The entire post-Soviet space has gone through many models of ideologies, economies, politicians, and religions. Each of them was always declared the only correct one, and its opponents were actively fought against. And we did not part with this model of the only correct ideology, politics, religion, economy.
The economy of illusions
We have little knowledge of reality, especially the new reality, and the theories behind it often contradict the truth. They are simply not rethought, and the most likely explanations are taken for the truth.
The famous quote by Y. Andropov "We do not know the country in which we live" belongs to the feather of the assistant M. Suslov, who wrote an article for his boss. While the article was being prepared for printing, Suslov died, and the work has a new author - Andropov, whose wise idea is now quoted by descendants (there is another version that the article was written for Leonid Brezhnev). However, this was typical for all party leaders. Now we react quite normally to the fact that the presidents pronounce texts written by speechwriters.
The world lives within the framework of erroneous theories and inadequate history. The victories of this or that economic concept, for example, are not connected with the economy. The victory of the liberal concept came as a result of intensive information campaigns. It is consequence of new development of an information component of a civilization when it is possible to promote the necessary ideas, leaning on quite objective toolkit. Religion did the same thing, but it did it intuitively, so it took centuries to advance. The world did not get what he wanted, but what others wanted the world to get.
А. Curtis tells us how only two people did it - Anthony Fisher and his friend Oliver Smedley. And they managed to promote this model of economy in an unfavorable environment: "They were ignored because almost all politicians and journalists from left to right believed in the Keynesian idea that the state should interfere in the management of the economy. Everyone was convinced that a free market left to themselves would come to a catastrophe, as it happened in the thirties. Fisher was a conservative, Smedley a liberal, but they both believed that their parties were leading Britain to an abyss, fascinated by the fake dreams of planners.
Э. Fisher created the first think-tank to support free market ideas. But since there were not one but one hundred and fifty such "tanks", their "explanatory" power, which fell on the minds of Western citizens, is quite understandable.
In another speech Curtis explains the basic error of this approach: "An important element is that these systems had nothing to do with the original idea of the "market". In fact, they are pseudo scientific planning elements created by politicians and a group of technocrats that borrowed much more Cold War ideas about cyberfeedback than the risky roller coaster market. In order to create such systems, they had to significantly increase the state and expand its power, which is the exact opposite of the utopia of the free market. When one explores the roots of the neoliberal idea of the market, one can see even stranger things. Ideas that grew up in the post-war period and captured the imagination of people like M. Thatcher are really a very strange mutation of capitalism. If you listen to Friedrich Hayek's interview, he speaks more as a Cold War system engineer discussing information signals and feedback than as Adam Smith with his moral theories.
As a result, Hayek's new understanding gradually took over the world, and Reagan and Thatcher were the first to adopt the model, which essentially led to the destruction of the social state model.
For Fisher, Hayek became such a guiding star, under the idea of which Fisher made his first think-tank. By the way, Hayek taught him how to conduct this fight, which led Hayek to the Nobel Prize.
The Thatcher Foundation has a letter from Hayek Fischer dated 1 January 1980. It is quite voluminous and typed, which is quite natural. In it, Hayek writes about his model of social impact: "I was talking about it thirty years ago, that we can defeat the socialist trend only when we can convince intellectuals, creators of public opinion. It seems to me that this has been well confirmed.
The U.S. also singles out a group of billionaires, starting with the Kohov brothers, who also invested in the idea of a limited state, reducing individual and corporate taxes, and minimizing social services. In Meyer's book they are called donors of this new ideology [Mayer J. Dark money. The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. - New York, 2016].
J. Blundell, Fisher and The road to serfdom // Hayek F.A. The road to serfdom. - London, 2001]. He did not refute it, but said that he did not remember it. This meeting took place immediately after the war. Hayek spent it in Cambridge and then moved to the London School of Economics. Fisher trained pilots in shooting in different parts of England, and then ended up in London in the structure that later became the Department of Defense. So they started working ten minutes apart.
Continuation in the next article!
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