Monday, October 18, 2004

Rockridge Institute - Reframing the Political Battle: Market Fundamentalism vs. Moral Economy

Rockridge Institute - Reframing the Political Battle: Market Fundamentalism vs. Moral Economy:

"The United States should be working to build democracy in every corner of the globe. But Market Fundamentalism actually undermines democratic values. We cannot successfully export democracy without also exporting economic justice and economic opportunity.


Iraq in this sense is a microcosm of a much larger problem. For more than twenty years now, the United States has been aggressively exporting Market Fundamentalist policies to other nations. This country tells foreign governments that they must lower their tariff barriers, dismantle controls over capital flows, cut government spending, and privatize state-owned industries. Most of the world’s developing and transitional economies have followed these policies and the overwhelming majority of them have been moving backwards–not forwards-- on all of the key indicators of economic success reported by the World Bank and the United Nation’s Human Development Reports. Market Fundamentalism, in short, has subverted economic development in most of the poorer regions of the world.


Even before the disaster in Iraq, the global failure of Market Fundamentalism had badly undermined our nation’s credibility in the developing world. It is now far easier for Islamic Radicals to demonize the U.S. as a greedy superpower bent on continuing the subordination of all Muslims. The failures of Market Fundamentalism have made recruitment easier for Al Queda and similar groups. In short, a new Administration needs a radically new strategy to counter the terrorist threat. The centerpiece of such a strategy must be a new approach to global development that abandons Market Fundamentalism in favor of exporting economic opportunity and economic justice."

This is a group that seems to be making progress with what I would consider to be the greater, all-encompassing values into the political and social conversation.

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