Customer Reviews

Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism

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So far, Lindsey's "Against the Dead Hand" may be the best book I have read about globalization. Lindsey does not beat around the bush--he is clearly a classical liberal who favors market forces. One would not expect anything less from a senior researcher at the Cato Institute. But the fact that he is a researcher clearly shows. The book has far more of a research base than any other text I have read on this subject. There is certainly more than mere anecdotal evidence in each chapter. But at the same, it is not a boring research text. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

Lindsey takes an extremely broad perspective and looks at globalization within a 150 year window. From this perspective, Lindsey argues that globalization is not a recent phenomenon. Instead, he claims that we are only beginning to approach the levels of global trade that existed prior to World War I. Achieving that same level of globalization is, however, quite a struggle. The "dead hand" of centralized, collectivist, and protectionist government/philosophy still exerts considerable force on the politics and policies of today. Lindsey is convinced that collectivist government, in multiple forms, has failed and that a return to market-oriented practices is really the only viable choice remaining. Overall, I find Lindsey's arguments persuasive, researched, and sensical. He makes a strong case.

On the other hand, I had great difficulty with the final two chapters of this book. In these chapters Lindsey discusses the social safety net and labor. I was both disappointed and troubled by Lindsey's discussion. His notion of a social safety net, based on Chapter Ten, seems to be providing retirement funds for those who work all their life. While I agree that retirment is important (I work too), Lindsey simply ignores and avoids the many people and issues that a social safety net should address. I was left asking about children who are ignored by their parents. What about the homeless? What about our vets? I could not help think of my recent experiences with poverty in Argentina or war-torn cities like Sarajevo. It is impossible to say what Lindsey would think about these concerns because he simply ignores them. I was left with the impression that he "simply does not get it." He risks presenting market-forces as a cure-all, which it clearly is not.

This book would have been five stars, in my view, had Lindsey eliminated Chapters Ten and Eleven. The rest of the book is superb, well thought out, and well written. I highly recommend this book. I find that it makes a nice complement to Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree." The contrasts are many and at times explicit. Lindsey takes a clear stance and, regardless of whether or not you agree, I think most reasonable readers will have to admit he has made his case well.

I am glad I read this book.

Books on "globalization" are common these days, but most don't contribute much to one's understanding of the overall phenomenon. Critics present laundry lists of problems that still exist in the world and then fault globalization either for causing them or for not solving them, ignoring the obvious gains achieved in recent decades. Proponents tell us where globalization is changing life for the better, but often fail to deal with the uneven nature of progress in the world. Why do some places flourish and some falter? Few books offer a complete and convincing picture of what globalization is, where it comes from, and what its limitations are. Against the Dead Hand does all of those things, and in an extremely readable format. It weaves history, economics, and politics together with interesting first-hand reporting from several of the world's economic quagmires. A thoughtful analysis that's suitable for both layman and academic alike.

One of this book's great virtues is its broad sense of historical perspective. Lindsey describes the current trend of globalization not simply as an affirmative triumph of market ideology, but as an outgrowth of the collapse of the great collectivist ideologies of the past century: communism, fascism, and even FDR-style managed capitalism. In other words, free markets advanced primarily because the state receded -- not because political leaders had converted to some capitalist orthodoxy.

Yet the collapse of state economic controls was far from total. Even though faith in central planning and top-down economic control has waned in recent years, the "dead hand" of the collectivist past -- the "accumulated institutions, mindsets, and vested interests of state-dominated economic development" -- still exerts a powerful influence on world affairs. Burdened as it is by the dead hand of the state, Lindsey shows how globalization is neither as widespread as its critics claim nor as firmly entrenched as its champions believe.

The book concludes with a discussion of the events of 9/11 that draws connections between the current terrorist threat and the broader themes explored in the book. Specifically, Lindsey explores the ideological camaraderie evidenced by the more radical elements of the anti-globalization movement -- remnants of what he terms the "Industrial Counterrevolution" -- and the anti-modernist thought embodied in radical Islam. He convincingly argues that while many of globalization's critics sell themselves as friends of the poor, they are in fact enemies of prosperity. Feeling insecure and left behind by the modern world, they seek to stop it -- a goal they must not be allowed to achieve.

Whether you're a fan of free markets or not, this book is worth your time. It's not a sugar-coated view of globalization, nor does it reject the critical role that governments have to play as the world grows closer together. It is, rather, an unflinchingly clear description of where we've been on the road to modernity and the perils that yet lie before us. I highly recommend it.

The popular perception of globalization portrays political leaders fighting against corporations and unfettered financial markets being manipulated by greedy speculators using lightening fast electrified capital. According to Brink Lindsey, author of "Against the Dead Hand - The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism", this formulation has the main direction of causation backwards.

The failures of central planning have led governments groping for market reforms as a pragmatic response to the failures of big government.

The trend toward what we now refer to as "globalization" was interrupted during the nineteenth century by what the author calls the "Industrial Counterrevolution". World leaders, impressed by the productivity and efficiency of big business, began to apply the same techniques as those used in business. Merged with these techniques were different theories of collectivism which arose as a result of the apparent chaos of the marketplace.

Though the U.S. never plunged headlong into state control, political leaders of both parties were swept up by its own version of the Industrial Counterrevolution, the Progressive movement.

We now have over a century of experimentation in various social and economic policies in several countries. The evidence shows free market principles produce better results, but market proponents should not confuse a change in trend with victory in the battle of ideas. Those general principles - competition, choice, limited government, private property, sound currency, free trade - are now seeping deeper into more areas of society that had been impervious to them. The change could be seen in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. recently when the Court took up the constitutionality of school vouchers. On one side were minority parents demanding educational choice who were pitted against public school teachers protecting the status quo.

Educational choice is one reminder that market proponents do not have a free ride. Laments Lindsey: "The defunct ideas of centralized control exert a waning but still-formidable influence on the shape of the world economy... The invisible hand of markets may be on the rise, but the dead hand of the old collectivist dream still exerts a powerful influence."

A belief in market economics is not simply the hope for the absence of government. Among government's most important responsibilities is maintenance of a legal order that protects property and enforces contracts to exchange that property.
Mr. Lindsey's entry is an easy reading but serious antidote to the double dose of hype from pro-globalization cheerleaders and anti-globalization protesters. I recommend it.

This is a terrific book. So much of what has been written about globalization so far has been either dry or full of hyperbole (both for and against it). "Against the Dead Hand" explains the world as it really is in a way that was a pleasure to read. The book combines history, first-person reporting, and clear analysis. Lindsey begins by telling the story of the first round of globalization that ended with World War I. In many important ways the world was more globalized a hundred years ago than it is even today, but the whole system fell apart in the face of anti-market ideologies and rising nationalism. The warning I took from this section is that there is nothing inevitable about globalization today. It can all fall apart again, plunging us back into the same kind of political and economic darkness that plagued the world for decades after 1914. Lindsey explains convincingly that globalization has returned not because of some grand vision of free-market thinkers but because socilaism proved to be such a failure. He points out that some of the great "reformers" in recent years have been communists and socialists themselves. The most important contribution of the book, in my view, is to remind us of how far we still are from a world were free markets and free trade predominate. The "dead hand" of the old collectivist systems still dominates economic life in most countries. Countries such as Argentina are still struggling against runaway government spending and corrupt legal and political systems. In one of my favorite passages, Lindsey describes a visit he made to a village in India where the villagers were assembling their own cars from kits. Import duties and regulations make it cheaper in India to build your own car! If you want to understand what is going on in the world today, why some nations are making progress and why others seem to stumble from one crisis to the next, "Against the Dead Hand" provides compelling answers. This book is realistic but in the end hopeful that we are headed to a better place. I highly recommend it!

just the kind of book i like--one that gives me an enormous wealth of historical information while explaining, in very readable terms, the economic forces that were and are in conflict with one another. my only criticism is that the book does not take social and psychological factors into enough account in describing the reasons for the various economic decisions. perhaps this excellent book should not take on such a role, but the reader ought to be cognizant of the other, non-economic reasons that play a major role in moving world leaders towards their economic policies. nevertheless, i strongly and highly recommend this superb book.

This book is absolutely outstanding, in two ways. First, it does a wonderful job combining historical fact with a compelling overall theme. It is both fun and fascinating to read. Second, it deals clearly and compellingly with what is perhaps the most important historical and ethical theme of the last few centuries and probably the next, the struggle between liberalism and collectivism. If that sounds off-putting, rest assured, the author does not come across as dogmatic or extremist, but as a thoughtful and humane observer of the progress of humanity. Regardless of your politics, this book will inform you and make you think. It will help you clarify your own beliefs and bolster them with historical facts, and at the same time give you a better appreciation for the beliefs of your philosophical opponents.
My only criticism is that in focusing on the power of ideas, Lindsey gives insufficient attention to self-interest and corruption, but maybe that will be the subject of another book. Meanwhile, read this and think!

"Government doesn't solve problems; government IS the problem!" With this characteristically succint rhetorical flourish Ronald Reagan crystallized the socio-econonmic debate which has defined the modern world. The struggle between the advocates of centralized economic control and those of market fundamentalism has underpinned every geo-political event since the 19th century. Recently, with the fall of Soviet Communism and the discrediting of socialist regimes worldwide, the concensus has built that the march of free markets is both inevitable and desirable. But Brink Lindsey, in this remarkably thoughtful and shaded analysis of globalization and its discontents, argues effectively that the struggle continues; the seductive inertia of central planning dies very hard in a culturally and economically disparate world.

Most surprisingly Lindsey reveals himself to be anything but an idealogue. Though his thinking emerges from the premise that competition and free markets provide the best promise for growing worldwide prosperity and general human advancement(he is, after all, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute), "Against the Dead Hand" argues forcefully for a strong government role in economic affairs. While paying all due respect to the venerable Mr. Reagan and other free-market icons, he offers the view that government itself is not the problem. Specifically, government interference in the functioning of capital markets is the problem.

Societies find trouble, Lindsey argues with forceful anecdotal evidence, when governments over-regulate, over-tax, impose trade sanctions like import quotas and subisidies, institute price controls, nationalize industries, any activity which distorts the market price mechanism. In one of the book's most interesting early chapters he discusses how decisions are made in human interaction, and how those decisions are signalled throughout large populations. In short, he makes a compelling case that the market mechanism works best in situations in which economic knowledge is limited. In these cases the sum of all economic decisions will provide optimum solutions. In situations where the production mechanisms and outcomes are known, centralized planning works best.

The world we need to strive for, according to Lindsey, is one in which free markets can flourish in an environment in which civil and property rights are fiercely protected by a democratic government. Government's role is no more and no less than to provide the ground rules for playing the free market game. But without such a framework, the game can't be played with any economic relevance.

In the course of his analysis Lindsey draws on empirical evidence spanning the past two centuries, and looks in on every corner of the globe. He exmamines economic development (and regression) in the former communist bloc, the Asian tigers, Latin America, and of course that imperfect ideal, the United States. He never misses an opportunity to pound the table for free trade, and argues that the dead hand of government (i.e., protectionism) is the very thing impeding the economic progress of the developing nations anti-globalists claim to be protecting.

There's one area of murkiness, and perhaps it's only because it veers away from the always involving story of evolving world economic experience. In his discussion of where the ideas of market fundamentalism and centralization emerged from, he sometimes grabs conclusions out of the air. When times are unstable, he says, people harken back to the past, and hence when industrialisation happened, society collectively decided to find safety in a new form of feudalism (i.e., socialism) Maybe, but it's just conjecture. Didn't events influence things more than collective thinking? Do people really think en masse in defiance of all things practical?

But as a whole the book is a noble attempt to piece together the myriad pieces of the global historical economic puzzle. Lindsey's conclusions on society's fate are tentative but hopeful. And his ideas are a search for the best in humanity.

"Against The Dead Hand" is an amazing read that explains the past, present, and probable future of globalization. It deepened my understanding of globalization by placing the phenomenon in a broader historical perspective. Compared to other books on this subject, "Against The Dead Hand" is much more analytically sophisticated and broader in historical sweep.

Definitely worth the buy for anyone interested in global and economic issues and current events!!

I highly recommend this book. Lindsey achieves what many of his contemporaries have tried, and failed, to do: to write an insightful and unbiased account of the past, present, and future of the global economy that is not only dead-on, but also actually ENTERTAINING. Lindsey expertly weaves the history and philosophy underlying the struggle between collectivism and capitalism with interesting first-person analogies and easily identifiable current events. The result is a must-read book that clearly explains the present state of the global economy and globalization's role therein.

Lindsey's analysis shows us that globalization and the free-market movement is not the culture-destroying, poverty-exploiting Frankenstein monster as portrayed by the anti-trade globalphobes. However, it also isn't, as many pro-market idealists optimistically assert, a new and inevitable force that will effortlessly carry us all to the "Promised Land" of wealth and prosperity. The reality is much less rosy and clear, for as Lindsey deftly demonstrates, the current state of the world's economy is a crazy mixture of new, pro-market reforms and remnants of collectivist policies clinging desperately to a failed past. And when these policies clash, as the economic collapses in Mexico, Asia, and most recently Argentina indicate, the results are anything but nice and neat. The "solution" for these nations and others is not the abolition of free-market policies or the maintenance of the status quo, but rather the slow, careful, and sometimes painful movement away from the failed anti-market past to the proven results of the free market and rule of law.

The world hasn't arrived in the Promised Land, and, really, a lot of it isn't even close.

But at least now we have a good map.

I bought this book to help in my research on a masters thesis...I think it is excellent. The book moves between (overly) scholarly erudition at times to almost poetic prose at others. You will defiantly feel where the action picks up and where it drops off...but it is understandable when you are trying to build a scholarly case on this subject.

Essentially he argues that liberalism (free markets, limited government, and individual rights) lost the battle in the 20th century, but had been on a decline since the late 1800s in some areas. The result was a century of warfare, massacres, and sustained poverty.

The scholarly work and assumptions made in this book are not the work of childish or child like intelligence. It is quite the opposite. Have you ever heard a free market advocate arguing "Look even a child understands it, it must be true!" Never, such are the arguments of communists and socialists. The real childish assumptions come overwhelmingly from the global left. The belief that poverty can be solved simply be re-distributing wealth shows painful ignorance of the economics involved. (though Lindsey is not hostile to "saftey nets"...I don't believe in the free market long run saftey nets will be needed at all...politically I recognize they would be necessary to get anything accomplished, but only if they are made more effecient like a negative tax proposed by Milton Friedman) Further ignorance is demonstrated through their assumptions that free markets exploit. Free markets are based on voluntary transactions, and as a voluntary transaction IT CANNOT BE EXPLOITIVE.

I agree with Lindsey that the leftist assumptions are the results of years of fallacious reasoning...intentionally or unintentionally; they are wrong on almost all accounts. I however find their love for their fellow human and desire to increase the welfare of society to be admirable, their solutions however are the causes to the problems they address. They don't understand history, politics, or economics. And they always blame the market for problems that the market often did not cause by conveniently forgetting or ignoring the government involvement in the creation of said problem (example, the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s...always blamed on free market capitalism when in fact fixed exchange rates, policies of the government not free trade, were a major cause of the crisis).

Current empirical evidence suggests, as Lindsey agrees, that economic freedom is strongly connected to civil and political freedom. That is, the more economically free a country is the more civil and political freedom the citizens enjoy...what we now call democracy is realized.

It is no coincidence that the forces who tried the hardest to suppress economic freedom also killed off vast portions of their populations...these are the Fascist and Communist governments that the Left have confused as polar opposites...they are not, both hate economic freedom and as a result both hate civil and political freedom.

Lindsey goes through great detail to list the conditions in the rise of liberalism and its decline. With the help of Hayek and Friedman he shows how government intervention and anti liberal policies helped bring about WWI, the great depression and WWII. The results of all of these were a belief that markets don't work and governments do. In the end, we live in a world that still fears globalization and free markets...a world that conflates free markets with mercantilism and continues to argue that free markets don't work in fact its their very own policy preferences that continue to cause global problems.

Example: protectionism (tariffs and quotas) protect the wealth of the first world capital owners at the expense of the first world consumers (who pay higher prices) and third world laborers (who have more difficulty finding employment) and third world capital owners (who find difficulty in creating and maintaining an export industry). PROTECTIONISM IS A WEALTH TRANSFER FROM POOR TO RICH, that ironically most leftists seem to accept ignorantly unaware that in no way are workers actually protected. Free trade is the opposite of this. Barriers are removed, jobs are created between both first and third world countries, trade ensues, both sides are lifted up through increasing prosperity and wealth creation.

Free markets are not the end all for the debate in this book. Lindsey recognizes that the forces that destroyed liberalism once before are still at work. Their arguments, assumptions, and ignorance still lives and has the potential to again mobilize a mass movement against liberalism...and ironically for totalitarianism. That being said, the summary of his book is that globalization and free markets are not inevitable nor invinsible.

No hard core leftist will read this book and suddenly be converted. They will likely throw confused fits of frustration and show little ability to counter the arguments found inside. Classic Liberals and those more favorable to the free market will find themselves with a highly compelling argument in this book that will strengthen their own understanding of globalization. Those who find themselves in the center will find a book that challenges many of the major assumptions that most of society accepts...it may leave you wondering exactly how you went through your entire education and were never presented with any of these arguments or facts.

But the sad state of public education is another book altogether... :P