Friday, February 16, 2018

The Free Market Threat to Democracy Sharmini Peries interviews John Weeks

Democratic institutions are not under stress--they're under aggressive attack, as unconstrained financial greed overrides democratic decisions, says economist John Weeks
Neoliberalism involves not the deregulation of the capitalist system, but the reregulation of it in the interest of capital. So, it involves moving from a system in which capital is regulated in the interests of stability and the many to regulation in a way that enhances capital.... We have a capitalism in which the form of regulation is shifted from the regulation of capital in the interest of labor to regulation of capital in the interest of capital.…
In summary, one way that the democracy has been undermined is to take away economic policy from the public realm and move it to the realm of experts. So, we have certain allegedly expert guidelines that we have to follow. Inflation should be low. We should not run deficits. The national debt should be small. These are things that are just made up ideologically. There is no technical basis to them. And so, in doing that, you might say, the term I like to use is, you decommission the democratic process and economic policy....
TRNN
The Free Market Threat to Democracy
Sharmini Peries interviews John Weeks, professor emeritus of the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies

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