return to top page A TALE OF TWO JACQUES
by
Anton Pinschoff
December 1994
'In the name of free trade, deregulation can quietly disempower citizens'
'Free trade shifts the power over economies and the quality of life further away from ordinary people'
Two hundred years ago, a public dispute took place that set the tone for the whole 'free trade' era. In one corner was the banker to the kings of France, Jacques Necker from Geneva (1732-1804), and opposing him were Baron Turgot, an associate of David Ricardo and Adam Smith. The latter two won the argument...and the EuroHouse that Jacques Delors Built is the tragic result. But The Other Jacques may yet make a comeback.
Jacques Necker maintained that everything manufactured might be traded abroad because man-made and thus of comparable value, but that all primary produce of the soil and of peasant's toil, such as foods, fibres and timber, should where possible only go to local markets or not go to market at all. The reasons are to do with the natural differences in soils and climates being likely to lead to over-specialisation, injustice and starvation.
Poor Jacques was an innocent abroad in those conspiratorial times. The first duty of the State, according to Jacques Necker, was to protect those living within its frontiers from any harm that might befall them, such as extortion, slavery, exile, unfair competition, foreign conquest, from the enemies without and within their stately gates.
It is a grand idea remembered, it would seem, only in times of war. At all other times, the servants of the State...the politicians, the civil servants and the teachers, seem to take the view that the State should only guard the interests of the invisible hand.
Indeed the financial and industrial powers seek to persuade their more accountable brethren that the 'economy of the state' works best when completely devoid of purpose and that the best state is thus the state that takes no responsibility for its citizens visible hands or for the impact upon society of its invisible hand.
Only our poets and our police remain apart from these mind games; the former concerned to protect our right to the enjoyment of celebration and creativity; the latter condemned to condone the irresponsible deployment of power and property. Meanwhile all real decision-making has but one purpose...further obsessive capital growth, to the totalitarian exclusion of any other purpose, such as human life itself.
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