The New York Review of Books - USA (2020-09-24)

September 24, 2020 73

late 1960s, wrote, “Everyone but an
economist knows without asking why
money shouldn’t buy some things.”
The Yale economist James Tobin wrote
tongue in cheek, “Any good second-
year graduate student in economics
could write a short examination paper
proving that voluntary transactions in
votes would increase the welfare of the
sellers as well as the buyers.”
The Protestant Reformation was
partly a protest against the sale of ec-
clesiastical offices (the sin of simony)
and the marketing of indulgences,
meaning entry into heaven. Human be-
ings were once commodities, as slaves.
Prostitution, both literal and meta-
phoric, means the sale of something
that in principle is not supposed to

be bought and sold. Michael Walzer’s

classic Spheres of Justice^6 points to

the necessity of what he calls “blocked

exchanges.”

Milanovic doesn’t quite locate his

discussion in this broader debate; he ob-

serves the collateral damage to citizen-

ship caused by market economies but

concludes that the purely economic im-

peratives of greater global income con-

vergence should take priority. At points,

Milanovic’s professional training as an

economist seems to be dueling with

his sensibilities as a liberal humanist.

He notes in passing that both low- wage

trade and labor migration are culturally

and politically disruptive, and that there

is a tension “between the welfare state,

access to which is based on citizenship,

and the free movement of labor.”

He also acknowledges the tendency of

globalization to intensify what he aptly

terms hypercommercialization and to

promote corruption. He laments the ex-

cess commercialization of sport at the

expense of norms of fair play; the com-

modification of many household activ-

ities such as cooking, eating, play, and

child- rearing; as well as the gig econ-

omy and what he calls the “outsourcing

morality,” via tax havens and regula-

tory evasions. One of his subsections

is titled “The Inevitable Amorality of

Hypercommercialized Capitalism.”

Yet in a remarkable lapse, Milanovic

flatly declares, “We lack any viable

alternative to hypercommercialized

capitalism. The alternatives the world

has tried have proved worse—some

of them much worse.” This assertion

misses the history of Western social

democracy. The political weakening of

the social democratic model is another

casualty of globalization, but for nearly

half a century social democracy was

precisely an attractive “viable alterna-

tive” to the hypercommercialism that

Milanovic decries. The postwar era saw

record growth in the West as well as in-

creasing equality, one of the few times

in world history that a basically capital-

ist economy squared that circle. Social

democracy ceased to be politically via-

ble only because capitalists reclaimed

power that had been temporarily

AND




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ALISON ROSSITER: SUBSTANCE OF DENSITY 1918 –1948
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Jane Wilson

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Jacqueline Schiffman,

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oil on masonite, 1961.

Estimate $50,000 to $80,000.



AND




A collection of notable art and

exhibitions from around the world.

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