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Bazaars, Conversation, and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear FOR a lay reader, markets exist in two extreme models. The first is the capitalist system, where markets function on their own and any state regulation or intervention is unwarranted. Here, market forces becomes so powerful in themselves that they dictate the course of society, policies of nation states, and even supra national organisations like the UN and the IMF. The second is the Soviet-type socialist system, where state itself acquires the role of biggest and only capitalist, monopolises all power and has decision-making in its own hands and tries to do away with any kind of free market system. It is believed that any amount of freedom to markets will inevitably lead to tyranny of market, exploitation of labour and complete hegemony of capital.
Rajni Bakshi’s book presents not only a fundamental critique of both these models but also discusses how these models originated, developed, altered in time and space and the challenges that they faced. It tries to explore the historical roots of present-day "market culture"—how it evolved and came to dominate the whole world. However, this historical study of market culture is essentially its critique, rather a very strong critique from diverse standpoints—a sociological, moral, ethical and ecological critique of "free market" ethos. The real strength of the book lies in the fact that it has shown that this model of market based on endless and mindless production is also not sustainable and efficient in the long run, as it’s on the way to exhaust the same society and nature on which it thrives. For instance, the cutting down of a rain forest might generate new capital, increase the Gross National Product (GNP) and turn enormous profits, but in the long run it destroys the very ground on which it stands. Speculation in stock markets might give profits but neither it creates new jobs nor it increases our well-being, rather it creates an atmosphere of greed, fear and insecurity. To foster a new market model, free of greed and fear, which increases not only our wealth but also our well-being, and to foster an economic progress that is also sustainable in the long run is the central concern of the book. The book begins with a comparison of ancient bazaars—spaces for open conversations, places for fostering new civilisational ethos—with modern impersonal markets, devoid of any social or moral concern. In discusses how bazaars were replaced by markets. It gives a brief history of "self-interest" and "homo economicus", of how a single dimension of human nature (of utility maximasing economic man) and market culture (solely guided by profit motive) came to dominate our whole worldview. The book is a survey of mixed economies that dominated the world from great depression until the late 70s, and how they were replaced by a new market orthodoxy in the 80s. Ronald Reagan and Margarat Thatcher became champions of this orthodoxy whose new mantra was LPG (liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation), which stood in stark contrast to the model of welfare state built in the early 20th century. The author also gives a brief history of money and moneymaking and questions the conventional wisdom of money, progress, welfare, freedom and open market, and challenges stereotype models. Besides, she documents the counter movements that are trying to heal the rupture between economy and society, polity, morality, spirituality and ecology—an endeavour to make the markets work for society rather than the other way round. The book tries to find the middle ground between two polar extreme models of market. It is a chronicle of various approaches and models that seek to recover the virtues of bazaars from the tyranny of a market model that emerged centuries before in Western Europe, and then spread to all corners of world through the agency of imperialism. While describing democratic values and place of commerce in civilisation, the author discusses the forgotten ideals of "liberty, equality and fraternity", and suggests how these can be truly materialised within the framework of an open, free, progressive society. The book is an
invitation to the open debate of how to challenge the complete
hegemony of capital in an increasingly globalised world. This
interesting work can be useful to the students of economics and
those who are interested in knowing the nitty-gritty of market
culture.
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Till
recently, these two systems were understood as mutually
irreconcilable, an understanding duly expressed in Hobsbawn’s
classic study Age of Extremes. Both of these 20th-century
utopias have fallen apart. While the fall of the Communist block was
dramatic, the triumphant free market fundamentalism is dying a slow,
quiet death.