It's hard to say for sure, but reading Summers' concluding section does make it seem to me he _was_ being ironic and provocative, but in a most cynical way. The memo slyly acknowledges the inherently evil logic of liberalization but does so in order to ask, in effect, "how far can we go? how much can we get away with?" He seems to clearly recognize that the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable is rhetorical, not logical. I would compare this memo with the Javier Solana statement on NATO's "moral responsibility". If you haven't read that, please do [PEN-L:6375]. It is a statement that has no intention of being believed. Every claim in the argument is so unqualified, so unambiguous and so self-righteous as to call attention to the impossibility of such a absolute state of moral certitude. It is a self-affirmation entirely devoid of self-reflection. It is a rhetoric of terror, not of morality. There is a direct line from Summers' irony to Solana's terrorism. That line passes through Clinton's sexual conduct and grand jury testimony and through Littleton, Colorado. It is a line of strategic, distorted communications; of technical rationality unmediated by ethical reflection. This is the Habermasian socio-cultural motivation crisis whipped into a frenzy. >World Bank chief economist Lawrence Summers, who now claims he was being >ironic and provocative. >He concluded this >section by saying that disagreement with this logic suggests the belief >that things like "intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, >social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc. could be turned around >and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for >liberalization." Exactly; as they should be. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
