City of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent

361 Pages·2003·1.88 MB·English

by  David Westbrook

City of Gold

City of Gold
An Apology for Global
Capitalism in a Time
of Discontent
David A.Westbrook
Associate Professor of Law
State University of New York
at Buffalo

ROUTLEDGE
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Published in 2004 by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001
www.routledge-ny.com
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
www.routledge.co.uk
Copyright © 2004 by David A.Westbrook
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group.
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be printed or utilized in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Westbrook, David A.
City of gold: an apology for global capitalism in a time of discontent/by David A.
Westbrook.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-94539-9 (hardcover: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-415-94540-2
(pbk.: alk. paper)
1. International economic integration—Political aspects. 2. International economic
integration—Social aspects. 3. Capitalism—Political aspects. 4. Capitalism—Social
aspects. 5. Globalization. 6. Economic development. I. Title.
HF1418.5.W44 2003
337–dc21
2003006596
ISBN 0-203-49380-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-57682-9 (Adobe eReader Format)
Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Part 1: Desire’s Constitution
Chapter I Conception 21
Chapter II Money as Communication 39
Chapter III Finance and the War against Time 57
Chapter IV Urban Renewal 75
Chapter V Governance 97
Part 2: Constitutional Critique
Chapter VI Alienation 117
Chapter VII Inauthenticity 129
Chapter VIII Identity, Tense 151
Part 3: Exhausted Philosophies
Chapter IX The Reformation of Economics 171
Chapter X After Economic Justice 185
Chapter XI The Disenchantment of Liberalism 213
v
vi (cid:127) Contents
Part 4: Toward a Metropolitan Political Economy
Chapter XII True Markets 237
Chapter XIII Orderly Markets 255
Chapter XIV Beyond the Market: Authority and Identity 273
Conclusion: The Possibility of Affection 291
Afterword on Method: Apology, Essay, Myth 303
Notes 307
Index 345
Acknowledgments

I have been lashed to this fish long enough. By way of cutting the line
and starting to make my way home, let me thank some of the many
people who have helped me finish this book. As is customary, I will try
to thank the most prominent, but this list is far from complete, cannot
be complete, and I hope that my sins of omission will be forgiven.
I thank my colleagues and students at the State University of New
York at Buffalo Law School for their patience, interest, and
unobtrusive support. The willingness of the administration, especially
Deans Nils Olsen and Peter Pitegoff, to support such an ambitious
project is quite appreciated (it would have been all too easy to ask for
more law review articles). I thank my students for the opportunity to
teach them much of the substance of this book; my thought has
certainly benefited from the rigors of exposition. Intrusive support has
been welcomed from fellow villagers in East Aurora (“What
chapter?!”) and from friends around the world.
Turning to the messy business of producing a text, Henning
Gutmann took the safety off by introducing himself to me at a
conference where I had been obstreperous, said he liked my comments,
and solicited a proposal for this, a primary work by an obscure author.
Crossing the endless plains of drafting, and even into the tangled
thickets of publishing, Guyora Binder, Barry Boyer, Jim Chen, Mary
Ann Glendon, David Kennedy, Phil Halpern, Tom Headrick, Estelle
Lau, George Marcus, Frank Michelman, Marc Miller, Susan Silbey,
Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Jim Wooten were supportive of me, each in
their own way. Pierre d’Argent, Rosa Lastra, Betty Mensch, and Pierre
Schlag made especially helpful comments, for which I remain grateful.
vii
viii (cid:127) Acknowledgments
I also appreciate the hard and often obscure work done by my research
assistants, Joseph Barker, Stephen Coolbaugh, Lisa Danish, Jonathan
Duncan, Maggie Juliano, and Charles Miller. I have been told that the
real editor was an extinct species, but I found one in Dave McBride,
who read and even reread the text, and did so very well. His objections
were so good they were almost welcome at the time, and are deeply
appreciated now. My secretary (a nobler word than “administrative
assistant”) Barb Kennedy has done a great job of getting this text out,
and perhaps as importantly, has made sure the barn did not burn down
while my attention was so focused. Angela Chnapko, Nikki
Hirschman, and Donna Capato at Routledge have also been very
helpful. The mistakes and limitations that remain in the text are my
responsibility.
As I have already suggested, I cannot properly thank all those who
helped me write this book. I cannot account for, much less clear, what
our commercial society misleadingly calls “debts,” because thought and
influence and expression do not work that way. Suffice it to say that I
have come to realize how many people have helped me over the decades
with their learning, their conversations, and when necessary (it has been
necessary) their indulgence. I have been very well treated, and for that I
am deeply grateful.
That said, let me mention three fortuitous encounters that allowed
me to write this particular philosophy of money and politics after World
War Two. First, the remarkable Brandon Becker (anthropologist,
bureaucrat, securities lawyer extraordinaire, brilliant dinner
companion) helped me develop a structural approach to our financial
markets. Second, my reading of James Buchan’s beautiful yet
problematic book Frozen Desire not only eerily recalled a poem I had
just finished writing, but also seemed to point a way for a contemporary
humanistic sensibility to address what it means to live together in a
world structured by finance. And in my efforts to think and write about
money against the grain of the professional meritocracy, to earn my own
text, I could not ask for a better colleague, reader, or friend than Jack
Schlegel.
A big book perforce feels like something of a summation, and in thus
encapsulating a portion of one’s life, a book can serve as a reminder of
how support and expectation and obligation are intertwined across
generations. My mother taught me to think about internationalism as a
response to war. My father repeatedly has told me that all I have
written, I took from him. This is true enough, but artists steal, and it is
a real act of filial piety that I give him this much attribution. My
brothers believed in me when doubt was more advisable, indeed, kept
Acknowledgments (cid:127) ix
me from doubting myself. Finally, my wife Amy—perhaps I would have
held the disparate strands of my longing together these many years
without her, but quite probably not. However that may be, my life
would not have been the deepening joy (and deepening realization that
it is a joy) that she and our children Thomas, Sophia, and Peter have
made it.