All-out assault on capitalism smacks of ignorance

Business books:This left-wing rant reveals its author to have no basic knowledge of economics, writes Chris Johns

Capitalism is in deep, deep trouble. In fact, it is about to fail. About this, and much else besides, the author is unequivocal. But this book is about a lot more than the mere failure of much of the western world: it represents a shining light to all those authors out there who want to learn how to turn nouns into verbs.

There is one idea in the book: consumer capitalism "infantilizes" all of us. Advertising is destroying our adult selves. Everything that we do is childish and, therefore, bad.

I wish I had an easy method for counting the number of times the word "infantilize" is used. It must run into the thousands. What turns us into corrupt children? Markets. Barber detests free markets with a vengeance. He comes close to saying that anything provided by the private sector is worthless; everything the public sector does, in contrast, cannot be praised enough.

The intrinsic worth of public sector goods and services is so obvious that it does not need to be proved or demonstrated.

We might suspect that, with such opinions, the author is simply an old-fashioned socialist engaging in a familiar rant against the evils of capitalism. But we would be wrong. Barber is far too postmodern to fall into that trap.

Despite abundant use of neo-Marxist jargon, we find a single-sentence admission buried towards the end of the book that admits the obvious failure of communism. But this is getting ahead of the story.

The author is an intellectual snob. He knows - boy, does he know - what we all need. And this is to be distinguished from what we all want. Global corporations determine our wants. These firms are engaged in an increasingly desperate race to force us to consume ever-greater quantities of goods and services. The world is chronically oversupplied with things that none of us could possibly need.

And Barber knows what we need. Or at least I think he does - he never tells us what basic human needs are. But I think I can guess.

Barber hates most things about our economic system. His self-loathing is typical of many left-wing intellectuals in the US and Europe. We have plenty of them in this country (one or two of them write for this newspaper). None of them have ever been contaminated by exposure to the basic principles of economics.

The author's rants against the evils of privatisation in particular, and aspects of market failure in general, are echoed by many liberal writers today. Ranting is easy: suggesting an alternative and superior method of economic organisation has defied much better minds than that of Barber.

Inequality and poverty have only recently been invented and are the outcome of market forces. At least that is what he appears to think. The author, like all economic illiterates, has no knowledge of history. What, I wonder, does he make of the simple fact that in the last decade, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in China and India thanks to the introduction of market reforms?

Not only does he know nothing of economic history, he manages to invent a wholly fictitious past: "Historically, capitalism began as a system in which specific goods and services, generic in character and reflecting real needs in a free market place, were produced and sold."

There is nothing about this sentence that is either true or makes sense. Sadly, there are many such sentences in this book.

Reading it I was reminded of a recent literary hoax. Alan Sokal threw some words together that hit all the right buttons for publishers of postmodern drivel.

The text, by design, made no sense, but sounded like something written by Derrida. And got published.

We are not surprised to learn that the two greatest evils facing the world today are shopping and television. The author makes a reasonable fist of describing the evils of mindless materialism. But what would he have us do instead?

A nodding acquaintance with history suggests that man's natural condition is war: not for nothing did Thomas Hobbes once describe life as nasty, brutish and short. I would say that we have made some progress since then. Sure, our kids spend too much time watching TV. But that is a whole lot better than the experience of previous generations.

I am a member of the first generation of Brits who have not had to join the army. Maybe I should be lounging around wearing sandals and quoting Proust, but why are my habits so obviously inferior to hairy dilettantes fond of knitting their own yoghurt?

There is a logical flaw at the heart of Barber's thesis. Shopping, he says, is at the root of all evil.

Now, 50 per cent of the world's population is happy to spend a few quid on beer, sex and football, but would rather go to the dentist than go shopping. How, I wonder, does the author explain that?

Chris Johns is head of global research and equity portfolio management at Bank of Ireland Asset Management

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

By Benjamin R Barber

W W Norton - £16.99