2922196bpmaoa for Rousseau, 'the word finance is a
Q&@
SLAVE'S
WORD' AND
FREEDOM TURNS INTO
A COMMODITY, DEGRADING BUYER
AND SELLER ALIKE, WHEREVER COMMERCE REIGNS?
'Financial systems make venal souls!' Their secret workings
are a 'means of máking pilferers & traitors, & of putting freedom
ànd the public good upon the auction block'?! Countering Voltaire & Montesquieu's
anglophilia, JJR claimed that the political & economic life of globalizing England offered a bogus liberty:
"THE ENGLISH PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE FREE. THEY GREATLY DECEIVE THEMSELVES; they are free only
during the election of members of Parliament! As soon as théy áre elècted, the people are their Slave, as if
nothing!" Presciently critiquing the neo-liberal conflation of free enterprise with freedom, Rousseau claimed
that individual liberty wàs dééply menaced in a society drìven by còmmerce, individual competitiveness
ànd amour propre? Anticipating anti-globalization critics, hé argued that finance money is 'at once
the weakest & most useless for the purpose of driving the political mechanism toward ìts goal,
and the strongest and most reliable for the purpose of déflècting it fròm ìts course'! Liberty
was bèst protècted nòt by prosperity but the General Équality òf àll subjects,
both ùrban ànd rural, and balanced economic growth!
Emphasizing national self-sufficiency,
he also distrusted the great and
opaque forces of international
trade, especially the
trading in
luxuries
...
Asih, man, 80 jaar
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