Existing socialism's successes discredit Friedman's core argument - By Rainer Shea

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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When considering the defenses socialists make regarding their beliefs and their indictments of capitalism, we typically find that the cases they make are superficial, misleading, or founded upon false premises. So we were surprised to find the below article, which is none of these things. The author actually reviews the ideas of a free-market economist (Milton Friedman), critiques the concepts presented, and offers a thoughtful rebuttal.

This almost never happens with socialists.

Now, that doesn't mean the author succeeds in rebutting Friedman or negating capitalism. In fact, he is hindered by the typical socialist obstacles: He misunderstands capitalism, he assumes the superiority of socialism, and he thinks this is about competing economic systems.

We also note that the title of the article suggests that the author is going to name the socialist success stories. He does not do that.

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In Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman argues that under "free market" capitalism, the individual is protected from constraints upon their freedom of choice. He ascribed to capitalism the task of providing versatile and wide-ranging options to the masses, whether this comes to which products they buy or which jobs they work at. He wrote that because unrestrained capitalism is so good at providing these kinds of choices, "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." (We are relying on the author's characterization of Friedmann, since we have not read the book. One clue that the author is "interpreting" Friedman is the use of the phrase "unrestrained capitalism." There is no such thing as "unrestrained capitalism." We doubt Friedman used the phrase.)

Karl Marx would likely respond to this with a repudiation of Friedman's claim that unrestricted capitalism is truly a "free economy," (Now the author switches to "unrestricted capitalism." There is also no such thing as "unrestricted capitalism." In addition, the author will never describe a "free economy.")

and with a case for why communism (Hmm. We thought the subject was socialism...)

provides the masses with more meaningful freedom than capitalism does, much less neoliberal capitalism. (The author has now made his first point, that communism [socialism?] is better for freedom. Let's see if he backs it up.)

Monopolies are an obvious facet of the neoliberal model (Monopolies are not a facet of capitalism, they are violations of it.)

that can be pointed to as proof that neoliberalism doesn't equate to a truly free market. (Monopolies can certainly manifest as restricted choice, which perhaps implies a loss of freedom. We would suggest, however, that not having a choice regarding the purchase of a product or service because of a monopoly does not speak to freedom at all. 

The existence of a monopoly does not imply servitude, which is the necessary component in determining freedom. The degree to which an entity has claim on your personal means of production [which means you are in servitude to that entity and therefore less free] is a more accurate determiner of economic freedom.

In addition, the author is focused solely on economics, where to him freedom is freedom of economic choice because there are no monopolies. But freedom is larger than economic choice, and the author never demonstrates that a monopoly necessarily means less freedom, or that socialism better provides economic choice.

Ironically, his alternative is a state-run monopoly, where the government owns the means of production, and not only produces the product, but tells you what you can purchase. 

A monopoly is an aberration of capitalism but a integral feature of socialism.)

But while touching on this point, it's important to note that Friedman was not naive about the reality that monopolies exist, or that business interests incentivize companies to tend towards monopoly and certain types of state intervention. He clarified this in an interview where he said: "It's always been true that business is not a friend of a free market " It's in the self-interest of the business community to get government on its side." (Again, these are violations of capitalism, not features of it.)

While Friedman's acknowledgement of capital's monopolistic nature and propensity towards receiving help from the state adds credibility to his intellectual honesty, it at the same time reveals he was on some level conscious that what's best for capital doesn't equate to a free economy. (Exactly. Those who would do uncapitalistic things in capitalism are simply manipulating their economic freedom, ironically bringing in Big Government to tilt the scales even more. Nothing about this is capitalistic.)

Friedman was able to bluntly articulate how and why capital constricts the market: by getting government to act in favor of business. He even described this principle as inevitable, not trying to argue that there's a better version of capitalism where the government doesn't favor business. (We would, however, be happy to make this argument. Friedman is not the only point of view on capitalism. There is indeed a "better version" of capitalism.

Capitalism is simply the willing, legal, eyes-open exchange of value.)

So why does Friedman argue that his vision of a socioeconomic system designed to maximize profits is what's best for upholding a free society?

Friedman argues for this kind of system because he takes the stance that neoliberalism, as opposed to socialism, social democracy, or any other system, is the relatively superior way for cultivating economic freedom. His case for neoliberalism is not that it provides complete freedom from state control, corruption, or systemic injustice. It's that neoliberalism offers the least realistic amount of these things. This is evident from his statement in the conclusion of Capitalism and Freedom about the level of freedom that people have in market economies compared to planned economies: (Hmm. A rather innocuous characterization of government-controlled economies.)

 "Who today can regard the chains of the proletarians in the Soviet Union as weaker than the chains of the proletarians in the United States, Britain or France or Germany or any Western state?"

This is a crucial justification Friedman uses for arguing that neoliberalism represents a "free economy" in spite of capitalism's innate constraints on the economy, and for claiming that neoliberalism's opponents hate the very idea of freedom: that whenever alternative systems to capitalism have been tried, they've only brought about even more oppressive systems. If fighting against capitalism only results in worse systems, Friedman implies, the only sensible option is to make business as free from state constraint as possible so that profits can be streamlined. (Again, this sounds like editorializing. What does it mean to "streamline profits?" Did Friedman actually write this?)

It's impossible to tell exactly how much Marx would have approved of the Soviet Union's system, as it came after his death and in different historical conditions than the ones he used as a frame of reference. But it's likely that Marx would at least have been able to rebut Friedman's narrative about the USSR and the other Marxist-Leninist countries overseeing an objectively worse system than neoliberalism. Marx could have done this by pointing to the theory of his crucial partner in formulating theory: Friedrich Engels.

Friedman's central charge against the USSR's system was that it was too authoritarian for the proletarians (Socialist lingo. Rather than "people" or "citizens," the average Soviet is not described as an individual or a human being, he is only a part of a faceless class of people.)

living under it to be considered truly "free," that these proletarians were constrained by "chains." But Engels argued that the presence of authority doesn't necessarily entail oppression, (This may be the primary point of the author's philosophy, and it fails. We first have to wade through the bland characterizations. "Presence of authority" is actually a very powerful, potentially unrestrainable government. "Doesn't necessarily" means "if we're lucky government won't go catawampus on us." 

There is no possibility that a hugely powerful government will avoid oppression. It is axiomatic that the accumulation of power is not incidental to the desire to use it. The author is attempting to suggest that a powerful government can be trusted to restrain itself, and that has never occurred in human history.)

and that authority is merely a tool which can be used for the benefit of the class that's in control. As Engels write in On Authority: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists."

It's this argument that calls all of Friedman's claims about the nature of freedom into question. If the projects to build an alternative to capitalism in Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and the other Marxist-Leninist countries (He never says, but apparently these are the author's "success stories.")

can't honestly be dismissed as mere tyrannical states, but as attempts to wield authority for the proletariat's benefit despite the many flaws in these attempts, (They were nice tries.)

what makes them objectively inferior to the societal model Friedman advocated for? (All of these experiments suffered the same fate for the exact reason we provided: A very powerful government cannot be restrained, because those wielding the power always use it. Socialism is objectively inferior because it empowers flawed human beings, who cannot resist the lure of what that power can do for them.)

What claim of moral superiority can neoliberalism, and capitalism in general, have to the projects for building an alternative to capitalism? It's hard to argue that capitalism is the most free system relative to all other systems if the existing attempts at building socialism can't objectively be called less free. (The author leaps to this conclusion. He has not discussed, let alone demonstrated, how socialism provides more economic freedom than capitalism. This would seem like a key component in his argument, but we do not find it here.)

Of course, that statement from Engels doesn't alone make the case for the workers in the USSR having been more free than workers in capitalist countries. Which is where different definitions of "freedom" come in; the workers in the USSR may not have had the freedom to become millionaires, like the workers in the capitalist world (theoretically) do, but by important metrics, they had far more freedom from scarcity than workers even in the rich United States did. According to a 1983 report by the CIA, "American and Soviet citizens eat the same amount of food each day but the Soviet diet may be more nutritious." (This is a truly odd example of freedom. A nutritious diet does not speak in any way to freedom.)

Other instances of the USSR enabling relative freedom from deprivation to its citizens were the country's keeping rents below 4% of the incomes of workers (the lowest rent tariff in the world at the time), its free allocation of housing to those on the waiting list, and its cultivation of conditions where millions would be able to improve their housing conditions every year. (Again, these are truly odd examples of freedom.)

Contrast this to the current impacts of neoliberalism in the U.S., (The author seems to think the US has a neoliberal economic system. It doesn't.)

where millions are at risk of eviction due to unreliable tenant protection laws.

These egalitarian policies, and their historically proven material impacts of helping people attain greater access to essential resources, are what Marx aimed to bring about. (Perhaps, but it has never happened. The author has not cited any "proven material impacts of helping people" because there are none.)

These policies may have come at the expense of bourgeois freedoms (Ah, so there are some other freedoms in capitalism?)

and brand choice, but they granted people freedom from many of the miseries that are now found under neoliberalism. (Undocumented statement.)

And Marx would likely have argued that these types of freedoms are more important. (Of course. And because of this someone else gets the power to choose what is more important and impose it on you.)

Rainer Shea is writing articles that counter the propaganda of the capitalist/imperialist power establishment, and that help move us towards a socialist revolution.