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Bernard Harcourt, The Illusion of Free Markets
February 8, 2011 - 1:01pm -- jim
America claims to have the most free markets in the world. It also operates a prison-industrial complex on a scale found nowhere else. According to Bernard E. Harcourt, author of the new book, "The Illusion of Free Markets," these two facts have the same ideological origin. Find out how the cult of free markets and the cult of law-and-order and prisons - the most distinctive features of American society today - mutually reinforce each other.
What: A Talk on the Illusion of Free Markets
Who: Bernard E. Harcourt
When: Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 3 pm
Where: Revolution Books, 146 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001, (212) 691-1190
Bernard E. Harcourt is Chair of the Political Science Department and Julius Kreeger Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and author of several other books, including "Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing" (Harvard 2001), "Language of the Gun" (Chicago 2005), and "Against Prediction: Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age" (Chicago 2007).
“Bernard Harcourt’s magisterial book makes a strong and persuasive case for the tight connection of the invisible hand of neoliberal ‘free’ markets and the iron fist of carceral policies. His erudite blend of history, political thought and economic theory lays bare the dark side of neoliberal penality. We ignore his powerful democratic voice and view at our own peril!” — Cornel West
It is widely believed today that the free market is the best mechanism ever invented to efficiently allocate resources in society. Just as fundamental is the belief that government has a legitimate and competent role in policing and punishing. The result, in this country, has been an incendiary combination of laissez-faire economics and mass incarceration. Today, the United States incarcerates over one percent of its adult population, the highest number and rate in the world. In this book, Bernard Harcourt traces the birth of the idea of natural orderliness in economic thought and its gradual evolution into today’s myth of the free market, and explores how it has produced the largest government-run penal sphere on the globe.
America claims to have the most free markets in the world. It also operates a prison-industrial complex on a scale found nowhere else. According to Bernard E. Harcourt, author of the new book, "The Illusion of Free Markets," these two facts have the same ideological origin. Find out how the cult of free markets and the cult of law-and-order and prisons - the most distinctive features of American society today - mutually reinforce each other.
What: A Talk on the Illusion of Free Markets Who: Bernard E. Harcourt When: Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 3 pm Where: Revolution Books, 146 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001, (212) 691-1190
Bernard E. Harcourt is Chair of the Political Science Department and Julius Kreeger Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and author of several other books, including "Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing" (Harvard 2001), "Language of the Gun" (Chicago 2005), and "Against Prediction: Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age" (Chicago 2007).
“Bernard Harcourt’s magisterial book makes a strong and persuasive case for the tight connection of the invisible hand of neoliberal ‘free’ markets and the iron fist of carceral policies. His erudite blend of history, political thought and economic theory lays bare the dark side of neoliberal penality. We ignore his powerful democratic voice and view at our own peril!” — Cornel West
It is widely believed today that the free market is the best mechanism ever invented to efficiently allocate resources in society. Just as fundamental is the belief that government has a legitimate and competent role in policing and punishing. The result, in this country, has been an incendiary combination of laissez-faire economics and mass incarceration. Today, the United States incarcerates over one percent of its adult population, the highest number and rate in the world. In this book, Bernard Harcourt traces the birth of the idea of natural orderliness in economic thought and its gradual evolution into today’s myth of the free market, and explores how it has produced the largest government-run penal sphere on the globe.