The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive

Dean Baker recently released his latest book, The End of Loser Liberalism, under a Creative Commons license and as a free download. Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and a regular contributor to the Guardian, Truthout and the Huffington Post. 

Introducing the book on his website, Baker writes:

"Most people define the central point of dispute between liberals and conservatives as being that liberals want the government to intervene to bring about outcomes that they consider fair, while conservatives want to leave things to the market. This is not true. Conservatives actually rely on the government all the time, but most importantly in structuring the market in ways that ensure that income will flow upwards. The framing that 'conservatives like the market while liberals like the government,' puts liberals in the position of seeming to want to tax the winners to help the losers.

This 'loser liberalism' is bad policy and horrible politics. The efforts of liberals would be much better spent on battles over the structure of markets so that they don't redistribute income upward. This book describes some of the key areas in which progressives can focus their efforts to restructure markets so that more income flows to the bulk of the working population rather than just a small elite."

Baker also makes the argument that "copyrights are a form of government intervention in markets that leads to enormous inefficiency, in addition to redistributing income upward." Thus, in distributing the book for free he hopes to drive home one of the book's main points via his own example.

Although focused on the United States, many of the issues raised in the book will certainly have resonance for a European audience. As Baker writes:

"The vast majority of the right does not give a damn about free markets; it just wants to redistribute income upward. Progressives have been useful to the right in helping it to conceal this agenda. Progressives help to ratify the actions of conservatives by accusing them of allegiance to a freemarket ideology instead of attacking them for pushing the agenda of the rich.

For the last three decades the right has been busily restructuring the economy in ways that ensure that income flows upward. The rules governing markets, written by the rich and powerful, ensure that this gravity-defying outcome prevails. The right then presents the imposition of rules that it likes as the natural result of unfettered market forces."

Download the book here.