An Age of Ideologues

When Allan Greenspan confessed to Congress that he knew that the mortgage crisis was immanent, but said nothing, he did so because he believed the market would correct itself without massive government interference. He said acting on this belief had worked for forty years and he was very surprised when it did not do so this time. I was dumbstruck by this admission. Capitalism has been subject to the boom and bust cycle since its inception. As long ago as the 1830s the economist Henry George was wrestling with the problem of how to mitigate this process to minimize the suffering that went with it. The Great Depression, a mere 70 plus years ago, is an obvious warning, especially when so much of the regulatory apparatus designed to protect society from a repeat had been dismantled by "free market" ideologues from Ronald Reagan on. All this was known to Greenspan, but he could not believe that the free market would not correct itself. This is the mark of an ideologue, in this case an Ayn Rand-believing, libertarian ideologue. The largest economy the world has ever seen was placed in the hands of an ideologue.

It is common to believe that the 19th or 20th centuries were the period that saw the rise of ideology to prominence. Socialism, communism and capitalism, each of whose adherents refuse to call it an ideology, a term of denigration reserved for the other two isms, were predominant. I want, however, to use a broader conception of ideology to include systems of belief devoid of evidence, in politics and religion as well. I believe we live in an age of ideology because of this age's extreme multidimensional complexity. In such an environment people seek simplicity in all-encompassing explanations. Living within the scope of knowledge is not enough to assuage the fear of the unknown, which is what extreme complexity amounts to.

As population increase and environmental degradation reduce mankind's survival options, it will become increasingly important that knowledge, with its concomitant tentativeness, increasingly replace ideology. The fundamental question here is whether human beings, who have for millennia relied upon one form or another of ideology to guide them through the unknown, can be brought to rely on knowledge as the guide into the unknown. Ideology's main attraction has been the emotional satisfaction it provides. Knowledge can offer no such all-encompassing assurance.


An alternative to ideology now in increasing vogue is "pragmatism." When Barack Obama began his campaign he focused on "change." He talked in terms of his "vision." Since winning the election he is talking increasingly of "pragmatism". He says we must see what works and if it doesn’t try something else. This is not knowledge at work: It is trial and error on a massive scale. What is needed is a broad assessment, based upon what we know, in order to give some cumulative and continuing benefit. We know from the history of the Great Depression that the way to get the economy going again is to feed money in from the bottom, i.e. through jobs. We know that the economy of a large society needs, to a certain extent, to be planned and we know that the capitalist market is exceptionally vulnerable to human greed, i.e. over-speculation. We also know that the world's population is going to have to do with less. This is the kind of knowledge that has to be brought to bear on our current fiscal crisis, not simply trial and error pragmatism or economic ideology.

Bob Newhard