Block om moralisk ekonomi i US-amerikansk politik

"Market Fundamentalism has ruled the country for close to twenty-five years. It has produced weak economic performance, corporate crime waves, government corruption and a coarsening of the culture. But the amazing thing is that efforts to hold the Market Fundamentalists accountable have gained so little traction. Perhaps the best explanation for this has been offered by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. In "The Lost Art of Democratic Narrative," published by The New Republic in March 2005, Reich argues that differences over economic policy have been fought out in American politics over the past century by appropriating four specific story lines--the rot at the top, the mob at the gates, the triumphant individual and the benevolent community. The party that tells these stories most persuasively wins, he observes, and in recent years the prize has gone to the Republicans.
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It is useful to remember that Franklin Roosevelt developed and mobilized the language of activist government well before Keynes and others came up with an economic justification for it. Roosevelt made the initial break with Market Fundamentalism on his own, and it was only later that the Keynesian revolution in economics legitimized his path. Similarly, it was not the economic research of men like Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman that made the revival of Market Fundamentalism possible. It was the fact that their economic ideas could be easily expressed in familiar and simple moral terms. In both cases, the key to changing the dominant story has not been economic theory but the power of a moral language. "

Fred Block, "A Moral Economy", The Nation 20 mars 2006

- Likheten mellan "moralisk ekonomi" i Blocks text och begreppet "berättelse" i den socialdemokratiska debatten i Sverige idag (t ex: Daniel Suhonen, Fokus) är tydlig. Petter Nilsson på Dagens Konflikt kritiserar "berättelse"-diskussionen här, men jag vill nog säga att på sitt syfte och på sin nivå (vinna val osv - viktigt) är "berättelsernas kamp" ändå väldigt viktigt.