doesn't take their stuff, we can be quiet and happy. And we're not going to be killing each other over obscure conceptions of what God wants from us. So so that's a, again, a practical, utilitarian defense. But the story then changes, right, we start to get a kind of ethical defense of the market. And this, you know, starts with Locke, right, who says that a market society is more likely to be a society with secure, right, something like democracy, though not, of course, our idea of democracy. But I guess this story really takes off with Adam Smith, and with the the Germans like Kant and Hegel. Okay. Okay. So,

Clif Mark  18:11

I mean, you mentioned something there distinction between instrumental defenses of the market and like, what you called more robust ones. And I want to sharpen that a little bit. Okay, so. So, I agree, I guess I see how Machiavelli and Hobbes are giving instrumental defenses of the market, but I also, I, I also think that other thinkers do too. So Smith, as he's commonly understood, like, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the point of markets is that we can produce more, and we can all like get rich together, you know, the rising tide raises all boats, division of labor, etc, etc. We are, we are going to be more wealthy. And I think I see something like that in high IQ, too, that the attempt to plan economies is bound to be a disaster, it's going to destroy wealth and and result in tyranny. So that is kind of the instrumental, instrumental side. I think it goes like a bit. Beyond Machiavellian hops. So just First, I want to ask is that more or less? Right?

Jeffrey Bercuson  19:23

Yeah, I think I think that's absolutely right. I think that there can I mean, I think both sides can be president and Smith and in heikkinen anyone else, which is to say, they're both instrumental right aspects to their defense, which is that so for example, market society is simply more likely to be more efficient. Or a market society will be less corrupt because lawmakers have less power, or a market society is simply the only option we have given the diffuse pneus of economic information. So that's sort of the more on the more instrumental side of the spectrum. And all those ideas are present in Smith and in hike, too. But what I mean by the ethical side, right, is that a market society is good for us as human beings, which is to say it's good. It's the sort of society in which we can more fully harness our nature.

Clif Mark  20:27

Okay,

Jeffrey Bercuson  20:28

fully harness and then realize our nature

Clif Mark  20:32

can Okay, so I want to, I'm going to push you a little more on that I'm really interested in here's the reason why is because the high IQ Smith efficiency, pro market arguments, look, capitalism, free enterprise, it just makes us richer, and that's why we should have it. Leaving aside how empirically based that is, this is a, this is an argument I think we're all familiar with. And people always make two different markets, the efficiency argument, but I also think that these other arguments that you're talking about are they're all like, all the time, I think that people really care about the moral, the moral aspect of, of, of commercial life. So can you tell me a little more about about that about like, what is the moral defense beyond just efficiency of a big role for free markets?

Jeffrey Bercuson  21:28

Sure, sure. I mean, ultimately, and this goes back to our earlier discussion about laissez faire. I mean, I guess there's a thread running through all these pro pro commerce thinkers, which says that a market society is likely to be the freest sort of society. And that that freedom is the space in which human beings, right fully realize, right, the abilities and talents at their disposal.

Clif Mark  22:03

Okay. Tell me a little. So we have, markets are important because we're free. But what freedom means is a kind of self realization. It's like I have these capacities, and I go to work, and it makes it an important part of human life that I can exercise these capacities is that, who are we talking about here?

Jeffrey Bercuson  22:25

I think that there's an inkling of this in Smith that really gets picked up. Right, but by Kant and Hegel, and who take it much further than I assume Smith would probably be comfortable with. I think that ethical dimensions of the argument are a bit off to the side and Smith, I think that he has a much more practical political programatic console, you can

Clif Mark  22:51

write on the bridge for like pragmatics and you can on the Germans for the like spiritual dimension of moneymaking.

Jeffrey Bercuson  22:57

That's right. That's exactly right. I think that the German interpreters to Smith really focus in on this idea of freedom and for then for them, it's a cannot be detached from this idea of realizing oneself in the world.

Clif Mark  23:16

Okay, so let's start. Let's start. Let's separate the two find Hegel, Khan, give me the like, quick summary of Kant's view of the role of markets and like why they're important and good for human freedom.

Jeffrey Bercuson  23:30

I mean, the key idea, I think, is that competition, right is what draws out our talents, what makes us refine and develop our rational capacities, right, this isn't done, when things are easy and peaceful, it requires competition and market society is a sort of the essential site of that competition.

Clif Mark  24:01

So okay, is in Khan's view? Is it that the competition the struggle, is it a struggle to survive? Or is it a struggle to win?

Jeffrey Bercuson  24:14

I think, Oh, sure. I think that it starts out as the former, but then becomes the ladder.

Clif Mark  24:20

So we are like these competitive beings who just want to beat each other. And, and that's maybe bad morally, but the upside of it the, like, cunning of reason, or whatever is that?

Jeffrey Bercuson  24:33

Sure,

Clif Mark  24:35

it helps us develop our capacities. And our reason, at least are instrumental. Yeah. And

Jeffrey Bercuson  24:42

like Kant's phrases are a social sociability. Right? We want to best other people. We're fundamentally competitive by nature. And that means we can't live without other people either. And so markets are one way to channel right this competitive Due energy, right? We're not talking about war wagering anymore, right? It's a kind of Hobbesian impulse in a way, right? It's like, we all are self interested, and we're manic and vital, and we're always acting, and we need to find new and better and more constructive ways, right to channel all these competitive energies. And and then the story I guess, of, as we move into the Germans, right is how this becomes an account of what freedom looks like in daily practice, suddenly, freedom becomes indistinguishable from our status as participants in market life. Alright, so

Clif Mark  25:49

the market is like a safer way for us to compete than war. And, and it helps us develop our capacities. And so in a way, they're like, there's an economic benefit, but there's also this benefit that we're not killing each other. Yeah. And so how does that change we move from Kant to Hegel.

Jeffrey Bercuson  26:07

Sure, well, I mean, you know, we have a lot of metaphysical baggage operating in the background, right? You know, for the for the Germans, right? Nothing is haphazard, nothing happens willy nilly. Right, if, if we've managed to detach ourselves from feudal life, if we suddenly have this open dynamic economy with a new degree of class mobility, right, if these things exist, right, then there must be some reason for their existence. And the reason, right, is that the existence of these instant, these new modern institutions and these new modern practices is that it makes our freedom possible.

Clif Mark  26:58

Okay, so giving a logical view, you're saying? So these are like, people who believe that everything happens for a reason?

Jeffrey Bercuson  27:07

Yes, I don't think that you can get around that right in either. Contrary angles, certainly not. And I mean, later, there's going to be a big bat. I mean, there's going to be a big backlash against this against this idea, of course. But yeah, I think that I mean, this is the the aim of the philosophy of right, to sort of reconcile us to our social world, right. I mean, again, nothing happens, haphazardly, like human life can't just be the realm of chance, right? Where there's no rhyme or reason to the things that happened, right? If we used to be serfs, and now we're free. Right? Well, then we need to understand, right? What, what what that freedom means and what it actually

Clif Mark  28:01

looks like. So like, oh, hago looks at the shift. And this is a lot of the other thinkers have been talking about so far, you know, from, from Machiavelli to Hegel. There's still all in this like long shift from a more feudal hierarchical society to a modern egalitarian one. And Hegel's more towards the end of like, you know, he's the most recent thinker we've talked about so far. And so he cares about modernization in the sense, right, the move from feudal feudalism to modernity, and he sees there's an internal truth to it, and something good to it. And so great, it's happened for a reason. What, on Hegel's view, is that reason?

28:49

Why has that? Why has this happened? What is the expanding role of commercial life in modernity?

Clif Mark  28:56

What does it give to us? Yeah, it

Jeffrey Bercuson  28:59

gives us a space to figure out who we are.

Clif Mark  29:03

So it's like a self realization, like, you know, oh, I always wanted to be a telemarketer. And now I can go out in the in the economy and become a telemarketer and realize that aspect of myself and develop those important, important capacities.

Jeffrey Bercuson  29:19

I mean, I think that that i mean, i that is the view is right, that work, right is not the highest, but a very meaningful instantiation of our freedom. Right? So we figure out who we are and what we can be right through work, right. I mean, Hegel says the same thing about the family, right? The family is another important instantiation of our freedom because we take on different roles, different responsibilities, and it's in the willing fulfillment. Right, those roles and responsibilities that we become ourselves right there, there is no us apart from our status as you know, son, husband, father, and he applies the same intuition to our work. Right? There is no us apart from ours, working as teacher, right? podcaster right, we, we figure out who we are, exercise our talents, and then, you know, become members of a community to,

Clif Mark  30:36

right. Okay. So it's like this important part of social integration and identity through your job through your work, you become who you are, you find out who you are, and you're like, linked to others. Yeah, this happens through the market, which he calls civil society, you know, and through the family, and through the state. Is that is that right?

Jeffrey Bercuson  31:00

Well, yes, that is certainly the, I think the highest form of freedom for Hegel, right. That's the third side of ethical life is the state. And, you know, for him, patriotism is also a constitutive part of the well lived, like, I mean, this is that's where things get kind of frayed.

Clif Mark  31:18

I mean, you were talking about like, there's no, there is no i apart from we kind of language and, and Hegel, like that is true, you know, he is on the communitarian side of, you know, the liberal communitarian split. But if we look at specifically, Hegel, and his philosophy of right, we talked about the state, the family and civil society or the market, and isn't it right that in the market, that's when I is mostly me, like, we get to know ourselves as isolated, atomized individuals precisely within the market as a part of our life.

Jeffrey Bercuson  32:02

Yes. And that's a valuable and essential moment in the history of freedom that Hegel wants to tell, right? How we assert ourselves, right? The eye, and we work on the world, and our ideas are instantiated in the world, and we see ourselves and our ability to do things and to make things. But that's also not the end of the argument, or not the end of the story that he tells, right, in becoming, in asserting ourselves, we also come to recognize our fundamental interdependence, right? And this interdependence manifests itself in different ways, right? We depend on other people as customers, for example, right? We depend on other people as fellow producers, right? I mean, when, you know, when we make things we're, you know, accessing a whole history of productive activity. Right, that makes us both in, you know, individual producers, but also members of potentially very long lasting communities. Right. Okay. So

Clif Mark  33:19

this is one of my favorite chapters of the book. And it's one of my favorite arguments, because I'm a big Halo fan. So the idea is that the market isn't just important, because it creates prosperity, but it is a social institution. And when individuals take part in it, we are trading with each other. We are integrating socially, we're making connections with others, it kind of has a social integration aspect. But there's also a self realization aspect, we get to know ourselves, we get to know our capabilities. And so it's kind of like Self Realization, recognition. And this is a large part of what we're doing in commercial activity. And it's not only in the market, but that's one important aspect of, of our lives and our identity. And the reason I find this so interesting is because this is kind of always implicit, and often explicit, still, in today's debates over economic matters. So the reason jobs are often so important politically, is not just because people need some kind of basic income to survive, although they also need that. It's that work provides a kind of social identity and standing and you know, you get all sorts of depression and mental health issues from long term unemployment. And so, the question of our participation in market life is much more than a question about resources. It's a question about identity, Self Realization. And I guess You would say freedom. Right. So could you. Could you speak a little to that? Do you see this Hague alien argument still in today's debates?

Jeffrey Bercuson  35:10

Yeah, no. Yeah, I think that's, I think an important part of the book. I mean, I think it runs through so many different thinkers in the book. I mean, if we celebrate the market, right, the reason we celebrate that market, market society is because of the contribution to human freedom that it makes. And again, I think the contrast to the feudal world is a pretty powerful one, right? It was in the early modern period, when all these thinkers are grappling with this new set of institutions. Right, it seems to them to be a very good thing. Right? We were what before we were enslaved and our prospects for living a happy and prosperous life were nil. Right? And now the world is much more open. Right, there's a higher degree of mobility and suddenly, more people are more free than they ever have been before. Right. Now, of course, when we map society today, right onto that sort of defense, I guess modern society doesn't compare very favorably. right with that. That's it. I mean, a freedom that I've

Clif Mark  36:30

described, I would I would still take, I think I would still barely take driving for Uber over being an actual medieval serf.

Jeffrey Bercuson  36:41

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, this is at the heart of why people defend, right, that are sort of society. Right. And so I mean, the obvious question that our conversation has raised, right, is if that society no longer embodies the central value that made it desirable in the first place.

Clif Mark  37:19

Great. I want to I want to dig into that a little bit. Because if the market suppose to create this human freedom and self realization, these values that all these thinkers in the past have celebrated about it. But you're saying what we wound up with, doesn't necessarily create those values. Why not? Because in some ways, people might say that commerce, and the markets play a greater role in our lives than ever. They're in better reputation, they might even be more free than ever. So why isn't the state retreating from the market and letting you know, capitalist do what they will? How come that isn't creating all the freedom that we might hope it would, based on these arguments that we've heard from Hegel and other thinkers in your book?

Jeffrey Bercuson  38:14

Yeah, I mean, I mean, this is a theme in the book, right? namely, what is the appropriate balance right to strike between market and state? I mean, obviously, this is an ongoing debate. But one of the things that I think was striking in all the thinkers that I covered, is that neither right tended to one or at least of the more contemporary thinkers, right? None of them lean wholly in one direction, right? Sort of once we get into the 20th century, right, it seems like the main endeavor, right, the main intellectual task is to articulate where the balance between state and market ought to be struck. Right. Total state control, right is now off the table. Right? And so two is total total laissez faire. Right? So and that's, again, that's true of kings, for example. So there's a chapter on Keynes. And the misconception is that he believes in complete and total state control, but in fact, right, he's a proponent of markets and merely thinks they need proper shepherding. Right. And in fact, one of the surprising findings is that hyack fundamentally says the same thing he ends up on the other side of the, of this argument, but there's it's not a complete and total laissez faire sort of argument that we get, even in high school. I say. That's an argument that comes from his deranged disciples. Okay, you So

Clif Mark  40:00

I think I just want to go back to that point, cuz I think this is really important and like an important insight that comes out of your book, which is that today, as I've been framing it the sort of quick and dirty formulation of the ideological cleavage of the debate is that it's either absolutely free markets, laissez faire government stay out. Sure. Government bad markets, good, or governments good markets bad. And within this, Keynes got, we all know, Keynes advocates. Government's affecting markets, he doesn't want to eliminate them, right. He's not a complete state planner. But he got put on the kind of left side the intervention aside, in so he kind of stands in for a little too much government interference, this leftist intervention, his view.

40:54

And Hayek,

Clif Mark  40:56

he has become like this intellectual hero to the laissez faire people, the libertarians. And and what you're saying is actually, look, Keynes was not a didn't want the government to completely control the economy. And Hayek, this purported hero of libertarianism, actually did advocate a certain level of, of government intervention. So you could, could you tell us a little about about that?

Jeffrey Bercuson  41:25

Sure, about about hyah. Sure. Well, I mean, I mean, I know, expert on high IQ, but I was as generous to him, as I mean, I was as generous to him as I was to everyone else, even though I had my own preconceptions. But what I but what I ultimately found is that I didn't have to be quite so generous, and that there were many reasonable statements about the need for careful state regulation of markets, the need for the fact that any great society has a meaningful modicum of care for its least advantaged citizens. Right? There's certainly no anarchist impulse there. Right to annihilate the state.

Clif Mark  42:26

Yeah, there's like a lot of welfare state stuff, right, like infrastructure, public education, like you said, for the needy.

Jeffrey Bercuson  42:36

Sure. And, and I, you know, but, again, this goes back to this idea of balance, right, he'll even say that it may be reasonable for the state to engage, say, in the provision of health care, so so. So something like socialized medicine, but but not so much not, but we do not go so far as to eliminate private innovation either. Right? I think Hi, x point is that states have a tendency to ossify and the market is the site of dynamism. Right? So that there might be certain areas where state activity and assistance is necessary, right, but it should never be so robust or so generous as to negate the possibility of innovations right in the private sphere. Right? Because, again, that's where the interesting stuff happens. Right. And I mean, for hike, that's just the nature of economic information.

Clif Mark  43:48

Right. So okay, so. Okay, so when you say that it's the nature of economic information, you want to just sorry, explain that and catch that? Sure. I

Jeffrey Bercuson  43:59

just that there's a kind of epistemological argument and high IQ, right about the knowledge that is available, right. To people engaged in economic activity. Right. And his point is that, to those who aspire to a higher total degree of state planning, right, that this implies the presence or the possession, the present the existence and possession, right, have more information than any institution could possibly have, right? economies and markets are too complex to dynamic, right information is too diffuse and dynamic to ever be to ever for state planning, right? Sure. Sure.

Clif Mark  44:51

I mean, that's one thing I think is important to note about hyak is that he's most worried about a Soviet five year plan. Right. He's not worried about Absolutely. Medicare for all in the States.

Jeffrey Bercuson  45:03

Yes. If we if we understand him in context, yes, I yes. As I tried to do I mean, that's just it. He's got the the Soviets in mind. And he's got, he's got Hitler in mind. Right. So

Clif Mark  45:17

I guess I mean,

Jeffrey Bercuson  45:19

in the budget, and that is why, and that's why as we move into the 70s, I think that he becomes more comfortable with a kind of uncharacteristic vernacular about what how a great society treats its least advantaged members. This is not the sort of talk that is present in the early work. And I mean, I'm not I'm not going to say that it's his central concern. Right. But but but but it's, it's present.

Clif Mark  45:53

You mentioned his deranged disciples. Were you talking about what are they? What do they say?

Jeffrey Bercuson  46:01

Well, in the book, I've talked about Buchanan, James Buchanan, and Milton Friedman. And these are the kind of laissez faire zealots who I think there's a compelling case to be made are responsible for the catastrophe that we currently find ourselves in, not just in the rich part of the world, but in poor parts of the world as well. Okay. Yeah. And these are the people who have fundamentally edited out, right? Any of these concerns, right? For the poorest members of our society, because for them, any form of taxation or any form of redistribution, is an encroachment, right? On the freedom of the successful Okay, so here, let me let me try this this out.

Clif Mark  46:53

In your book, a high IQ is kind of the farthest furthest right laissez faire type guy that you have a chapter on. And then and then you talk about he he has the argument you just gave, but he still has some kind of like, he's okay with some state intervention. Then he has these deranged disciples like Friedman and cannon, and they are the real laissez faire guys. And they say, any interference by the government any government action at all, except for like police to guard property, a distorts the market, and will make us less prosperous, because what I think is on the face of it, both Hayek and the deranged disciples, Friedman, Buchanan, on the face of it, they're trying to make an efficiency argument. They're saying, we'll be poor, at least, Friedman is. Uh huh. But the thrust of it seems to also be this moral argument because they're, they're saying they their whole rhetoric is that like any governor, government interference is not just gonna make you poor. It's like this violation, it's a violation of your freedom, where you're supposed to be, you know, realizing yourself and working for money and getting rich.

Jeffrey Bercuson  48:09

He Oh, yes. Buchanan pulls no punches here. And in fact, he sort of lumps all forms of state intervention into what he calls a platonic worldview of masters. And so tell us,

Clif Mark  48:25

give me a little biographical background of James Buchanan. Not

Jeffrey Bercuson  48:34

University of Chicago. Aftermath of high IQ, okay. Right. economist I, I'm pretty sure he won the Nobel Prize if I if I'm not mistaken. I have to look that up. But he may, yeah, he, I mean, of course, he has the efficiency argument. But in a lot of his writing, he puts the moral argument about freedom front and center. Right. And his feeling is that taxation for example, and any form of economic planning of any sort, right is tantamount to a kind of slavery.

Clif Mark  49:30

Right? Okay. Right. So, those of you who are at least as like, old as I am, will remember this argument from you know, or if you just read any of the political philosophy of the 80s this was very much the discourse, right, like inner inner any interference taxation is theft. It's slavery.

Jeffrey Bercuson  49:49

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, because it implies that those who are planning and levy Those taxes have a kind of special insight. Right? Right, a kind of special wisdom. It's the government

Clif Mark  50:07

having winners.

Jeffrey Bercuson  50:08

They can't Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Or they just have access to information that no one else does. And the the the idea amongst these laissez fers advocates is that this information simply doesn't exist. Right. And that's why we can't really engage in any effective economic planning. And anyone says, who in any institution that says they possess this information and can plan accordingly? is exercising a kind of a legitimate power? Right? Okay.

Clif Mark  50:42

Yeah, perfectly, perfectly well summarized. Less a fair argument, we can't we just, there's, there's no way to know enough to do a central plan. So that's fine and good.

Jeffrey Bercuson  50:58

And that's a good thing. And that's a good thing, because we have this moral image of what freedom looks like. And it's incompatible. Right, with state interventions. Right.

Clif Mark  51:18

Um, you know, I missed that because you froze again. Yeah, that's, that's all right. I want to go on to the next question, which was that? Okay, so we have this, like, less a fair argument that we hear a lot. And it's like, from people like Milton Friedman, and James Buchanan. And we return that to its origin and high IQ. And you say, even high IQ would not push the less a fair argument as far as it gets pushed today and by his disciples. Yeah. And so that's the efficiency argument. But I would like to also return a little more to this moral argument about self realization in the market, because we spoke earlier about that coming from Hegel. Yeah. And I think it's still a really important part of why of the discourse today and of why people think people should be free to to act, you know, freely in markets, etc. Now, does the argument for human freedom, Self Realization, I love Hegel, does that give us any case for laissez faire economics? Or how would it if you tried?

Jeffrey Bercuson  52:38

Mm hmm. Um, so

Clif Mark  52:46

Okay, let me put it this way. There's a lot of laissez faire people positions insane. No, I and

Jeffrey Bercuson  52:51

no, I have a I have an answer to this. I think the answer is we can, that we can only answer on the basis of the evidence that we have. And the evidence that we have is that even an approximation of the pure laissez faire that these people desire is quite radically incompatible with the meaningful freedom of the vast majority of individuals. Okay. Why? Well, because when these markets when our society operates with, kind, with, according to this laissez faire ideology, right, we end up with some very bad outcomes that can constrain the freedom of individuals. So this happens on a couple of different planes. Right? There's the personal plane, right, simply the fact that the economy is a closed box, right to the vast majority of the people who want to participate it, right, one of the one an obvious implication of this emphasis on self realization, right, is that there needs to be meaningful opportunities for work. Right. Right. And if things are so closed off, right, if our economy is so radically inegalitarian, that there are no such opportunities, right, that the only jobs are Uber drivers and food delivery people. Right, then what that means is that meaningful Self Realization, its possibility has been negated for Amazon picker. And, yes, Amazon picker and I guess Amazon delivery person. So I mean, it's true on a on a personal level, and I think it's also true on a political level. Right. Like, I mean, as you know, this sort of laissez faire world unfolds itself as it becomes more inegalitarian it also tends to become more plutocratic, right, which is to say that political power and access to it right is defined exclusively According to income and wealth, right, this is one of the big themes in the chapter on john Rawls, right? where he talks a lot about the fair value, right of the political liberties, right? So we may all have the right to go out in public and speak and protest. But if those liberties are merely formal, right, if we're just yelling into the void, and there's no meaningful sense that we are heard, or that our demands are taken into account, right, then we're not fully free, right when it comes to our political life. And so again, so if laissez faire as the way it's played itself out, it seems to be the case that we're neither free as workers. And we're not really free as citizens. Then it seems to me that the the routing, this defense of laissez faire in freedom, right implies quite impoverished conception of freedom. Right? Okay. So it's sort of like a betrayal, right of the sort of original route, right, of what I talked about in the book.

Clif Mark  56:23

Yeah. So I mean, that's like, one of the things I think it's so important for people who are more on the left, or, you know, at least not laissez faire, guys, is that the concept of freedom and of self realization is so important to our thinking about markets. Right. And so Hegel falls on kind of the pro market side, in your in your story. But

Jeffrey Bercuson  56:47

yes, without a doubt,

Clif Mark  56:48

but his argument for self realization,

56:52

it is possible,

Clif Mark  56:54

I think that work can really serve these goals of self development, and integrating yourself with other people and learning your importance in society. But other conditions have to hold true about the market. And if those conditions about our economy today don't hold true, then using argument to push for more or less a fair, is perverse. It's, it's mistaken. And actually, we'll have it looks like the opposite effect. If, you know, a lot of what you're saying is true.

Jeffrey Bercuson  57:29

So I, I agree, and it raises the obvious question of, well, then what what is the solution? Right, who is the agent for the restoration of the freedom that we have lost?

Clif Mark  57:44

All right, and I await your answer?

Jeffrey Bercuson  57:48

Well, I mean, so I can tell you what some people that I cover in

Clif Mark  57:53

your like your final chapters? Thomas Piketty?

Jeffrey Bercuson  57:56

Yeah. Yeah, Piketty? Yeah, I mean, again, Piketty is not anti market by any means. He's not a rabid Communist or, or anything like that. But he does think that we have fallen into an inegalitarian. spiral. Right. That and that the only way to get out of it is for the rich to pay a whole heck of a lot more tax. Who's making his right, so So? That is the million dollar question. That's not really the trillion dollar question, isn't it? I mean, I guess it depends on how you interpret Piketty. I interpret him is pretty pessimistic on this front. Right? I mean, his point is that, okay, so if we want a tax on nothing, I mean, income is a side concern. He's sort of much more interested in in wealth from assets like, capital, not not like income. Yeah, sorry. It's not like he's much less interested in income. And he's much more interested in the wealth generated by financial assets, real estate, stocks, bonds and things like that. And his feeling is that the real challenge when it comes to levying taxes on these sorts of instruments is that they are just so global by nature, right money is crossing borders in such an obscure and difficult to track way that he's ultimately quite pessimistic about the possibility of an effectively levying such an ambitious tax plan. Right, which again, is like taxing a small percentage of the billionaires in a slightly larger percentage of well. So so so capital, so capital is quite pessimistic I would say, I mean, he has a little bit of optimism when it comes to Europe because of the political infrastructure that already exists right in the EU. But but but even so, you know, he says, we've fallen down into a spiral. And it's hard to see how we can get to have to shut down

Clif Mark  1:00:20

Switzerland and Luxembourg and Dora, an iron. Yeah.

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:00:24

I mean, it's, well, the the lack of transparency that characterizes the banking communities in those countries is really at the root of the problem, right? If you want to effectively tax people, then you need to know how much they have, or how much they earn. And unfortunately, that is a very pressing and difficult problem. So maybe then the answer, maybe then a more realistic answer, or a more practice practicable answer comes from Rawls, right, who uses a much more national framework for these sorts of things, right talks about the sorts of domestic political institutions required to restore freedom for a greater portion of society. But, again,

Clif Mark  1:01:19

I mean, Rawls would depend on taxation, right? So how you gonna pull that off? Isn't the same objections that you raised to Piketty arise from Rawls as well?

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:01:31

Mm hmm. Um, I think that we probably have more information in the in the rawlsian case about domestic wealth and income, right than we do on the sort of like massive global scale that Piketty talks about. So you're right, that taxation is without a doubt a big part of the rawlsian program, right? He imagines a much more burdensome progressive tax designed to redistribute income from rich to poor. Right. He also thinks that there ought to be a quite burdensome tax on bequests and inheritances, because the intergenerational transmission of wealth, which is a big thing, theme and capital as well also plagues Rawls. At the level of politics, right, he talks about laws related to campaign financing and political speech, right, the access that certain groups have to mass media, right? These are sort of, I guess, more practical, right, right. So right, so

Clif Mark  1:02:48

So look, I'm gonna I keep summarizing the whole story, but it helps get me back on track. So markets good until our sorry, markets bad until you realize you can use them to get out of feudalism. So when you're comparing it to live you under a feudal math master markets, good market when you're comparing it to living under one of Stalin's five year plans, markets also good. Yes, markets also go up when you compare it to the compare, like the state of laissez faire or market commercial society today, to any of the philosophical justifications for it, it falls very, very short. It doesn't realize the efficiency that we want, it doesn't realize that human freedom that we want. And one of the big reasons you're pointing to through Piketty and Rawls is inequality. Right? And so we're looking for an answer of how to reduce inequality. We can we can even set the efficiency argument aside. I mean, we can say maybe markets are indeed the most efficient, like maybe that they do. I mean, the evidence speaks for itself. He make a lot of billionaires they,

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:03:58

yeah, they are, there is no better way to make a lot of money. But the question right, relates to distribution. Okay. Well, I mean, you mentioned

Clif Mark  1:04:12

possibilities about taxation, and, you know, taxing inheritances, but you also have a chapter on Lenin. Have we got any interesting answers there?

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:04:25

Oh, I'm not very kind to Lenin. I mean, I find the reason that I have a chapter on Lenin is because I find it much easier. Well, not easier, but I find that we understand Marx better when we get Lenin side of it, right. But I'm not very kind to Lenin either. I mean,

Clif Mark  1:05:00

Well, look, you're you're pessimistic about a

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:05:03

Piketty solutions have been dismal failure. I mean, so and the reason that there's a chapter on Lenin is because of an sort of subtle critique well, because of the fact that we don't get a lot of practical, political institutional stuff in Marx. Okay. Right. So that's why that I think that Lenin sees himself sort of cashing marks out at the political institutional level, right, what the dictatorship of the proletariat actually looks like. And of course, it's an unimaginable catastrophe. Okay, so,

Clif Mark  1:05:53

no revolution, Jeffrey fine. What suppose we we shelve the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat for the moment, and we talk about voting within the context of like capitalist countries nowadays, right. One of the really cool and interesting things about this book is that you have all these chapters of thinkers who are critical of, of market society and how it works. So you have Marx and, and Lenin, even though you're not that positive by Lenin, but you have all these critical voices. But what strikes me and is interesting is even the pro market voices the the Smith's and the high x, if you follow them, you still don't get to the level of laissez faire capitalism that people want today. You don't get to neoliberalism. And so it seems like if I, even if I take the most like, right wing pro market, guys in your book, like high IQ, and I go based on his arguments, I still vote for the left wing party, like the democrats in the States or the NDP in Canada, or labour in the UK, something like that. Is Is that right? Does high IQ tell us to vote left?

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:07:16

Yes.

Clif Mark  1:07:20

And I couldn't possibly interest you in a revolution.

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:07:25

I mean, right. Well,

1:07:30

I

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:07:31

mean, I can't believe that you've got me into defending high IQ. So staunchly. I mean,

Clif Mark  1:07:42

you're you're defending, though as like a light of the electoral left. that exists.

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:07:51

Like, follow Hi. Well, I mean, NDP. Yeah. Compare again, compared to his acolytes. I think that's not an unfair depiction. But I mean, so So you're saying, having accumulated all of this, all this. All these opinions about markets and whether they're good or bad? I mean, I hate to take the sort of like, predictable middle ground. Right. But it seems to me that we've done it. I mean, we again, we I took we, like you said we went down that Revolutionary Road with Marx and Lenin and well, we don't want to go down that that road again. We've gone too far in the other direction with our with by following Buchanan and Friedman, and things didn't turn out very well as our present day reality attests to. So it is I think, a matter of finding that middle ground which leans left. I love this, because

Clif Mark  1:09:15

there's so much there's so much debate today like whether the left where should the left look for inspiration and thought and they're like, you know, is is it Lenin?

1:09:25

Is it

Clif Mark  1:09:26

is it anarchism? Is it this? Is it that nothing? Hey, you know, what, you're further left on the spectrum than any of the available parties if you follow

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:09:36

Hayek

Clif Mark  1:09:39

which is, you know, horrifying in a way, but

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:09:42

hilarious, let's let's forget. Yeah, I mean, we don't I mean, we don't need to. I mean, we, I think the point is, if you're trying to convince some let's so let's say you're having an argument with someone who tends towards the At the right end of the ideological spectrum when it comes to markets, right? And you, you engage them in arguments and you want to meet them on their terms, right? You want to speak to them in a language that they're going to understand. Right? Well, then you have to speak to them about the language of freedom. Right. And I think that is what what my book is about, like trying to understand what freedom means in the context of a market society. And if we map the sort of freedom that we have today, on to the sort of freedom that other people have that the earliest defenders of market society, right, adopted, there, it's night and day.

Clif Mark  1:10:51

Okay, so tell me today to make it concrete. Tell me how higher taxes will set me free. Sure.

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:11:01

We begin with the heroic assumption that those higher taxes will be effectively spent. And what effectively spent means in the context of the conversation that we've been having is that those taxes will be used for the sort of opportunity enlarging redistribution, like what does that mean? Right. So it means that people need to have a baseline of meaningful economic security. And that economic security is then the launching point for engaging in the sorts of experiments and the sorts of entrepreneurial activity that led really clever people to celebrate the market in the first place.

Clif Mark  1:11:53

Great.

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:11:58

All right, right. I mean, that's what it boils down to, like if we hate society today. Yeah. Right. We I guess we can take it out. Right. We hate our society today. Right? Because we find that the avenue of opportunities has been so tragically constrained, right? Yeah. And so what we, you know, what we need to do is to enlarge the range of opportunities for self development, Self Realization, meaningful participation, right. So

1:12:40

the reason the reason

Clif Mark  1:12:41

all this, like market activity and getting richer mattered in the first place, was because it would give us opportunities to like live a freer and better life. And so if it doesn't, if it just leads to opportunities for tech billionaires to build bunkers in New Zealand, and everyone else to lead a life of desperation online, and

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:13:07

yeah, then

Clif Mark  1:13:08

then even if markets are formerly free, they're not creating any human freedom. Yeah, I

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:13:15

think that's right. I mean, the reason that we began by that we begin by celebrating these markets is because of the range of opportunities they presented, like we keep bringing up this beautiful contrast. But the idea is there were no meaningful opportunities, right, your place in society was set for life, and you had no meaningful control over it. Right. And the market kind of opened things up, right opened up a multitude of avenues for self development and self realization. And if those avenues are no longer

1:13:58

Yeah, for

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:14:00

Yeah, we begin with security, right, meaningful economic security, and maybe we can even get to prosperity. Right. But even security alone is a meaningful objective. Yeah. Right. Which goes back to the the tax question. Right. redistribution is the aim of redistribution through taxation should be the kind of universal security, right economic security, that makes self confidence possible and with self confidence, action, right activity.

Clif Mark  1:14:36

Great, I love it. So I think that might be a good place to stop on the note that more taxation and redistribution will actually create more freedom, more human Liberty than a more or less a fair policy. And that's a interesting idea. We've been going on for a while. So in closing, could you just tell tell us where everyone can find you. Are you online on social media? And where can we buy the book?

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:15:09

my social media presence is very weak. I'm not going to tell you to buy the book on Amazon, because that is, you know, that's bad. Where can you buy the book? Probably not at your local bookstore because I doubt your local bookstore would have this book. But you can buy it on Amazon. Or maybe you have to press is that a small business does that No, probably not. But I guess you have to press is the best way to purchase it. Or just email me and I'll sit? I'll send you a free copy. Okay, so

Clif Mark  1:15:42

a history of political thought, property, labor and commerce from Plato to Piketty from U of T press, University of Toronto press in 2020.

Jeffrey Bercuson  1:15:53

Thanks, Clifton. Thanks for having me.

Clif Mark  1:15:56

It was my great pleasure. Thanks for coming on.