For 40 years academics were duped into idolizing the idea of unfettered markets, says Cornel West, and now our society is paying a terrible price.<br /><br />Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/how-intellectuals-betrayed-the-poor<br /><br />Follow Big Think here:<br />YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/bigthink<br />Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom<br />Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink<br /><br />Transcript:<br />I think one was, there was an idolizing of unfettered markets. And much if not most of the intelligentsia were duped. I recall traveling with my dear brother Michael Harrington and talking with brother Stanley Aronowitz years ago. And you know, here we're engaged in critiques of unfettered markets, and it looked as if we were medieval thinkers. Everybody was saying, we're followers of Milton Friedman. Everybody was saying Frederick Hayak got it right. Everybody was saying marketize, commercialize, commodify, and we were still reading Lukasch. And Lukasch was saying commodification is not simply an asymmetric relation of power, of bosses vis-à-vis workers, so workers are being more and more marginalized. Profits are being produced, wealth is being produced, hemorrhaged at the top, no fair distribution of that wealth or profit for workers. Poor are being demonized because they are viewed as those persons who are irresponsible, who will not work, who are always looking for welfare; i.e., failures in the society of success. And we reached a brink, and the chickens came home to roost. And a few years ago the unfettered markets led us off and over the brink.<br /><br />And all of a sudden, very few intellectuals want to be honest and acknowledge the greed with which they were duped. Don't want to talk about the inequality that went along with it. Don't want to talk about the demonization of the poor that went along with it. Don't want to talk about the politics of fear that produced a Republican Party that was more and more lily-white, using not just race but also demonizing gay brothers and lesbian sisters, you see. Don't want to talk about the indifference toward the poor, and greed being good and desirable and so forth. Now is a very different moment, and it's not, you know, just about pointing fingers, but saying somebody's got to take responsibility. This was a nearly 40-year run. Who paid the cost? As is usually the case, you know, poor working people paid the cost, disproportionately black and brown and red, you see.<br /><br />So in the age of Obama, we say, okay, can we have a different kind of discussion? And that's what we're trying to do, but of course you've got two wars going on; you've got still Wall Street in the driver's seat in the Obama administration when it comes to the economic team, you see. And you've got very -- you know, I think in some ways unimaginative thinking when it comes to foreign policy, be it the Middle East or be it European Union or be it Latin America, you know, calling Chavez a dictator; the man's been elected! If he's calling into question rights and liberties, criticize him as a democratic president. We did the same thing for Bush. Bush was calling into question rights and liberties; we didn't call him a dictator. We said he's a democratically elected president who's doing the wrong thing. Chavez ought to be criticized. He's not a dictator; the man's been elected.<br /><br />But it's that kind of demonizing that obscures and obfuscates the kind of issues that are necessary, because Chavez is also talking about poor people. So of course I want libertarian and democratic sides. I want right and liberties and empowerment of poor people. But talking about poor people is not a joke; it's crucial, it's part and parcel of the future of any serious democratic project.
