One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy
Author: Thomas Frank
List Price: $14.95
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ISBN: 0385495048
Publisher: Anchor (18 September, 2001)
Sales Rank: 51,769
Average Customer Rating: 3.57 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
Good Work
Good work, Thomas Frank. This book is a revealing transcoding of the corporate mythology of the 90's, a rabidly hyped symbolic order cooked up by admen, marketers, and management gurus at the behest of the top 1%. It goes by the name market populism. If you've read Fredric Jameson, you will recognize the practical, real-world analyses of the 're-narratavized' cultural fragment. Capital takes cultural artifacts which may have opposed it previously, (e.g. revolution, class war, freedom, democracy), and re-appropriates it for use in its' own narrative, to justify its own ends (the inflation of securities and paper wealth). Thus historical data, or ideological conflict or even Marxist utopianism is re-narrativized by big money in the mass media. Plenty of explanation of how Capital effaces the differences between all those dialectical poles,like a home-grown Baudrillard with easy-to-follow examples. Where the book lacked was in it's not drumming home what exactly the costs were, especially in terms of the destructive effects of international finance capital, the dis-lodging of a billion people into shanty towns by Global Capital, and the environmental destruction rent by Trans-national Capital. You might take a look at one of David Korten's book for this, or George Soros' On Globalization. But most important about the book is the fact that it questions what has been so vigorously sold as 'inevitable' to the rest of us, it maintains the possibility of negating what seems so Universal on CNN or Fox News. It is a supreme act of historical transparency, pointing to a way we might go from a way we've already been.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Brilliant demolition of capitalist 'thinking'
In this extraordinary and brilliant book, the American journalist Thomas Frank exposes the shams and scams of the market and its barkers. Frank dissects the media, the political parties, the 'think tanks' like Demos, and the public relations and management theory 'industries', with their clowns like Tom Peters. He shows how the market, under the sign of democracy and choice, robs us of our basic freedoms, in the economic arena.
He shows us how the US economy 'works': 86% of Wall Street's gains go to the richest 10% of the US population. In 1999, Chief Executive Officers got on average 475 times what their blue-collar workers got; the ratio was 11/1 in Japan and 24/1 in Britain. 40% of Internet firm executives had criminal records; they were experienced fraudsters and swindlers. The other 60% haven't got caught yet! Yet US workers had less social mobility than European workers.
... Capitalism does not provide: stocks and shares do not secure jobs, incomes, pensions, education, or health care. Only the old-fashioned, despised, desperately-in-need-of-structural-reform welfare state could do that. Of course, the Stock Market that has so finally failed all its supporters did not need structural reform! We need politics, not politicians or politicos or ideologues. We cannot rely on the market; we need to stop the market before it stops us.
After the coal-based industrial revolution, we had the oil-fired economy; now we are supposed to be in the third revolution, the third way of 'the knowledge-based' economy. First, this implies that earlier industrial revolutions were powered by ignorance and the ignorant (workers), not clever like 'us' moderns. Second, it is pure idealism.
Blair's favourite guru, Charles Leadbeater, recently wrote a book entitled, Living on thin air. His vision of the future allows no production, no industry, no nation, no economy, no materiality - and this idealist rubbish passes as 'new' wisdom! Workers having to live on thin air - no thanks!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Bursting the bubble
Thomas Frank's One Market Under God is an important book and offers interesting insights into the stock market hysteria of the nineties while capturing the sense of delusion of those who remained bewildered in the economic sidelines. Frank academically dissects the New Economy and reveals its emptiness. It's a sort of "Extraordinary delusions and the Madness of Crowds" of the modern age. While Frank's style may be pedantic at times, he reveals a pungent and welcome sarcasm that we'll have you laughing in revenge at all the hype of the market and its instruments form 'lifestyle' magazines to over-produced television commercials. One of his biggest and most effective targets is the magazine "Fast Company". The main argument of the book is that in the nineties the public at large has been convinced that markets were the ideal solution to all ills, social and economic. This occurred to such a degree that the market champions became popular heroes, while the snobs were those who criticized or were skeptical of the market's all-powerful mantra. Frank presents the media and corporate manufacture of the rhetoric and - let's say it 'frankly' propaganda'- that fueled the market bubble and myth as the Keynesian economic system was rapidly being dismantled under our noses. I recommend reading this entertaining as well as thorough analysis with another fascinating look at the emergence of market economics dominance, "Turbo Capitaliosm" by Edward Luttwak and "Globalization and its Discontents" by Jospeh Stiglitz - ironically one of Bill Clinton's top economic advisers. Also look for Thomas Frank's articles in the magazine he edits "The Baffler". Similar Products
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