The DA is pro market, not free market … and the EFF is not Marxist.
Gabri Rigotti
The DA is pro market, not free market … and the EFF is not Marxist.
This writer for the Daily Friend in the link below gets it wrong on both counts:
https://dailyfriend.co.za/2024/06/13/south-africas-precarious-2024-opportunity/
So too the Guardian in this article below, gripped by hysteria:
However the writer for the Daily Friend does get this fundamental right:
“As RW Johnson, author and retired Oxford don, noted in his 2011 Hoernlé lecture, liberalism is “by some way South Africa’s oldest political tradition, reaching back long before either Afrikaner or African nationalism or Communism existed”. In fact, its origins can be traced back to the first half of the 19th century, when a young Charles Darwin visited the Cape Colony and met Sir John Herschel, the astronomer, who was there mapping the southern skies. Herschel introduced Darwin to the Rev. John Philip, who was said to promote an “ungodly equality between the races”. At the time, the three were viewed as “racial extremists and outcasts because of their egalitarian views” in Johnson’s words.”
South Africa may arguably be the last outpost of classical liberalism worldwide.
Elsewhere it has all but disappeared.
In our South African Martin van Staden we have a theorist who has in his writings distilled the essence of classical liberalism, and also proposed that libertarianism is, as an offshoot of classical liberalism, the purest form of classical libertarianism.
When asked if he is a libertarian, Martin replies that he is a liberal, in the classical sense.
The DA falls into this model, not as a proponent of the genuine free market, as that can only be in the context of libertarianism or the same rose by any other name.
It certainly is however a proponent for freer markets …
The DA merely uses the vocabulary of most so-called “free market” economists who, yes, they argue for freer markets, but then fall short of libertarianism.
Academia is full of “free market” economists, one of the most famous being Milton Friedman who looks remarkably like the legal guru Alan Dershowitz, one of the last classical liberals of the USA.
But even Milton Friedman was not libertarian so his “free” markets are theoretical, in practice by his acceptance of government intervention, implicitly or explicitly, he would be more accurately described as an advocate for a quasi free market.
This is not to in any way put down the DA, far from it.
But it is time that there is an intellectual challenge to the use of the term “free market”.
You could be a libertarian strategically seeking to leverage the mainstream of classical liberalism towards a libertarian end.
Yes, then you are indeed an advocate for a genuine free market.
Else, like Friedman whose work is immensely valuable, the “free market” you are referring to is not actually the free market.
The real world however requires a tolerance for “just good enough”, perfection always being an elusive butterfly, and excellence often extremely hard to achieve.
As libertarians/individualists we can do with more and more quasi free marketeers.
Whereas, to wrap up this post, and requiring only a few lines to do so, the EFF is just uber black fascism seeking to score global sympathy by pretending to be Marxist.
Malema is just a black Mussolini, he even looks like Benito himself.
How highly educated professionals and intellectuals fall for this is puzzling?
For genuine Marxism, with the utmost of principled integrity, and perhaps one of the foremost exponents of principled Marxism, look no further than our very own South African Communist Party.
One might not agree with Marxism, but their principled advocacy is sincere.
" It is not the water in the fields that brings true development, rather, it is water in the eyes, or compassion for fellow beings, that brings about real development. "
—Anna Hazare
Trevor Watkins
- The DA advocates a "social" market, not an unambiguous "free" market. They believe
- government should intervene in the economy.
- governments have an important role to play in improving access to markets.
- there are some functions and services that governments can potentially perform better than markets.
- Markets only function optimally in a context where a state provides basic services.
- It does not oppose taxation, and other forms of state theft.
- Unlike the ANC, it does not have a clear position on capital punishment.
- It opposes the free movement of individuals across state borders.
- It supports hate speech regulation.
- It supports policies including state interventions in education, healthcare, the economy, and safety and security.
- The DA principles do not mention property rights, or dispute resolution processes.
- Respect for all who respect you.
- Render no harm without consent, except in self-defence
- Recognise lawfully acquired property
- Resolve disputes by jury
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Stephen van Jaarsveldt
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