Argentina is essentially the case of neoliberalism renaissance after 2008 debacle. So this is
about strange non-death of neoliberalism after 2008. This is not traditional right wing regime
(which usually isolationalist for smaller countries and suspicious of the USA and international
financial capital)
Clearly the pendulum has swung to the right in the past few years. Numerous questions arise.
What kind of right? How far right? How did they gain power? What is their appeal? How
sustainable are the right wing regimes? Who are their international allies and adversaries?
Having taken power, how have the rightist regimes performed and by what criteria is success or
failure measured?
While the left has been in retreat, they still retain power in some states. Numerous
questions arise. What is the nature of the left today? Why have some regimes continued while
others have declined or been vanquished? Can the left recover its influence and under what
conditions and with what programmatic appeal.
We will proceed by discussing the character and policies of the right and left and their
direction. We will conclude by analyzing the dynamics of right and left policies, alignments
and future perspectives.
Right-Radicalism: The Face of Power
The right wing regimes are driven by intent to implement structural changes: they look to
reordering the nature of the state, economic and social relations and international political
and economic alignments.
Radical right regimes rule in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay,
Guatemala, Honduras and Chile.
In several countries extreme right regimes have made abrupt changes, while in others they
build on incremental changes constituted over time.
The changes in Argentina and Brazil represent examples of extreme regressive transformations
directed at reversing income distribution, property relations, international alignments and
military strategies. The goal is to redistribute income upwardly, to re-concentrate wealth,
property-ownership upward and externally and to subscribe to imperial doctrine. These
pluto-populist regimes are run by rulers, who openly speak to and for very powerful domestic
and overseas investors and are generous in their distribution of subsidies and state resources
– a kind of ' populism for the plutocrats' .
The rise and consolidation of extremist right regimes in Argentina and Brazil are based on
several decisive interventions, combining elections and violence, purges and co-optation, mass
media propaganda and deep corruption.
Mauricio Macri was backed by the major media, led by the Clarin conglomerate, as well as by
the international financial press (Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.). Wall Street
speculators and Washington's overseas political apparatus subsidized his electoral
campaign.
Macri, his family, cronies and financial accomplices, transferred public resources to
private accounts. Provincial political bosses and their patronage operations joined forces with
the wealthy financial sectors of Buenos Aires to secure votes in the Capital.
Upon his election, the Mauricio Macri regime transferred five billion dollars to the
notorious Wall Street speculator, Paul Singer, signed off on multi-billion dollar, high
interest loans, increased utility fees six fold, privatized oil, gas and public lands and fired
tens of thousands of public sector employees.
Macri organized a political purge and arrest of opposition political leaders, including
former President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner. Several provincial activists were jailed or even
assassinated.
Macri is a success story from the perspective of Wall Street, Washington and the
Porteño business elite. Wages and salaries have declined for Argentine workers. Utility
companies secured their highest profits ever. Bankers doubled interest rate returns. Importers
became millionaires. Agro-business incomes skyrocketed as their taxes were reduced.
From the perspective of Argentina's small and medium business enterprises President Macri's
regime has been a disaster: Many thousands have gone bankrupt because of high utility costs and
harsh competition from cheap Chinese imports. In addition to the drop in wages and salaries,
unemployment and under employment doubled and the rate of extreme poverty tripled
The economy, as a whole, floundered. Debt financing failed to promote growth, productivity,
innovation and exports. Foreign investment experienced easy entry, big profits and fast
departure. The promise of prosperity was narrowly based around a quarter of the population. To
weaken the expected public discontent – the regime shut down independent media voices,
unleashed thugs against critics and co-opted pliable gangster trade union bosses to break
strikes.
Public protests and strikes multiplied but were ignored and repressed. Popular leaders and
activists are stigmatized by the Macri-financed media hacks.
Barring a major social upheaval or economic collapse, Macri will exploit the fragmentation
of the opposition to secure re-election as a model gangster for Wall Street. Macri is prepared
to sign off on US military bases, EU free trade agreements, and greater police liaison with
Israel's sinister secret police, Mossad.
Brazil has followed Macri's far right policies.
Seizing power through a phony impeachment operation, the mega-swindler Michel Temer
immediately proceeded to dismantle the entire public sector, freeze salaries for twenty years,
and extend retirement age for pensioners by five to ten years. Temer led over a thousand
bribe-taking elected officials in the multi-billion dollar pillage of the state oil company and
every major public infrastructure project.
Coup, corruption and contempt were hidden by a system granting Congressional impunity until
independent prosecutors investigated, charged and jailed several dozen politicians, but not
Temer. Despite 95% public disapproval, President Temer remains in power with the total backing
of Wall Street, the Pentagon and Sao Paolo bankers.
Mexico, the long-standing narco-assassin state, continues elect one thieving PRI-PAN
political regime after another. Billions in illicit profits flows to the overseas tax havens of
money laundering bankers, US and Canadian mine owners. Mexican and international manufacturers
extracted double digit profits sent, to overseas accounts and tax havens. Mexico broke its own
miserable record in elite tax avoidance, while extending low wage-tax 'free trade zones'.
Millions of Mexicans have fled across the border to escape predatory gangster capitalism. The
flow of hundreds of millions of dollars of profits by US and Canadian multi-nationals were a
result of the 'unequal exchange' between US capital and Mexican labor, held in place by
Mexico's fraudulent electoral system.
In at least two well-known presidential elections in 1988 and 2006, left of center
candidates, Cuahtemoc Cardenas and Manuel Lopez Obrador, won with healthy margins of victory,
only to have their victories stolen by fraudulent vote counts.
Peru's rightist mining regimes, alternated between the overtly bloody Fujimori dictatorship
and corrupt electoral regimes. What is consistent in Peruvian politics is the handover of
mineral resources to foreign capital, pervasive corruption and the brutal exploitation of
natural resources by US and Canadian mining and drilling corporations in regions inhabited by
Indian communities.
The extreme right ousted elected left-of-center governments, including President Fernando
Lugo in Paraguay (2008-2012) and Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2006-2009), with the active support
and approval of the US State Department. Narco-presidents now wield power by means of
repression, including violence against popular movements and the killing of scores of peasant
and urban activists. This year, a grossly rigged election in Honduras ensured the continuity of
narco-regimes and US military bases.
The spread of the extreme right from Central America and Mexico to the Southern Cone
provides the groundwork for the re-assertion of US centered military alliances and regional
trade pacts.
The rise of the extreme right ensures the most lucrative privatizations and the highest
rates of return on overseas bank loans. The far right is quick to crack down on popular dissent
and electoral challenges with violence. At most the far right allows a few rotating elites with
nationalist pretensions to provide a façade of electoral democracy.
The Shift from the Center-Left to the Center-Right
The political swings to the far right have had profound ripple effects – as nominal
center-left regimes have swung to the center-right.
Two regimes have moved decisively from the center-left to the center-right: Uruguay under
Tabare Vazquez of the 'Broad Front' and Ecuador with the recent election of Lenin Moreno of
PAIS Alliance. In both cases the groundwork was established via accommodations with oligarchs
of the traditional right parties. The previous center-left regimes of Ecuadorean President
Rafael Correa and Uruguayan President Jose Mujica succeeded in pushing for public investments
and social reforms. They combined their leftist rhetoric while capitalizing on the global high
prices and high demand for agro-mineral exports to finance their reforms. With the decline in
world prices and the public exposure of corruption, the newly elected center-left parties
nominated and elected center –right candidates who turned anti-corruption campaigns into
vehicles for embracing neoliberal economic policies. The center-right presidents rejected
economic nationalism, encouraged large scale foreign investment and implemented fiscal
austerity programs appealing to the upper middle class and ruling class.
The center-right regimes marginalized the leftist sectors of their parties. In the case of
Ecuador, they split the party, with the newly elected president realigning international
policies away from the left (Bolivia, Venezuela) and toward the US and the far right–
while shedding the legacy of their predecessor in terms of popular social programs.
With the decline in export prices the center-right regimes offered generous subsidies to
foreign investors in agriculture and forestry in Uruguay, and mine owners and exporters in
Ecuador.
The newly converted center-right regimes joined with their established counterparts in Chile
and joined the Trans Pacific Partnership with Asian nations, the EU and the US.
The center-right sought to manipulate the social rhetoric of the previous center-left
regimes in order to retain popular voters while securing support from the business elite.
The Left Moves to the Center Left
Bolivia, under Evo Morales, has demonstrated an exceptional capacity for sustaining growth,
securing re-election and neutralizing the opposition by combining a radical left foreign policy
with a moderate, mixed public-private export economy. While Bolivia condemns US imperialism,
major oil, gas, metals and lithium multi-nationals have invested heavily in Bolivia. Evo
Morales has moderated his ideological posture shifting from revolutionary socialism to a local
version of liberal democratic cultural politics.
Evo Morales' embrace of a mixed economy has neutralized any overt hostility from the US and
the new far-right regimes in the region
Though remaining politically independent, Bolivia has integrated its exports with the far
right neoliberal regimes in the region. President Evo Morales's moderate economic policies,
diversity of mineral exports, fiscal responsibility, incremental social reforms, and support
from well-organized social movements has led to political stability and social continuity
despite the volatility of commodity prices.
Venezuela's left regimes under President Hugo Chavez and Maduro have followed a divergent
course with harsh consequences. Totally dependent on extraordinary global oil prices, Venezuela
proceeded to finance generous welfare programs at home and abroad. Under President Chavez
leadership, Venezuela adopted a consequential anti-imperialist policy successfully opposing a
US centered free trade agreement (LAFTA) and launching an anti-imperialist alternative, the
Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA).
Advancing social welfare and financing overseas allies without diversifying the economy and
markets and increasing production was predicated on continuous high returns on a single
volatile export – oil.
Unlike Bolivia under President Evo Morales, who built his power with the support of an
organized, class conscious and disciplined mass base, Venezuela counted on an amorphous
electoral alliance, which included slum dwellers, defectors from the corrupt traditional
parties (across the spectrum) and opportunists intent on grabbing office and perks. Political
education was reduced to mouthing slogans, cheering the President and distributing consumer
goods.
Venezuelan technocrats and political loyalists occupied highly lucrative positions,
especially in the petroleum sector and were not held to account by workers' councils or
competent state auditors. Corruption was rampant and billions of dollars of oil wealth was
stolen. This pillage was tolerated because of the huge influx of petro-dollars due to historic
high prices and high demand. This led to a bizarre situation where the regime spoke of
socialism and funded massive social programs, while the major banks, food distributers,
importers and transportation operators were controlled by hostile private oligarchs who
pocketed enormous profits while manufacturing shortages and promoting inflation. Despite the
problems, the Venezuelan voters gave the regime a series of electoral victories over the US
proxies and oligarch politicians. This tended to create overconfidence in the regime that the
Bolivarian socialist model was irrevocable.
The precipitous drop of oil prices, global demand, and export earnings led to the decline of
imports and consumption. Unlike Bolivia, foreign reserves declined, the rampant theft of
billions was belatedly uncovered and the US-backed rightwing opposition returned to violent
'direct action' and sabotage while hoarding essential food, consumer goods and medicine.
Shortages led to widespread black marketeering. Public sector corruption and hostile opposition
control of the private banking, retail and industrial sectors, backed by the US, paralyzed the
economy. The economy has been in a free-fall and electoral support has eroded. Despite the
regime's severe problems, the majority of low income voters correctly understood that their
chances of surviving under the US-backed oligarchic opposition would be worse and the embattled
left continued to win gubernatorial and municipal elections up through 2017.
Venezuela's economic vulnerability and negative growth rate led to increased indebtedness.
The opposition of the extreme right regimes in Latin America and Washington's economic
sanctions has intensified food shortages and increased unemployment.
In contrast, Bolivia effectively defeated US-elite coup plots between 2008-10. The Santa
Cruz-based oligarchs faced the clear choice of either sharing profits and social stability by
signing off on social pacts (workers/peasants, capital and state) with the Morales government
or facing an alliance of the government and the militant labor movement prepared to expropriate
their holdings. The elites chose economic collaboration while pursuing low intensity electoral
opposition.
Conclusion
Left opposition is in retreat from state power. Opposition to the extreme right is likely to
grow, given the harsh, uncompromising assault on income, pensions, the rise in the cost of
living, severe reductions in social programs and attacks on private and public sector
employment. The extreme right has several options, none of which offer any concessions to the
left. They have chosen to heighten police state measures (the Macri solution); they attempt to
fragment the opposition by negotiating with the opportunist trade union and political party
bosses; and they reshuffle degraded rulers with new faces to continue policies (the Brazilian
solution).
The formerly revolutionary left parties, movements and leaders have evolved toward electoral
politics, protests and job action. So far they do not represent an effective political option
at the national level
The center-left, especially in Brazil and Ecuador, is in a strong position with dynamic
political leaders (Lula DaSilva and Correa) but face trumped up charges by right-wing
prosecutors who intend to exclude them from running for office. Unless the center-left
reformers engage in prolonged large-scale mass activity, the far right will effectively
undermine their political recovery.
The US imperial state has temporarily regained proxy regimes, military allies and economic
resources and markets. China and the European Union profit from optimal economic conditions
offered by the far right regimes. The US military program has effectively neutralized the
radical opposition in Colombia, and the Trump regime has intensified and imposed new sanctions
on Venezuela and Cuba.
The Trump regimes 'triumphalist' celebration is premature – no decisive strategic
victory has taken place, despite important short term advances in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
However large outflows of profits, major transfers of ownership to foreign investors, favorable
tax rates, low tariff and trade policies have yet to generate new productive facilities,
sustainable growth and to ensure economic fundamentals. Maximizing profits and ignoring
investments in productivity and innovation to promote domestic markets and demand has
bankrupted tens of thousands of medium and small local commercial and manufacturing firms. This
has led to rising chronic unemployment and underemployment. Marginalization and social
polarization without political leadership is growing. Such conditions led to 'spontaneous'
uprisings in Argentina 2001, Ecuador 2000 and Bolivia 2005.
The far right in power may not evoke a rebellion of the far left but its policies can
certainly undermine the stability and continuity of the current regimes. At a minimum, it can
lead to some version of the center left and restoration of the welfare and employment regimes
now in tatters.
In the meantime the far right will press ahead with their perverse agenda combining deep
reversals of social welfare, the degradation of national sovereignty and economic stagnation
with a formidable profit maximizing performance.
I think this author is on the wrong site. None of those countries have "radical right"
governments. Right wing radicals believe in social hierarchy regardless of wealth
distribution.
In contrast, Bolivia effectively defeated US-elite coup plots between 2008-10. The Santa
Cruz-based oligarchs faced the clear choice of either sharing profits and social stability
by signing off on social pacts (workers/peasants, capital and state) with the Morales
government or facing an alliance of the government and the militant labor movement prepared
to expropriate their holdings. The elites chose economic collaboration while pursuing low
intensity electoral opposition.
This is an intelligent form of Bolivia First, looking for good relations with
International Capital, but putting the wellbeing of all Bolivians first.
And interestingly
it works.
According to a report by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in
Washington, "Bolivia has grown much faster over the last eight years than in any period
over the past three and a half decades." The benefits of such growth have been felt by the
Bolivian people: under Morales, poverty has declined by 25% and extreme poverty has
declined by 43%; social spending has increased by more than 45%; the real minimum wage has
increased by 87.7%; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Economic Commission on Latin America
and the Caribbean has praised Bolivia for being "one of the few countries that has reduced
inequality". In this respect, the re-election of Morales is really very simple: people like
to be economically secure – so if you reduce poverty, they'll probably vote for
you.
Turns out the difference between Bolivia and Venezuela has nothing to do with abstract
ideological labels, and everything to do with fiscal prudence.
I know, I know, fiscal prudence sounds deadly dull, but it makes an enormous difference in
real people's lives. While Venezuela's reckless socialists were impoverishing the country's
once thriving middle class, Bolivia's socialists were creating an entirely new indigenous
middle class, even spawning a whole new style of architecture along with it. Why? Because
newly affluent Bolivians can afford it: Per capita GDP more than tripled from just $1,000 a
year to over $3,200 over a decade. At the same time, new government social programs
designed to help older people, mothers and other at-risk groups saw to major improvements
in social indicators. To take just one, consider this: Thirty-two percent of Bolivians were
chronically malnourished in 2003. By 2012, just 18 percent were.
"... Cohen, who has been quite vocal against the Russophobic witch hunt gripping the nation , believes that this falsified 35 page report is part of an "endgame" to mortally wound Trump before he even sets foot in the White House, by grasping at straws to paint him as a puppet of the Kremlin. The purpose of these overt attempts to cripple Trump, which have relied on ham-handed intelligence reports that, according to Cohen "even the New York Times referred to as lacking any evidence whatsoever," is to stop any kind of détente or cooperation with Russia. ..."
With eyebrows suspiciously furrowed, Tucker Carlson sat down tonight with NYU Professor of Russian Studies and contributor to
The Nation , Stephen Cohen, to discuss the 35 page #FakeNews dossier which has gripped the nation with nightmares of golden showers
and other perverted conduct which was to be used by Russia to keep Trump on a leash.
The left leaning Cohen, who holds a Ph.D. in government and Russian studies from Columbia, taught at Princeton for 30 years before
moving to NYU. He has spent a lifetime deeply immersed in US-Russian relations, having been both a long standing friend of Mikhail
Gorbachev and an advisor to President George H.W. Bush. His wife is also the editor of uber liberal " The Nation," so it's safe to
assume he's not shilling for Trump - and Tucker was right to go in with eyebrows guarded against such a heavyweight.
Cohen, who has been quite vocal against the Russophobic witch hunt
gripping the nation , believes that this
falsified 35 page report is part of an "endgame" to mortally wound Trump before he even sets foot in the White House, by grasping
at straws to paint him as a puppet of the Kremlin. The purpose of these overt attempts to cripple Trump, which have relied on ham-handed
intelligence reports that, according to Cohen "even the New York Times referred to as lacking any evidence whatsoever," is to stop
any kind of détente or cooperation with Russia.
Cohen believes that these dangerous accusations attempting to brand a US President as a puppet of a foreign government constitute
a "grave American national security threat."
Also the concept of "Neoliberal jihad is valid, but it is better to call it Neoliberal World revolution as it was borrowed
from Trotskyism
Notable quotes:
"... Jihad vs. McWorld ..."
"... In the two decades since Barber's book, this conflict has seemed to play out along overtly cultural lines: with Islamic extremism representing jihad, in opposition to Western neoliberalism representing McWorld. ..."
"... Linking Brexit and Trump to global right-wing tribal nationalisms doesn't mean conflating them all, of course. ..."
"... Yet at the same time, we can't understand our 21st century world without a recognition of this widespread phenomenon of global, tribal nationalism. ..."
In his ground-breaking
1995 book Jihad vs. McWorld , political scientist Benjamin Barber posits that the
global conflicts of the early 21st century would be driven by two opposing but equally
undemocratic forces: neoliberal corporate globalization (which he dubbed "McWorld") and
reactionary tribal nationalisms (which he dubbed "Jihad"). Although distinct in many ways, both
of these forces, Barber persuasively argues, succeed by denying the possibilities for
democratic consensus and action, and so both must be opposed by civic engagement and activism
on a broad scale.
In the two decades since Barber's book, this conflict has seemed to play out along overtly
cultural lines: with Islamic extremism representing jihad, in opposition to Western
neoliberalism representing McWorld. Case in pitch-perfect point: the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Center. Yet despite his use of the Arabic word Jihad, Barber is clear that
reactionary tribalism is a worldwide phenomenon -- and in 2016 we're seeing particularly
striking examples of that tribalism in Western nations such as Great Britain and the United
States.
Britain's vote this week in favor of leaving the European Union was driven entirely by such
reactionary tribal nationalism. The far-right United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and its
leader Nigel Farage
led the charge in favor of Leave , as exemplified by a recent UKIP poster featuring a photo
of Syrian refugees with the caption " Breaking point: the EU has failed
us ." Farage and his allies like to point to demographic statistics about how much the UK
has changed in the last few decades , and more
exactly how the nation's white majority has been somewhat shifted over that time by the
arrival
of sizeable African and Asian immigrant communities.
It's impossible not to link the UKIP's emphases on such issues of immigration and demography
to the presidential campaign of the one prominent U.S. politician who is
cheering for the Brexit vote : presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. From his
campaign-launching speech about Mexican immigrant "criminals and rapists" to his proposal to
ban Muslim immigration and his "Make American Great Again" slogan, Trump has relied on
reactionary tribal nationalism at every stage of his campaign, and has received the
enthusiastic endorsement
of white supremacist and far-right organizations as a result. For such American tribal
nationalists, the 1965 Immigration Act is the chief bogeyman, the origin point of continuing
demographic shifts that have placed white America in a precarious position.
The only problem with that narrative is that it's entirely inaccurate. What the 1965 Act did
was reverse a
recent, exclusionary trend in American immigration law and policy, returning the nation to
the more inclusive and welcoming stance it had taken throughout the rest of its history.
Moreover, while the numbers of Americans from Latin American, Asian, and Muslim cultures have
increased in recent decades, all of those
communities have been part of o
ur national community from its origin points . Which is to say, this right-wing tribal
nationalism isn't just opposed to fundamental realities of 21st century American identity -- it
also depends on historical and national narratives that are as mythic as they are
exclusionary.
Linking Brexit and Trump to global right-wing tribal nationalisms doesn't mean conflating
them all, of course. Although Trump rallies have featured troubling instances of violence, and
although the
murderer of British politican Jo Cox was an avowed white supremacist and Leave supporter,
the right-wing Islamic extremism of groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram rely far more
consistently and centrally on violence and terrorism in support of their worldview and goals.
Such specific contexts and nuances are important and shouldn't be elided.
Yet at the same time, we can't understand our 21st century world without a recognition of
this widespread phenomenon of global, tribal nationalism. From ISIS to UKIP, Trump to France's
Jean-Marie Le Pen, such reactionary forces have become and remain dominant players across the
world, influencing local and international politics, economics, and culture. Benjamin Barber
called this trend two decades ago, and we would do well to read and remember his analyses -- as
well as his call for civic engagement and activism to resist these forces and fight for
democracy.
Petras did not mention that it was Carter who started neoliberalization of the USA. The subsequent election of Reagan signified
the victory of neoliberalism in this country or "quite coup". The death of New Deal from this point was just a matter
of time. Labor relations drastically changes and war on union and atomization of workforce are a norm.
Welfare state still exists but only for corporation and MIC. Otherwise the New Deal society is almost completely dismanted.
It is true that "The ' New Deal' was, at best, a de facto ' historical compromise' between the capitalist class
and the labor unions, mediated by the Democratic Party elite. It was a temporary pact in which the unions secured legal recognition
while the capitalists retained their executive prerogatives." But the key factor in this compromise was the existence of the USSR as
a threat to the power of capitalists in the USA. when the USSR disappeared cannibalistic instincts of the US elite prevailed over caution.
Notable quotes:
"... The earlier welfare 'reforms' and the current anti-welfare legislation and austerity practices have been accompanied by a series of endless imperial wars, especially in the Middle East. ..."
"... In the 1940's through the 1960's, world and regional wars (Korea and Indo-China) were combined with significant welfare program – a form of ' social imperialism' , which 'buy off' the working class while expanding the empire. However, recent decades are characterized by multiple regional wars and the reduction or elimination of welfare programs – and a massive growth in poverty, domestic insecurity and poor health. ..."
"... modern welfare state' ..."
"... Labor unions were organized as working class strikes and progressive legislation facilitated trade union organization, elections, collective bargaining rights and a steady increase in union membership. Improved work conditions, rising wages, pension plans and benefits, employer or union-provided health care and protective legislation improved the standard of living for the working class and provided for 2 generations of upward mobility. ..."
"... Social Security legislation was approved along with workers' compensation and the forty-hour workweek. Jobs were created through federal programs (WPA, CCC, etc.). Protectionist legislation facilitated the growth of domestic markets for US manufacturers. Workplace shop steward councils organized 'on the spot' job action to protect safe working conditions. ..."
"... World War II led to full employment and increases in union membership, as well as legislation restricting workers' collective bargaining rights and enforcing wage freezes. Hundreds of thousands of Americans found jobs in the war economy but a huge number were also killed or wounded in the war. ..."
"... So-called ' right to work' ..."
"... Trade union officials signed pacts with capital: higher pay for the workers and greater control of the workplace for the bosses. Trade union officials joined management in repressing rank and file movements seeking to control technological changes by reducing hours (" thirty hours work for forty hours pay ..."
"... Trade union activists, community organizers for rent control and other grassroots movements lost both the capacity and the will to advance toward large-scale structural changes of US capitalism. Living standards improved for a few decades but the capitalist class consolidated strategic control over labor relations. While unionized workers' incomes, increased, inequalities, especially in the non-union sectors began to grow. With the end of the GI bill, veterans' access to high-quality subsidized education declined ..."
"... With the election of President Carter, social welfare in the US began its long decline. The next series of regional wars were accompanied by even greater attacks on welfare via the " Volker Plan " – freezing workers' wages as a means to combat inflation. ..."
"... Guns without butter' became the legislative policy of the Carter and Reagan Administrations. The welfare programs were based on politically fragile foundations. ..."
"... The anti-labor offensive from the ' Oval Office' intensified under President Reagan with his direct intervention firing tens of thousands of striking air controllers and arresting union leaders. Under Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and William Clinton cost of living adjustments failed to keep up with prices of vital goods and services. Health care inflation was astronomical. Financial deregulation led to the subordination of American industry to finance and the Wall Street banks. De-industrialization, capital flight and massive tax evasion reduced labor's share of national income. ..."
"... The capitalist class followed a trajectory of decline, recovery and ascendance. Moreover, during the earlier world depression, at the height of labor mobilization and organization, the capitalist class never faced any significant political threat over its control of the commanding heights of the economy ..."
"... Hand in bloody glove' with the US Empire, the American trade unions planted the seeds of their own destruction at home. The local capitalists in newly emerging independent nations established industries and supply chains in cooperation with US manufacturers. Attracted to these sources of low-wage, violently repressed workers, US capitalists subsequently relocated their factories overseas and turned their backs on labor at home. ..."
"... President 'Bill' Clinton ravaged Russia, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia and liberated Wall Street. His regime gave birth to the prototype billionaire swindlers: Michael Milken and Bernard 'Bernie' Madoff. ..."
"... Clinton converted welfare into cheap labor 'workfare', exploiting the poorest and most vulnerable and condemning the next generations to grinding poverty. Under Clinton the prison population of mostly African Americans expanded and the breakup of families ravaged the urban communities. ..."
"... President Obama transferred 2 trillion dollars to the ten biggest bankers and swindlers on Wall Street, and another trillion to the Pentagon to pursue the Democrats version of foreign policy: from Bush's two overseas wars to Obama's seven. ..."
"... Obama was elected to two terms. His liberal Democratic Party supporters swooned over his peace and justice rhetoric while swallowing his militarist escalation into seven overseas wars as well as the foreclosure of two million American householders. Obama completely failed to honor his campaign promise to reduce wage inequality between black and white wage earners while he continued to moralize to black families about ' values' . ..."
"... Obama's war against Libya led to the killing and displacement of millions of black Libyans and workers from Sub-Saharan Africa. The smiling Nobel Peace Prize President created more desperate refugees than any previous US head of state – including millions of Africans flooding Europe. ..."
"... Forty-years of anti welfare legislation and pro-business regimes paved the golden road for the election of Donald Trump ..."
"... Trump and the Republicans are focusing on the tattered remnants of the social welfare system: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. The remains of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society -- are on the chopping block. ..."
"... The moribund (but well-paid) labor leadership has been notable by its absence in the ensuing collapse of the social welfare state. The liberal left Democrats embraced the platitudinous Obama/Clinton team as the 'Great Society's' gravediggers, while wailing at Trump's allies for shoving the corpse of welfare state into its grave. ..."
"... Over the past forty years the working class and the rump of what was once referred to as the ' labor movement' has contributed to the dismantling of the social welfare state, voting for ' strike-breaker' Reagan, ' workfare' Clinton, ' Wall Street crash' Bush, ' Wall Street savior' Obama and ' Trickle-down' Trump. ..."
"... Gone are the days when social welfare and profitable wars raised US living standards and transformed American trade unions into an appendage of the Democratic Party and a handmaiden of Empire. The Democratic Party rescued capitalism from its collapse in the Great Depression, incorporated labor into the war economy and the post- colonial global empire, and resurrected Wall Street from the 'Great Financial Meltdown' of the 21 st century. ..."
"... The war economy no longer fuels social welfare. The military-industrial complex has found new partners on Wall Street and among the globalized multi-national corporations. Profits rise while wages fall. Low paying compulsive labor (workfare) lopped off state transfers to the poor. Technology – IT, robotics, artificial intelligence and electronic gadgets – has created the most class polarized social system in history ..."
"... "The collaboration of liberals and unions in promoting endless wars opened the door to Trump's mirage of a stateless, tax-less, ruling class." ..."
"... Corporations [now] are welfare recipients and the bigger they are, the more handouts they suck up ..."
"... Corporations not only continuously seek monopolies (with the aid and sanction of the state) but they steadily fine tune the welfare state for their benefit. In fact, in reality, welfare for prols and peasants wouldn't exist if it didn't act as a money conduit and ultimate profit center for the big money grubbers. ..."
"... The article is dismal reading, and evidence of the failings of the "unregulated" society, where the anything goes as long as you are wealthy. ..."
"... Like the Pentagon. Americans still don't readily call this welfare, but they will eventually. Defense profiteers are unions in a sense, you're either in their club Or you're in the service industry that surrounds it. ..."
The American welfare state was created in 1935 and continued to develop through 1973. Since then, over a prolonged period, the
capitalist class has been steadily dismantling the entire welfare state.
Between the mid 1970's to the present (2017) labor laws, welfare rights and benefits and the construction of and subsidies for
affordable housing have been gutted. ' Workfare' (under President 'Bill' Clinton) ended welfare for the poor and displaced
workers. Meanwhile the shift to regressive taxation and the steadily declining real wages have increased corporate profits to an
astronomical degree.
What started as incremental reversals during the 1990's under Clinton has snowballed over the last two decades decimating welfare
legislation and institutions.
The earlier welfare 'reforms' and the current anti-welfare legislation and austerity practices have been accompanied by a
series of endless imperial wars, especially in the Middle East.
In the 1940's through the 1960's, world and regional wars (Korea and Indo-China) were combined with significant welfare program
– a form of ' social imperialism' , which 'buy off' the working class while expanding the empire. However, recent decades are characterized
by multiple regional wars and the reduction or elimination of welfare programs – and a massive growth in poverty, domestic insecurity
and poor health.
New Deals and Big Wars
The 1930's witnessed the advent of social legislation and action, which laid the foundations of what is called the ' modern
welfare state' .
Labor unions were organized as working class strikes and progressive legislation facilitated trade union organization, elections,
collective bargaining rights and a steady increase in union membership. Improved work conditions, rising wages, pension plans and
benefits, employer or union-provided health care and protective legislation improved the standard of living for the working class
and provided for 2 generations of upward mobility.
Social Security legislation was approved along with workers' compensation and the forty-hour workweek. Jobs were created through
federal programs (WPA, CCC, etc.). Protectionist legislation facilitated the growth of domestic markets for US manufacturers. Workplace
shop steward councils organized 'on the spot' job action to protect safe working conditions.
World War II led to full employment and increases in union membership, as well as legislation restricting workers' collective
bargaining rights and enforcing wage freezes. Hundreds of thousands of Americans found jobs in the war economy but a huge number
were also killed or wounded in the war.
The post-war period witnessed a contradictory process: wages and salaries increased while legislation curtailed union rights via
the Taft Hartley Act and the McCarthyist purge of leftwing trade union activists. So-called ' right to work' laws effectively
outlawed unionization mostly in southern states, which drove industries to relocate to the anti-union states.
Welfare reforms, in the form of the GI bill, provided educational opportunities for working class and rural veterans, while federal-subsidized
low interest mortgages encourage home-ownership, especially for veterans.
The New Deal created concrete improvements but did not consolidate labor influence at any level. Capitalists and management still
retained control over capital, the workplace and plant location of production.
Trade union officials signed pacts with capital: higher pay for the workers and greater control of the workplace for the bosses.
Trade union officials joined management in repressing rank and file movements seeking to control technological changes by reducing
hours (" thirty hours work for forty hours pay "). Dissident local unions were seized and gutted by the trade union bosses
– sometimes through violence.
Trade union activists, community organizers for rent control and other grassroots movements lost both the capacity and the
will to advance toward large-scale structural changes of US capitalism. Living standards improved for a few decades but the capitalist
class consolidated strategic control over labor relations. While unionized workers' incomes, increased, inequalities, especially
in the non-union sectors began to grow. With the end of the GI bill, veterans' access to high-quality subsidized education declined.
While a new wave of social welfare legislation and programs began in the 1960's and early 1970's it was no longer a result of
a mass trade union or workers' "class struggle". Moreover, trade union collaboration with the capitalist regional war policies led
to the killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands of workers in two wars – the Korean and Vietnamese wars.
Much of social legislation resulted from the civil and welfare rights movements. While specific programs were helpful, none of
them addressed structural racism and poverty.
The Last Wave of Social Welfarism
The 1960'a witnessed the greatest racial war in modern US history: Mass movements in the South and North rocked state and federal
governments, while advancing the cause of civil, social and political rights. Millions of black citizens, joined by white activists
and, in many cases, led by African American Viet Nam War veterans, confronted the state. At the same time, millions of students and
young workers, threatened by military conscription, challenged the military and social order.
Energized by mass movements, a new wave of social welfare legislation was launched by the federal government to pacify mass opposition
among blacks, students, community organizers and middle class Americans. Despite this mass popular movement, the union bosses at
the AFL-CIO openly supported the war, police repression and the military, or at best, were passive impotent spectators of the drama
unfolding in the nation's streets. Dissident union members and activists were the exception, as many had multiple identities to represent:
African American, Hispanic, draft resisters, etc.
Under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, Medicare, Medicaid, OSHA, the EPA and multiple poverty programs were implemented.
A national health program, expanding Medicare for all Americans, was introduced by President Nixon and sabotaged by the Kennedy Democrats
and the AFL-CIO. Overall, social and economic inequalities diminished during this period.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the American militarist empire. This coincided with the beginning of the end of social welfare
as we knew it – as the bill for militarism placed even greater demands on the public treasury.
With the election of President Carter, social welfare in the US began its long decline. The next series of regional wars were
accompanied by even greater attacks on welfare via the " Volker Plan " – freezing workers' wages as a means to combat inflation.
Guns without butter' became the legislative policy of the Carter and Reagan Administrations. The welfare programs were based
on politically fragile foundations.
The Debacle of Welfarism
Private sector trade union membership declined from a post-world war peak of 30% falling to 12% in the 1990's. Today it has sunk
to 7%. Capitalists embarked on a massive program of closing thousands of factories in the unionized North which were then relocated
to the non-unionized low wage southern states and then overseas to Mexico and Asia. Millions of stable jobs disappeared.
Following the election of 'Jimmy Carter', neither Democratic nor Republican Presidents felt any need to support labor organizations.
On the contrary, they facilitated contracts dictated by management, which reduced wages, job security, benefits and social welfare.
The anti-labor offensive from the ' Oval Office' intensified under President Reagan with his direct intervention
firing tens of thousands of striking air controllers and arresting union leaders. Under Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush
and William Clinton cost of living adjustments failed to keep up with prices of vital goods and services. Health care inflation was
astronomical. Financial deregulation led to the subordination of American industry to finance and the Wall Street banks. De-industrialization,
capital flight and massive tax evasion reduced labor's share of national income.
The capitalist class followed a trajectory of decline, recovery and ascendance. Moreover, during the earlier world depression,
at the height of labor mobilization and organization, the capitalist class never faced any significant political threat over its
control of the commanding heights of the economy.
The ' New Deal' was, at best, a de facto ' historical compromise' between the capitalist class and the labor
unions, mediated by the Democratic Party elite. It was a temporary pact in which the unions secured legal recognition while the capitalists
retained their executive prerogatives.
The Second World War secured the economic recovery for capital and subordinated labor through a federally mandated no strike
production agreement. There were a few notable exceptions: The coal miners' union organized strikes in strategic sectors and some
leftist leaders and organizers encouraged slow-downs, work to rule and other in-plant actions when employers ran roughshod with special
brutality over the workers. The recovery of capital was the prelude to a post-war offensive against independent labor-based political
organizations. The quality of labor organization declined even as the quantity of trade union membership increased.
Labor union officials consolidated internal control in collaboration with the capitalist elite. Capitalist class-labor official
collaboration was extended overseas with strategic consequences.
The post-war corporate alliance between the state and capital led to a global offensive – the replacement of European-Japanese
colonial control and exploitation by US business and bankers. Imperialism was later 're-branded' as ' globalization' . It
pried open markets, secured cheap docile labor and pillaged resources for US manufacturers and importers.
US labor unions played a major role by sabotaging militant unions abroad in cooperation with the US security apparatus: They worked
to coopt and bribe nationalist and leftist labor leaders and supported police-state regime repression and assassination of recalcitrant
militants.
' Hand in bloody glove' with the US Empire, the American trade unions planted the seeds of their own destruction at home.
The local capitalists in newly emerging independent nations established industries and supply chains in cooperation with US manufacturers.
Attracted to these sources of low-wage, violently repressed workers, US capitalists subsequently relocated their factories overseas
and turned their backs on labor at home.
Labor union officials had laid the groundwork for the demise of stable jobs and social benefits for American workers. Their collaboration
increased the rate of capitalist profit and overall power in the political system. Their complicity in the brutal purges of militants,
activists and leftist union members and leaders at home and abroad put an end to labor's capacity to sustain and expand the welfare
state.
Trade unions in the US did not use their collaboration with empire in its bloody regional wars to win social benefits for the
rank and file workers. The time of social-imperialism, where workers within the empire benefited from imperialism's pillage, was
over. Gains in social welfare henceforth could result only from mass struggles led by the urban poor, especially Afro-Americans,
community-based working poor and militant youth organizers.
The last significant social welfare reforms were implemented in the early 1970's – coinciding with the end of the Vietnam War
(and victory for the Vietnamese people) and ended with the absorption of the urban and anti-war movements into the Democratic Party.
Henceforward the US corporate state advanced through the overseas expansion of the multi-national corporations and via large-scale,
non-unionized production at home.
The technological changes of this period did not benefit labor. The belief, common in the 1950's, that science and technology
would increase leisure, decrease work and improve living standards for the working class, was shattered. Instead technological changes
displaced well-paid industrial labor while increasing the number of mind-numbing, poorly paid, and politically impotent jobs in the
so-called 'service sector' – a rapidly growing section of unorganized and vulnerable workers – especially including women and minorities.
Labor union membership declined precipitously. The demise of the USSR and China's turn to capitalism had a dual effect: It eliminated
collectivist (socialist) pressure for social welfare and opened their labor markets with cheap, disciplined workers for foreign manufacturers.
Labor as a political force disappeared on every count. The US Federal Reserve and President 'Bill' Clinton deregulated financial
capital leading to a frenzy of speculation. Congress wrote laws, which permitted overseas tax evasion – especially in Caribbean tax
havens. Regional free-trade agreements, like NAFTA, spurred the relocation of jobs abroad. De-industrialization accompanied the decline
of wages, living standards and social benefits for millions of American workers.
The New Abolitionists: Trillionaires
The New Deal, the Great Society, trade unions, and the anti-war and urban movements were in retreat and primed for abolition.
Wars without welfare (or guns without butter) replaced earlier 'social imperialism' with a huge growth of poverty and homelessness.
Domestic labor was now exploited to finance overseas wars not vice versa. The fruits of imperial plunder were not shared.
As the working and middle classes drifted downward, they were used up, abandoned and deceived on all sides – especially by the
Democratic Party. They elected militarists and demagogues as their new presidents.
President 'Bill' Clinton ravaged Russia, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia and liberated Wall Street. His regime gave birth to the
prototype billionaire swindlers: Michael Milken and Bernard 'Bernie' Madoff.
Clinton converted welfare into cheap labor 'workfare', exploiting the poorest and most vulnerable and condemning the next
generations to grinding poverty. Under Clinton the prison population of mostly African Americans expanded and the breakup of families
ravaged the urban communities.
Provoked by an act of terrorism (9/11) President G.W. Bush Jr. launched the 'endless' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and deepened
the police state (Patriot Act). Wages for American workers and profits for American capitalist moved in opposite directions.
The Great Financial Crash of 2008-2011 shook the paper economy to its roots and led to the greatest shakedown of any national
treasury in history directed by the First Black American President. Trillions of public wealth were funneled into the criminal banks
on Wall Street – which were ' just too big to fail .' Millions of American workers and homeowners, however, were '
just
too small to matter' .
The Age of Demagogues
President Obama transferred 2 trillion dollars to the ten biggest bankers and swindlers on Wall Street, and another trillion
to the Pentagon to pursue the Democrats version of foreign policy: from Bush's two overseas wars to Obama's seven.
Obama's electoral 'donor-owners' stashed away two trillion dollars in overseas tax havens and looked forward to global free trade
pacts – pushed by the eloquent African American President.
Obama was elected to two terms. His liberal Democratic Party supporters swooned over his peace and justice rhetoric while
swallowing his militarist escalation into seven overseas wars as well as the foreclosure of two million American householders. Obama
completely failed to honor his campaign promise to reduce wage inequality between black and white wage earners while he continued
to moralize to black families about ' values' .
Obama's war against Libya led to the killing and displacement of millions of black Libyans and workers from Sub-Saharan Africa.
The smiling Nobel Peace Prize President created more desperate refugees than any previous US head of state – including millions of
Africans flooding Europe.
'Obamacare' , his imitation of an earlier Republican governor's health plan, was formulated by the private corporate
health industry (private insurance, Big Pharma and the for-profit hospitals), to mandate enrollment and ensure triple digit profits
with double digit increases in premiums. By the 2016 Presidential elections, ' Obama-care' was opposed by a 45%-43% margin
of the American people. Obama's propagandists could not show any improvement of life expectancy or decrease in infant and maternal
mortality as a result of his 'health care reform'. Indeed the opposite occurred among the marginalized working class in the old 'rust
belt' and in the rural areas. This failure to show any significant health improvement for the masses of Americans is in stark contrast
to LBJ's Medicare program of the 1960's, which continues to receive massive popular support.
Forty-years of anti welfare legislation and pro-business regimes paved the golden road for the election of Donald Trump
Trump and the Republicans are focusing on the tattered remnants of the social welfare system: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
The remains of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society -- are on the chopping block.
The moribund (but well-paid) labor leadership has been notable by its absence in the ensuing collapse of the social welfare
state. The liberal left Democrats embraced the platitudinous Obama/Clinton team as the 'Great Society's' gravediggers, while wailing
at Trump's allies for shoving the corpse of welfare state into its grave.
Conclusion
Over the past forty years the working class and the rump of what was once referred to as the ' labor movement' has contributed
to the dismantling of the social welfare state, voting for ' strike-breaker' Reagan, ' workfare' Clinton, ' Wall Street crash' Bush,
' Wall Street savior' Obama and ' Trickle-down' Trump.
Gone are the days when social welfare and profitable wars raised US living standards and transformed American trade unions
into an appendage of the Democratic Party and a handmaiden of Empire. The Democratic Party rescued capitalism from its collapse in
the Great Depression, incorporated labor into the war economy and the post- colonial global empire, and resurrected Wall Street from
the 'Great Financial Meltdown' of the 21 st century.
The war economy no longer fuels social welfare. The military-industrial complex has found new partners on Wall Street and
among the globalized multi-national corporations. Profits rise while wages fall. Low paying compulsive labor (workfare) lopped off
state transfers to the poor. Technology – IT, robotics, artificial intelligence and electronic gadgets – has created the most class
polarized social system in history. The first trillionaire and multi-billionaire tax evaders rose on the backs of a miserable
standing army of tens of millions of low-wage workers, stripped of rights and representation. State subsidies eliminate virtually
all risk to capital. The end of social welfare coerced labor (including young mother with children) to seek insecure low-income employment
while slashing education and health – cementing the feet of generations into poverty. Regional wars abroad have depleted the Treasury
and robbed the country of productive investment. Economic imperialism exports profits, reversing the historic relation of the past.
Labor is left without compass or direction; it flails in all directions and falls deeper in the web of deception and demagogy.
To escape from Reagan and the strike breakers, labor embraced the cheap-labor predator Clinton; black and white workers united to
elect Obama who expelled millions of immigrant workers, pursued 7 wars, abandoned black workers and enriched the already filthy rich.
Deception and demagogy of the labor-
If the welfare state in America was abolished, major American cities would burn to the ground. Anarchy would ensue, it would be
magnitudes bigger than anything that happened in Ferguson or Baltimore. It would likely be simultaneous.
I think that's one of the only situations where preppers would actually live out what they've been prepping for (except for
a natural disaster).
I've been thinking about this a little over the past few years after seeing the race riots. What exactly is the line between
our society being civilized and breaking out into chaos. It's probably a lot thinner than most people think.
I don't know who said it but someone long ago said something along the lines of, "Democracy can only work until the people
figure out they can vote for themselves generous benefits from the public treasury." We are definitely in this situation today.
I wonder how long it can last.
While I agree with Petras's intent (notwithstanding several exaggerations and unnecessary conflations with, for example, racism),
I don't agree so much with the method he proposes. I don't mind welfare and unions to a certain extent, but they are not going
to save us unless there is full employment and large corporations that can afford to pay an all-union workforce. That happened
during WW2, as only wartime demand and those pesky wage freezes solved the Depression, regardless of all the public works programs;
while the postwar era benefited from the US becoming the world's creditor, meaning that capital could expand while labor participation
did as well.
From then on, it is quite hard to achieve the same success after outsourcing and mechanization have happened all over the world.
Both of these phenomena not only create displaced workers, but also displaced industries, meaning that it makes more sense to
develop individual workfare (and even then, do it well, not the shoddy way it is done now) rather than giving away checks that
probably will not be cashed for entrepreneurial purposes, and rather than giving away money to corrupt unions who depend on trusts
to be able to pay for their benefits, while raising the cost of hiring that only encourages more outsourcing.
The amount of welfare given is not necessarily the main problem, the problem is doing it right for the people who truly need
it, and efficiently – that is, with the least amount of waste lost between the chain of distribution, which should reach intended
targets and not moochers.
Which inevitably means a sound tax system that targets unearned wealth and (to a lesser degree) foreign competition instead
of national production, coupled with strict, yet devolved and simple government processes that benefit both business and individuals
tired of bureaucracy, while keeping budgets balanced. Best of both worlds, and no military-industrial complex needed to drive
up demand.
The American welfare state was created in 1935 and continued to develop through 1973. Since then, over a prolonged period,
the capitalist class has been steadily dismantling the entire welfare state.
Wrong wrong wrong.
Corporations [now] are welfare recipients and the bigger they are, the more handouts they suck up, and welfare for
them started before 1935. In fact, it started in America before there was a USA. I do not have time to elaborate, but what were
the various companies such as the British East India Company and the Dutch West India Companies but state pampered, welfare based
entities? ~200 years ago, Herbert Spencer, if memory serves, pointed out that the British East India Company couldn't make a profit
even with all the special, government granted favors showered upon it.
Corporations not only continuously seek monopolies (with the aid and sanction of the state) but they steadily fine tune
the welfare state for their benefit. In fact, in reality, welfare for prols and peasants wouldn't exist if it didn't act as a
money conduit and ultimate profit center for the big money grubbers.
Well, the author kind of nails it. I remember from my childhood in the 50-60 ties in Scandinavia that the US was the ultimate
goal in welfare. The country where you could make a good living with your two hands, get you kids to UNI, have a house, a telly
ECT. It was not consumerism, it was the American dream, a chicken in every pot; we chewed imported American gum and dreamed.
In the 70-80 ties Scandinavia had a tremendous social and economic growth, EQUALLY distributed, an immense leap forward. In the
middle of the 80 ties we were equal to the US in standards of living.
Since we have not looked at the US, unless in pity, as we have seen the decline of the general income, social wealth fall way
behind our own.
The average US workers income has not increased since 90 figures adjusted for inflation. The Scandinavian workers income in the
same period has almost quadrupled. And so has our societies.
The article is dismal reading, and evidence of the failings of the "unregulated" society, where the anything goes as long
as you are wealthy.
Between the mid 1970's to the present (2017) labor laws, welfare rights and benefits and the construction of and subsidies
for affordable housing have been gutted. 'Workfare' (under President 'Bill' Clinton) ended welfare for the poor and displaced
workers. Meanwhile the shift to regressive taxation and the steadily declining real wages have increased corporate profits
to an astronomical degree.
What does Hollywood "elite" JAP and wannabe hack-stand-up-comic Sarah Silverman think about the class struggle and problems
facing destitute Americans? "Qu'ils mangent de la bagels!", source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
Like the Pentagon. Americans still don't readily call this welfare, but they will eventually. Defense profiteers are unions
in a sense, you're either in their club Or you're in the service industry that surrounds it.
As other commenters have pointed out, it's Petras curious choice of words that sometimes don't make too much sense. We can probably
blame the maleable English language for that, but here it's too obvious. If you don't define a union, people might assume you're
only talking about a bunch of meat cutters at Safeway.
The welfare state is alive and well for corporate America. Unions are still here – but they are defined by access and secrecy,
you're either in the club or not.
The war on unions was successful first by co-option but mostly by the media. But what kind of analysis leaves out the role
of the media in the American transformation? The success is mind blowing.
America has barely literate (white) middle aged males trained to spout incoherent Calvinistic weirdness: unabased hatred for
the poor (or whoever they're told to hate) and a glorification of hedge fund managers as they get laid off, fired and foreclosed
on, with a side of opiates.
There is hardly anything more tragic then seeing a web filled with progressives (management consultants) dedicated to disempowering,
disabling and deligitimizing victims by claiming they are victims of biology, disease or a lack of an education rather than a
system that issues violence while portending (with the best media money can buy) that they claim the higher ground.
""Democracy can only work until the people figure out they can vote for themselves generous benefits from the public
treasury." We are definitely in this situation today."
Quite right: the 0.01% have worked it out & US democracy is a Theatre for the masses.
I don't know who said it but someone long ago said something along the lines of, "Democracy can only work until the people
figure out they can vote for themselves generous benefits from the public treasury."
Some French aristocrat put it as, once the gates to the treasury have been breached, they can only be closed again with gunpowder.
Anyone recognize the author?
The author doesn't get it. What we have now IS the welfare state in an intensely diverse society. We have more transfer spending
than ever before and Obamacare represents another huge entitlement.
Intellectuals continue to fantasize about the US becoming a Big Sweden, but Sweden has only been successful insofar as it has
been a modest nation-state populated by ethnic Swedes. Intense diversity in a huge country with only the remnants of federalism
results in massive non-consensual decision-making, fragmentation, increased inequality, and corruption.
The welfare state is alive and well for corporate America. Unions are still here – but they are defined by access and
secrecy, you're either in the club or not.
They are largely defined as Doctors, Lawyers, and University Professors who teach the first two. Of course they are not called
unions. Access is via credentialing and licensing. Good Day
Bernie Sanders, speaking on behalf of the MIC's welfare bird: "It is the airplane of the United States Air Force, Navy, and
of NATO."
Elizabeth Warren, referring to Mossad's Estes Rockets: "The Israeli military has the right to attack Palestinian hospitals
and schools in self defense"
Barack Obama, yukking it up with pop stars: "Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming."
It's not the agitprop that confuses the sheep, it's whose blowhole it's coming out of (labled D or R for convenience) that
gets them to bare their teeth and speak of poo.
What came first, the credentialing or the idea that it is a necessary part of education? It certainly isn't an accurate indication
of what people know or their general intelligence – although that myth has flourished. Good afternoon.
For an interesting projection of what might happen in total civilizational collapse, I recommend the Dies the Fire series of
novels by SM Stirling.
It has a science-fictiony setup in that all high-energy system (gunpowder, electricity, explosives, internal combustion, even
high-energy steam engines) suddenly stop working. But I think it does a good job of extrapolating what would happen if suddenly
the cities did not have food, water, power, etc.
Spoiler alert: It ain't pretty. Those who dream of a world without guns have not really thought it through.
It has been pointed out repeatedly that Sweden does very well relative to the USA. It has also been noted that people of Swedish
ancestry in the USA do pretty well also. In fact considerably better than Swedes in Sweden
Neoliberalism as "Die-now economics." "Embodiment into lower class" or "the representation as a member the lower
class" if often fatal and upper mobility mobility is artificially limited (despite all MSM hype it is lower then in Europe). So just
being a member of lower class noticeably and negatively affects your life expectancy and other social metrics. Job insecurity
is the hazard reserved for lower and lower middle classes destructivly effect both physical and mental health. Too much stress
is not good for humans. Neoliberalism with its manta of competition uber alles and atomization of the workforce is a real killer.
also the fact that such article was published and the comments below is a clear sign that the days of neoliberalism are numbered.
It should go.
Notable quotes:
"... In our new book , we draw on an extensive body of scientific literature to assess the health effects of three decades of neoliberal policies. Focusing on the social determinants of health -- the conditions of life and work that make it relatively easy for some people to lead long and healthy lives, while it is all but impossible for others -- we show that there are four interconnected neoliberal epidemics: austerity, obesity, stress, and inequality. They are neoliberal because they are associated with or worsened by neoliberal policies. ..."
"... Neoliberalism operates through labor markets to undermine health not only by way of the financial consequences of unemployment, inadequate employment, or low wages, as important as these are, but also through chronic exposure to stress that 'gets under your skin' by way of multiple mechanisms. Quite simply, the effects of chronic insecurity wear people out over the life course in biologically measurable ways . ..."
"... Oh, and "beyond class" because for social beings embodiment involves "social production; social consumption; and social reproduction." In the most reductive definition of class -- the one I used in my crude 1% + 10% + 90% formulation -- class is determined by wage work (or not), hence is a part of production (of capital), not social consumption (eating, etc.) or social reproduction (children, families, household work ). So, even if class in our political economy is the driver, it's not everything. ..."
"... "Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. ..."
"... Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve." ..."
"... As opposed to being champions of "self-actualization/identity" and "absolute relativism", I always got the impression that they were both offering stark warnings about diving too deeply into the self, vis-a-vis, identity. As if, they both understood the terrifying world that it could/would create, devoid of common cause, community, and ultimately empathy. A world where "we" are not possible because we have all become "I". ..."
"... Wonks like Yglesias love to mock working class concerns as "economic anxiety," which is at once belittling (it's all about f-e-e-e-lings ..."
"... "we have measurable health outcomes from political choices" So True!!! ..."
In our new book
, we draw on an extensive body of scientific literature to assess the health effects of three decades of neoliberal policies.
Focusing on the social determinants
of health -- the conditions of life and work that make it relatively easy for some people to lead long and healthy lives,
while it is all but impossible for others -- we show that there are four interconnected neoliberal epidemics: austerity, obesity,
stress, and inequality. They are neoliberal because they are associated with or worsened by neoliberal policies. They are
epidemics because they are observable on such an international scale and have been transmitted so quickly across time and space
that if they were biological contagions they would be seen as of epidemic proportions.
(The Case-Deaton study provides an obvious fifth: Deaths of despair. There are doubtless others.)
Case in point for
one of the unluckier members of the 90%:
On the morning of 25 August 2014 a young New Jersey woman, Maria Fernandes, died from inhaling gasoline fumes as she slept
in her 13-year-old car. She often slept in the car while shuttling between her three, low-wage jobs in food service; she kept
a can of gasoline in the car because she often slept with the engine running, and was worried about running out of gasoline. Apparently,
the can accidentally tipped over and the vapours from spilled gasoline cost her life. Ms Fernandes was one of the more obvious
casualties of the zero-hours culture of stress and insecurity that pervades the contemporary labour market under neoliberalism.
And Schrecker and Bambra conclude:
Neoliberalism operates through labor markets to undermine health not only by way of the financial consequences of unemployment,
inadequate employment, or low wages, as important as these are, but also through chronic exposure to stress that 'gets under your
skin' by way of multiple mechanisms. Quite simply, the effects of chronic insecurity wear people out over the life course in
biologically measurable ways .
... ... ...
Oh, and "beyond class" because for social beings embodiment involves "social production; social consumption; and social reproduction."
In the most reductive definition of class -- the one I used in my crude 1% + 10% + 90% formulation -- class is determined by wage
work (or not), hence is a part of production (of capital), not social consumption (eating, etc.) or social reproduction (children,
families, household work ). So, even if class in our political economy is the driver, it's not everything.
L.S. reminiscent of Ernst Becker's, "The Structure of Evil" – "Escape from Evil"? (..not to indicate good vs. evil dichotomy)
A great amount of perspective must be agreed upon to achieve "change" intoned. Divide and conquer are complicit, as noted .otherwise
(and as indicated by U.S. economic history) change arrives only when all have lost all and can therefore agree begin again.
There is however, Naomi Klein perspective, "Shock Doctrine", whereby influence contributes to destabilization, plan in hand
leading to agenda driven ("neoliberal"=market fundamentalism) outcome, not at all spontaneous in nature:
"Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers,
whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It
maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services
should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions
that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility
and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive
and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve."
On Case-Deason: Sounds like home. I keep the scanner on(local news) ems and fire only since 2006(sheriff got a homeland security
grant). The incidence of suicide, overdose and "intoxication psychosis" are markedly increased in the last 10+ years out here
in the wilderness(5K folks in whole county, last I looked). Our local economy went into near depression after the late 90's farm
bill killed the peanut program then 911 meant no hunting season that year(and it's been noticeably less busy ever since) then
drought and the real estate crash(we had 30 some realtors at peak..old family land being sold off, mostly). So the local Bourgeoisie
have had less money to spend, which "trickles down" onto the rest of us.:less construction, less eating out even at the cheap
places, less buying of gas, and on and on means fewer employees are needed, thus fewer jobs. To boot, there is a habit among many
employers out here of not paying attention to labor laws(it is Texas ) the last minwage rise took 2 years to filter out here,
and one must scrutinize one's pay stub to ensure that the boss isn't getting squirrelly with overtime and witholding.
Geography plays into all this, too 100 miles to any largish city.
I'm not well versed in Foucault or Lacan but I've read some of both and in reading between the lines of their writing (the
phantom philosophy?) I saw a very different message than that often delivered by post-modern theorists.
As opposed to being champions of "self-actualization/identity" and "absolute relativism", I always got the impression that
they were both offering stark warnings about diving too deeply into the self, vis-a-vis, identity. As if, they both understood
the terrifying world that it could/would create, devoid of common cause, community, and ultimately empathy. A world where "we"
are not possible because we have all become "I".
Considering what both their philosophies claimed, if identity is a lie, and the subject is always generated relative to the
other, then how the hell can there be any security or well being in self-actualization? It is like trying to hit a target that
does not exist.
All potentially oppressive cultural categorizations are examples of this (black, latino, gay, trans, etc.). If the identity
is a moving target, both to the oppressor and the oppressed, then how can it ever be a singular source of political action? You
can't hit what isn't there. This is not to say that these groups (in whatever determined category) are not oppressed, just that
formulating political action based strictly on the identity (often as an essential category) is impossible because it does not
actually exist materially. It is an amalgamation of subjects who's subjectivity is always relative to some other whether ally
or oppressor. Only the manifestations of oppression on bodies (as brought up in Lambert's post) can be utilized as metrics for
political action.
I thought of a couple of other advantages of the "embodiment" paradigm:
Better Framing. Wonks like Yglesias love to mock working class concerns as "economic anxiety," which is
at once belittling (it's all about f-e-e-e-lings *) and disempowering (solutions are individual, like therapy or drugs).
Embodiment by contrast insists that neoliberalism (the neoliberal labor market (class warfare)) has real, material, physiological
effects that can be measured and tracked, as with any epidemic.
This is three years old article. What changed ? The USA is still the center of the global neoliberal empire.
Slavoj Žižek develops a false premise but with real mastery of the language. he is definitely talanted writer, but not so much a
thinker. He completely missed the gorth of nationalism as a reaction to neoliberalism. So comments are more
interesting then that article and some of them proved to be prophetic.
"... The stabilisation of society under the Putin reign is largely because of the newly established transparency of these unwritten rules. ..."
"... the US stands for neoliberal capitalism, Europe for what remains of the welfare state, China for authoritarian capitalism, Latin America for populist capitalism. ..."
"... This is why our times are potentially more dangerous than they may appear. ..."
"... the next stage of a geopolitical struggle for control in a nonregulated, multicentred world. ..."
"... the impossibility of creating a global political order that would correspond to the global capitalist economy. ..."
"... In politics, age-old fixations, and particular, substantial ethnic, religious and cultural identities, have returned with a vengeance ..."
"... Capitalism is a system engineered to ensure that the psychopaths get to the top. Ruthlessness, selfishness, blind pursuit of profit, manipulation and coercion of others, believing your own lies - these are the necessary qualities for success, which have been elevated into desirable qualities. If you don't have them, you're a loser. ..."
"... To get to the top, you have to be a psychopath. If you're at the top, you're a psychopath. ..."
"... The oligarchs, of course. ..."
"... The current Ukrainian problem may have more in common with Georgia, than Syria, Libya and Iraq, but they all have the US squaring off against Russia. ..."
"... What might be more worrying is when the current FRB resuscitation of the US economy fails to show the promise anticipated and the debt to China becomes a political problem. What then? Does Washington send warships to Beijing? ..."
"... Most likely Ukraine would be a quasi-independent, bankrupt state heavily indebted to the West, with NATO bases, folklore instead of real politics, large emigration (mostly illegal), and desperate population ..."
"... The rest of the population would be slowly dropping to substance level, no jobs, no money, no futures. ..."
"... So having Russia - as a savior, boogeyman or a distraction - immensely help all Ukrainians. It makes them important enough to have to be bought out. It forces a competition for their affection and thus bids up any rewards. ..."
"... This is an end-of-days party for those who seem to have no place in the neo-liberal world, either EU or the Russian version. ..."
"... Most power gets dissipated with over-reach, so I am not sure capitalizing faster would have been better for US. Most power is also always local, and the world is a big place. ..."
"... US neo-con dreamers tend to see the world as a map. It is not a "map". It is a much more complex environment with local dynamics, histories, and lots and lots of people. Who want stuff. Moving in, or "capitalizing" as you call it, creates heightened expectations and inevitable disappointments. My advise is to chill and keep it small. Over-reach and too much ambition never work in the long run. ..."
"... and kill left and right for 'freedoms'. ..."
"... Therein is another contradiction. Globalists cannot focus on their national economy. ..."
"... Our predicament TOMORROW will be defined by an intensifying scarcity of finite resources, with the additional whammy of climate change. ..."
"... My own gut-feeling is that globalisation is already beginning to decline and disintegrate due to economic, political, resource and environmental constraints. ..."
"... My guess is Bankers and big corporations will control the post capitalist world. ..."
"... the US stands for neoliberal capitalism, Europe for what remains of the welfare state, China for authoritarian capitalism, Latin America for populist capitalism ..."
"... First and foremost; perturbations we are witnessing are processes of reversing the globalisation-effect that in its core value destroys centralised global-powers control. ..."
"... There's no such thing as your fantasy version of Capitalism; where all the markets are "free" and there are no assholes and sociopaths trying to manipulate and screw people. ..."
"... ALL the ISM words are worthless labels used by people with economic morality OCD. ..."
"... Zizek's analysis is once again spot on and would be accepted as self-evident (Ukraine a proxy war between superpowers) were it not for our twisted corporate controlled media. ..."
"... Seems very obvious here in the USA we are controlled (owned) by the multi-national corporations. ..."
"... Governments now exist to funnel wealth to the .01% who own the corporations. ..."
"... or the corporate elite more likely !! ..."
"... will involve the nation state recapturing its power and the diminishing authority of the corporate elite who of course are hell bent on taking over everything affecting our lives ..."
"... The 'corporate elite' already OWN our governments. The nation state is disappearing at the same rate as democratic representation. ..."
"... Something I find interesting is the transnational nature of modern capital, and labour. This is making geo control difficult for modern superpowers, not impossible, but increasingly difficult. As revenue is increasingly tied to transnational enterprises, the paradox is that state interests are tied to cross border peace and stability. Not a goal helped by upsetting regional stability. ..."
"... Our predicament today is defined by this tension: the global free circulation of commodities is accompanied by growing separations in the social sphere. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the global market, new walls have begun emerging everywhere, separating peoples and their cultures. Perhaps the very survival of humanity depends on resolving this tension. ..."
"... Consider that there may be an elite group of power-mongers who, through the control of global mega-institutions, wield the power to mobilize e.g the military might of the U.S. and of Britain and of other puppet nations ..."
"... Actually, even Obama himself, could be a proxy! ..."
"... Global corporations appear to be the new weapon of war, ..."
"... most power and influence in any country comes from its wealth holders and in many cases these are faceless suits in big business and high finance all protected by a blag legal system set up to protect companies and 'their' assets. ..."
"... The transnational entity called the United Nations has long passed its use-by date. The US government is in thrall to Wall Street, corporations and their lobby groups and is over-extended in numerous wars and conflicts across the planet. Americans are tired of fighting, they are sinking into Third World poverty, their jobs are disappearing and more of them are ending up in prisons operated by private firms for profit. ..."
"... It is definitely time to teach the superpowers, old and new, some manners, but who will do it? ..."
"... All gringos have done in their century of greatness ("the land of 'the' 'free' and 'the' 'brave'") is abusing people who can't defend themselves on an equal basis, mess with the environment and (very successfully I would admit) brainwash many, many people by selling them very stupid and unsustainable illusions ..."
"... Monied interests will control the 'post-superpower capitalist world order.' During the past few years, they quietly used their power to force governments austerity policies in both the US and Europe and hack away at their social safety nets. ..."
"... Communism at least gave social liberalism in the West a chance, as an alternative to deprive the Soviets of sympathizers. Once communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, the monied interests felt they could dispense with liberalism and pursue more extreme aims. ..."
"... We exist in a world where might makes right. ..."
"... These few percent, consciously or not, create, enforce, and change all the rules; it is for the rest of us to find some way to survive under them. Good luck all. ..."
"... Otherwise, the US was pretty much entirely indifferent to Russia's national interests and preferences ..."
"... Far more accurate to say that the US simply treated Russia as the loser of the Cold War ..."
"... and as such should simply roll over and accept all edicts from Washington. ..."
"... Gangs are the most primitive form of government and within neo-liberalism all governments are merely gangs. ..."
"... neo-liberalism's excessive division is dehumanising hence the institutional collapse. ..."
"... Super-rich people and large corporations, are a luxury we can no longer afford. ..."
"... 'Survival in numbers' is a prime survival mechanism in our species. Cooperation trumps competition most of the time. Neo-liberalism has made far too much division for our species to survive it. Cooperating with neo-liberalism is the biggest mistake. ..."
"... What if, for structural reasons, and not only due to empirical limitations, there cannot be a worldwide democracy or a representative world government? ..."
"... since Consumerism is nothing more than a superstitious belief in Perpetual Motion ..."
"... Here Zizek encourages a kind of liberal naiveté, astonishing for a guy who pretends to be comfortable with Lenin's no-nonsense revolutionary analytic approach. ..."
"... Global capital doesn't want world democracy. They want the TransPacific Partnership G8, etc. They want elite enrichment and militarized police. ..."
"... Slavoj Žižek develops a false premise with great ease. ..."
"... The USA is subconsciously aware of this problem and its inevitable endpoint. It is thus armed to the teeth and will remain so. ..."
"... Only an economic collapse can disarm the USA. ..."
"... The problem could be tempered by the citizenry, but the public is cowed by fears of terrorism, real and imagined. ..."
In a divided and dangerous world, we need to teach the new powers some manners
To know a society is not only to know its explicit rules. One must also know how to apply them: when to use them, when to violate
them, when to turn down a choice that is offered, and when we are effectively obliged to do something but have to pretend we are
doing it as a free choice. Consider the paradox, for instance, of offers-meant-to-be-refused. When I am invited to a restaurant by
a rich uncle, we both know he will cover the bill, but I nonetheless have to lightly insist we share it – imagine my surprise if
my uncle were simply to say: "OK, then, you pay it!"
There was a similar problem during the chaotic post-Soviet years of Yeltsin's rule in Russia. Although the legal rules were known,
and were largely the same as under the Soviet Union, the complex network of implicit, unwritten rules, which sustained the entire
social edifice, disintegrated. -[ It's he is completely detached from reality; that was a neoliberal revolution,
nothing more nothing less -- NNB] In the Soviet Union, if you wanted better hospital treatment, say, or a new apartment, if you
had a complaint against the authorities, were summoned to court or wanted your child to be accepted at a top school, you knew the
implicit rules. You understood whom to address or bribe, and what you could or couldn't do.
After the collapse of Soviet power, one
of the most frustrating aspects of daily life for ordinary people was that these unwritten rules became seriously blurred. People
simply did not know how to react, how to relate to explicit legal regulations, what could be ignored, and where bribery worked. (One
of the functions of organized crime was to provide a kind of ersatz legality. If you owned a small business and a customer owed you
money, you turned to your mafia protector, who dealt with the problem, since the state legal system was inefficient.)
The stabilisation
of society under the Putin reign is largely because of the newly established transparency of these unwritten rules. Now, once
again, people mostly understand the complex cobweb of social interactions.
In international politics, we have not yet reached this stage. Back in the 1990s, a silent pact regulated the relationship between
the great western powers and Russia. Western states treated Russia as a great power on the condition that Russia didn't act as one.--[
That' beyong naive -- the USA treated Yeltisn Russia as a vassal, it actually was a time --NNB] But what if the person
to whom the offer-to-be-rejected is made actually accepts it? What if Russia starts to act as a great power? A situation like this
is properly catastrophic, threatening the entire existing fabric of relations – as happened
five years ago in Georgia. Tired of only being
treated as a superpower, Russia actually acted as one.
How did it come to this? The "American
century" is over, and we have entered a period in which
multiple
centres of global capitalism have been forming. In the US, Europe, China and maybe Latin America, too, capitalist systems have
developed with specific twists: the US stands for neoliberal capitalism, Europe for what remains of the welfare state, China
for authoritarian capitalism, Latin America for populist capitalism.
After the attempt by the US to impose itself as the sole
superpower – the universal policeman – failed, there is now the need to establish the rules of interaction between these local centres
as regards their conflicting interests.
This is why our times are potentially more dangerous than they may appear. During the cold war, the rules of international
behaviour were clear, guaranteed by the Mad-ness – mutually assured destruction
– of the superpowers. When the Soviet Union violated these unwritten rules by invading Afghanistan, it paid dearly for this infringement.
The war in Afghanistan was the beginning of its end. Today, the old and new superpowers are testing each other, trying to impose
their own version of global rules, experimenting with them through proxies – which are, of course, other, small nations and states.
Karl Popper once praised the scientific testing of hypotheses,
saying that, in this way, we allow our hypotheses to die instead of us. In today's testing, small nations get hurt and wounded instead
of the big ones – first Georgia, now Ukraine. Although the official arguments are highly moral, revolving around human rights and
freedoms, the nature of the game is clear. The events in Ukraine
seem something
like the crisis in Georgia, part two – the next stage of a geopolitical struggle for control in a nonregulated, multicentred
world.
It is definitely time to teach the superpowers, old and new, some manners, but who will do it? Obviously, only a transnational
entity can manage it – more than 200 years ago, Immanuel Kant saw the need for a transnational legal order grounded in the rise of
the global society. In his project for perpetual peace, he wrote: "Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth
has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship
is no high-flown or exaggerated notion."
This, however, brings us to what is arguably the "principal contradiction" of the new world order (if we may use this old Maoist
term): the impossibility of creating a global political order that would correspond to the global capitalist economy.
What if, for structural reasons, and not only due to empirical limitations, there cannot be a worldwide democracy or a representative
world government? What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal democracy with worldwide elections?
Today, in our era of globalisation, we are paying the price for this "principal contradiction." In politics, age-old fixations,
and particular, substantial ethnic, religious and cultural identities, have returned with a vengeance. Our predicament today
is defined by this tension: the global free circulation of commodities is accompanied by growing separations in the social sphere.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the global market, new walls have begun emerging everywhere, separating peoples
and their cultures. Perhaps the very survival of humanity depends on resolving this tension.
GreeneGrasshopper -> Strummered, 06 May 2014 10:05pm
Capitalism is a system engineered to ensure that the psychopaths get to the top. Ruthlessness, selfishness, blind
pursuit of profit, manipulation and coercion of others, believing your own lies - these are the necessary qualities for success,
which have been elevated into desirable qualities. If you don't have them, you're a loser.
To get to the top, you have to be a psychopath. If you're at the top, you're a psychopath.
Whitt, 06 May 2014 9:22pm
"Who can control the post-superpower capitalist world order?"
*
Is this a trick question?
The oligarchs, of course.
Silvertown Swedinburgh, 06 May 2014 11:24pm
For the 1948 Italian General Election the US fleet was in Italian ports with the US Marines on board just so the electorate
would get the message and as one CIA agent said "We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their
political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets," according to CIA operative F. Mark Wyatt. and they kept
interfering in Italian elections into the 1970s
MsrOboulot Malkatrinho, 07 May 2014 1:19pm
Northern Cyprus was annexed by Turkey. Many commentators would also argue that Croatia and Slovenia were effectively annexed
by the EU, if not Austria and Germany. Commentators such as Pilger would argue that 80% of Latin America was annexed by the US
a long time ago, but let's not go there. Of course, we can also talk about the Occupied Territories, how would you describe them?
As I said, it's a matter of political views we disagree on, not one of terminology.
StephenStafford, 06 May 2014 9:39pm
Though the article deals with countries and geographic areas, much might be equivalently true of companies which may be likened
to countries especially when some have larger revenues than many countries which they may tend to be able. individually or as
a group, to dominate.
The Obama regime is calling fo sanctions on the Putin regime, whilst ExxonMobil seems unfazed and is busily investing with a Russian
oil company Rosneft.
After Yeltsin, Putin very obviously searched for ways to reclaim State assets sold off on the cheap and whereas he could manage
to deal with one (Yukos), his Government was obviously too impaired to go after many other Oligarchs, so for the moment they and
their ill-gotten assets are 'safe' .
The current Ukrainian problem may have more in common with Georgia, than Syria, Libya and Iraq, but they all have the US
squaring off against Russia. In Ukraine, Russia acted decisively over Crimea and left the US in a quandary as to what their
next move could be, other than backing their puppet regime.
The US has shown little wish to be directly involved after Iraq in many of these local skirmishes apart from 'drones'. Russia
has not turned up in any war zone using drones so far, though Iran and Hezbollah seem to see in their next conflicts, the use
of drones will be very important.
What might be more worrying is when the current FRB resuscitation of the US economy fails to show the promise anticipated
and the debt to China becomes a political problem. What then? Does Washington send warships to Beijing?
Putin told Bush a long while ago that Russia appreciated the US interest in its natural resources, but no thank you.
Beckow -> StephenStafford, 06 May 2014 11:50pm
"Ukrainian problem may have more in common with Georgia, than Syria, Libya and Iraq, but they all have the US squaring off
against Russia."
I agree that Georgia was a mini-version of this, but because of its size the Ukraine problem is in a class of its own. In other
words, this is truly new and almost anything can happen.
When trying to understand the reality around us it helps to do a few logical games, and Zizek does that, just not fully. For example,
let's say there was no Russia, or only an absolutely powerless Russia (like Yeltsin in the 90's). What would happen?
Most likely Ukraine would be a quasi-independent, bankrupt state heavily indebted to the West, with NATO bases, folklore instead
of real politics, large emigration (mostly illegal), and desperate population. It would be run by Western approved oligarchs
who would share all local resources with Western "investors". It would not be in EU, although a small layer of Kiev intelligentsia
would be heavily subsidized by the West, given do-nothing cushy NGO positions, offered frequent trips and humored as needed. The
nationalists would be changing public holidays, tearing down and putting up statues, and occasionally venting their anger at minorities
and at football games. The rest of the population would be slowly dropping to substance level, no jobs, no money, no futures.
In other words just like some of the poorer EU countries, except without the accumulated wealth, euro currency and access
to EU as an escape valve.
So having Russia - as a savior, boogeyman or a distraction - immensely help all Ukrainians. It makes them important enough
to have to be bought out. It forces a competition for their affection and thus bids up any rewards. All Ukrainians do better
(except the killed ones): the NGO crowd in Kiev gets more grants, oligarchs get more deals, nationalists get more respect, Russians
in the south-east will get a veto power, so they will also have to be compensated. This is a win-win and on the ground the people
engaged sense it: so they will keep it going, they will escalate. What are the alternatives? Greece without the Aegean islands?
Or a dumpy provincial life?
This is locally driven and not any longer by super-powers, indispensable one, aspiring one, or any other kind. It will go on and
will be quite entertaining. That's what Zizek missed, he is too globally focused. This is about a unique place, strange and desperate
people, and no resources to pay for the entertainment. This is an end-of-days party for those who seem to have no place in
the neo-liberal world, either EU or the Russian version.
StephenStafford -> Beckow, 07 May 2014 2:12pm
Good synopsis of the problem in Ukraine.
re
What would happen?
The weakness of Russia wasn't immediately capitalised upon by the USA, though the Clinton foreign policy increasingly reflected
this, particularly with the interference in the Balkans. The PNAC on the other hand did see the advantage that the USA could take
and that was obvious in the Afghanistan attack and more especially with Iraq.
Arguably in this post 1990 period, the USA acted relatively slowly to capitalise on the dissolution of the USSR.
Beckow StephenStafford, 07 May 2014 7:54pm
Most power gets dissipated with over-reach, so I am not sure capitalizing faster would have been better for US. Most power
is also always local, and the world is a big place.
US neo-con dreamers tend to see the world as a map. It is not a "map". It is a much more complex environment with local dynamics,
histories, and lots and lots of people. Who want stuff. Moving in, or "capitalizing" as you call it, creates heightened expectations
and inevitable disappointments. My advise is to chill and keep it small. Over-reach and too much ambition never work in the long
run.
WhatIsWhat -> StephenStafford
The US has shown little wish to be directly involved after Iraq in many of these local skirmishes apart from 'drones'.
For the sake of the truth, little correction:
The US has shown little wish to be openly and visibly involved after Iraq in many of these local skirmishes apart from 'drones'.
They prefer to be invisible and remotely control 'human drones' who 'peacefully protest' and kill left and right for 'freedoms'.
Rialbynot, 06 May 2014 9:47pm
What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal democracy with worldwide elections?
Today, in our era of globalisation, we are paying the price for this "principal contradiction."
Some are paying the price; others are benefitting. That's the first thing we need to recognise.
Having done so, we can then start "solving" the contradiction by re-focussing attention on our national economies, while also
seeking to make the global market economy a little more people-friendly (the aim being a global social market economy).
Perhaps the EU's principle (or concept) of subsidiarity, which, unfortunately, the EU itself so often fails to apply, could be
used to identify at which level decisions should be taken.
Brigitte Bernadotte -> Rialbynot, 07 May 2014 12:43pm
A "global democracy" is a nightmare per se, because it's a global government. The US is a democracy, and Germany was a democracy
in the 20's, too. However, it turned into one of the most terrible dictatorships ever. Hell-bent on removing borders actually.
Any kind of global government, as friendly and benevolent it might be, could turn into a global dictaorship, like in Star Wars
the Republic was turned into the Empire. Which country would fight the golbal dictorship? To which country wold whistleblowers
and refugees go? Ivory tower left-wing populist academics like Zizek, who conveniently blames "capitalism" (the right to own property)
as the root of all evil - as if the Soviet Union and Mao's China had been bastions of liberty - fail to deal with this aspect.
I am not surprised, the EU welfare state is the reason for the euro debt mountain (in the US it's military overstretch), which
is the reason for the EU's misery, and he failed to even mention that, too.
That's also why the EU is dangerous, it reduces political diversity, which helped Europe to overcome dictatorships in the past.
Several EU countries grounding Morales' plane on American orders was a taste of that. As for subsidiarity, the EU is based on
"ever closer union", which is an euphemism for centralist power grab.
Brian o'Cualain -> Brigitte Bernadotte, 07 May 2014 1:51pm
When looking at the EU welfare debt mountain it's worth looking who exactly benefits from the welfare, not only in terms of the
generally recognized view of welfare but also the whole notion of corporate welfare, subsidies, tax-breaks etc. I think you'll
find the scales will tend to tip where they tip for everything else.
Avi Unobtaniumstein -> Rialbynot, 08 May 2014 11:36am
Therein is another contradiction. Globalists cannot focus on their national economy.
michaelmichael, 06 May 2014 9:58pm
"Our predicament today is defined by this tension: the global free circulation of commodities is accompanied by growing separations
in the social sphere. "
The tension lies primarily between those who have and those who haven't. As far as the corporations are concerned, its business
as usual.
Our predicament TOMORROW will be defined by an intensifying scarcity of finite resources, with the additional whammy of climate
change.
Luismdv, 06 May 2014 10:25pm
"What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal democracy with worldwide elections?"
There seems to be some plausibility in that hypothesis. If this was true, both the left and the right will have to check their
political premises because the "democratic consensus" is shared across the whole political specter (except, both political extremes,
largely irrelevant).
But unlike classic Marxism, which made the (socio-cultural) superstructure dependent on the (economic) structure, there is no
evidence that this is true now. The implication could be that the economic structure remains in place (supported by basic human
needs) while the democratic superstructure falls apart. This is not what I want, but is a possibility.
What if, for structural reasons, and not only due to empirical limitations, there cannot be a worldwide democracy or a representative
world government? What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal democracy with worldwide
elections?
Today, in our era of globalisation, we are paying the price for this "principal contradiction.
A rather strange and unsatisfying article from Zizek. I partly agree with him but feel he needs to spell out what these 'structural
reasons' to which he alludes. Why it's dissatisfying is that he appears to lament the impossibility of a world government or liberal
democratic order. I consider that a blessing though, whatever shape or form it takes - not least liberal democratic - structurally
it could only be oppressive.
I also find it strange that Zizek appears to accept 'this era of (economic) globalisation' as something natural and permanent
rather than as contingent and transient - only a manifestation of a certain stage in the development of capitalism. My own
gut-feeling is that globalisation is already beginning to decline and disintegrate due to economic, political, resource and environmental
constraints.
While I'd certainly agree that this is a very dangerous time, in the long-run there's no point in lamenting the absence of
a global order/government - it's in fact our last, best hope of freedom and equality. If the oligarchs and plutocrats across the
globe were ever able to overcome their differences and unite behind a single global order or government it would inherently have
to be highly authoritarian and undemocratic to maintain control.
NOTaREALmerican -> TransReformation, 06 May 2014 10:37pm
Re: If the oligarchs and plutocrats across the globe were ever able to overcome their differences and unite behind a single
global order or government it would inherently have to be highly authoritarian and undemocratic to maintain control.
Well, not if it was run by the nice guys in Brussels. Didn't the people of the EU vote to consolidate power in Brussels because
of their hope that a United States of Europe would be as democratic and freedom-loving as the United States of Merica?
DailyMailHatesMe, 06 May 2014 10:38pm
In the discipline of international relations, constructivism is the claim that significant aspects of international relations
are historically and socially constructed, rather than inevitable consequences of human nature or other essential characteristics
of world politics.
Philosophish, 06 May 2014 10:42pm
Though geopolitics qua content change all the time in history the age old dictum stands strong as ever: he with the money makes
the rules!
The question is not who can control the 'superpowers', the question is who controls the money suppy.
sadhu, 06 May 2014 10:47pm
My guess is Bankers and big corporations will control the post capitalist world. Forget the political and moral arguments.
The top layer will do everything in their power to control. But the dilemma is if 'they' have the power and 'free will' to control
the 'we' the underdog should have the 'free will' as well to counter their control. However, as interesting as this article is,
it still argues in political, economic and super power terms, where as a more realistic approach would be to look at this in biological
and natural terms.
For example in plate tectonics, what controls what. Or does the matter of control even come into plate. In the past they attributed
volcanoes to the power of Gods and Devils, where as through scientific analysis (as apposed to social and particularly religious
ones) we have come to view volcanoes and plate tectonics as intricate natural processes.
Therefore, instead of speaking of controls how long will it take us to speak in terms of natural processes. How does it come about
that one strata of society much like some particular genes, hormones and possibly bacteria and viruses take over the processes
of a particular life form. It happens through natural processes and not political and moral arguments.
Bucky Fuller used to say that in order to have true democracy we should learn/discover its true principles just as we discovered
the principles of gravity and electricity.
Here is a good place to mention John McMurtry and his 'Cancer Stage of Capitalism', downloadable from his info in Wikipedia.
I am so grateful to the Guardian and Cif for it was in such discussions where a kind soul introduced me to McMurtry.
EarlyVictoria, 06 May 2014 10:53pm
the US stands for neoliberal capitalism, Europe for what remains of the welfare state, China for authoritarian capitalism,
Latin America for populist capitalism
Liking this neat formulation.
Laserlurk, 06 May 2014 10:56pm
First and foremost; perturbations we are witnessing are processes of reversing the globalisation-effect that in its core
value destroys centralised global-powers control.
Second; humans as a race have lost momentum of the discovery and are pretty much bound to the known territories, continents
and practices.
Without drive we are lost in a consumption and quite retarded innovation of the things and technologies that cause auto-dumb effect.
As understanding all of which is written above eases consequences of a post-Lacan society, we are generally unhappy about everything,
but we lost the crying shoulder.
So, one might say we also live post- mutually assured destruction, as everyone is inflicting it slowly on themselves.
Then again, one can be rather nihilistic and write as well: Who cares?
NOTaREALmerican -> Laserlurk , 06 May 2014 11:01pm
Re: Then again
Or, one can be pathologically optimist and keep consolidating power in the hope that - eventually - the nice people WILL eventually
run things.
taxhaven, 06 May 2014 11:08pm
...multiple centres of global capitalism have been forming. In the US, Europe, China and maybe Latin America, too, capitalist
systems have developed with specific twists: the US stands for neoliberal capitalism, Europe for what remains of the welfare
state, China for authoritarian capitalism, Latin America for populist capitalism...
Funny...everywhere I look I see authoritarian socialism, not "capitalism". I see manipulated markets, manipulated prices, crony
favourites, insolvent public sectors, rigged wages and prices and zillions of regulations.
NOTaREALmerican -> taxhaven, 06 May 2014 11:19pm
There's no such thing as your fantasy version of Capitalism; where all the markets are "free" and there are no assholes
and sociopaths trying to manipulate and screw people.
You live in the same fantasyland the Socialists and Libertarians do. None of the economic ISM's work according to moral rules
when you've got lots of smart-n-savvy assholes and sociopaths.
The morals are for the children, and the adults are out trying to figure out how to screw the children (which - it turns out
- is pretty easy).
taxhaven -> NOTaREALmerican, 06 May 2014 11:45pm
There's no such thing as your fantasy version of Capitalism (?)
So what IS there? It sure isn't anything close to "capitalism", is it...
NOTaREALmerican -> taxhaven, 06 May 2014 11:52pm
Re: So what IS there?
ALL the ISM words are worthless labels used by people with economic morality OCD. The assholes and sociopaths could care
less what "the systems" is, because from an asshole and sociopath's perspective there is only one system: how much can I take
NOW and how can I screw people to take more later.
What ELSE exists or has EVER existed? These dumbasses ISM's are worthless to even talk about; they exists only in a fantasyland
of no assholes and manipulative sociopaths who confidently take what they want and have no morals.
GiulioSica, 06 May 2014 11:13pm
Zizek's analysis is once again spot on and would be accepted as self-evident (Ukraine a proxy war between superpowers)
were it not for our twisted corporate controlled media.
But, unfortunately, he offers no solutions, only questions. As a result, it can be summed up in a short sentence: "Things are
bad. What is to be done?"
ID1812901, 06 May 2014 11:16pm
Big banks rule the world, don't they?
NOTaREALmerican ID1812901, 06 May 2014 11:22pm
When ya think about, a bank creates money from nothing and is protected by the state. How could they NOT rule the world.
WillShirley, 06 May 2014 11:24pm
Seems very obvious here in the USA we are controlled (owned) by the multi-national corporations. They control our
government, therefor they control our military and that makes them extremely dangerous.
They do not see killing tens of thousands of people as troubling in the slightest. Look at our invasion of Iraq. Look at the
other little wars we started to protect the corporations. They own most of the so-called civilized world and plan to retain that
control. They can't control the sunlight so we have almost NO solar power plants. They know clean water is going to be a problem...
it is now... so they sell us bottles of what they say is clean water.... and we buy it happily.
Governments now exist to funnel wealth to the .01% who own the corporations. We exist for the same reason cattle are
found at a dairy farm. Until the herd decides to act like adult men and women instead of domesticated animals we will continue
to allow the corporate takeover of our world. Until we stop worshiping the dollar and acting as if only money can make us happy
we will be in thrall to the capitalists/fascists who currently run the whole show.
North10, 06 May 2014 11:29pm
Sorry Zizek .far too sloppy .first Georgia, now Ukraine, well no, the US has interfered militarily with 75 countries since
WW2 and currently has military bases in 135 sovereign nations ..so hardly first Georgia and now Ukraine .just watch four star
US General Wesley Clark discussing in 2007 the US plans to topple seven countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria,
coincidence with real events, hardly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAWzvtVJA5A
So, hardly first Georgia and now Ukraine...
Vatslav Rente, 06 May 2014 11:30pm
Strange, abstract thinking Mr. Zizek.
What is this nonsense about Georgia and Ukraine. In Georgia, Russia prevented the genocide against Ossetians. In Eastern Ukraine
supported ethnic Russians. What is the problem?
The rules never change. Money and Power are everything. Democracy, dictatorship, the international community - fiction for outsiders,
words which superpower cover their interests. Of course Russia is holding its geopolitics. It's not like the state Department.
Is this news? Maybe Mr. Zizek doubts in competence of the American President? Don't worry, the U.S. can't win all the time, this
is normal. Moreover, to be "the world's policeman" ungrateful and dangerous activity, constantly crazy fundamentalist trying to
burn the flag of your country)
HumbleDawes, 06 May 2014 11:39pm
To know a society is not only to know its explicit rules. One must also know how to apply them: when to use them, when to
violate them, when to turn down a choice that is offered, and when we are effectively obliged to do something but have to pretend
we are doing it as a free choice. Consider the paradox, for instance, of offers-meant-to-be-refused. When I am invited to a
restaurant by a rich uncle, we both know he will cover the bill, but I nonetheless have to lightly insist we share it – imagine
my surprise if my uncle were simply to say: "OK, then, you pay it!"
This uninspired paragraph, including its misuse of the word 'paradox', could have just been written: 'to know a society is
not only to know its laws, one must also be aware of its social norms' without any real loss of meaning. 'Offers-meant-to-be-refused.'
Endless verbiage. Sort-it-out-Slavoj.
ronaldadair, 06 May 2014 11:43pm
You have it all wrong my friend - that is to say you are barking up the wrong tree when you talk about a world controlled by
who ? - one nation ? - or the corporate elite more likely !!
What so many people are missing is that we are heading at a fair rate of knots " back to the future " which will involve
the nation state recapturing its power and the diminishing authority of the corporate elite who of course are hell bent on taking
over everything affecting our lives not because they have any particular crusade in this direction, but simply because in
order to continue to enlarge their empires - to increase their economies of scale , their future, as they see it, lies in a world
where the corporation govern
This will not happen and one only has to move into a space where the correction occurs to see that the nation state will once
again govern us as part of a world connected by bi-lateral trade agreements.
GordonGecko -> ronaldadair, 07 May 2014 8:43am
The 'corporate elite' already OWN our governments. The nation state is disappearing at the same rate as democratic representation.
JacobJonker -> ronaldadair, 07 May 2014 11:20am
Obvious and uncommon common sense.It may,however,not eventuate due to the propensity of the majority to be blind to their fate.There
is also the usual apathy,though the coming generations will see a division into slaves,stooges,slave-masters,dissenters,freedom
fighters and the usual coterie of the power pyramid from the top to the bottom layer of slaves to a system.Nation-states whose
citizens wish to survive have a challenge ahead of them.Typically,only a minority is growing in awareness.
Robbli, 06 May 2014 11:45pm
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that
it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly
addicted.". - Frank Herbert, Dune.
Nice people are too busy doing nice things and have no desires to rule and exploit, hence we will always be ruled by a-holes as
long as we keep on voting for them and no, I don't know what the answer is unless we are prepared to make sacrifices, become self
sufficient and live off the grid.
ThomasPaine2 -> Robbli, 07 May 2014 9:18am
A very well made point. I have a suggestion about how it could possibly be fixed.
In order to prevent the scum rising to the top, for want of a better cliché, we should look to re-structure our local and central
law-making bodies. Rather than elections, which necessarily attract the vainglorious and selfish, a system of conscription should
be implemented. Government (local and central) should have an upper-house composed of people from the community selected randomly,
much like jury service.
Their job is to hear the legislative proposals and counter arguments and decide based upon evidence presented whether to approve
a proposal. That will instantly remove the capacity for political corruption, as all legislation will need the approval of citizen's
juries. Couple this with state funding of political parties for the lower house and corporate influence will be dramatically reduced.
When I am invited to a restaurant by a rich uncle, we both know he will cover the bill, but I nonetheless have to lightly insist
we share it – imagine my surprise if my uncle were simply to say: "OK, then, you pay it!"
I gave up those social contracts
a long time ago and I've never looked back. Your uncle knows damn well he is expected to pay, since you would never go to that
restaurant if it weren't for his invite. If both parties know what that you aren't being genuine, then why bother at all? This
is something that's always bothered me. Keep it real folks!
I´ll try an example: Slavoj´s uncle represents the banks, and Slavoj represent us. Slavoj is invited to dinner, he eats -not much.
This Slavoj´s meal were the cheap and easy-to-get credits to buy homes, that became the famous "junk bonds" through a complicated
financial engineering.
The end differs from Slavoj´s article:
I can´t pay, you know -Uncle says
So I´ll have to pay? -Slavoj, sweating, answers
I´m afraid you´ll have to -Uncle insists
Slavoj he asks the waiter to bring the bill, and thinks he´ll have to sell his car, no holidays, less clothes...
travellersjoy, 06 May 2014 11:58pm
Since US governments willingly colluded with its corporate class, and bullied and coerced Europe and the Anglosphere to transfer
the wealth of the West, to the Middle East and then China, I have no confidence that there is a class of people with the skills,
abilities, and INTELLIGENCE to see beyond the immediate profit horizon - except perhaps in China - and they are only thinking
about their own interests.
If the people of the western world are incapable of electing good governments in the public/national interest, I doubt the
possibility of any supra-power being more responsible. The fact is, all our governments can be, and often are, bought and sold
by the great multinationals that demand free rein to do what they will - and who brought us the GFC, as well as the shift of economic
power from West to East.
Asking for a benign dictator is just asking for trouble as any citizen of a fascist state can attest.
nj61nj, 07 May 2014 12:28am
what a depressing article which really doesn't tell us anything much at all. So kant -> almost pointless and sometimes damaging
UN, Popper - an exposure of the problem of positivism. To say there is a contradiction or tension here is a misnomer, in fact
it is just an increasingly unilateral domination of capitalism. It is increasingly difficult to find a dialectic within which
to understand struggles and tensions which result from this situation. What of the state in Syria, or South Sudan, or Ukraine?
Marxist philosophy needs to catch up quick.
Stevo0012345, 07 May 2014 12:32am
Something I find interesting is the transnational nature of modern capital, and labour. This is making geo control difficult
for modern superpowers, not impossible, but increasingly difficult.
As revenue is increasingly tied to transnational enterprises, the paradox is that state interests are tied to cross border peace
and stability. Not a goal helped by upsetting regional stability.
In the good old days when the world was divided into 2 spheres of influence stability was reasonably easy to enforce.
It is definitely time to teach the superpowers, old and new, some manners, but who will do it? Obviously, only a transnational
entity can manage it
Does Žižek really mean that only a transnational entity / a law of world citizenship / a global political order can keep the
PTB in check?
Presumably not, as he questions it:
What if, for structural reasons, and not only due to empirical limitations, there cannot be a worldwide democracy or a representative
world government? What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal democracy with worldwide
elections?
The notion of a worldwide democracy is obviously absurd.
However, Žižek is right. We do need legal and politcal mechanisms that, as I see it, will stand up for individuals, communities
and cultures in the face of the global economic order.
I think the solutions will have to be culturally pluralistic and local.
We need to recognise that superpowers, politicians and governments are still stuck in the 19th-Century of competitng nation
states, the fight economic wars to be the top dogs.
World economy is now a fact:
We only have one global economy and what we think of as the US economy or the Russian economy does not have any reality outside
of world economy. Governments try to impose their own rules on how they interact with global economic reality, but these rules
are merely reactive. World economy is fact. The problem is that governments continue to view nation states as separate controllable
economic entities -- which they are not.
They are not even interdependent entities (as was the case during colonial times). Goods
and services can come for anywhere and are financed from multiple global locations, produced in multiple locations and consumed
worldwide in different locations. This is even more the case when you consider global financial markets. Global financial actors
and multinational corporations know this, whereas governments are still stuck in 19th Century thinking. It is this outmoded way
of thinking that has led to economic wars in the past, continues to fuel current wars and will lead to future economic war if
politicians don't wake up to the fact of world economy.
2bapilgrim, 07 May 2014 8:52am
So many comments on the headline, but the real problem to be solved is stated in the last paragraph:
Our predicament today is defined by this tension: the global free circulation of commodities is accompanied by growing
separations in the social sphere. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the global market, new walls have begun emerging
everywhere, separating peoples and their cultures. Perhaps the very survival of humanity depends on resolving this tension.
MysticFish, 07 May 2014 8:53am
We now have a deeply serious moral crisis in politics not just a capitalist one. In the past right wing political crimes used
to be reported. This time, what we get instead is worrying silence and one-sidedness from the media. Why would our governments
go to such trouble to brush aside the gratuitous massacre of innocent unarmed Ukrainians?
" Today the old and new superpowers are...trying to impose their own version of global rules, experimenting with them through
proxies - which are, of course,...small nations and states. (...small nations get hurt and wounded instead of the big ones)."
Consider that there may be an elite group of power-mongers who, through the control of global mega-institutions, wield the
power to mobilize e.g the military might of the U.S. and of Britain and of other puppet nations. The anger resulting from
their atrocities would in effect be directed at the U.S or British footsoldier, NOT the hidden MANIPULATORS! Actually, even
Obama himself, could be a proxy!
MysticFish -> Kosmicfriend, 07 May 2014 10:25am
Your argument is plausible, since all kinds of entities are now able to disguise themselves behind global corporations, who
in turn, strangely exercise undue persuasion over our elected politicians. It's very difficult to see just what is going on.
Global corporations appear to be the new weapon of war, when, for example, you look at the carpet bombing effect fracking
has on vital agricultural land and water resources. The far right seem to think this technology serves their countries' interests,
but then they are not particularly bright when they also act as paid mercenaries for Chinese ambitions.
imight, 07 May 2014 9:02am
the only way to stop the big powers fighting is to stop the reasons they fight at source.....greed
most power and influence in any country comes from its wealth holders and in many cases these are faceless suits in big business
and high finance all protected by a blag legal system set up to protect companies and 'their' assets. i highlight 'their'
as companies have more rights than individuals in modern law and this allows a disconnect between the people running the company
and the consequences of decisions made.....
if companies and their executives and shareholders wish to continue receiving this rights of limited liability the law should
be changed to force them to to behave ethically and pay fairly (the difference between highest and lowest paid workers should
be low) and be responsible to the environment, if they cant do that ... why should they have limited public liabilities .... ????
If proof were needed that Slavoj Žižek has little understanding of the current crisis in Ukraine, who the responsible agents
are and what they seek to gain from plunging the country into chaos and war, this execrable post is it.
The transnational entity called the United Nations has long passed its use-by date. The US government is in thrall to Wall
Street, corporations and their lobby groups and is over-extended in numerous wars and conflicts across the planet. Americans are
tired of fighting, they are sinking into Third World poverty, their jobs are disappearing and more of them are ending up in prisons
operated by private firms for profit.
It seems Žižek prefers the old order of one country dominating the world and that country being the United States. Russia on the
other hand should meekly accept allowing Ukraine to fall under fascist rule and then itself being plundered by US corporations
and divided up into small squabbling statelets while Siberian mineral wealth and Caspian Sea oil and gas enrich a small parasitic
class that flits from one country to the next.
Martyn -> Blackburn, 07 May 2014 9:47am
The banks control the money supply, and so hold the nations to ransom. Some influential groups, some of them very wealthy,
are interested in controlling and manipulating public opinion both at local and international level. One might be tempted to think
that the people in power are those who have been democratically elected, but this is perhaps a deception. Whose democracy is it?
The leaders? Or does it belong to those who do things behind the scenes? Control the money supply and public opinion and you already
have a monopoly on rule.
Writeangle, 07 May 2014 10:22am
There are far too many different cultures and religions for there ever to be work agreement in many areas.Its only the political
elite that dream their dogmas will take over the world. The welfare state ridden EU has dreams of getting bigger and more important,
dreams that are extremely unlikely to be met.
Most Likely China will be the next world's superpower with the narcissistic welfare state EU sinking slowly in the west.
We will have to wait and see how China plays its new hand and how the others respond to it.
My guess is that the west will not be able to match China and will fall behind even in the US.
NinthLegion, 07 May 2014 10:34am
The Roman Caesars knew that thy could command respect, achieve unity, and lead efficiently and with deep authority if they
had an enemy - any credible enemy. Its what holds nations together with what passes for a common mindset. The psychology has not
changed. After the demise of the Soviet Union, Al Quieda stepped into the breach. Such a scenario also keeps a powerful and wholly
influental industrial military complex happy - as Eisenhower warned. It keeps macho politicians with huge nuclear arsenals in
power, clothed with their baubles at the conference tabe, and it also serves to impress wayward regimes. The threat to most governments
today, I believe, comes more from within, rather than from without, and a perceived need for security against a potential enemy
is beneficial (for them) in promoting a steady erosion of liberty.
Nations need an enemy that must be credible, sufficiently powerful, and able to provide a relatively malignant threat.
FrJack NinthLegion, 07 May 2014 11:24am
Nations need an enemy that must be credible, sufficiently powerful, and able to provide a relatively malignant threat.
Do you mean that there must actually be such a threat or that for a nation to hold together, it's population must believe (be
made to believe, constantly told) there is such a threat?
FrJack, 07 May 2014 10:39am
Perhaps the very survival of humanity depends on resolving this tension.
Perhaps the opposite is true. The success of humans as a species, humanity, has and is in large part driven by the soiciobiologically
evolved propensity to continually have the tensions/dynamic of competitive groups going on. We live in an age where it is now
easier than ever to see/make analysis and judgment on the minutiae of how these tensions constantly ebb and flow and morph, how
the players jockey for position and we are on the look out to see where that leaves us. But there is nothing new here, it is a
never ending process without resolution. The idea of resolution is a quasi religious dream of return to the garden of eden where
all the nuisance things that we have to worry about and deal with simply for being alive are 'solved' for us. 'Re'-solution is
a dream of something that never existed except for when we were babies. It is an infantile memory.
tiojo, 07 May 2014 12:05pm
The USA just now is comparable with Britain and its empire at the time prime minister MacMillan made his famous 'Winds of Change'
speech in South Africa. He was a politician who realised that the game was up. Britain was no longer the world power it had been.
Although he knew that to be the case he didn't have a coherent plan for the future. The empire was dismantled. Britain dithered,
and still does, about whether its future lies with Europe or not. Slow decline continued.
The USA post-Iraq is in slow decline as a world power. The bipolar world of the Cold War was replaced by an all too brief unipolar
world of US hegemony. But now with the EU, China, India, Russia, Brazil and others providing alternatives we are, as Mr Zizek
says, entering a multi-polar world where the dance moves have not been rehearsed. Such a shame that this fracturing of power does
not lead to a reaffirmation of faith in internationalism and a willingness to compromise and collaborate through the UN and its
agencies.
lioninthemeadow, 07 May 2014 12:06pm
Žižek touches on a fundamental truth that all reasonable human beings recognise: humanity must jettison its tribal attachments
to nations etc. and vest greater powers in supranational bodies like the UN.
I believe it is inevitable that the world will increasingly fuse together in the decades and centuries ahead - it is logical,
it is pragmatic and it is the only means of ensuring our mutual survival as a species.
As long as humans are divided by tribalism and reactionary loyalties then the world will be host to all manner of social catastrophes.
FrJack -> Danny Bird, 07 May 2014 12:49pm
As long as humans are divided by tribalism and reactionary loyalties then the world will be host to all manner of social
catastrophes.
The biggest catastrophy we are all facing is environmental. This is due in large part to the seemingly unending proliferation
of human beings. Now, evolution wise, it can be said that as a species, our proliferation is a big success. I have not seen anyone
argue that the behavioural propensity of tribalism and loyalty has or is having an effect that is hindering our evolutionary success.
Indeed, it seems more credible that they are positive attributes in that sense. But if faced with a scenario that population growth
must be curtailed or even reduced if we are to stand any hope of mitigating environmental ills, then I'd say it is better that
some other tribe than mine bear the cost of that. I have no doubt they feel they same way. Now, plenty of people seem to be hoping
for some other way out of this problem. I think they are dreaming.
Well, as you yourself say, in those old times of "mad"-ness (mutually assured destruction) at least we entertained more secure
and stable illusions even if based on very dangerous and unsustainable premises
It is definitely time to teach the superpowers, old and new, some manners, but who will do it?
No one ever has taught anything to the powerful. The best we can do is exactly what those so-called pro-Russia "terrorists"
are doing in Eastern Ukraine
There is not such a thing as "rationality" or Karl Popper's falsifiability and "scientific testing of hypotheses" among many
other things, because you can only have such a thing in the physical sciences. What on earth would be a baseline understanding
of truth in politics, when it is all based on lying and manipulating people?!?
Immanuel Kant saw the need for a transnational legal order grounded in the rise of the global society
Yeah, and the closest we have gotten to it is the UN which is an odd joke. They are just a proxy to the USG. Even its secretary
compulsively criticizes Snowden even if he doesn't have to, as a way to show "respect" his masters
"Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place
is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion."
Yes, and this is happening. People are widely opening their eyes to the "freedom-loving" b#llsh!t of the USG
All gringos have done in their century of greatness ("the land of 'the' 'free' and 'the' 'brave'") is abusing people who can't
defend themselves on an equal basis, mess with the environment and (very successfully I would admit) brainwash many, many people
by selling them very stupid and unsustainable illusions
... or a representative world government
You are kidding us, right?
What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal democracy with worldwide elections?
Well, I think definitely are. I don't think that market forces will help our "global" problems. We should stop ferally playing
into market forces hoping for those illusions to solve our problems.
We have advanced our technologies and market a bit since the stone age, but morally we are still pretentious animals (monkeys
wearing ties and thumbing our cell phones).
What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal democracy with worldwide elections?
And some muddle about walls separating people and cultures. While delighted to read (at last) a reasonable article in the Guardian,
I find Žižek's take wanting.
Monied interests will control the 'post-superpower capitalist world order.' During the past few years, they quietly used their
power to force governments austerity policies in both the US and Europe and hack away at their social safety nets.
Communism at least gave social liberalism in the West a chance, as an alternative to deprive the Soviets of sympathizers.
Once communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, the monied interests felt they could dispense with liberalism and pursue more extreme
aims.
America is the first effective 'post-democratic' western nation, that is an oligarchy of business-people. Over the coming decades,
the machinery of democracy there will break down to be replaced by a shadow government of old money, CEOs, and financiers. It
will then quietly work to induce the same in the other western nations. John Calvin's Switzerland will be the model of this new
order.
Over the coming decades, the machinery of democracy there will break down to be replaced by a shadow government of old money,
CEOs, and financiers. It will then quietly work to induce the same in the other western nations
It didn't work before...remember WWII! True, the dimensions of globalized markets and imperialistic interests were not the
same those days, now they got internet and other means of cultural turning.
But national, religious, and ethnic identities remain strong in the Old World, from Portugal to Japan, you won't get people
to speak American English and hail an identity-lacking world order. I am not totally sure whether that is good or bad, though.
Cousin2, 07 May 2014 4:17pm
The sad reality is that nothing has changed. We exist in a world where might makes right. In some countries, the brief
period roughly between the end of WW2 and the beginning of the Reagan/Thatcher regimes will be remembered as a time when workers'
wages kept pace with increased productivity.
Today, we are some 35 years back into business as usual, when increases in prosperity flow largely to the top few percent as
they have been doing since the beginning and probably will "to the last syllable of recorded time."
These few percent, consciously or not, create, enforce, and change all the rules; it is for the rest of us to find some
way to survive under them. Good luck all.
akarlin, 07 May 2014 9:31pm
Back in the 1990s, a silent pact regulated the relationship between the great western powers and Russia. Western states
treated Russia as a great power on the condition that Russia didn't act as one. But what if the person to whom the offer-to-be-rejected
is made actually accepts it? What if Russia starts to act as a great power?
With all due respect to Zizek, this is only half-true at best.
This "acknowledgement" of Russia as a great power only extended to pretty insignificant measures such as including it in the G8
(and only in its political, not financial, component). Otherwise, the US was pretty much entirely indifferent to Russia's
national interests and preferences (often after having promised otherwise). NATO expansion is the big one, of course, but
there are plenty of others (creeping missile defense, Libya, etc).
Far more accurate to say that the US simply treated Russia as the loser of the Cold War (despite Gorbachev's piteous
assertions that it was ended by the USSR's own free choice and hence such attitudes are unfair) and as such should simply
roll over and accept all edicts from Washington.
yourmiddleclassfarce, 08 May 2014 8:34am
Gangs are the most primitive form of government and within neo-liberalism all governments are merely gangs.
neo-liberalism = raising importance of the invention called money over that of people which is a dehumanising
process which cultivates (culture being the inclusive process)
All institutions (specialism within and due to the divisive process called civilization) are collapsing (because the dehumanising
process is collapsing culture which is the inclusive process). Even the world's gangs (of all type and power) are in that same
precarious process.
neo-liberalism's excessive division is dehumanising hence the institutional collapse.
Rich people are a luxury WE can no longer afford.
MysticFish -> yourmiddleclassfarce, 08 May 2014 8:45am
Super-rich people and large corporations, are a luxury we can no longer afford. People will always need to hoard to
a certain extent, though, to get them through winter and, if you are a farmer, lean years. It's not good to have everyone totally
dependent on the tender mercies of a mafia run state, or they will become abject slaves.
We need to encourage benign human-scale enterprises that are responsive to local needs and don't cause harm on an industrial
scale.
yourmiddleclassfarce -> MysticFish, 08 May 2014 11:48pm
I agree however if enough of us get together to make, for instance, a decision regarding a transport system for everyone (inclusive)
that is not exclusive then benign state scale or even interstate scale agreements that are inclusive and not divisive will generate
more social cohesion, interaction and economy precisely because the most efficient use of the invention called money rides on
the back of social currency and not social exclusion. Social currency is destroyed by excessive division.
[Notice how the neo-liberals have removed the term 'mass transit' from the lexicon of social discourse?]
'Survival in numbers' is a prime survival mechanism in our species. Cooperation trumps competition most of the time. Neo-liberalism
has made far too much division for our species to survive it. Cooperating with neo-liberalism is the biggest mistake.
LittleRichardjohn, 08 May 2014 9:45am
What if, for structural reasons, and not only due to empirical limitations, there cannot be a worldwide democracy or
a representative world government? What if the global market economy cannot be directly organised as a global liberal
democracy with worldwide elections?
... ... ....
The prospect of global solidarity is almost certainly dependent on the absurdity of Consumerism hitting the buffers, which,
since Consumerism is nothing more than a superstitious belief in Perpetual Motion...
Here Zizek encourages a kind of liberal naiveté, astonishing for a guy who pretends to be comfortable with Lenin's no-nonsense
revolutionary analytic approach.
Yes, a global world democracy would be nice. But it's hardly the case that in not having it we have only chaos. Global
capital doesn't want world democracy. They want the TransPacific Partnership G8, etc. They want elite enrichment and militarized
police.They've got it, or are in the process of getting it.. Instead of the pap he wrote, Zizek should be talking
about the creation of a world-wide opposition to those political structures.
Slavoj Žižek develops a false premise with great ease. He hints that some sort of reference point for unwritten social
codes should exist when it's always been an experiment that is never resolved except by wars when the all sides are stretched
too thin with endless tolerance.
The USA is subconsciously aware of this problem and its inevitable endpoint. It is thus
armed to the teeth and will remain so.
In this situation it is impossible not to be a bully. Everyone else has to tolerate the bully and will continue to do so for
a very long time. Only an economic collapse can disarm the USA. A collapse of the magnitude necessary does not seem likely.
The problem could be tempered by the citizenry, but the public is cowed by fears of terrorism, real and imagined.
Everyone is monitored by the NSA to keep them in line. None of this will be resolved by any sort of world government as Žižek
and other idealists imagine. The world is stuck in limbo.
Much of this is discussed on the No Agenda Show. Google it.
A similar trend can be seen at the organizational level. A
recent study by Erling Bath, Alex
Bryson, James Davis, and Richard Freeman showed that the diffusion of individual pay since the
1970s is associated with pay differences between, not within, companies. The Stanford
economists Nicholas Bloom and David Price confirmed this finding,
and argue that virtually the entire increase in income inequality in the US is rooted in the
growing gap in average wages paid by firms. Such outcomes are the result not just of inevitable
structural shifts, but also of decisions about how to handle those shifts. In the late 1970s,
as neoliberalism took hold, policymakers became less concerned about big firms converting
profits into political influence, and instead worried that governments were protecting
uncompetitive companies. With this in mind, policymakers began to dismantle the economic rules
and regulations that had been implemented after the Great Depression, and encouraged vertical
and horizontal mergers. These decisions played a major role in enabling a new wave of
globalization, which increasingly diffused growth and wealth across countries, but also laid
the groundwork for the concentration of income and wealth within countries. The growing
"platform economy" is a case in point. In China, the e-commerce giant Alibaba is leading a
massive effort to connect rural areas to national and global markets, including through its
consumer-to-consumer platform Taobao. That effort entails substantial diffusion: in more than
1,000 rural Chinese communities – so-called "
Taobao Villages " – over 10% of the population now makes a living by selling products
on Taobao. But, as Alibaba helps to build an inclusive economy comprising millions of
mini-multinationals, it is also expanding its own market power. Policymakers now need a new
approach that resists excessive concentration, which may create efficiency gains, but also
allows firms to hoard profits and invest less. Of course, Joseph Schumpeter famously argued
that one need not worry too much about monopoly rents, because competition would quickly erase
the advantage. But corporate performance in recent decades paints a different picture: 80% of
the firms that made a return of 25% or more in 2003 were still doing so ten years later. (In
the 1990s, that share
stood at about 50% .) Have you read?
To counter such concentration, policymakers should, first, implement smarter competition
laws that focus not only on market share or pricing power, but also on the many forms of rent
extraction, from copyright and patent rules that allow incumbents to cash in on old discoveries
to the misuse of network centrality. The question is not "how big is too big," but how to
differentiate between "good" and "bad" bigness. The answer hinges on the balance businesses
strike between value capture and creation. Moreover, policymakers need to make it easier for
startups to scale up. A vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem remains the most effective antidote
to rent extraction. Digital ledger technologies, for instance, have the potential to curb the
power of large oligopolies more effectively than heavy-handed policy interventions. Yet
economies must not rely on markets alone to bring about the "churn" that capitalism so badly
needs. Indeed, even as policymakers pay lip service to entrepreneurship, the number of startups
has declined in many advanced economies. Finally, policymakers must move beyond the neoliberal
conceit that those who work hard and play by the rules are those who will rise. After all, the
flipside of that perspective, which rests on a fundamental belief in the equalizing effect of
the market, is what Michael Sandel calls our "
meritocratic hubris ": the misguided idea that success (and failure) is up to us alone.
This implies that investments in education and skills training, while necessary, will
not be sufficient to reduce inequality. Policies that tackle structural biases head-on
– from minimum wages to, potentially, universal basic income schemes – are also
needed. Neoliberal economics has reached a breaking point, causing the traditional left-right
political divide to be replaced by a different split: between those seeking forms of growth
that are less inclined toward extreme concentration and those who want to end concentration by
closing open markets and societies. Both sides challenge the old orthodoxies; but while one
seeks to remove the "neo" from neoliberalism, the other seeks to dismantle liberalism
altogether. The neoliberal age had its day. It is time to define what comes next.
This was a pretty profitc book, if you think that it was publishe in 1995. At the same time
neoliberalm is not atolerant isther and we can talk about "neoliberal jihad"
Notable quotes:
"... As neoliberal economic theory -- not to be confused with social liberalism -- is the force behind globalization, this critique is relevant on a much larger scale. ..."
"... Barber argues that there are several imperatives that make up the McWorld, or the globalization of politics : a market imperative, a resource imperative, an information-technology imperative, and an ecological imperative. Due to globalization, our market has expanded and is vulnerable to the transnational markets where free trade, easy access to banking and exchange of currency are available. ..."
"... Barber sees Jihad as offering solidarity and protecting identities, but at the potential cost of tolerance and stability. ..."
The book was based on a March 1992 article by Barber first published in The Atlantic Monthly .
[1]
The book employs the basic critique of neoliberalism seen in Barber's earlier,
seminal work Strong
Democracy . As neoliberal economic theory -- not to be
confused with social
liberalism -- is the force behind globalization, this critique is relevant on a much larger
scale. Unregulated market forces encounter parochial (which he calls tribal ) forces.
These tribal forces come in many varieties: religious, cultural, ethnic, regional, local,
etc. As globalization imposes a culture of its own on a population, the tribal forces feel
threatened and react. More than just economic, the crises that arise from these confrontations
often take on a sacred quality to the tribal elements; thus Barber's use of the term "Jihad"
(although in the second edition, he expresses regret at having used that term). [
why? ]
Barber's prognosis in Jihad vs McWorld is generally negative -- he concludes that
neither global corporations nor traditional cultures are supportive of democracy . He further posits that McWorld could ultimately win the
"struggle". He also proposes a model for small, local democratic institutions and
civic engagement
as the hope for an alternative to these two forces.
Barber argues that there are several imperatives that make up the McWorld, or the
globalization of politics
: a market imperative, a resource imperative, an information-technology imperative, and an
ecological imperative. Due to globalization, our market has expanded and is vulnerable to the
transnational markets where free trade, easy access to banking and exchange of currency are
available. With the emergence of our markets, we have come up with international laws and
treaties in order to maintain stability and efficiency in the interconnected economy. Resources
are also an imperative aspect in the McWorld, where autarky seems insufficient and inefficient
in presence of globalization. The information-technology of globalization has opened up
communications to people all over the world, allowing us to exchange information. Also,
technology is now systematically integrated into everyone's lives to the point where it "gives
every person on earth access to every other person". [3] Globalization of
ecology may seem cliche; Barber argues that whatever a nation does to their own ecology, it
affects everyone on earth. For instance, cutting down a jungle will upset the overall oxygen
balance, which affects our "global lungs". McWorld may promote peace and prosperity, but Barber
sees this as being done at the cost of independence and identity , and notes that no more
social justice or equality than necessary are needed to promote efficient economic production
and consumption.
Barber sees Jihad as offering solidarity and protecting identities, but at the potential
cost of tolerance and stability. Barber describes the solidarity needed within the concept
of Jihad as being secured through exclusion and war against outsiders. As a result, he argues,
different forms of anti-democratization can arise through anti-democratic one-party
dictatorships, military juntas, or theocratic fundamentalism. Barber also describes through
modern day examples what these 'players' are. "they are cultures, not countries; parts, not
wholes; sects, not religions, rebellious factions and dissenting minorities at war not just
with globalism but with the traditional nation-state. Kurds, Basques, Puerto Ricans, Ossetians,
East Timoreans, Quebecois, the Catholics of Northern Ireland, Catalans, Tamils, and of course,
Palestinians- people with countries, inhabiting nations not their own, seeking smaller worlds
within borders that will seal them off from modernity." [4]
Barber writes democracy can be spread and secured through the world satisfying the needs of
both the McWorld and Jihad. "With its concern for accountability, the protection of minorities,
and the universal rule of law, a confederalized representative system would serve the political
needs of McWorld as well as oligarchic bureaucratism or meritocratic elitism is currently
doing." [4] Some can accept
democracy faster than others. Every case is different, however "Democracy grows from the bottom
up and cannot be imposed from the top down. Civil society has to be built from the inside out."
[1] He
goes on to further explain exactly what the confederal option means and how it will help. "It
certainly seems possible that the most attractive democratic ideal in the face of the brutal
realities of Jihad and the dull realities of McWorld will be a confederal union of semi
autonomous communities smaller than nation-states, tied together into regional economic
associations and markets larger than nation-states -- participatory and self-determining in
local matters at the bottom, representative and accountable at the top. The nation-state would
play a diminished role, and sovereignty would lose some of its political potency."
[4]
Should probably be "neoliberal religion has de-legitimized itself with its hypocrisy
Notable quotes:
"... Sorry, as a church-attending person, I object. Religion has de-legitimized itself with its hypocrisy. One example: Jerry Falwell, a "battler" against abortion actually supported it before his plutocratic masters told him it was a wedge issue. ..."
"... Michael Hudso says Jesus' first appearance in the Jerusalem temple was to announce just such a Jubilee Boy is that ever ignored! ..."
"... Your correlating the hypocritical actions of the leadership with the ideals of a religion. Corrupt leadership may delegitimize those individuals but does not delegitimize the ideals of the religion. Is the ideal of America totally dependent on the actions of its political leadership? Personally, I think there is far more to America than just the president and congress whether corrupt or not. ..."
"... What is or are the ideal(s) of "America?" Get rich quick, violence on all fronts, anti-intellectualism, imperial project across the planet? "Democracy?" If you trot that out as a "feature", you better explain what you mean, with some specificity. More to America? If youtube is any guide, try searching it for "syria combat" or "redneck" or "full auto," or all the really sick racist and extreme stuff - a pretty sorry place. But we all recite the Pledge so dutifully, don't we? and feel a thrill as the F-22s swoop over the football stadium? ..."
Sorry, as a church-attending person, I object. Religion has de-legitimized itself with its hypocrisy. One example: Jerry
Falwell, a "battler" against abortion actually supported it before his plutocratic masters told him it was a wedge issue.
Positions on the wedge issues (abortion, the gays) are actually difficult to prove with scripture–not that it has the
kind of authority it did before 35,000 variations on old manuscripts were discovered in the 17th century. (Marcus Borg is the
scholar to consult here).
Meanwhile, the big issues - e.g. covetousness, forbidden very explicitly in one of the 10 commandments - is an *industry* in
the U.S.
I'll believe these evangelicals are guided by the bible when I see them picketing Madison Avenue for promoting covetousness,
or when I see them lobbying for a debt jubilee.
Michael Hudso says Jesus' first appearance in the Jerusalem temple was to announce just such a Jubilee Boy is that ever ignored!
Your correlating the hypocritical actions of the leadership with the ideals of a religion. Corrupt leadership may delegitimize
those individuals but does not delegitimize the ideals of the religion. Is the ideal of America totally dependent on the actions
of its political leadership? Personally, I think there is far more to America than just the president and congress whether corrupt
or not.
Ideals only serve in practice to create primordial debts, buttress power differentials, and enable selective malfeasance. I
fail to see the social utility of any of those products and believe humanity would be better off repudiating them and their vectors.
Disease is not a public good.
Well I am using this definition of ideal: "a person or thing conceived as embodying such a conception or conforming to such
a standard, and taken as a model for imitation". I guess you are welcome to your definition.
I think "America" is maybe a shibboleth of some sort, but there is not a dam' thing left of the stuff I was taught and brought
to believe, as a young person, Boy Scout, attendee at the Presbyterian Westminster Fellowship, attentive student of Mrs. Thompson
and Mr. Fleming in Civics, Social Studies and US History classes, and all that. I was well enough steeped in that stuff to let
"patriotism" overcome better sense, strongly enough to enlist in the Army in 1966.
Maybe you think "The Birth of a Nation" captures the essence of our great country?
What is or are the ideal(s) of "America?" Get rich quick, violence on all fronts, anti-intellectualism, imperial project
across the planet? "Democracy?" If you trot that out as a "feature", you better explain what you mean, with some specificity.
More to America? If youtube is any guide, try searching it for "syria combat" or "redneck" or "full auto," or all the really sick
racist and extreme stuff - a pretty sorry place. But we all recite the Pledge so dutifully, don't we? and feel a thrill as the
F-22s swoop over the football stadium?
The book was based on a March 1992 article by Barber first published in The Atlantic Monthly .
[1]
The book employs the basic critique of neoliberalism seen in Barber's earlier,
seminal work Strong
Democracy . As neoliberal economic theory -- not to be
confused with social
liberalism -- is the force behind globalization, this critique is relevant on a much larger
scale. Unregulated market forces encounter parochial (which he calls tribal ) forces.
These tribal forces come in many varieties: religious, cultural, ethnic, regional, local,
etc. As globalization imposes a culture of its own on a population, the tribal forces feel
threatened and react. More than just economic, the crises that arise from these confrontations
often take on a sacred quality to the tribal elements; thus Barber's use of the term "Jihad"
(although in the second edition, he expresses regret at having used that term). [
why? ]
Barber's prognosis in Jihad vs McWorld is generally negative -- he concludes that
neither global corporations nor traditional cultures are supportive of democracy . He further posits that McWorld could ultimately win the
"struggle". He also proposes a model for small, local democratic institutions and
civic engagement
as the hope for an alternative to these two forces.
Barber argues that there are several imperatives that make up the McWorld, or the
globalization of politics
: a market imperative, a resource imperative, an information-technology imperative, and an
ecological imperative. Due to globalization, our market has expanded and is vulnerable to the
transnational markets where free trade, easy access to banking and exchange of currency are
available. With the emergence of our markets, we have come up with international laws and
treaties in order to maintain stability and efficiency in the interconnected economy. Resources
are also an imperative aspect in the McWorld, where autarky seems insufficient and inefficient
in presence of globalization. The information-technology of globalization has opened up
communications to people all over the world, allowing us to exchange information. Also,
technology is now systematically integrated into everyone's lives to the point where it "gives
every person on earth access to every other person". [3] Globalization of
ecology may seem cliche; Barber argues that whatever a nation does to their own ecology, it
affects everyone on earth. For instance, cutting down a jungle will upset the overall oxygen
balance, which affects our "global lungs". McWorld may promote peace and prosperity, but Barber
sees this as being done at the cost of independence and identity , and notes that no more
social justice or equality than necessary are needed to promote efficient economic production
and consumption.
Barber sees Jihad as offering solidarity and protecting identities, but at the potential
cost of tolerance and stability. Barber describes the solidarity needed within the concept of
Jihad as being secured through exclusion and war against outsiders. As a result, he argues,
different forms of anti-democratization can arise through anti-democratic one-party
dictatorships, military juntas, or theocratic fundamentalism. Barber also describes through
modern day examples what these 'players' are. "they are cultures, not countries; parts, not
wholes; sects, not religions, rebellious factions and dissenting minorities at war not just
with globalism but with the traditional nation-state. Kurds, Basques, Puerto Ricans, Ossetians,
East Timoreans, Quebecois, the Catholics of Northern Ireland, Catalans, Tamils, and of course,
Palestinians- people with countries, inhabiting nations not their own, seeking smaller worlds
within borders that will seal them off from modernity." [4]
Barber writes democracy can be spread and secured through the world satisfying the needs of
both the McWorld and Jihad. "With its concern for accountability, the protection of minorities,
and the universal rule of law, a confederalized representative system would serve the political
needs of McWorld as well as oligarchic bureaucratism or meritocratic elitism is currently
doing." [4] Some can accept
democracy faster than others. Every case is different, however "Democracy grows from the bottom
up and cannot be imposed from the top down. Civil society has to be built from the inside out."
[1] He
goes on to further explain exactly what the confederal option means and how it will help. "It
certainly seems possible that the most attractive democratic ideal in the face of the brutal
realities of Jihad and the dull realities of McWorld will be a confederal union of semi
autonomous communities smaller than nation-states, tied together into regional economic
associations and markets larger than nation-states -- participatory and self-determining in
local matters at the bottom, representative and accountable at the top. The nation-state would
play a diminished role, and sovereignty would lose some of its political potency."
[4]
Guardian in Russia coverage acts as MI6 outlet. Magnitsky probably was MI6 operation, anyway.
Notable quotes:
"... The Observer fabricated a direct quote from the Russian president for their propaganda purposes without any regard to basic journalistic standards. They wanted to blame Putin personally for the suspicions of some Russian investigators, so they just invented an imaginary statement from him so they could conveniently do so. ..."
"... What is really going on here is the classic trope of demonisation propaganda in which the demonised leader is conflated with all officials of their government and with the targeted country itself, so as to simplify and personalise the narrative of the subsequent Two Minutes Hate to be unleashed against them. ..."
"... In the same article, the documents from Russian investigators naming Browder as a suspect in certain crimes are first "seen as" a frame-up (by the sympathetic chorus of completely anonymous observers yellow journalism can always call on when an unsupported claim needs a spurious bolstering) and then outright labelled as such (see quote above) as if this alleged frame-up is a proven fact. Which it isn't. ..."
"... No evidence is required down there in the Guardian/Observer journalistic gutter before unsupported claims against Russian officials can be treated as unquestionable pseudo-facts, just as opponents of Putin can commit no crime for the outlet's hate-befuddled hacks. ..."
The decline of the falsely self-described "quality" media outlet The Guardian/Observer into a deranged fake news site pushing
anti-Russian hate propaganda continues apace. Take a look at
this gem :
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has accused prominent British businessman Bill Browder of being a "serial killer" –
the latest extraordinary attempt by the Kremlin to frame one of its most high-profile public enemies.
But Putin has not been reported anywhere else as making any recent statement about Browder whatever, and the Observer article
makes no further mention of Putin's supposed utterance or the circumstances in which it was supposedly made.
As the rest of the article makes clear, the suspicions against Browder were actually voiced by Russian police investigators and
not by Putin at all.
The Observer fabricated a direct quote from the Russian president for their propaganda purposes without any regard to basic
journalistic standards. They wanted to blame Putin personally for the suspicions of some Russian investigators, so they just invented
an imaginary statement from him so they could conveniently do so.
What is really going on here is the classic trope of demonisation propaganda in which the demonised leader is conflated with
all officials of their government and with the targeted country itself, so as to simplify and personalise the narrative of the subsequent
Two Minutes Hate to be unleashed against them.
When, as in this case, the required substitution of the demonised leader for their country can't be wrung out of the facts even
through the most vigorous twisting, a disreputable fake news site like The Guardian/Observer is free to simply make up new, alternative
facts that better fit their disinformative agenda. Because facts aren't at all sacred when the official propaganda line demands lies.
In the same article, the documents from Russian investigators naming Browder as a suspect in certain crimes are first "seen as"
a frame-up (by the sympathetic chorus of completely anonymous observers yellow journalism can always call on when an unsupported
claim needs a spurious bolstering) and then outright labelled as such (see quote above) as if this alleged frame-up is a proven fact.
Which it isn't.
No evidence is required down there in the Guardian/Observer journalistic gutter before unsupported claims against Russian officials
can be treated as unquestionable pseudo-facts, just as opponents of Putin can commit no crime for the outlet's hate-befuddled hacks.
The above falsifications were brought to the attention of the Observer's so-called Readers Editor – the official at the Guardian/Observer
responsible for "independently" defending the outlet's misdeeds against outraged readers – who did nothing. By now the article has
rolled off the site's front page, rendering any possible future correction nugatory in any case.
Later in the same article Magnitsky is described as having been Browder's "tax lawyer" a standard trope of the Western propaganda
narrative about the case. Magnitsky
was actually an accountant .
A trifecta of fakery in one article! That makes crystal clear what the Guardian meant in
this article , published at precisely the same moment as the disinformation cited above, when it said:
"We know what you are doing," Theresa May said of Russia. It's not enough to know. We need to do something about it.
By "doing something about it" they mean they're going to tell one hostile lie about Russia after another.
From the 'liberal' Guardian/Observer wing of the rightwing bourgeois press, spot the differences with the article in the Mail
on Sunday by Nick Robinson?
This thing seems to have been cobbled together by a guy called Nick Robinson. The same BBC Nick Robinson that hosts the Today
Programme? I dunno, one feels really rather depressed at how low our media has sunk.
I think huge swathes of the media, in the eyes of many people, have never really recovered from the ghastly debacle that was
their dreadful coverage of the reasons for the illegal attack on Iraq.
The journalists want us to forget and move on, but many, many, people still remember. Nothing happened afterwards. There
was no tribunal to examine the media's role in that massive international crime against humanity and things actually got worse
post Iraq, which the attack on Libya and Syria illustrates.
Exactly: in my opinion there should be life sentences banning scribblers who printed lies and bloodthirsty kill, kill, kill
articles from ever working again in the media.
Better still, make them go fight right now in Yemen. Amazing how quickly truth will spread if journalists know they have
a good chance of dying if they print lies and falsehoods ..
At a time when the ruling elite, across virtually the entire western world, is losing it; it being, political legitimacy and
the breakdown of any semblance of a social contract between the ruled and the rulers the Guardian lurches even further to the
political right . amazing, though not really surprising. The Guardian's role appears to be to 'coral' radical and leftist ideas
and opinions and 'groom' the educated middle class into accepting their own subjugation.
The Guardian's writers get so much, so wrong, so often it's staggering and nobody gets the boot, except for the people who
allude to the incompetence at the heart of the Guardian. They fail dismally on Trump, Brexit and Corbyn and yet carry on as if
everything is fine and dandy. Nothing to complain about here, mover along now.
I suppose it's because they are actually media aristocrats living in a world of privilege, and they, as members of the ruling
elite, look after one another regardless of how poorly they actually perform. This is typical of an elite that's on the ropes
and doomed. They choose to retreat from grubby reality into a parallel world where their own dogmas aren't challenged and they
begin to believe their propaganda is real and not an artificial contruct. This is incredibly dangerous for a ruling elite because
society becomes brittle and weaker by the day as the ruling dogmas become hollow and ritualized, but without traction in reality
and real purpose.
The Guardian is a bit like the Tory government, lost and without any real ideas or ideals. The slow strangulation of the CIF
symbolizes the crisis of confidence at the Guardian. A strong and confident ruling class welcomes criticism and is ready to brush
it all off with a smile and a shrug. When they start running scared and pretending there is no dissent or opposition, well, this
is a sign of decadence and profound weakness. They are losing the battle of ideas and the battle of solutions to our problems.
All that really stands between them and a social revolution is a thin veneer of 'authority' and status, and that's really not
enough anymore.
All our problems are pathetically and conviniently blamed on the Russians and their Demon King and his vast army of evil Trolls.
It's like a political version of the Lord of the Rings.
Don't expect the Guardian to cover the biggest military build-up (NATO) on Russia's borders since Hitler's 1941 invasion.
John Pilger has described the "respectable" liberal press (Guardian, NYT etc) as the most effective component of the propaganda
system, precisely BECAUSE it is respectable and trusted. As to why the Guardian is so insistent in demonising Russia, I would
propose that is integrates them further with a Brexit-ridden Tory government. Its Blairite columnists prefer May over Corbyn any
day.
The Guardian is trying to rescue citizens from 'dreadful dangers that we cannot see, or do not understand' – in other words they
play a central role in 'the power of nightmares'
https://www.youtube.com/embed/LlA8KutU2to
So Russians cannot do business in America but Americans must be protected to do business in Russia?
If you look at Ukraine and how US corporations are benefitting from the US-funded coup, you ask what the US did in Russia
in the 1990s and the effect it had on US business and ordinary Russian people. Were the two consistent with a common US template
of economic imperialism?
In particular, you ask what Bill Browder was doing, his links to US spying organisations etc etc. You ask if he supported
the rape of Russian State assets, turned a blind eye to the millions of Russians dying in the 1990s courtesy of catastrophic economic
conditions. If he was killing people to stay alive, he would not have been the only one. More important is whether him making
$100m+ in Russia needed conditions where tens of millions of Russians were starving .and whether he saw that as acceptable collateral
damage ..he made a proactive choice, after all, to go live in Moscow. It is not like he was born there and had no chance to leave
..
I do not know the trurh about Bill Browder, but one thing I do know: very powerful Americans are capable of organising mass
genocide to become rich, so there is no possible basis for painting all American businessmen as philanthropists and all Russians
as murdering savages ..
It's perfectly possible, in fact the norm historically, for people to believe passionately in the existence of invisible threats
to their well-being, which, when examined calmly from another era, resemble a form of mass-hysteria or collective madness. For
example; the religious faith/dogma that Satan, demons and witches were all around us. An invisible, parallel, world, by the side
of our own that really existed and we were 'at war with.' Satan was our adversary, the great trickster and disseminator of 'fake
news' opposed to the 'good news' provided by the Gospels.
What's remarkable, disturbing and frightening is how closely our media resemble a religious cult or the Catholic Church in
the Middle Ages. The journalists have taken on a role that's close to that of a priesthood. They function as a 'filtering' layer
between us and the world around us. They are, supposedly, uniquely qualified to understand the difference between truth and lies,
or what's right and wrong, real news and propaganda. The Guardian actually likes this role. They our the guardians of the truth
in a chaotic world.
This reminds one of the role of the clergy. Their role was to stand between ordinary people and the 'complexities' of the
Bible and separate the Truths it contained from wild and 'fake' interpretations, which could easily become dangerous and undermine
the social order and fundamental power relationships.
The big challenge to the role of the Church happened when the printing press allowed the ordinary people to access the information
themselves and worst still when the texts were translated into the common language and not just Latin. Suddenly people could access
the texts, read and begin to interpret and understand for themselves. It's hard to imagine that people were actually burned alive
in England for smuggling the Bible in English translation a few centuries ago. That's how dangerous the State regarded such a
'crime.'
One can compare the translation of the Bible and the challenge to the authority of the Church and the clergy as 'guardians
of the truth' to what's happeing today with the rise of the Internet and something like Wikileaks, where texts and infromation
are made available uncensored and raw and the role of the traditional 'media church' and the journalist priesthood is challenged.
We're seeing a kind of media counter-reformation. That's why the Guardian turned on Assange so disgracefully and what Wikileaks
represented.
A brilliant historical comparison. They're now on the legal offensive in censoring the internet of course, because in truth
the filter system is wholly vulnerable. Alternative media has been operating freely, yet the majority have continued to rely on
MSM as if it's their only source of (dis)information, utilizing our vast internet age to the pettiness of social media and prank
videos. Marx was right: capitalist society alienates people from their own humanity. We're now aliens, deprived of our original
being and floating in a vacuum of Darwinist competition and barbarism. And we wonder why climate change is happening?
Apparently we are "living in disorientating times" according to Viner, she goes on to say that "championing the public interest
is at the heart of the Guardian's mission".
Really? How is it possible for her to say that when many of the controversial articles which appear in the Guardian are not
open for comment any more. They have adopted now a view that THEIR "opinion" should not be challenged, how is that in the public
interest?
In the Observer on Sunday a piece also appeared smearing RT entitled: "MPs defend fees of up to Ł1,000 an hour to appear
on 'Kremlin propaganda' channel." However they allowed comments which make interesting reading. Many commenter's saw through their
ruse and although the most vociferous critics of the Graun have been banished, but even the mild mannered ones which remain appear
not the buy into the idea that RT is any different than other media outlets. With many expressing support for the news and op-ed
outlet for giving voice to those who the MSM ignore – including former Guardian writers from time to time.
Why Viner's words are so poisonous is that the Graun under her stewardship has become a agitprop outlet offering no balance.
In the below linked cringe worthy article there is no mention of RT being under attack in the US and having to register itself
and staff as foreign agents. NO DEFENCE OF ATTACKS ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS by the US state is mentioned.
Surely this issue is at the heart of championing public interest?
For the political/media/business elites (I suppose you could call them 'the Establishment') in the US and UK, the main problem
with RT seems to be that a lot of people are watching it. I wonder how long it will be before access is cut. RT is launching a
French-language channel next month. We are already being warned by the French MSM about how RT makes up fake news to further Putin's
evil propaganda aims (unlike said MSM, we are told). Basically, elites just don't trust the people (this is certainly a constant
in French political life).
It's not just that they don't allow comments on many of their articles, but even on the articles where CiF is enabled, they ban
any accounts that disagree with their narrative. The end result is that Guardianistas get the false impression everyone shares
their view and that they are in the majority. The Guardian moderators are like Scientology leaders who banish any outsiders
for fear of influencing their cult members.
Everyone knows that Russia-gate is a feat of mass hypnosis, mesmerized from DNC financed lies. The Trump collusion myth is
baseless and becoming dangerously hysterical: but conversely, the Clinton collusion scandal is not so easy to allay. Whilst
it may turn out to be the greatest story never told: it looks substantive enough to me. HRC colluded with Russian oligarchy
to the tune of $145m of "donations" into her slush fund. In return, Rosatom gained control of Uranium One.
A curious adjunct to this corruption: HRC opposed the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Given her subsequent rabid Russophobia: you'd
have thought that if the Russians (as it has been spun) arrested a brave whistleblowing tax lawyer and murdered him in prison
– she would have been quite vocal in her condemnation. No, she wanted to make Russia
great again. It's amazing how $145m can focus ones
attention away from ones natural instinct.
[Browder and Magnitsky were as corrupt as each other: the story that the Russians took over Browder's hedge fund and implicated
them both in a $230m tax fraud and corruption scandal is as fantastical as the "Golden Shower" dossier. However, it seems to me
Magnitsky's death was preventable (he died from complications of pancreatitis, for which it seems he was initially refused treatment
) ]
So if we turn the clock back to 2010-2013, it sure looks to me as though we have a Russian collusion scandal: only it's not
one the Guardian will ever want to tell. Will it come out when the FBI 's "secret" informant (William D Cambell) testifies to
Congress sometime this week? Not in the Guardian, because their precious Hillary Clinton is the real scandal here.
This "tactic" – a bold or outrageous claim made in the headline or in the first few sentences of a piece that is proven false
in the very same article – is becoming depressingly common in the legacy media.
In other words, the so-called respectable media knowingly prints outright lies for propaganda and clickbait purposes.
I dropped a line to a friend yesterday saying "only in a parallel universe would a businessman/shady dealer/tax evader such as
Browder be described as an "anti-corruption campaigner."" Those not familiar with the history of Browder's grandfather, after
whom a whole new "deviation" in leftist thinking was named, should look it up.
Some months ago you saw tweets saying Russophobia had hit ridiculous levels. They hadn't seen anything yet. It's scary how easily
people can be brainwashed.
The US are the masters of molesting other nations. It's not even a secret what they've been up to. Look at their budgets or
the size of the intelligence buildings. Most journalists know full well of their programs, including those on social media, which
they even reported on a few years back. The Guardian run stories by the CIA created and US state funded RFE/RL & then tell
us with a straight face that RT is state propaganda which is destroying our democracy.
The madness spreads: today The Canary has/had an article 'proving' that the 'Russians' were responsible for Brexit, Trump, etc
etc.
Then there is the neo-liberal 'President' of the EU charging that the extreme right wing and Russophobic warmongers in the
Polish government are in fact, like the President of the USA, in Putin's pocket..
This outbreak is reaching the dimensions of the sort of mass hysteria that gave us St Vitus' dance. Oh and the 'sonic' terrorism
practised against US diplomats in Havana, in which crickets working for the evil one (who he?) appear to have been responsible
for a breach in diplomatic relations. It couldn't have happened to a nicer empire.
Globalization, which was supposed to benefit developed and developing countries alike, is now reviled almost
everywhere, as the political backlash in Europe and the US in recent years has shown. The challenge is to minimize the
risk that the backlash will intensify, and that starts by understanding – and avoiding – past mistakes.
NEW YORK – Fifteen years ago, I published
Globalization and Its
Discontents,
a book that sought to explain why there was so much dissatisfaction with globalization within the
developing countries. Quite simply, many believed that the system was "rigged" against them, and global trade agreements
were singled out for being particularly unfair.
The Year Ahead 2018
The world's leading thinkers and policymakers examine what's come apart in the past year, and anticipate
what will define the year ahead.
Order now
Now discontent with globalization has fueled a wave of populism in
the United States and other advanced economies, led by politicians who claim that the system is unfair to their
countries. In the US, President Donald Trump insists that America's trade negotiators were snookered by those from
Mexico and China.
So how could something that was supposed to benefit all, in developed
and developing countries alike, now be reviled almost everywhere? How can a trade agreement be unfair to all parties?
To those in developing countries, Trump's claims – like Trump himself
– are laughable. The US basically wrote the rules and created the institutions of globalization. In some of these
institutions – for example, the International Monetary Fund – the US still has veto power, despite America's diminished
role in the global economy (a role which Trump seems determined to diminish still further).
To someone like me, who has watched trade negotiations closely for
more than a quarter-century, it is clear that US trade negotiators got most of what they wanted. The problem was with
what
they wanted. Their agenda was set, behind closed doors, by corporations. It was an agenda written by and for large
multinational companies, at the expense of workers and ordinary citizens everywhere.
Indeed, it often seems that workers, who have seen their wages fall
and jobs disappear, are just collateral damage – innocent but unavoidable victims in the inexorable march of economic
progress. But there is another interpretation of what has happened: one of the objectives of globalization was to weaken
workers' bargaining power. What corporations wanted was cheaper labor, however they could get it.
This interpretation helps explain some puzzling aspects of trade
agreements. Why is it, for example, that advanced countries gave away one of their biggest advantages, the rule of law?
Indeed, provisions embedded in most recent trade agreements give foreign investors more rights than are provided to
investors in the US. They are compensated, for example, should the government adopt a regulation that hurts their bottom
line, no matter how desirable the regulation or how great the harm caused by the corporation in its absence.
There are three responses to globalized discontent with
globalization. The first – call it the Las Vegas strategy – is to double down on the bet on globalization
as it has
been managed for the past quarter-century
. This bet, like all bets on proven policy failures (such as trickle-down
economics) is based on the hope that somehow it will succeed in the future.
The second response is Trump_vs_deep_state: cut oneself off from globalization,
in the hope that doing so will somehow bring back a bygone world. But protectionism won't work. Globally, manufacturing
jobs are on the decline, simply because productivity growth has outpaced growth in demand.
Even if manufacturing were to come back, the jobs won't. Advanced
manufacturing technology, including robots, means that the few jobs created will require higher skills and will be
placed at different locations than the jobs that were lost. Like doubling down, this approach is doomed to fail, further
increasing the discontent felt by those left behind.
Trump will fail even in his proclaimed goal of reducing the trade
deficit, which is determined by the disparity between domestic savings and investment. Now that the Republicans have
gotten their way and enacted a tax cut for billionaires, national savings will fall and the trade deficit will rise,
owing to an increase in the value of the dollar. (Fiscal deficits and trade deficits normally move so closely together
that they are called "twin" deficits.) Trump may not like it, but as he is slowly finding out, there are some things
that even a person in the most powerful position in the world cannot control.
There is a third approach: social protection without protectionism,
the kind of approach that the small Nordic countries took. They knew that as small countries they had to remain open.
But they also knew that remaining open would expose workers to risk. Thus, they had to have a social contract that
helped workers move from old jobs to new and provide some help in the interim.
The Nordic countries are deeply democratic societies, so they knew
that unless most workers regarded globalization as benefiting them, it wouldn't be sustained. And the wealthy in these
countries recognized that if globalization worked as it should, there would be enough benefits to go around.
American capitalism in recent years has been marked by unbridled
greed – the 2008 financial crisis provides ample confirmation of that. But, as some countries have shown, a market
economy can take forms that temper the excesses of both capitalism and globalization, and deliver more sustainable
growth and higher standards of living for most citizens.
We can learn from such successes what to do, just as we can learn
from past mistakes what not to do. As has become evident, if we do not manage globalization so that it benefits all, the
backlash – from the New Discontents in the North and the Old Discontents in the South – is at risk of intensifying.
"... In other words, Germany already effectively controls the armies of four countries. And the initiative, Foreign Policy notes, 'is likely to grow'. This is not surprising: if Germany ('the EU') wants to become truly autonomous from the US, it needs to acquire military sovereignty, which it currently lacks. ..."
"... so many people in Europe will see it being necessitated by the growing chaos in the Middle East and in Africa. ..."
"... Never let a crisis go to waste ..."
"... Certainly not those of the inhabitants of the constituent "nations" of the EU (ironic quotation marks fully intended). And now Muti Merkel and the authoritarian scolds of Brussels are trying to force a quota of these migrants upon all of the "nations" – or should we say, the administrative zones – of the EU. Orban, Le Pen, the AfD, and ilk are not stupid, you know. ..."
"... I worked in and with "Brussels" for many years and can say that many, if not most, of the personnel involved with EU institutions are neo-liberals, neo-cons and deluded with the fantasy of an EU imperium, Greece to America's Rome. ..."
"... I think I concur with Mitchell that a Federal EU State is a big no no for Germany, based on the fact fiscal transfers would be out of the German coffers, and this fact is amplified by the exit of the UK, which was a big net EU contributor. The rumour mill has it that Jans Weidmann will be the next ECB Head, which means we can expect more, not less austerity imposed as the EU elite push further EMU, which, is certainly not in the interests of the average Joe across the Euro member states. ..."
"... Anyhow, check Bill Mitchell out, so decent material and nice to see people standing up for the Nation State, rather than supranational entities and corporations. ..."
"... If Germany is trying to build a mini-imperial system straddling all of Europe, then it would seek willing 'elites' in the small European countries to give a slice of pie to in exchange for their cooperation with that agenda. This is standard (neo)colonial policy today, which is best understood as the neocon/neoliberal approach the United States has taken to world domination – aka bad cop/good cop. "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we'll deliver a carpet of bombs", is another version of that offer. The one that can't be refused? ..."
"... This is because public debt in the eurozone is used as a political tool – a disciplining tool – to get governments to implement socially harmful policies (and to get citizens to accept these policies by portraying them as inevitable), which explains why Germany continues to refuse to seriously consider any form of debt relief for Greece, despite the various commitments and promises to that end made in recent years: debt is the chain that keeps Greece (and other member states) from straying 'off course'. ..."
"... That would be the neoliberal mechanism of control; notice here how debts assumed by small nations are not like debts assumed by the controlling powers, either. Rather like student loan holders vs. central banks – students can't print money to pay off their debts, that's the difference. ..."
"... So, if it is true in economics that stability creates instability, then the creation of a stable Europe will undo itself in the manner that this article appears to be saying. ..."
"... This corporate super-entity reminds me of "Omnius Prime" in the Dune universe – a computer with nearly total sociopathic control over humanity. The corporate super-entity, whose AI program's only concern is maximizing short term profits by inflating securities and equities, will eat the Earth if we allow it to continue – digesting and purging humans which have been commodified like everything else. ..."
"... Then we see power blocks aligning, the US (and it's proxies), the EU under Germany, Russia, and China. Clearly we are sitting on a powder keg that is the disintegrating neo-liberal world orde. What will serve as the spark that lights the fuse? Trump and North Korea? War for fun and profit in the Middle East? ..."
The basis of this thesis was plain when the ECB was placed in Germany.
The Economic regime is: Germany books the profits, and you lazy (non Germans) book the
losses.
Welcome to the neoliberal roots of the next 30 years war. The 30 years war was the
imposition of the ruler's denomination, Catholicism, on the people. This next 30 years one is
imposing asset stripping (rent extraction) on the people and enriching a few Aristocrats, as
a dogma.
Now do you understand Brexit? Do you believe the British could not see this coming?
I'll repeat: This was the obvious outcome when the ECB was placed in Germany. I'm English
and discussed this very topic with my family and friends there, and there was general
agreement that German ambition would pave the path.
Those who don't know their history are condemned to repeat it.
Now do you understand Brexit? Do you believe the British could not see this coming?
Exactly. Those average British voters weren't stupid as claimed. If the EU/Germans are
trying to do this whose aims are, and I quote:
"to further erode what little sovereignty and autonomy member states have left, particularly
in the area of fiscal policy, and to facilitate the imposition of neoliberal 'structural
reforms' – flexibilisation of labour markets, reduction of collective bargaining
rights, etc. – on reluctant countries." and the year is only 2017, then what would it
be like in the EU by the year, say, 2040?
Those British voters knew exactly what was coming down the turnpike and decided to bail and
accept a whole lot of present pain. It was not their fault that it turned out that their
leadership turned out to be a load of stuff-ups. To reinforce the point, look at the pain and
deaths that the American colonies had to endure to get out of the British Empire. Before 1777
that would not have seemed to be the logical thing to do.
Does this direction become a hazard to the United States? Mr. Putin appears to have an answer, but perhaps does not have ready yet the next step,
namely the needed set of trained personnel, trays, software, and printed pieces of paper, so
that one way or another a country that wants to jettison the Euro can convert its ATMs very
quickly to do so. Being set up to print very large stocks of Euros from the country that is
leaving also comes to mind. Readers will recognize other steps.
Unlike some years ago, fast air access from Russia to southern European countries by
overflying Mr Putin's friend Turkey is now probably available.
A good summary of a situation that is too complex to be neatly summarized – so many
political, historical, religious, cultural, etc. issues come into play not only for each
nation involved but also on an individual level for hundreds of millions of people. My most
immediate reaction to these suggestions that a militarily capable fourth Reich may be
emerging is that so many people in Europe will see it being necessitated by the growing chaos
in the Middle East and in Africa.
In other words, Germany already effectively controls the armies of four countries.
And the initiative, Foreign Policy notes, 'is likely to grow'. This is not surprising: if
Germany ('the EU') wants to become truly autonomous from the US, it needs to acquire
military sovereignty, which it currently lacks.
And I seriously doubt that Germany really "controls" the armies of four countries.
The fact is that so far Germany's military strategy was conceived only within the NATO
framework -- where it could rely upon the heavy-lifting of the USA logistical train, the
ground experience and battle-readiness of the French and the British, and the availability of
the navies from Spain and Italy. Germany has neither the equipment, nor the personnel, nor
the experience to take the lead of a EU military, and other countries will probably
strenuously oppose such endeavours which would rob them from their last symbolic and
practical vestiges of sovereignty.
On the other hand, as the article explains, Germany is well on its way to assert its
complete dominion over the economic and institutional arrangements in the EU.
Ah, yes, a crisis greatly exacerbated by taking down Libya, a country which had served as
a bulwark against much of the tide of migration into Southern Europe from Sub-Saharan Africa,
as well as an enemy to Wahabbi/Salafist terror.
Not to mention the EU support for the dismemberment of Syria that launched its own tidal
wave of migration into Europe, whilst Syria was also an enemy of Wahabbi/Salafist terror.
In light of that, one must ask, in whose interest were these actions undertaken, and at
whose behest? Well?
Certainly not those of the inhabitants of the constituent "nations" of the EU (ironic
quotation marks fully intended). And now Muti Merkel and the authoritarian scolds of Brussels
are trying to force a quota of these migrants upon all of the "nations" – or should we
say, the administrative zones – of the EU. Orban, Le Pen, the AfD, and ilk are not
stupid, you know. Europeans, at least those of you who still possess a quantum of
self-respect, and who honor your histories and cultures, gather your courage and tell Muti
and the Commissars of Brussels that the game is over before they can inflict yet more damage.
But – perhaps – you are already too comfortably numb to remember why and how to
do this? Well, then, into the veal pen with you.
Further to "France's corporate offensive in Italy", one-sided as France took recent
exception to the take over of one its shipbuilders by an Italian rival, I would argue that
it's an offensive by the EU's 1%, a strategy of immiseration facilitated by the likes of Guy
Verhofstadt as per http://www.sofina.be/board-management/ . Sofina
is well-connected with the French establishment by way of Eurazeo and the Italian
establishment by way of Banca Leonardo.
I worked in and with "Brussels" for many years and can say that many, if not most, of
the personnel involved with EU institutions are neo-liberals, neo-cons and deluded with the
fantasy of an EU imperium, Greece to America's Rome. It suits them and their
cheerleaders, including in Blighty, to pretend that this is due to the malign influence of
Albion perfide or Anglo-Saxons. One should not expect a change of tack after Brexit. The
"racaille" are profit(eer)ing too much and are able to get away with it under the cover of
more Europe.
As far as EMU is concerned, monetarist economic thinking has been predominant in much of
the Europhiles output on monetary union since the 70s, that is, prior to the UK joining the
Community. Bill Mitchell has written concisely on this over the past week & is quite
scathing of Mitterrand and Delors for their embrace of what we now term 'neoliberalism',
combine this with a desire for an actual military arm & one really does worry about the
direction of the EU, with or without the UK.
Further, and within the lecture presented by Sir Ivan Rogers last week concerning Cameron
& Brexit, the fact remains both the UK Elite & Euro Elite were keen on pushing TTIP,
this despite the fact many believe it was the UK pushing neoliberalism on to Europe.
I think I concur with Mitchell that a Federal EU State is a big no no for Germany, based
on the fact fiscal transfers would be out of the German coffers, and this fact is amplified
by the exit of the UK, which was a big net EU contributor. The rumour mill has it that Jans
Weidmann will be the next ECB Head, which means we can expect more, not less austerity
imposed as the EU elite push further EMU, which, is certainly not in the interests of the
average Joe across the Euro member states.
Anyhow, check Bill Mitchell out, so decent material and nice to see people standing up for
the Nation State, rather than supranational entities and corporations.
I found the first about 1/3 of this post informative. But then the author gets to the main
thesis:
The process underway can only be understood through the lens of the
geopolitical-economic tensions and conflicts between leading capitalist states and regional
blocs, and the conflicting interests between the different financial/industrial capital
fractions located in those states , which have always characterised the European economy.
In particular, it means looking at Germany's historic struggle for economic hegemony over
the European continent.
This suggests that the national battles in Europe are battles between different national
"capital fractions," in particular German capital with its everlasting desire for economic
hegemony over Europe against (presumably) other European national capitals that are opposed
to Germany.
That does not strike me as an accurate description of the current status of Europe or the
EU, and nothing in the rest of the piece suggests that this is a (the most?) useful lens for
interpreting events. The author even admits that elites from smaller Euro countries are happy
in the role of compradors to Germany's economically dominant capitalists and that "European
elites" are united in their anti-democratic tendencies. Even the German election results show
this thesis to be dubious – if "Germany" is well on its way to it's long-cherished goal
of European economic hegemony, why on earth would voters be tired of Merkel? They should make
her Kaiser!
If Germany is trying to build a mini-imperial system straddling all of Europe, then it
would seek willing 'elites' in the small European countries to give a slice of pie to in
exchange for their cooperation with that agenda. This is standard (neo)colonial policy today,
which is best understood as the neocon/neoliberal approach the United States has taken to
world domination – aka bad cop/good cop. "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we'll
deliver a carpet of bombs", is another version of that offer. The one that can't be
refused?
Jump down a few paragraphs from your quote to this:
This is because public debt in the eurozone is used as a political tool – a
disciplining tool – to get governments to implement socially harmful policies (and to
get citizens to accept these policies by portraying them as inevitable), which explains why
Germany continues to refuse to seriously consider any form of debt relief for Greece,
despite the various commitments and promises to that end made in recent years: debt is the
chain that keeps Greece (and other member states) from straying 'off course'.
That would be the neoliberal mechanism of control; notice here how debts assumed by
small nations are not like debts assumed by the controlling powers, either. Rather like
student loan holders vs. central banks – students can't print money to pay off their
debts, that's the difference.
As far as Germany's voters, well, the reality of Empire is that trickle-down is a myth.
Empires always deliver the tribute from foreign holdings to a small circle of politically
connected elites – British lords, French aristocrats, Wall Street billionaires, Third
World tin-pot dictators, etc. The general public always suffers as a result; you have to fund
the foreign military adventures over the domestic infrastructure, health care and education
needs. Hence Empires always try to limit and undermine democratic rule; the German voters
probably see this as well.
So, if it is true in economics that stability creates instability, then the creation of a
stable Europe will undo itself in the manner that this article appears to be saying. In order
to avoid conflict, the European Union has created a trading zone that has a great deal of
inequality in it–not just in trade but inequality in the financial system that will
continue to grow as corporations merge and become ever larger and as banks become ever more
monolithic. Perhaps, national sovereignty will succumb to financial hegemony rather than
becoming the victims of German hegemony.
And what would have been the plans for Britain?
Big omission in the article. That was a damned if they do, damned if they don't option.
Isn't a lot of the EU's bill for Britain about making sure they pay for EU officials
pensions?
While everywhere else it is austerity for Eurozone and EU countries' pensioners
Although I found this article helpful in summarizing many of the changes in EU politics,
the author is incorrect in his premise that the German government is at the root of the
anti-democratic, neoliberal EU movement. The author ignores the dominant role that the
interconnected multinational corporations (
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed–the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/
) play in running the global political economy.
69 of the top 100 economies are now corporations (
https://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/world-s-top-100-economies-31-countries-69-corporations
). National politics have become subservient to the interests of the financial economy which
can move money quickly and destroy a state's economy when political decisions do not follow
the neoliberal script of austerity. The author's premise that "Germany needs to seize control
of the most coveted institution of them all – the ECB –, which hitherto has never
been under direct German control" is backwards. It is the ECB that has had control of the
German political leaders for years. Whether "Merkel now has her eyes on the ECB's presidency"
or not does not matter. She is merely a cog in the corporate machine – easily replaced
if she fails to follow the neoliberal agenda of austerity.
Of course we must recognize that austerity is only imposed as an attempt to inflate the
debt bubble by squeezing those least capable of paying, those considered disposable in the
sociopathic and mechanistic corporate hive mind. The "automatic stabilizing mechanisms" that
"put the economy on 'autopilot', thus removing any element of democratic discussion and/or
decision-making" are really just manifestations of the emergent behavior that this corporate
super-organism expresses and imposes on the global economy. (
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/01/ai-has-already-taken-over-its-called-the-corporation/
)
This corporate super-entity reminds me of "Omnius Prime" in the Dune universe – a
computer with nearly total sociopathic control over humanity. The corporate super-entity,
whose AI program's only concern is maximizing short term profits by inflating securities and
equities, will eat the Earth if we allow it to continue – digesting and purging humans
which have been commodified like everything else.
This total corporatization is at the root of both existential threats to humanity –
nuclear war and climate change. The risk of nuclear war (primarily from some mistake or
miscalculation) results from the military-industrial complex's imperial program of
globalization to further multinational corporate profits and control, and climate change is a
cancer driven by corporate resource exploitation that will surely kill humanity if we don't
cut out the corporate tumors and stop smoking that oil.
I'm beginning to think that the only way to save humanity, to save the planet, will be a
"Butlerian Jihad" to rid us of the existential threat that corporations represent. I wonder
how many people will have to be consumed by this corporate monster before we rise up to kill
it. There will be a cost to eliminating corporations, to ending the limited liability of the
owners, but that cost will be well worth the price of saving humanity, civilization, and our
ecosystem. "There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation
of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by corporations. The power of all
corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never
fails to be a source of abuses." James Madison
Argument by assertion doesn't work here. There is no evidence whatsoever that the ECB has
influence over German leaders. More generally, German politics are dominated by industrial
capital, particularly its automakers, not financial capital. And in fact the Bundesbank has
disproportionate influence over the ECB. And Germany has repeatedly checked measures that
would provide more support to the banking system and lead to more Eurozone integration to
preserve its advantaged position.
In addition, the EU is perfectly willing to take on global corporations, contrary to your
claims. Did you miss the massive anti-trust fine it imposed on Microsoft, and the fines it
has imposed on Google? The EU competition ruling on Google will force Google to change how it
does business in a fundamental manner, and the fines (up to 10% of global revenues for a
violation in a single line of business) are high enough to bring Google to heel. The EU also
is requiring Apple to pay a ginormous tax bill for its special tax avoidance scheme in
Ireland.
If you are going to comment on European politics, you need to know the terrain. You don't,
and worse you say things that mislead readers.
Jeebus! I had no idea that Germany had extended it's claws so far into the affairs of
other countries as to be integrating their army units.
I suppose it's a much better strategy than attacking those armies and risking people
getting killed. :-/
But, seriously, Germany has moved far beyond it's mercantilist advantages and subjugation
of Greece and other periphery nations. It has become beyond obvious to me that they learned
from their experience in WWII and decided that economic hegemony was the way to go to achieve
de facto political hegemony. I think the Fourth Reich is fitting.
Thank you for having the courage to put those two words together so chillingly: "Fourth
Reich". You are not an alarmist to do so – you are right on the money. This has indeed
been a deliberate decades-long campaign to install German hegemony (no "accident"), and the
project is well along its way.
From here we can soberly project a future in which Europe *does* finally institute a
fiscal compact – wholly on Germany's terms. Is it too outrageous to suggest that there
will one day be a new Holy Roman Emperor to wear the crown of Charlemagne? And would it be
too forward to make guesses as to the nationality of said emperor?
Then we see power blocks aligning, the US (and it's proxies), the EU under Germany,
Russia, and China. Clearly we are sitting on a powder keg that is the disintegrating
neo-liberal world orde. What will serve as the spark that lights the fuse? Trump and North
Korea? War for fun and profit in the Middle East?
The problem is that neoliberal ideology entered the state of the crisis in 2008 much like Bolshevik ideology entered the
crisis after WWII. The USSR managed to survive for another 50 years after that.
Notable quotes:
"... Multipolar is just that – leave exercise of power and responsibility as close to the local situation as possible. Brussels telling Poland who should be a TV presenter, or Washington deciding what people in rural Hungary should read is idiotic. What's the point of all this busy-body behaviour? It is always justified by some slogans about preventing 'human rights violations'. Right. We have seen the results – a lot more people have died and suffered because of 'humanitarian' interventions than from anything else in the last 20+ years. ..."
"... I do find the current rapprochement between Russia and the major Moslem states amusing. It goes beyond Turkey and Iran, Moscow is working all of them, Egypt, Sudan, I suspect it is a clever attempt to beat US at its own game – US has spent about four decades arming and unleashing any Islamic force it could find against Russians (and Slavs in general), using methods that were beyond brutal and hypocrisy that eventually backfired. Maybe turning it around is a good strategy. It is inconsistent, but when you fight extreme stupidity, often the only thing that works is to use more stupidity ..."
"... Orwell's vision is but one of the possibilities. Another is Armageddon. Yet another is a "(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the near and medium term. Things being what they are, it may even be the best we can hope for. ..."
"... I don't see any other power than the West (=US) aspiring to 'manage the world'. Maybe some ISIS fanatics have the same dream, but they are not in a position to achieve it. West has 'managed' it very poorly: mindless interventions, wars, migrants, hypocrisy, threats and blackmail. ..."
"... The other 'powers' have very modest, regional aspirations. Russia or China really don't care that much who wins the elections in Portugal, or what regional papers write in Hungary – US seems to be obsessed with it. And the only justification that Western defenders offer when pressed is that 'there would be a vacuum' and 'Russians would move in'. This is obvious nonsense and only elderly paranoid Cold Warrior types believe it ..."
"... Europeans have been invited to join the Eurasian Project, to create a continental market from "Lisbon to Vladivostok". Latent dreams of Hegemony hold at least some of their elites back. ..."
"... The West rode an ahistorical rogue wave of development to a point just short of Global Hegemony. That wave broke, and is now rolling back out into the world leaving the West just short of its civilizational resource requirements. No way to get back on a broken wave. In any case, China now holds the $$$ hammer, and Russia holds the military hammer, and they've now got the surfboard. Both of them, led by historically aware elites, know that Hegemony doesn't work, so will focus on keeping their neck of the woods as stable & prosperous as possible while hell blazes elsewhere. ..."
"The same "hegemon with allies/vassals" as it is now, only in that case divided in
three"
Why? There is absolutely nothing about 'multipolar' that dictates three, or four
'hegemons', or even lists who would the 'multis' be. The idea is simply that most people,
most of the time are better off left alone.
Is that so hard to understand? Why should people in Washington (or Moscow, Beijing,
Brussels, ) be intimately involved with how others live their lives, with their fights and
alliances? Knowledge always dissipates with distance, and most of the 'masters of the
universe' are not that smart to start with.
Multipolar is just that – leave exercise of power and responsibility as close to the
local situation as possible. Brussels telling Poland who should be a TV presenter, or
Washington deciding what people in rural Hungary should read is idiotic. What's the point of
all this busy-body behaviour? It is always justified by some slogans about preventing 'human
rights violations'. Right. We have seen the results – a lot more people have died and
suffered because of 'humanitarian' interventions than from anything else in the last 20+
years.
I do find the current rapprochement between Russia and the major Moslem states amusing. It
goes beyond Turkey and Iran, Moscow is working all of them, Egypt, Sudan, I suspect it is a
clever attempt to beat US at its own game – US has spent about four decades arming and
unleashing any Islamic force it could find against Russians (and Slavs in general), using
methods that were beyond brutal and hypocrisy that eventually backfired. Maybe turning it
around is a good strategy. It is inconsistent, but when you fight extreme stupidity, often
the only thing that works is to use more stupidity
"The same "hegemon with allies/vassals" as it is now, only in that case divided in
three"
Why? There is absolutely nothing about 'multipolar' that dictates three, or four
'hegemons', or even lists who would the 'multis' be. The idea is simply that most people,
most of the time are better off left alone.
Peter's is the apocalyptic view made famous by Orwell. He may be right, it may all unravel
and Oceania, Eurasia & Eastasia run a classic 3-power calculus of shifting alliances in a
struggle for control of the "hinterlands". Not at all impossible, but certainly not what the
proponents of the multipolar world want.
The idea is much more than the notion that most people want to "be left alone". The
Multipolar world as it is actually being constructed by its proponents, from its monetary
structures to its security, commercial and trade regimes, is precisely the attempt to prevent
that Orwellian development in the face of Western decline. Their foundational tenet is that
Globalization as a world-historical trend is here to stay (for at least the next few
generations), and the "compartmentalization" of the world into alliances and hegemonies as
historically occurred is no longer a viable option. The 3 Orwellian powers are all nuclear
now, and the #1 priority is to mitigate the risk of war between them. Best to do that by
dissolving them into a matrix of commercial and developmental programs that they'd be loathe
to destroy.
EG: Though Russia considers both China and Iran "strategic partners", there is no formal
alliance with either of them, and there won't be. Alliances cannot be "forbidden", but the
countries that have signed onto the multipolar world program view alliances with
suspicion.
As a introduction to the coming multipolar world, Kupchan's Western-centric analysis is a
good place to start: https://www.amazon.com/No-Ones-World-Council-Relations/dp/0199325227 "Kupchan provides a detailed strategy for striking a bargain between the West and the
rising rest by fashioning a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and
governance."
Assuming he even knows the least thing about what the multipolar world is trying to do,
Peter's view is that their attempt will fail. Maybe so.
To "fashion a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance" requires
that the professional criminal class that grabbed the remains of Western power a decade and a
half ago has been forced to let go. If not, the world indeed faces an abyss.
Orwell's vision is but one of the possibilities. Another is Armageddon. Yet another is a
"(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the
near and medium term. Things being what they are, it may even be the best we can hope
for.
"(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen
in the near and medium term.
I think we already have it, except I don't think West has failed yet. Or it has in a way,
the process of failing goes on, but the consequences have not been felt much in the West
yet.
I don't see any other power than the West (=US) aspiring to 'manage the world'. Maybe some
ISIS fanatics have the same dream, but they are not in a position to achieve it. West has
'managed' it very poorly: mindless interventions, wars, migrants, hypocrisy, threats and
blackmail.
The other 'powers' have very modest, regional aspirations. Russia or China really don't
care that much who wins the elections in Portugal, or what regional papers write in Hungary
– US seems to be obsessed with it. And the only justification that Western defenders
offer when pressed is that 'there would be a vacuum' and 'Russians would move in'. This is
obvious nonsense and only elderly paranoid Cold Warrior types believe it (peterAUS?). What is
really going on is that West has over-reached and can barely handle its own problems. So they
scream 'Russians are coming' to distract, or to prolong the agony. Russians are not coming,
they don't care in 2017, they can barely control their huge territory today. More you see
squealing and lying in the Western media, more it shows that they have not much else to work
with.
"(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen
in the near and medium term.
I think we already have it, except I don't think West has failed yet. Or it has in a
way, the process of failing goes on, but the consequences have not been felt much in the
West yet.
Well, exogenous events aside, "decline and fall" is necessarily a process. A series of
steps and plateaus is typical. A major step occurred in 2007/8, when the money failed. The
bankers, in a frankly heroic display of coordination, propped up the $$$ and the West got a
decade long plateau. Things are going wobbly again, financially speaking and I suspect the
next step function to occur rather soon. Stays of execution have been exhausted, so it'll be
interesting how the West handles it, and how the RoW reacts.
Europeans have been invited to join the Eurasian Project, to create a continental market from
"Lisbon to Vladivostok". Latent dreams of Hegemony hold at least some of their elites back.
The USA has also been invited, but its dreams remain much more virile. That is, until Trump
who's backers seem to read the writing on the wall better than the Straussians.
I don't see any other power than the West (=US) aspiring to 'manage the world' .
The other 'powers' have very modest, regional aspirations US seems to be obsessed with
it.
The fact is that the rise of the West to global dominance is due to a historical anomaly.
It was fuelled (literally) by the discovery and harnessing of the chemical energy embedded in
coal (late 18thC) and then oil (late 19thC). The first doubled the population, and as first
movers gave the West a running start. The second turned on the afterburners, and population
grew >3.5 fold. Again the West led the way. To fuel that ahistorical step-function growth
curve, control of resources on a global scale became its civilizational imperative.
That growth curve has plateaued, and the rest of the world has caught/is catching up
developmentally. The resources the West needs aren't going to be available to it in the way
they were 100 years ago. Them days is over, for everybody really, but especially for the West
because it has depleted its own hi-ROI resources, and both of its means of control (IMF$
System & U$M) of what's left of everybody else's are failing simultaneously. So its
plateau will not be flat, or not flat for long between increasingly violent steps.
The West rode an ahistorical rogue wave of development to a point just short of Global
Hegemony. That wave broke, and is now rolling back out into the world leaving the West just
short of its civilizational resource requirements. No way to get back on a broken wave. In
any case, China now holds the $$$ hammer, and Russia holds the military hammer, and they've
now got the surfboard. Both of them, led by historically aware elites, know that Hegemony
doesn't work, so will focus on keeping their neck of the woods as stable & prosperous as
possible while hell blazes elsewhere.
What is really going on is that West has over-reached and can barely handle its own
problems.
IMHO, what's really going on is that the West's problems are simply symptomatic of what
"decline and fall", if not "collapse" looks like from within a failing system. A long time
ago I read the diary of a Roman nobleman who in the most matter-of-fact style wrote of
exactly the same things Westerners complain about today. How this, that or the other thing no
longer works the way it did. For all of his 60+ years, every day was infinitesimally worse
than the day before, until finally he decides to pack up his Roman households and move to his
estates in Spain. It took 170(iirc) more years of continuous decline until Alaric finally
arrived at the Gates of Rome. If wholly due to internal causes, collapse is almost always a
slow motion train wreck.
'there would be a vacuum' and 'Russians would move in'. This is obvious nonsense and
only elderly paranoid Cold Warrior types believe it (peterAUS?).
Actually, it's just stupid. Cold Warrior or not, the view betrays a deep and abiding
ignorance of both history and a large part of what drove the West's hegemonic successes. That
both militate against anyone else ever even trying such a thing on a global scale can't be
seen if you look at historical developments and the rest of the world through 10′ of
1″ pipe.
The idea that Russia wants/needs the Baltics is even more laughable than that it
wants/needs the Ukraine or Poland. None of these tarbabies have anything to offer but
trouble. Noisome flies on an elephant, it is only if they make themselves more troublesome as
outsiders than they would be as vassals would Russia move.
Why do you think so? I think we are about to enter an occasional plateau and things will
be stable or even improve for a while. The Rome analogies are instructive, but they only take you so far. E.g. Rome was
collapsing for about two centuries, on and off. Rome was also infinitely more brutal than
today's West and the 'barbarians' were real barbarians, not aspiring migrants led by
well-paid NGO comprador class. Why do you think it is getting wobbly?
"... complex systems are prone to catastrophic failure, how that possibility is held at bay through a combination of redundancies and ongoing vigilance, but how, due to the impractical cost of keeping all possible points of failure fully (and even identifying them all) protected, complex systems "always run in degraded mode". Think of the human body. No one is in perfect health. At a minimum, people are growing cancers all the time, virtually all of which recede for reasons not well understood. ..."
"... every major investment leads to further investments (no matter how dumb or large) to protect the value of past investments. ..."
"... Tainter argues that the energy cost (defined broadly) of maintaining the dysfunction eventually overwhelms the ability of the system to generate surpluses to meet the rising needs of maintenance. ..."
"... a combination of shrinking revenue base and the subordination of all systemic needs to the needs of individual emperors to stay in power and therefore stay alive. ..."
"... In each case, some elite individual or grouping sees throwing good money after bad as necessary to keeping their power and their positions. Our current sclerotic system seems to fit this description nicely. ..."
"... One point that Tainter made is that collapse is not all bad. He presents evidence that the average well being of people in Italy was probably higher in the sixth century than in the fifth century as the Western Roman Empire died. Somewhat like death being necessary for biological evolution collapse may be the only solution to the problem of excessive complexity. ..."
"... The Iron Law of Institutions (agents act in ways that benefit themselves in the context of the institution [system], regardless of the effect those actions have on the larger system) would seem to mitigate against any attempts to correct our many, quickly failing complex social and technological systems. ..."
"... It is that cumulative concentration of wealth and power over time which is ultimately destabilizing, producing accepted social norms and customs that lead to fragility in the face of both expected and unexpected shocks. This fragility comes from all sorts of specific consequences of that inequality, from secrecy to group think to brain drain to two-tiered justice to ignoring incompetence and negligence to protecting incumbents necessary to maintain such an unnatural order. ..."
"... The problem arises with any societal order over time in that corrosive elements in the form of corruptive behavior (not principle based) by decision makers are institutionalized. I may not like Trump as a person but the fact that he seems to unravel and shake the present arrangement and serves as an indicator that the people begin to realize what game is being played, makes me like him in that specific function. ..."
"... However, the failure was made immeasurably worse due to the fact that Exxon had failed to supply that pump-station with a safety manual, so when the alarms started going off the guy in the station had to call around to a bunch of people to figure out what was going on. So while it's possible that the failure would have occurred no matter what, the failure of the management to implement even the most basic of safety procedures made the failure much worse than it otherwise would have been. ..."
"... . . .but it is also true that the incentives of the capitalist system ensure that there will be more and worse accidents than necessary , as the agents involved in maintaining the system pursue their own personal interests which often conflict with the interests of system stability and safety. ..."
"... In Claus Jensen's fascinating account of the Challenger disaster, NO DOWNLINK, he describes how the managers overrode the engineers' warnings not to fly under existing weather conditions. We all know the result. ..."
"... Globalization factors in maximizing the impact of Murphy's Law: ..."
"... Where one can only say: "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do" ..."
Lambert found a short article by Richard
Cook that I've embedded at the end of the post. I strongly urge you to read it in full. It discusses how complex systems are
prone to catastrophic failure, how that possibility is held at bay through a combination of redundancies and ongoing vigilance, but
how, due to the impractical cost of keeping all possible points of failure fully (and even identifying them all) protected, complex
systems "always run in degraded mode". Think of the human body. No one is in perfect health. At a minimum, people are growing cancers
all the time, virtually all of which recede for reasons not well understood.
The article contends that failures therefore are not the result of single causes. As Clive points out:
This is really a profound observation – things rarely fail in an out-the-blue, unimaginable, catastrophic way. Very often just
such as in the MIT article the fault or faults in the system are tolerated. But if they get incrementally worse, then the ad-hoc
fixes become the risk (i.e. the real risk isn't the original fault condition, but the application of the fixes).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire#Wigner_energy
documents how a problem of core instability was a snag, but the disaster was caused by what was done to try to fix it. The plant
operators kept applying the fix in ever more extreme does until the bloody thing blew up.
But I wonder about the validity of one of the hidden assumptions of this article. There is a lack of agency in terms of who is
responsible for the care and feeding of complex systems (the article eventually identifies "practitioners" but even then, that's
comfortably vague). The assumption is that the parties who have influence and responsibility want to preserve the system, and have
incentives to do at least an adequate job of that.
There are reasons to doubt that now. Economics has promoted ways of looking at commercial entities that encourage "practitioners"
to compromise on safety measures. Mainstream economics has as a core belief that economies have a propensity to equilibrium, and
that equilibrium is at full employment. That assumption has served as a wide-spread justification for encouraging businesses and
governments to curtail or end pro-stability measures like regulation as unnecessary costs.
To put it more simply, the drift of both economic and business thinking has been to optimize activity for efficiency. But highly
efficient systems are fragile. Formula One cars are optimized for speed and can only run one race.
Highly efficient systems also are more likely to suffer from what Richard Bookstaber called "tight coupling." A tightly coupled
system in one in which events occur in a sequence that cannot be interrupted. A way to re-characterize a tightly coupled system is
a complex system that has been in part re-optimized for efficiency, maybe by accident, maybe at a local level. That strips out some
of the redundancies that serve as safeties to prevent positive feedback loops from having things spin out of control.
To use Bookstaber's nomenclature, as opposed to this paper's, in a tightly coupled system, measures to reduce risk directly make
things worse. You need to reduce the tight coupling first.
A second way that the economic thinking has arguably increased the propensity of complex systems of all sorts to fail is by encouraging
people to see themselves as atomized agents operating in markets. And that's not just an ideology; it's reflected in low attachment
to institutions of all sorts, ranging from local communities to employers (yes, employers may insist on all sorts of extreme shows
of fealty, but they are ready to throw anyone in the dust bin at a moment's notice). The reality of weak institutional attachments
and the societal inculcation of selfish viewpoints means that more and more people regard complex systems as vehicles for personal
advancement. And if they see those relationships as short-term or unstable, they don't have much reason to invest in helping to preserving
the soundness of that entity. Hence the attitude called "IBY/YBG" ("I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone") appears to be becoming more widespread.
I've left comments open because I'd very much enjoy getting reader reactions to this article. Thanks!
So many ideas . Mike Davis argues that in the case of Los Angeles, the key to understanding the city's dysfunction is in the
idea of sunk capital – every major investment leads to further investments (no matter how dumb or large) to protect the value
of past investments.
Tainter argues that the energy cost (defined broadly) of maintaining the dysfunction eventually overwhelms the ability
of the system to generate surpluses to meet the rising needs of maintenance.
Goldsworthy has argued powerfully and persuasively that the Roman Empire in the West was done in by a combination of shrinking
revenue base and the subordination of all systemic needs to the needs of individual emperors to stay in power and therefore stay
alive. Their answer was endlessly subdividing power and authority below them and using massive bribes to the bureaucrats
and the military to try to keep them loyal.
In each case, some elite individual or grouping sees throwing good money after bad as necessary to keeping their power
and their positions. Our current sclerotic system seems to fit this description nicely.
I immediately thought of Tainter's "The Complex of Complex Cultures" when I starting reading this. One point that Tainter
made is that collapse is not all bad. He presents evidence that the average well being of people in Italy was probably higher
in the sixth century than in the fifth century as the Western Roman Empire died. Somewhat like death being necessary for biological
evolution collapse may be the only solution to the problem of excessive complexity.
Tainter insists culture has nothing to do with collapse, and therefore refuses to consider it, but he then acknowledges that
the elites in some societies were able to pull them out of a collapse trajectory. And from the inside, it sure as hell looks like
culture, as in a big decay in what is considered to be acceptable conduct by our leaders, and what interests they should be serving
(historically, at least the appearance of the greater good, now unabashedly their own ends) sure looks to be playing a big, and
arguably the defining role, in the rapid rise of open corruption and related social and political dysfunction.
Then I'll add my two cents: you've left out that when systems scale linearly, the amount of complexity, and points for failure,
and therefore instability, that they contain scale exponentially–that is according to the analysis of James Rickards, and supported
by the work of people like Joseph Tainter and Jared Diamond.
Ever complex problem that arises in a complex system is fixed with an even more complex "solution" which requires ever more
energy to maintain, and eventually the inevitably growing complexity of the system causes the complex system to collapse in on
itself. This process requires no malignant agency by humans, only time.
Maybe call the larger entity "meta-stable?" Astro and geo inputs seem to have been big perturbers. Lots of genera were around
a very long time before naked apes set off on their romp. But then folks, even these hot, increasingly dry days, brag on their
ability to anticipate, and profit from, and even cause, with enough leverage, de- stability. Good thing the macrocosms of our
frail, violent, kindly, destructive bodies are blessed with the mechanisms of homeostasis.
Too bad our "higher" functions are not similarly gifted But that's what we get to chat about, here and in similar meta-spaces
Agree, positive density of ideas, thoughts and implications.
I wonder if the reason that humans don't appreciate the failure of complex systems is that (a) complex systems are constantly
trying to correct, or cure as in your cancer example, themselves all the time until they can't at which point they collapse, (b)
that things, like cancer leading to death, are not commonly viewed as a complex system failure when in fact that is what it is.
Thus, while on a certain scale we do experience complex system failure on one level on a daily basis because we don't interpret
it as such, and given that we are hardwired for pattern recognition, we don't address complex systems in the right ways.
This, to my mind, has to be extended to the environment and the likely disaster we are currently trying to instigate. While
the system is collapsing at one level, massive species extinctions, while we have experienced record temperatures, while the experts
keep warning us, etc., most people to date have experienced climate change as an inconvenience - not the early stages of systemwide
failure.
Civilization collapses have been regular, albeit spaced out, occurrences. We seem to think we are immune to them happening
again. Yet, it isn't hard to list the near catastrophic system failures that have occurred or are currently occurring (famines,
financial markets, genocides, etc.).
And, in most systems that relate to humans with an emphasis on short term gain how does one address system failures?
To paraphrase President Bill Clinton, who I would argue was one of the major inputs that caused the catastrophic failure of
our banking system (through the repeal of Glass-Steagall), it all depends on what the definition of WE is.
Civilizational collapse is extremely common in history when one takes a long term view. I'm not sure though that I would
describe it as having that much "regularity" and while internal factors are no doubt often important external factors like the
Mongol Onslaught are also important. It's usually very hard to know exactly what happened since historical documentation tends
to disappear in periods of collapse. In the case of Mycenae the archaeological evidence indicates a near total population decline
of 99% in less than a hundred years together with an enormous cultural decline but we don't know what caused it.
As for long term considerations the further one tries to project into the future the more uncertain such projections become
so that long term planning far into the future is not likely to be evolutionarily stable. Because much more information is available
about present conditions than future conditions organisms are probably selected much more to optimize for the short term rather
than for the largely unpredicatble long term.
it's not in question. Evolution is about responding to the immediate environment. Producing survivable offspring (which requires
finding a niche). If the environment changes (Climate?) faster than the production of survivable offspring then extinction (for
that specie) ensues.
Now, Homo sapien is supposedly "different" in some respects, but I don't think so.
I agree. There's nothing uniquely special about our species. Of course species can often respond to gradual change by migration.
The really dangerous things are global catastrophes such as the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous or whatever happened
at the Permian-Triassic boundary (gamma ray burst maybe?).
Interesting that you sit there and type on a world-spanning network batting around ideas from five thousand years ago, or yesterday,
and then use your fingers to type that the human species isn't special.
Do you really think humans are unable to think about the future, like a bear hibernating, or perhaps the human mind, and its
offspring, human culture and history, can't see ahead?
Why is "Learn the past, or repeat it!" such a popular saying, then?
The Iron Law of Institutions (agents act in ways that benefit themselves in the context of the institution [system], regardless
of the effect those actions have on the larger system) would seem to mitigate against any attempts to correct our many, quickly
failing complex social and technological systems.
This would tend to imply that attempts to organize large scale social structures is temporary at best, and largely futile.
I agree. The real key is to embrace and ride the wave as it crests and callapses so its possible to manage the fall–not to try
to stand against so you get knocked down and drowned. Focus your efforts on something useful instead of wasting them on a hopeless,
and worthless, cause.
Civilization is obviously highly unstabe. However it should remembered that even Neolithic cultures are almost all less than
10,000 years old. So there has been little time for evolutionary adaptations to living in complex cultures (although there is
evidence that the last 10,000 years has seen very rapid genetic changes in human populations). If civilization can continue indefinitely
which of course is not very clear then it would be expected that evolutionary selection would produce humans much better adapted
to living in complex cultures so they might become more stable in the distant future. At present mean time to collapse is probably
a few hundred years.
Well said, but something I find intriguing is that the author isn't talking so much about civilizational collapse. The focus
is more on various subsystems of civilization (transportation, energy, healthcare, etc.).
These individual components are not inherently particularly dangerous (at a systemic/civilizational level). They have been
made that way by purposeful public policy choices, from allowing enormous compensation packages in healthcare to dismantling our
passenger rail system to subsidizing fossil fuel energy over wind and solar to creating tax incentives that distort community
development. These things are not done for efficiency. They are done to promote inequality, to allow connected insiders and technocratic
gatekeepers to expropriate the productive wealth of society. Complexity isn't a byproduct; it is the mechanism of the looting.
If MDs in hospital management made similar wages as home health aides, then how would they get rich off the labor of others? And
if they couldn't get rich, what would be the point of managing the hospital in the first place? They're not actually trying to
provide quality, affordable healthcare to all Americans.
It is that cumulative concentration of wealth and power over time which is ultimately destabilizing, producing accepted
social norms and customs that lead to fragility in the face of both expected and unexpected shocks. This fragility comes from
all sorts of specific consequences of that inequality, from secrecy to group think to brain drain to two-tiered justice to ignoring
incompetence and negligence to protecting incumbents necessary to maintain such an unnatural order.
The problem arises with any societal order over time in that corrosive elements in the form of corruptive behavior (not
principle based) by decision makers are institutionalized. I may not like Trump as a person but the fact that he seems to unravel
and shake the present arrangement and serves as an indicator that the people begin to realize what game is being played, makes
me like him in that specific function. There may be some truth in Thomas Jefferson's quote: "The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Those presently benefiting greatly
from the present arrangement are fighting with all means to retain their position, whether successfully or not, we will see.
Well said, washunate. I think an argument could be run that outside economic areas, the has been a drive to de-complexity.
Non economic institutions, bodies which exist for non market/profit reasons are or have been either hollowed out, or co-opted
to market purposes. Charities as vast engines of self enrichment for a chain of insiders. Community groups, defunded, or shriveled
to an appendix by "market forces". The list goes on and on.
Reducing the "not-market" to the status of sliced-white-bread makes us all the more dependant on the machinated complexities of
"the market" .god help us .
Joseph Tainter's thesis, set out in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" is simple: as a civilization ages its use of energy
becomes less efficient and more costly, until the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in, generates its own momentum and the system
grinds to a halt. Perhaps this article describes a late stage of that process. However, it is worth noting that, for the societies
Tainter studied, the process was ineluctable. Not so for our society: we have the ability -- and the opportunity -- to switch
energy sources.
An interesting article as usual, but here is another take.
Indeed, sometimes complex systems can collapse under the weight of their own complexity (Think: credit default swaps). But
sometimes there is a single simple thing that is crushing the system, and the complexity is a desperate attempt to patch things
up that is eventually destroyed by brute force.
Consider a forced population explosion: the people are multiplied exponentially. This reduces per capita physical resources,
tends to reduce per-capita capital, and limits the amount of time available to adapt: a rapidly growing population puts an economy
on a treadmill that gets faster and faster and steeper and steeper until it takes superhuman effort just to maintain the status
quo. There is a reason why, for societies without an open frontier, essentially no nation has ever become prosperous with out
first moderating the fertility rate.
However, you can adapt. New technologies can be developed. New regulations written to coordinate an ever more complex system.
Instead of just pumping water from a reservoir, you need networks of desalinization plants – with their own vast networks of power
plants and maintenance supply chains – and recycling plans, and monitors and laws governing water use, and more efficient appliances,
etc.etc.
As an extreme, consider how much effort and complexity it takes to keep a single person alive in the space station.
That's why in California cars need to be emissions tested, but in Alabama they don't – and the air is cleaner in Alabama. More
people needs more controls and more exotic technology and more rules.
Eventually the whole thing starts to fall apart. But to blame complexity itself, is possibly missing the point.
"But because system operations are never trouble free, human practitioner adaptations to changing conditions actually
create safety from moment to moment. These adaptations often amount to just the selection of a well-rehearsed routine from
a store of available responses; sometimes, however, the adaptations are novel combinations or de novo creations of new approaches."
This may just be a rationalization, on my part, for having devoted so much time to historical studies– but it seems to me that
historians help civilizations prevent collapse, by preserving for them the largest possible "store of available responses."
Thanks for posting this very interesting piece! As you know, I am a fan Bookstaber's concept of tight coupling. Interestingly,
Bookstaber (2007) does not reference Cook's significant work on complex systems.
Before reading this article, I considered the most preventable accidents involve a sequence of events uninterrupted by human
intelligence. This needs to be modified by Cook's points 8, 9. 10 and 12.
In using the aircraft landing in the New York river as an example of interrupting a sequence of events, the inevitable accident
occurred but no lives were lost. Thus the human intervention was made possible by the unknowable probability of coupling the cause
with a possible alternative landing site. A number of aircraft accidents involve failed attempts to find a possible landing site,
even though Cook's point #12 was in play.
A possible issue with or a misunderstanding of #7. Catastrophic failure can be made up of small failures that tend to follow
a critical path or multiple critical paths. While a single point of origin for catastrophic failure may rarely if ever occur in
a complex system, it is possible and likely in such a system to have collections of small failures that occur or tend to occur
in specific sequences of order. Population explosion (as TG points out) would be a good example of a failure in a complex
social system that is part of a critical path to catastrophic failure.
Such sequences, characterized by orders of precedence, are more likely in tightly coupled systems (which as Yves points out
can be any system pushed to the max). The point is, they can be identified and isolated at least in situations where a complex
system is not being misused or pushed to it's limits or created due to human corruption where such sequences of likelihood may
be viewed or baked into the system (such as by propaganda->ideology) as features and not bugs.
I agree completely that maximum efficiency comes with horrible costs. When hospitals are staffed so that people are normally
busy every minute, patients routinely suffer more as often no one has time to treat them like a human being, and when things deviate
from the routine, people have injuries and deaths. Same is true in other contexts.
Agreed, but that's not caused by efficiency. That's caused by inequality. Healthcare has huge dispariaties in wages and working
conditions. The point of keeping things tightly staffed is to allow big bucks for the top doctors and administrators.
Yes. When one efficiency conflicts with and destroys another efficiency. Eq. Your mother juggled a job and a family and ran
around in turbo mode but she dropped everything when her kids were in trouble. That is an example of an efficiency that can juggle
contradictions and still not fail.
Might this nurse observe that in hospitals, there isn't and can't be a "routine" to deviate from, no matter how fondly "managers"
wish to try to make it and how happy they may be to take advantage of the decent, empathic impulses of many nurses and/or the
need to work to eat of those that are just doing a job. Hence the kindly (sic) practice of "calling nurses off" or sending them
home if "the census is down," which always runs aground against a sudden influx of billable bodies or medical crises that the
residual staff is expected to just somehow cope with caring for or at least processing, until the idiot frictions in the staffing
machinery add a few more person-hours of labor to the mix. The larger the institution, the greater the magnitude and impact (pain,
and dead or sicker patients and staff too) of the "excursions from the norm."
It's all about the ruling decisions on what are deemed (as valued by where the money goes) appropriate outcomes of the micro-political
economy In the absence of an organizing principle that values decency and stability and sustainability rather than upward wealth
transfer.
The author presents the best-case scenario for complex systems: one in which the practitioners involved are actually concerned
with maintaining system integrity. However, as Yves points out, that is far from being case in many of our most complex systems.
For instance, the Silvertip pipeline spill near Billings, MT a few years ago may indeed have been a case of multiple causes
leading to unforeseen/unforeseeable failure of an oil pipeline as it crossed the Yellowstone river. However, the failure was
made immeasurably worse due to the fact that Exxon had failed to supply that pump-station with a safety manual, so when the alarms
started going off the guy in the station had to call around to a bunch of people to figure out what was going on. So while it's
possible that the failure would have occurred no matter what, the failure of the management to implement even the most basic of
safety procedures made the failure much worse than it otherwise would have been.
And this is a point that the oil company apologists are all too keen to obscure. The argument gets trotted out with some regularity
that because these oil/gas transmission systems are so complex, some accidents and mishaps are bound to occur. This is true–but
it is also true that the incentives of the capitalist system ensure that there will be more and worse accidents than necessary,
as the agents involved in maintaining the system pursue their own personal interests which often conflict with the interests of
system stability and safety.
Complex systems have their own built-in instabilities, as the author points out; but we've added a system of un-accountability
and irresponsibility on top of our complex systems which ensures that failures will occur more often and with greater fall-out
than the best-case scenario imagined by the author.
As Yves pointed out, there is a lack of agency in the article. A corrupt society will tend to generate corrupt systems just
as it tends to generate corrupt technology and corrupt ideology. For instance, we get lots of little cars driving themselves about,
profitably to the ideology of consumption, but also with an invisible thumb of control, rather than a useful system of public
transportation. We get "abstenence only" population explosion because "groath" rather than any rational assessment of obvious
future catastrophe.
All systems have a failure rate, including people. We don't get to live in a world where we don't need to lock our doors and
banks don't need vaults. (If you find it, be sure to radio back.)
The article is about how we deal with that failure rate. Pointing out that there are failures misses the point.
. . .but it is also true that the incentives of the capitalist system ensure that there will be more and worse
accidents than necessary, as the agents involved in maintaining the system pursue their own personal interests which
often conflict with the interests of system stability and safety.
How true. A Chinese city exploded. Talk about a black swan. I wonder what the next disaster will be?
After a skimmy read of the post and reading James' lead-off comment re emperors (Brooklin Bridge comment re misuse is somewhat
resonant) it seems to me that a distinguishing feature of systems is not being addressed and therefore being treated as though
it's irrelevant.
What about the mandate for a system to have an overarching, empowered regulatory agent, one that could presumably learn from
the reflections contained in this post? In much of what is posted here at NC writers give due emphasis to the absence/failure
of a range of regulatory functions relevant to this stage of capitalism. These run from SEC corruption to the uncontrolled movement
of massive amount of questionably valuable value in off the books transactions between banks, hedge funds etc. This system intentionally
has a deliberately weakened control/monitoring function, ideologically rationalized as freedom but practically justified as maximizing
accumulation possibilities for the powerful. It is self-lobotomizing, a condition exacerbated by national economic territories
(to some degree). I'm not going to now jump up with 3 cheers for socialism as capable of resolving problems posed by capitalism.
But, to stay closer to the level of abstraction of the article, doesn't the distinction between distributed opacity + unregulated
concentrations of power vs. transparency + some kind of central governing authority matter? Maybe my Enlightenment hubris is riding
high after the morning coffee, but this is a kind of self-awareness that assumes its range is limited, even as it posits that
limit. Hegel was all over this, which isn't to say he resolved the conundrum, but it's not even identified here.
Think of Trump as the pimple finally coming to a head: he's making the greed so obvious, and pissing off so many people that
some useful regulation might occur.
Another thought about world social collapse: if such a thing is likely, (and I'm sure the PTB know if it is, judging from the
reports from the Pentagon about how Global Warming being a national security concern) wouldn't it be a good idea to have a huge
ability to overpower the rest of the world?
We might be the only nation that survives as a nation, and we might actually have an Empire of the World, previously unattainable.
Maybe SkyNet is really USANet. It wouldn't require any real change in the national majority of creepy grabby people.
Government bureaucrats and politicians pursue their own interests just as businessmen do. Pollution was much worst in the non-capitalist
Soviet Union, East Germany and Eastern Europe than it was in the Capitalist West. Chernobyl happened under socialism not capitalism.
The present system in China, although not exactly "socialism", certainly involves a massively powerful govenment but a glance
at the current news shows that massive governmental power does not necessarily prevent accidents. The agency problem is not unique
to or worse in capitalism than in other systems.
I'd throw in the theory of cognitive dissonance as an integral part of the failure of complex systems. (Example Tarvis and
Aronon's recent book: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by me))
We are more apt to justify bad decisions, with bizarre stories, than to accept our own errors (or mistakes of people important
to us). It explains (but doesn't make it easier to accept) the complete disconnect between accepted facts and fanciful justifications
people use to support their ideas/organization/behavior.
I think this one suffers "Metaphysical Foo Foo Syndrome" MFFS. That means use of words to reference realities that are inherently
ill-defined and often unobservable leading to untestable theories and deeply personal approaches to epistemological reasoning.
just what is a 'complex system"? A system implies a boundary - there are things part of the system and things outside the system.
That's a hard concept to identify - just where the system ends and something else begins. So when 'the system' breaks down, it's
hard to tell with any degree of testable objectivity whether the breakdown resulted from "the system" or from something outside
the system and the rest was just "an accident that could have happened to anybody'"
maybe the idea is; '"if something breaks down at the worst possible time and in a way that fkks everything up, then it must
have been a complex system". But it could also have been a simple system that ran into bad luck. Consider your toilet. Maybe you
put too much toilet paper in it, and it clogged. Then it overflowed and ran out into your hallway with your shit everywhere. Then
you realized you had an expensive Chinese rug on the floor. oh no! That was bad. you were gonna put tthat rug away as soon as
you had a chance to admire it unrolled. Why did you do that? Big fckk up. But it wasn't a complex system. It was just one of those
things.
Actually, it was a system too complex for this individual. S(He) became convinced the plumbing would work as it had previously.
But doo to poor maintenance, too much paper, or a stiff BM the "system" didn't work properly. There must have been opportunity
to notice something anomalous, but appropriate oversight wasn't applied.
It coould happen to anybody after enough pizza and red wine
people weren't meant to be efficient. paper towels and duct tape can somettmes help
This ocurred to me: The entire 1960s music revolution would't have happened if anybody had to be efficient about hanging out
and jamming. You really have to lay around and do nothing if you want to achieve great things. You need many opportunities to
fail and learn before the genius flies. That's why tightly coupled systems are self-defeating. Because they wipe too many people
out before they've had a chance to figure out the universe.
Excellent example of tight coupling: Toilet -> Floor -> Hallway -> $$$ Rug
Fix: Apply Break coupling procedure #1: Shut toilet door.
Then: Procedure #2 Jam inexpensive old towels in gap at the bottom.
As with all such measures this buys the most important thing of all – time. In this case to get the $$$Rug out of the way.
IIRC one of Bookstaber's points was that that, in the extreme, tight coupling allows problems to propagate through the system
so fast and so widely that we have no chance to mitigate before they escalate to disaster.
To put it more simply, the drift of both economic and business thinking has been to optimize activity for efficiency.
I think that's an interesting framework. I would say effeciency is achieving the goal in the most effective manner possible.
Perhaps that's measured in energy, perhaps labor, perhaps currency units, but whatever the unit of measure, you are minimizing
that input cost.
What our economics and business thinking (and most importantly, political thinking) has primarily been doing, I would say,
is not optimizing for efficiency. Rather, they are changing the goal being optimized. The will to power has replaced efficiency
as the actual outcome.
Unchecked theft, looting, predation, is not efficient. Complexity and its associated secrecy is used to hide the inefficiency,
to justify and promote that which would not otherwise stand scrutiny in the light of day.
What nonsense. All around us 'complex systems' (airliners, pipelines, coal mines, space stations, etc.) have become steadily
LESS prone to failure/disaster over the decades. We are near the stage where the only remaining danger in air travel is human
error. We will soon see driverless cars & trucks, and you can be sure accident rates will decline as the human element is taken
out of their operation.
see fukushima, lithium batteries spontaneously catching fire, financial engineering leading to collapse unless vast energy
is invested in them to re stabilize Driverless cars and trucks are not that soon, tech buddies say ten years I say malarkey based
on several points made in the article, while as brooklyn bridge points out public transit languishes, and washunate points out
that trains and other more efficient means of locomotion are starved while more complex methods have more energy thrown at them
which could be better applied elsewhere. I think you're missing the point by saying look at all our complex systems, they work
fine and then you ramble off a list of things with high failure potential and say look they haven't broken yet, while things that
have broken and don't support your view are left out. By this mechanism safety protocols are eroded (that accident you keep avoiding
hasn't happened, which means you're being too cautious so your efficiency can be enhanced by not worrying about it until it happens
then you can fix it but as pointed out above tightly coupled systems can't react fast enough at which point we all have to hear
the whocoodanode justification )
So here's a question. What is the failure heirarchy. And why don't those crucial nodes of failsafe protect the system. Could
it be that we don't know what they are?
While 90% of people were producing food a few decades ago, I think a large percentage will be producing energy in a few decades
right now we are still propping up our golf courses and avoiding investing in pipelines and refineries. We are still exploiting
the assets of the 50s and 60s to live our hyper material lives. Those investments are what gave us a few decades of consumerism.
Now everyone wants government to spend on infra without even knowing what needs to go and what needs to stay. Maybe half of
Californians need to get out of there and forget about building more infra there just a thought.
America still has a frontier ethos how in the world can the right investments in infra be made with a collection of such values?
We're going to get city after city imploding. More workers producing energy and less leisure over the next few decades. That's
what breakdown is going to look like.
What you say is true, but only if you have a sufficient number of failures to learn from. A lot of planes had to crash for
air travel to be as safe as it is today.
I am surprised to see no reference to John Gall's General
Systematics in this discussion, an entire study of systems and how they misbehave. I tend to read it from the standpoint of
managing a complex IT infrastructure, but his work starts from human systems (organizations).
The work is organized around aphorisms - Systems tend to oppose their own proper function - The real world is what it is
reported to the system - but one or two from this paper should be added to that repertoire. Point 7 seems especially important.
From Gall, I have come to especially appreciate the Fail-Safe Theorem: "when a Fail-Safe system fails, it fails by failing to
fail safe."
Instead of writing something long and rambling about complex systems being aggregates of smaller, discrete systems, each depending
on a functioning and accurate information processing/feedback (not IT) system to maintain its coherence; and upon equally well
functioning feedback systems between the parts and the whole - instead of that I'll quote a poem.
" Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; "
IIRC in Robert A. Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters" there's a different version:
Big fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas
And so, ad infinitum.
Since the story is about humans being parasitized and controlled by alien "slugs" that sit on their backs, and the slugs in
turn being destroyed by an epidemic disease started by the surviving humans, the verse has a macabre appropriateness.
Terrific post- just the sort of thing that has made me a NC fan for years.
I'm a bit surprised that the commentators ( thus far ) have not referred to the Financial Crisis of 2008 and the ensuing Great
Recession as being an excellent example of Cook's failure analysis.
Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera's
All The Devils Are Here www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/159184438X/
describes beautifully how the erosion of the protective mechanisms in the U.S. financial system, no single one of which would
have of itself been deadly in its absence ( Cook's Point 3 ) combined to produce the Perfect Storm.
It brought to mind Garett Hardin's The Tragedy Of The Commons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
. While the explosive growth of debt ( and therefore risk ) obviously jeopardized the entire system, it was very much within the
narrow self interest of individual players to keep the growth ( and therefore the danger ) increasing.
Bingo. Failure of the culture to properly train its members. Not so much a lack of morality as a failure to point out that
when the temple falls, it falls on Samson.
The next big fix is to use the US military to wall off our entire country, maybe include Canada (language is important in alliances)
during the Interregnum.
Why is no one mentioning the Foundation Trilogy and Hari Seldon here?
My only personal experience with the crash of a complex, tightly-coupled system was the crash of the trading floor of a very
big stock exchange in the early part of this century. The developers were in the computer room, telling the operators NOT to roll
back to the previous release, and the operators ignored them and did so anyway. Crash!
In Claus Jensen's fascinating account of the Challenger disaster, NO DOWNLINK, he describes how the managers overrode the
engineers' warnings not to fly under existing weather conditions. We all know the result.
Human error was the final cause in both cases.
Now we are undergoing the terrible phenomenon of global warming, which everybody but Republicans, candidates and elected, seems
to understand is real and catastrophic. The Republicans have a majority in Congress, and refuse–for ideological and monetary reasons–to
admit that the problem exists. I think this is another unfolding disaster that we can ascribe to human error.
"Human error" needs unpacking here. In this discussion, it's become a Deus ex Humanitas. Humans do what they do because their
cultural experiences impel them to do so. Human plus culture is not the same as human. That's why capitalism doesn't work in a
selfish society.
But highly efficient systems are fragile. Formula One cars are optimized for speed and can only run one race.
Another problem with obsessing about (productive or technical) efficiency is that it usually means a narrow focus on the most
measured or measurable inputs and outputs, to the detriment of less measurable but no less important aspects. Wages are easier
to measure than the costs of turnover, including changes in morale, loss of knowledge and skill, and regard for the organization
vs. regard for the individual. You want low cost fish? Well, it might be caught by slaves. Squeeze the measurable margins, and
the hidden margins will move.
1) Measuring what is easy instead of what is important.
2) Measuring many things and then optimizing all of them optimizes the whole.
Then, have some linear thinker try to optimize those in a complex system (like any organization involving humans) with multiple
hidden and delayed feedback loops, and the result will certainly be unexpected. Whether for good or ill is going to be fairly
unpredictable unless someone has actually looked for the feedback loops.
It's nice to see well spelled out a couple of intuitions I've had for a long time. For example, that we are going in the wrong
direction when we try to streamline instead of following the path of biology: redundancies, "dirtiness" and, of course, the king
of mechanisms, negative feedback (am I wrong in thinking that the main failure of finance, as opposed to economy, is that it has
inbuilt positive feedback instead of negative?). And yes, my professional experience has taught me that when things go really
wrong it was never just one mistake, it is a cluster of those.
Yes, as you hint here, and I would make forcefully explicit: COMPLEX vs NOT-COMPLEX is a false dichotomy that is misleading
from the start.
We ourselves, and all the organisms we must interact with in order to stay alive, are individually among the most complex systems
that we know of. And the interactions of all of us that add up to Gaia are yet more complex. And still it moves.
Natural selection built the necessary stability features into our bodily complexity. We even have a word for it: homeostasis.
Based on negative feedback loops that can keep the balancing act going. And our bodies are vastly more complex than our societies.
Society's problem right now is not complexity per se, but the exploitation of complexity by system components that
want to hog the resources and to hell with the whole, quite exactly parallel to the behavior of cancer cells in our bodies when
regulatory systems fail.
In our society's case, it is the intelligent teamwork of the stupidly selfish that has destroyed the regulatory systems. Instead
of negative feedback keeping deviations from optimum within tolerable limits, we now have positive feedback so obvious it is trite:
the rich get richer.
We not only don't need to de-complexify, we don't dare to. We really need to foster the intelligent teamwork that our society
is capable of, or we will fail to survive challenges like climate change and the need to sensibly control the population. The
alternative is to let natural selection do the job for us, using the old reliable four horsemen.
We are unlikely to change our own evolved selfishness, and probably shouldn't. But we need to control the monsters that we
have created within our society. These monsters have all the selfishness of a human at his worst, plus several natural large advantages,
including size, longevity, and the ability to metamorphose and regenerate. And as powerful as they already were, they have recently
been granted all the legal rights of human citizens, without appropriate negative feedback controls. Everyone here will already
know what I'm talking about, so I'll stop.
Formula One cars are optimized for speed and can only run one race.
Actually I believe F1 has rules regarding the number of changes that can be made to a car during the season. This is typically
four or five changes (replacements or rebuilds), so a F1 car has to be able to run more than one race or otherwise face penalties.
Yes, F-1 allows four power planets per-season it has been up dated lately to 5. There isn't anything in the air or ground as
complex as a F-1 car power planet. The cars are feeding 30 or more engineers at the track and back home normal in England millions
of bit of info per second and no micro-soft is not used but very complex programs watching every system in the car. A pit stop
in F-1 is 2.7 seconds anything above 3.5 and your not trying hard enough.
Honda who pride themselves in Engineering has struggled in power planet design this year and admit they have but have put more
engineers on the case. The beginning of this Tech engine design the big teams hired over 100 more engineers to solve the problems.
Ferrari throw out the first design and did a total rebuild and it working.
I'm sure those in F-1 system designs would look at stories like this and would come to the conclusion that these nice people
are the gate keepers and not the future. Yes, I'm a long time fan of F-1. Then again what do I know.
The sad thing in F-1 the gate keepers are the owners CVC.
Interesting comment! One has to wonder why every complex system can't be treated as the be-all. Damn the torpedos. Spare no
expense! Maybe if we just admitted we are all doing absolutely nothing but going around in a big circle at an ever increasing
speed, we could get a near perfect complex system to help us along.
In the link it's the humans of McLaren that make all the decisions on the car and the race on hand. The link is about humans
working together either in real race time or designing out problems created by others.
Globalization factors in maximizing the impact of Murphy's Law:
Meltdown potential of a globalized 'too big to fail' financial system associated with trade imbalances and international
capital flows, and boom and bust impact of volatile "hot money".
Environmental damage associated with inefficiency of excessive long long supply chains seeking cheap commodities and dirty
polluting manufacturing zones.
Military vulnerability of same long tightly coupled 'just in time" supply chains across vast oceans, war zones, choke points
that are very easy to attack and nearly impossible to defend.
Consumer product safety threat of manufacturing somewhere offshore out of sight out of mind outside the jurisdiction of
the domestic regulatory system.
Geographic concentration and contagion of risk of all kinds – fragile pattern of horizontal integration – manufacturing
in China, finance in New York and London, industrialized mono culture agriculture lacking biodiversity (Iowa feeds the world).
If all the bulbs on the Christmas tree are wired in series, it takes only one to fail and they all go out.
Globalization is not a weather event, not a thermodynamic process of atoms and molecules, not a principle of Newtonian physics,
not water running downhill, but a hyper aggressive top down policy agenda by power hungry politicians and reckless bean counter
economists. An agenda hell bent on creating a tightly coupled globally integrated unstable house of cards with a proven capacity
for catastrophic (trade) imbalance, global financial meltdown, contagion of bad debt, susceptibility to physical threats of all
kinds.
Any complex system contains non-linear feedback. Management presumes it is their skill that keeps the system working over some
limited range, where the behavior approximates linear. Outside those limits, the system can fail catastrophically. What is perceived
as operating or management skill is either because the system is kept in "safe" limits, or just happenstance. See chaos theory.
Operators or engineers controlling or modifying the system are providing feedback. Feedback can push the system past "safe"
limits. Once past safe limits, the system can fail catastrophically Such failure happen very quickly, and are always "a surprise".
All complex system contain non-linear feedback, and all appear manageable over a small rage of operation, under specific conditions.
These are the systems' safe working limits, and sometimes the limits are known, but in many case the safe working limits are
unknown (See Stock Markets).
All systems with non-linear feedback can and will fail, catastrophically.
All predicted by Chaos Theory. Best mathematical filed applicable to the real world of systems.
So I'll repeat. All complex system will fail when operating outside safe limits, change in the system, management induced and
stimulus induced, can and will redefine those limits, with spectacular results.
We hope and pray system will remain within safe limits, but greed and complacency lead us humans to test those limits (loosen
the controls), or enable greater levels of feedback (increase volumes of transactions). See Crash of 2007, following repeal of
Glass-Stegal, etc.
First, I don't think the use of "practitioner" is an evasion of agency. Instead, it reflects the very high level of generality
inherent in systems theory. The pitfall is that generality is very close to vagueness. However, the piece does contain an argument
against the importance of agency; it argues that the system is more important than the individual practitioners, that since catastrophic
failures have multiple causes, individual agency is unimportant. That might not apply to practitioners with overall responsibility
or who intentionally wrecked the system; there's a naive assumption that everyone's doing their best. I think the author would
argue that control fraud is also a system failure, that there are supposed to be safeguards against malicious operators. Bill
Black would probably agree. (Note that I dropped off the high level of generality to a particular example.)
Second, this appears to defy the truism from ecology that more complex systems are more stable. I think that's because ecologies
generally are not tightly coupled. There are not only many parts but many pathways (and no "practitioners"). So "coupling" is
a key concept not much dealt with in the article. It's about HUMAN systems, even though the concept should apply more widely than
that.
Third, Yves mentioned the economists' use of "equilibrium." This keeps coming up; the way the word is used seems to me to badly
need definition. It comes from chemistry, where it's used to calculate the production from a reaction. The ideal case is a closed
system: for instance, the production of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen in a closed pressure chamber. You can calculate the
proportion of ammonia produced from the temperature and pressure of the vessel. It's a fairly fast reaction, so time isn't a big
factor.
The Earth is not a closed system, nor are economies. Life is driven by the flow of energy from the Sun (and various other factors,
like the steady rain of material from space). In open systems, "equilibrium" is a constantly moving target. In principle, you
could calculate the results at any given condition , given long enough for the many reactions to finish. It's as if the potential
equilibrium drives the process (actually, the inputs do).
Not only is the target moving, but the whole system is chaotic in the sense that it's highly dependent on variables we can't
really measure, like people, so the outcomes aren't actually predictable. That doesn't really mean you can't use the concept of
equilibrium, but it has to be used very carefully. Unfortunately, most economists are pretty ignorant of physical science, so
ignorant they insistently defy the laws of thermodynamics ("groaf"), so there's a lot of magical thinking going on. It's really
ideology, so the misuse of "equilibrium" is just one aspect of the system failure.
I avoided physics, being not so very mathematical, so learned the chemistry version – but I do think it's the one the economists
are thinking of.
What I neglected to say: it's an analogy, hence potentially useful but never literally true – especially since there's no actual
stopping point, like your table.
There is much simpler way to look at it, in terms of natural cycles, because the alternative is that at the other extreme,
a happy medium is also a flatline on the big heart monitor. So the bigger it builds, the more tension and pressure accumulates.
The issue then becomes as to how to leverage the consequences. As they say, a crisis should never be wasted. At its heart, there
are two issues, economic overuse of resources and a financial medium in which the rent extraction has overwhelmed its benefits.
These actually serve as some sort of balance, in that we are in the process of an economic heart attack, due to the clogging of
this monetary circulation system, that will seriously slow economic momentum.
The need then is to reformulate how these relationships function, in order to direct and locate our economic activities within
the planetary resources. One idea to take into consideration being that money functions as a social contract, though we treat
it as a commodity. So recognizing it is not property to be collected, rather contracts exchanged, then there wouldn't be the logic
of basing the entire economy around the creation and accumulation of notational value, to the detriment of actual value. Treating
money as a public utility seems like socialism, but it is just an understanding of how it functions. Like a voucher system, simply
creating excess notes to keep everyone happy is really, really stupid, big picture wise.
Obviously some parts of the system need more than others, but not simply for ego gratification. Like a truck needs more road
than a car, but an expensive car only needs as much road as an economy car. The brain needs more blood than the feet, but it doesn't
want the feet rotting off due to poor circulation either.
So basically, yes, complex systems are finite, but we need to recognize and address the particular issues of the system in question.
Perhaps in a too-quick scan of the comments, I overlooked any mention of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, Antifragile. If so,
my apologies. If not, it's a serious omission from this discussion.
I first wondered about something related to this theme when I first heard about just in time sourcing of inventory. (Now also
staff.) I wondered then whether this was possible because we (middle and upper class US citizens) had been shielded from war and
other catastrophic events. We can plan based on everything going right because most of us don't know in our gut that things can
always go wrong.
I'm genX, but 3 out of 4 of my grandparents were born during or just after WWI. Their generation built for redundancy, safety,
stability. Our generation, well. We take risks and I'm not sure the decision makers have a clue that any of it can bite them.
The just-in-time supply of components for manufacturing was described in Barry Lynn's book "Cornered" and identified as creating
extreme fragility in the American production system. There have already been natural disasters that shutdown American automobile
production in our recent past.
Everything going right wasn't part of the thinking that went into just-in-time parts. Everything going right - long enough
- to steal away market share on price-point was the thinking. Decision makers don't worry about any of this biting them. Passing
the blame down and golden parachutes assure that.
This is really a very good paper. My direct comments are:
point 2: yes. provided the safety shields are not discarded for bad reasons like expedience or ignorance or avarice. See Glass-Steagall
Act, for example.
point 4: yes. true of all dynamic systems.
point 7: 'root cause' is not the same as 'key factors'. ( And here the doctor's sensitivity to malpractice suits may be guiding
his language.) It is important to determine key factors in order to devise better safety shields for the system. Think airplane
black boxes and the 1932 Pecora Commission after the 1929 stock market crash.
It's easy, complexity became too complex. And I can't read the small print. We are devolving into a world of happy people with
gardens full of flowers that they live in on their cell phones.
There are a number of counter-examples; engineered and natural systems with a high degree of complexity that are inherently
stable and fault-tolerant, nonetheless.
1. Subsumption architecture is a method of controlling robots, invented by Rodney Brooks in the 1980s. This scheme
is modeled on the way the nervous systems of animals work. In particular, the parts of the robot exist in a hierarchy of subsystems,
e.g., foot, leg, torso, etc. Each of these subsystems is autonomously controlled. Each of the subsystems can override the autonomous
control of its constituent subsystems. So, the leg controller can directly control the leg muscle, and can override the foot subsystem.
This method of control was remarkably successful at producing walking robots which were not sensitive to unevenness of the surface.
In other words, the were not brittle in the sense of Dr. Cook. Of course, subsumption architecture is not a panacea. But it is
a demonstrated way to produce very complex engineered systems consisting of many interacting parts that are very stable.
2. The inverted pendulum Suppose you wanted to build a device to balance a pencil on its point. You could imagine
a sensor to detect the angle of the pencil, an actuator to move the balance point, and a controller to link the two in a feedback
loop. Indeed, this is, very roughly, how a Segway remains upright. However, there is a simpler way to do it, without a sensor
or a feedback controller. It turns out that if your device just moves the balance point sinusoidaly (e.g., in a small circle)
and if the size of the circle and the rate are within certain ranges, then the pencil will be stable. This is a well-known consequence
of the Mathieu equation. The lesson here is that stability (i.e., safety) can be inherent in systems for subtle reasons that defy
a straightforward fault/response feedback.
3. Emergent behavior of swarms Large numbers of very simple agents interacting with one another can sometimes exhibit
complex, even "intelligent" behavior. Ants are a good example. Each ant has only simple behavior. However, the entire ant colony
can act in complex and effective ways that would be hard to predict from the individual ant behaviors. A typical ant colony is
highly resistant to disturbances in spite of the primitiveness of its constituent ants.
4. Another example is the mammalian immune system that uses negative selection as one mechanism to avoid attacking
the organism itself. Immature B cells are generated in large numbers at random, each one with receptors for specifically configured
antigens. During maturation, if they encounter a matching antigen (likely a protein of the organism) then the B cell either dies,
or is inactivated. At maturity, what is left is a highly redundant cohort of B cells that only recognize (and neutralize) foreign
antigens.
Well, these are just a few examples of systems that exhibit stability (or fault-tolerance) that defies the kind of Cartesian
analysis in Dr. Cook's article.
Glass-Steagall Act: interactions between unrelated functionality is something to be avoided. Auto recall: honking the horn
could stall the engine by shorting out the ignition system. Simple fix is is a bit of insulation.
ADA software language: Former DOD standard for large scale safety critical software development: encapsulation, data hiding,
strong typing of data, minimization of dependencies between parts to minimize impact of fixes and changes. Has safety critical
software gone the way of the Glass-Steagall Act? Now it is buffer overflows, security holes, and internet protocol in hardware
control "critical infrastructure" that can blow things up.
By Simon Shuster /
Berlin November 7, 2017 To signal the storming of the Russian imperial palace, the
revolutionary guards were supposed to raise a red lantern over the fortress they had occupied
in Petrograd, the city now known as St. Petersburg. It was October 1917, and Vladimir Lenin,
the leader of Russia's communist underground, was finally within reach of seizing power over
the largest country in the world. Pacing around the musty rooms of his rebel headquarters, he
demanded that his men raise the lantern onto the flagpole and begin the siege at once.
But there was a problem. They'd forgotten to bring a lantern.
One of Lenin
's henchmen went out to look for one. But he got lost, fell into some mud and returned with a
purple lamp, which the insurgents could not figure out how to attach to the flagpole.
Eventually they gave up on their idea for a signal and started the siege without it.
With a lot of luck, they were successful. But in Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the
Master of Terror, a new biography of
Lenin written by Victor Sebestyen and published on Tuesday -- the 100th anniversary of
Russia's October Revolution -- it
becomes clear that Lenin did not attain absolute power through meticulous planning or the
ruthless efficiency of his men. Much of his success seems to have come through his ability to
bluff, intimidate and improvise. It's a story that, for Sebestyen, still echoes a century
later. On the eve of the anniversary of Lenin's revolution, TIME spoke to his biographer about
the lucky breaks that helped bring Lenin to power, the legacy he left behind in Russia and the
parallels that Sebestyen sees between Trump_vs_deep_state and Leninism.
TIME: The book sheds a lot of light on Lenin's understanding of good and evil. How would you
describe the moral compass that he used?
Victor Sebestyen: It's all about the means justifying the ends. That's what it came down to.
Anything you do for the cause is morally justifiable. It's similar to the religious idea of
saving souls. It doesn't matter how many heretics you burn as long as you're serving that
cause.
Didn't Lenin also see himself, in a sense, as saving mankind?
Yes, he was trying to create a new type of human being, a perfect Soviet person –
homo sovieticus – who would get rid of slavery and exploitation. The trouble is
that people often have a disappointing wish not to be perfected. They first have to be bullied
and coerced and, in the end, terrorized. So that's what Lenin did. It was a giant experiment.
The scale of its ambition was monumental. But that's what makes the scale of the failure so
disastrous.
Your book also suggests that for Lenin, the Russian Revolution was part of a vendetta. He
wanted to avenge the death of his older brother, who was executed at the age of 21 for plotting
to kill the czar. How much of this was personal to Lenin rather than ideological?
I think there was an element of both. A lot of the legend of Lenin was that of a very cold,
very calculating, icy and logical figure. But actually he was moved by emotion every bit as
much as ideology. It wasn't only his brother's execution that drove him, but the fact that his
whole family was shunned after that by the liberal middle class. Lenin never had a kind word to
say about the bourgeois after that, and that drove him just as much as his belief in Marxist
theory.
As you describe in the book, Lenin came to power by colluding with a hostile foreign power
-- namely, Germany during World War I -- while at the same time making appeals to Russian
patriotism and national pride. How did he reconcile these two?
I don't think it was hard for him to reconcile at all. He looked at the ultimate goal, which
was power for him, the power to change the world. That was his morality. It didn't matter that
he was colluding. He would have seen it as a perfectly reasonable political tactic. Of course
he had to hide it, because it would have been embarrassing. But he wouldn't have found the
morality troubling one bit. I don't suppose he thought about it for more than a minute.
Some of the early commentaries on your book have
suggested that Lenin's tactics resemble those of the Donald Trump campaign during last
year's elections. Don't you think such comparisons are a bit of a stretch?
Of course I didn't have Trump in mind when I started writing the book. But I did have in
mind the power of demagoguery. So I don't think it's a stretch at all to make that comparison,
especially when you look at [Trump's] personality. Some of the same things are said about him:
He lies shamelessly; he promises anything and everything; he offers very simple solutions to
complicated problems. This is very recognizable today.
When it came down to it, Lenin's messages were often very simple, very pithy, very direct.
He would have been fantastic on Twitter. I mean, his slogan -- Peace, Land, Bread -- it's a lot
less than 140 characters. I really do think he is the godfather of post-truth politics, and I
think we're seeing Leninist stuff going on in our politics quite often.
Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist, reportedly
called himself a Leninist. Do you see a parallel there as well?
I think there's a big element of Leninism in wanting to destroy everything and start again.
That's the parallel between them. [Bannon and his allies] also want to smash the old system,
which to them doesn't work, and they want to build anew.
Lenin was also obsessed with propaganda. What were his innovations on that front?
He was really obsessed with film and radio. But he would have used whatever the new
technology was at the time. I dread to think how he would use the Internet. His style was
always to look at the worst of his opponents and brand them that way. That was always in his
argument: Exaggerate everything wrong that your opponent does, and then identify them only like
that.
The Russian media haven't paid as much attention as one might expect to the 100th
anniversary of the Revolution this week. Nor has President Vladimir Putin. Why is that?
Well, they can't write [Lenin] out completely, because that would basically mean that
everything their parents or grandparents fought for is meaningless, that it's all wrong. You
can't do that. But trying to come to terms with the communists is not an easy one for Putin. He
hates the word revolution . It's appalling to him. For a leader like Putin, it's not a
great message to send to your people: Hey, you can actually get rid of an autocratic leader
quite easily if you want to.
Then why does the cult of Lenin's disciple and successor, Joseph Stalin, seem to be so much
more alive among Russians today?
To them modern history begins in 1945, with victory in the Great Patriotic War, and you can
almost forget the years before it. You can write Stalin's history as the great national leader
while barely mentioning that he was a communist. But you can't ignore that with Lenin.
Lenin's embalmed corpse is still inside the mausoleum on Red Square, in the center of
Moscow, and the question of whether or not to bury him is still a major controversy. Why does
Putin seem uninterested in putting it to rest?
He had the chance in 2011, when the mausoleum was in such bad shape that there was a danger
of it falling down. That was a chance to get rid of it and bury him. But he said, No. And in
the end they spent quite a lot of money propping it up again. I don't know how much of Lenin's
actual body is left in there. There may be much more wax than an embalmed body.
Last week Putin unveiled a monument in Moscow to the victims of political repressions. He
didn't name and shame Stalin or Lenin during his speech at that ceremony. But what do you make
of this step to at least acknowledge that these crimes and purges took place?
That was the first big [monument] with a big state unveiling. But I don't know how you can
do that without mentioning the people who committed the repressions and how it happened. Still,
the fact that they put up the monument at all is important. It would be churlish to dismiss it.
People have been pressing for something like this to happen in Russia for a while, and even
though it might not go as far as one might want, at least it's something. It was carefully
scripted, carefully crafted. But the fact that it's there at all is a good step.
In other parts in this series, I have discussed the tools that the elite are using to achieve
their goals.
In part I, I talked about how debt is used as a tool of enslavement, and in
part II I explained how central banking is a system of financial control that literally dominates
the entire planet (
Part III and
Part IV here) Professor Quigley also mentioned this system of financial control
in his book
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create
a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each
country and the economy of the world as a whole."
Today, a system of interlocking global treaties is slowly but surely merging us into a global
economic system. The World Trade Organization was formed on January 1, 1995, and 164 nations now
belong to it. And every time you hear of a new "free trade agreement" being signed, that is another
step toward a one world economy.
Of course economics is just one element of their overall plan. Ultimately the goal is to erode
national sovereignty almost completely and to merge the nations of the world into a single unified
system of global governance.
... ... ...
Once you start looking into these things, you will see that the elite are very openly telling us
what they intend to do.
One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is a quote from David Rockefeller's book entitled
Memoirs
Some even believe we are a part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United
States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around
the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you
will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty and I am proud of it
As David Rockefeller openly admitted, they are "internationalists" that are intent on establishing
a one world system.
"... I believe discussion of Neoliberalism is very much like discussion of Global Warming. "Weedy" or not, "academic" or not both discussions require transit through some difficult concepts and technical depth. In the case of Global Warming discussions you either come to grips with some complicated climate science or you end up discussing matters of faith drawn from popular "simplifications". In the case of Neoliberalism the discussion necessarily enters a region which requires attention to fine details which when followed to their end tend to have deep and broad implications. ..."
"... The concept of a Thought Collective greatly aids understanding the particularly slippery nature of Neoliberalism as a term for discussion. That slippery nature is no accident. The Market as a theory of knowledge -- an epistemology -- makes apparent the philosophical even "religious" extent of Neoliberal thinking. ..."
"... I prefer Wendy Brown's definition of neoliberalism. It is not simply a commitment to capitalism or to markets, she argues, but an effort to transform all spheres of human life in ways that render them amendable to economic calculation. ..."
"... But "economic calculation" still understates the post-modern condition and tends toward looking for an outside origin, like Hayek/Friedman. Neoliberalism is something we are doing to ourselves, and Foucault's biopolitics makes this clear. You just don't separate the economic from the social and political. ..."
"... Twitter and Facebooks "likes and dislikes" are a form of (social) capital accumulation. Financialization has become ascendant because labour productivity is no longer measurable, and they need "fictitious" numbers to maintain hierarchy. ..."
"... Marxists understand that Hayek-Friedman neoliberalism is just another stage in the real subsumption of labor and completion of globalized capitalism. It is just liberalism after capitalism has finally destroyed traditionalism, nationalism, religion etc. ..."
I believe discussion of Neoliberalism is very much like discussion of Global Warming.
"Weedy" or not, "academic" or not both discussions require transit through some difficult
concepts and technical depth. In the case of Global Warming discussions you either come to
grips with some complicated climate science or you end up discussing matters of faith drawn
from popular "simplifications". In the case of Neoliberalism the discussion necessarily
enters a region which requires attention to fine details which when followed to their end
tend to have deep and broad implications.
In the interview referenced by this post Phillip Mirowski asserts Neoliberals believe the
Market is an information processor which "knows" more than you or I could ever know. He also
introduces the concept of a Thought Collective -- which he states he adapted from writings of
Ludwig Fleck related to describing a method for study and explanation of the history of
Science. I believe both these "weedy" "academic" distinctions are key to understanding
Neoliberalism and distinguishing it from Neoclassical economics and Libertarianism. The
concept of a Thought Collective greatly aids understanding the particularly slippery nature
of Neoliberalism as a term for discussion. That slippery nature is no accident. The Market as
a theory of knowledge -- an epistemology -- makes apparent the philosophical even "religious"
extent of Neoliberal thinking.
Two recent papers by Phillip Mirowski tackle the difficulties in defining and discussing
Neoliberalism. They are both "weedy" and "academic" and unfortunately help little in
addressing the issue RabidGhandhi raised at the root of the lengthy thread beginning the
comments to this post.
"The Political Movement that Dared not Speak its own Name: The Neoliberal Thought
Collective Under Erasure" 2014
[https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/research-papers/the-political-movement-that-dared-not-speak-its-own-name-the-neoliberal-thought-collective-under-erasure]
"This is Water (or is it Neoliberalism?)" 2016 -- this is a response to critics of the
previous paper.
[https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/this-is-water-or-is-it-neoliberalism]
There have been several oblique references to this story -- so I'll repeat it since I only
recently ran across it.
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish
swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And
the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other
and goes, "What the hell is water?"
I am afraid that little story says volumes about the problem RabidGhandhi raised. I
believe remaining "weedy" and "academic" is the very least service we might do to discussing
Neoliberalism and when arguing topics related to Neoliberalism -- and probably the least
damage.
Phillip Mirowski approach is not the only approach and it has its flaws. IMHO he
exaggerates differences between neoliberal doctrine and neo-classical economics.
I went to the site you recommended and read through the very lengthy discussion of
Neoliberalism as Trotskyism for the rich. I believe the title of that discussion makes a
reasonable summary of the definition of Neoliberalism you prefer and propose: Neoliberalism
is Trotskyism for the rich. While there may be some groups in which this definition might be
a useful formula for continuing discussion I doubt it would be of much use in discussing
Neoliberalism in general.
Neoliberalism is slippery enough without bringing in a can-O-worms like Trotskyism -- and
as I am not a Soviet style Marxist nor a student of Marxism and only vaguely familiar with
the Russian revolutions the metaphor is as meaningless to me as a metaphor based on the
gang-of-four with references to Maoism.
I disagree with your view that Mirowski exaggerates the differences between Neoliberal
doctrine and Neoclassical economics. I don't recall the source but I do recall one of
Mirowski's writings or videos did identify how Neoclassical economics is drifting toward
Neoliberalism. Although both disciplines might advocate similar policies they differ in how
they arrive at those policies. And I believe it Neoclassical economists think of economics at
a tool for conducting policy while Neoliberals view their doctrines as guides for policy.
Mirowski -- at least as I read his paper -- tends to avoid making a formulaic definition
of Neoliberalism and instead emphasizes what he views as its key doctrines. Those doctrines
are what distinguishes Neoliberalism.
I prefer Wendy Brown's definition of neoliberalism. It is not simply a commitment to
capitalism or to markets, she argues, but an effort to transform all spheres of human life in
ways that render them amendable to economic calculation.
But "economic calculation" still understates the post-modern condition and tends
toward looking for an outside origin, like Hayek/Friedman. Neoliberalism is something we are
doing to ourselves, and Foucault's biopolitics makes this clear. You just don't separate the
economic from the social and political.
Twitter and Facebooks "likes and dislikes" are a form of (social) capital
accumulation. Financialization has become ascendant because labour productivity is no longer
measurable, and they need "fictitious" numbers to maintain hierarchy.
Jodi Dean
calls this the era of "Communicative Capitalism" wherein value creation has been democratized
and we are ruled by the "circulation of commodified affect."
This is brutal. We create value when we like something or someone. We commodify it when we
attempt to justify our affections in social settings and produce discourse to do so. It
circulates when other people agree and spread the episteme. Why is it "Capitalism?" Because
Facebook extracts surplus from your affections and discourse. Sociality and sociability are
now major profit centers.
That's like everything, folks. Everything. Late-capitalism or neoliberalism is at least
fast becoming a global totality without an outside or margin.
I come at this from a Marxist perspective, and so am very skeptical of liberalism.
Neo-liberalism is simply liberalism after the last vestiges of traditionalist communitarian
have disappeared.
I usually like Gaius Publius, but I don't like this article. Recently the French union
reaction to Macron's labor reforms has the slogan to the effect that "We don't want that
liberalism."
To understand neo-liberalism, you have to a) use the European meaning of liberalism,
especially since the founders were European, b) you also have to connect the word with the
full spectrum of what is "liberalism" as developed in the Early modern period by Hume, Locke,
Smith, the American founders, John Stuart Mills, etc. Remember, during their times, both
Burke and John C Calhoun were considered exemplary liberals. (See Domenico Losurdo.)
Neo-liberalism is no more limited to economics and markets than liberalism was.
Neo-liberalism/liberalism, besides the right to property or the fruits of your labor (Locke
also Marx) also includes the full panoply of rights and privileges (at least in theory)
included in the Bill of Rights and the extension of those over time, and the right to
property and market competition are inextricably connected to the other rights (free press,
freedom to associate, gun rights, national self-determination, freedom from searches, etc).
Inextricably, they cannot be separated.
Including individualistic rights over your body, for instance. The right to an abortion,
gay marriage, freedom of choice, even the popularization of tattoos developed at the same
time as the ascension of economic neoliberalism, which is inextricably connected to the
"liberalization" of the social spheres.
Which is why it is the ocean we swim in and why it is so hard to fight and why Democrats
and centrists and the identitarian "Left" dislike the word so much. Neoliberalism is just
liberalism on steroids. Those who dislike the word want to de-liberalize (some of ) the
markets and limit (some) property rights while retaining most of the individualism that
liberalism allows. They don't want to be socialists.
Marxists understand that Hayek-Friedman neoliberalism is just another stage in the
real subsumption of labor and completion of globalized capitalism. It is just liberalism
after capitalism has finally destroyed traditionalism, nationalism, religion etc.
hmmmnnn while this, from article can be so defined:
"With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the
Universe as "a kind of neoliberal international" [a term modeled on "the Communist
International]: a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists.
The movement's rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the
ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the
Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam
Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the
universities of Chicago and Virginia."
FDR regulated capitalism, entirety of western "social democracies", stand in contrast
(some might say, thankfully)
For one of the strongest early analyses of the development of neoliberalism, see
Foucault's 1978-79 Collège de France lectures, "The Birth of Biopolitics" (English
translation 2008). The entire year is an extended review of and commentary on the the
development of liberalism, or in Foucault's terms "liberal governmentality," and in
particular of neo-liberalism
"... The experience of every modern democratic nation-state proves that libertarianism is incompatible with democracy ..."
"... Libertarianism is the version of neoliberalism used to get teenagers hooked on markets. ..."
"... The only ray of hope is that neoliberalism seems, by stripping the vast majority of people of income and assets, to be wildly successful at suppressing aggregate demand and so contains the seeds of its own demise. Maybe. ..."
"... Too bad Mises and Hayek didn't live in the UK or France or US or Canada or other long established democracy; ..."
"... nobody's marching in the streets or even making a fuss about it ..."
"Just deserts for predators and prey" – yes, very much this. I remember talking with
my father about a year ago in a quasi-philosophical sense about where I felt western society
had gone wrong. I could not quite adequately express the essence of my thoughts beyond "a
fundamental devaluation of people as individuals."
I think it applies to foreign policy as well – however you want to put things. The
ghouls/neocons/neolibs decide to start some regime change war somewhere. Hundreds of
thousands/millions of the wrong people die. But the pipeline (or whatever) gets built on the
correct parts of the map. No harm no foul and it's on to the next part of the giant "Risk"
board.
Come to think, I actually quite like "ghoul" as a catch-all term for all these evil
bastards. Can't remember where I first saw that – might have been here – but it
fits.
A good article on the neoliberal links to fascism: Why
libertarians apologize for autocracy The experience of every modern democratic nation-state proves that libertarianism is
incompatible with democracy by Michael Lind.
Libertarianism is the version of neoliberalism used to get teenagers hooked on
markets.
What is neoliberalism? A market-based ideology willing to employ fascism to impose the
conditions necessary to establish the market state. (ie, throwing people out of helicopters.)
The state is co-opted to ensure rule of the Market.
The value of everything, human life-included, is to be decided by the Market. (Except when
the outcome is not favorable to the elite. Hence the need to takeover the state.)
The market state will impose Freedom™. Freedom™ means the law of the jungle
and consequently many rebellious serfs, er, citizens unhappy with Freedom™. (Another
reason the state will be needed – to reimpose Freedom™. That is, prison or maybe
helicopter trips.)
In 2015, he discovered that he was enrolled in a particular type of ineligible payment
plan and would need to start his decade of payments all over again, even though he had been
paying more each month than he would have if he had been in an eligible plan. Because of
his 8.25 percent interest rate, which he could not refinance due to loan rules, even those
higher payments weren't putting a dent in his principal. So the $70,000 or so that he did
pay over the period amounted to nothing, and he'll most likely pay at least that much going
forward.
So this is who we are now. For all sorts of reasons that made perfect sense at the time,
we built additional repayment programs onto existing complexity onto well-meaning
forgiveness overseen by multiple layers of responsible parties. And once that was done, Mr.
Shafer, teacher of shelter dwellers and street kids and others whom fellow educators failed
to reach, wasted a small fortune and will now shovel another one into the federal
coffers.
Which leaves just one more question: If this is who we are, is it who we actually want
to be?
Apparently, yes.
The only ray of hope is that neoliberalism seems, by stripping the vast majority of people
of income and assets,
to be wildly successful at suppressing aggregate demand and so contains the seeds of its own
demise. Maybe.
The only ray of hope is that neoliberalism seems, by stripping the vast majority of
people of income and assets, to be wildly successful at suppressing aggregate demand and so
contains the seeds of its own demise. Maybe.
Exactly.. once the majority are stripped of their assets and have to commit most of their
income to rent, there *should* be no growth. Unless the entire system is running around asset
inflation, which it is now. But that cannot last forever.
The only ray of hope is that neoliberalism seems, by stripping the vast majority of
people of income and assets,
to be wildly successful at suppressing aggregate demand and so contains the seeds of its
own demise. Maybe.
I don't think that this is what They are thinking. The 'make it up on volume' is a
retailer strategy, our MOTU are playing well above wholesale and actually are not in the
goods-transferring biz at all. Finance, you know. Long before we are all gone, eaten alive or
whatever, They will be turning their sights on where the real money is -- each other. Perhaps
a few corners of life will survive, and I am curious as to what the new life forms, if any,
that emerge out of this sea of pesticides, herbicides, garbage, and too much CO2 will be.
Academic question, of course. Perhaps this is why there is no evidence of other intelligent
life in the universe? That's too depressing, I'm gonna go make some cinnamon toast.
To create a feudal aristocracy using pseudoscientific propaganda. The government uses a
combination of tax policy, deregulation, the destruction of legal protections (ex: labour
laws), privatization, free trade, mass immigration, propaganda, and frankly, blunt force
where needed to slowly dismantle the middle class.
The end result is a society that looks something like Russia in the 1990s or perhaps South
Africa, with very high inequality along with high multiculturalism.
Enforcement is not consistent. For example, low and middle class workers are expected to
compete in terms of lowest wages and poorest job security with the developing world.
Meanwhile, the very rich can do whatever they want and not pay much taxes. Intellectual
property is another example of this inconsistency, and allows corporations to rent seek on
their IP, itself often a product of taxpayer funded R&D or bought from a small company
(witness how big pharmaceutical companies are guilty of both of these).
Very true, speaking specifically of South Africa where I live, your analysis of the
situation hits the mark. We have an openly neoliberal opposition party that fashions itself
as a pro-poor party yet even a cursory glance at its policy stance reveals where the dictates
it shouts regularly from its benches originate, and whose interests it represents (it's
certainly not the poor). It campaigns heavily for the gutting of labour laws while advocating
for the destruction of local industries by coddling up to foreign investors and free trade
cheerleaders. Yet nobody seems to see the contradiction, because, as Altandmain says above,
it's all about building a narrative through propaganda with the media as an echo chamber (if
people think media ownership in the US is concentrated, they must try visiting SA). And the
trickle down economics myth is very much the dominant narrative down here, with the rich
being worshipped as demigods who hold the fate of the country in their hands, and as such,
must have carte blanche to do as they please
Intellectual capture of the general populace by co-opting (read buying) academia and the
msm to extol the virtues of neoliberalism is what allows its pernicious effects to spread
like wildfire. Credentialism and the pretentious grounding of neoliberal discourse in
pseudoscientific rigor discourages critique from ordinary, "non-expert" people and co-opts
even these lemmings (queitly being marched to their demise) to defend its ideological
soundness. The question i've always had is this: how do countries get grassroots movements
against neoliberalism going when the precursor to success against it seems to be eliminating
basic and functional illiteracy among the general population about its inner workings and the
instruments it uses to legitimize its evils (e.g. propaganda)? Outside of niche communities
like here at NC, most people seem to care more about the Kardashians than equipping
themselves with the chops (financial, technical etc) to call BS on all this. And this seems
to be a war that will require numbers to win, but how to get those numbers when so many
people appear to be so enchanted by the supposed virtues of neoliberalism ("getting ahead",
ruthless competition etc).
PS: Some of us here at NC live in developing countries and the tentacles of this ideology
have proven to be no respector of borders, as such, imho said grassroots movements would
necessarily have to be transnational by spreading beyond the heartlands of global capitalism
(Western Europe & US/North America).
Great article. Now when I hear TV/Journalist commentators suggest the nation-state is
useless and democracy is obsolete I will know their point of reference and unspoken
arguments. I will also listen for what they do not report on or talk about. 'The dog that did
not bark in the night.' Thanks for posting. Two things:
1.
"Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, "
Austria in 1938 had no deep-rooted democratic history. It was part of the aristocratic
Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, when that collapsed post WWI. Hayek and Mises grounded
their philosophy in their post-empire/post-autocratic-rule chaotic national experiences
– unstable newly imposed democratic societies which previously had a long history of
autocratic rule and a bad or poorly done recent (post WWI) transition to democracy. E.g. Post
WWI Weimar Germany was chaos, as reported by on-the-ground correspondent William Shirer.
Mises and Hayek also applied their ideas to well-established older democratic nations. In
context, their philosophy did not apply to the well-established democracies. If anything,
Mises and Hayek assumed a strong central govt inevitably meant a 'strong man' govt and not a
democratic govt, it seems.
2.
" Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation,
neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of
the world."
The IMF and WTO and neoliberalism itself have become a 'strong man' or 'strong committee'
supra-govt rule, imo. Neoliberalism's economic application has lead to the very conditions of
weakening democracy and subjecting people to 'strong man/committee rule' Mises and Hayek
tried to prevent by weakening the power of the nation-state, without regard to differences in
nation-state governments and polity.
shorter neolib args:
All* strong govts lead to despotism. (*All? nope. false premise)
Weakening the power of all govt's will guard against despotism. (Really? nope. some forms
of govt are a strong guard against despotism. false premise)
Replacing govt functions with market functions has no risk. (nope. see astronomical price
increases in privatized govt services and deregulated markets. epi-pen?)
Therefore, weakening central govts and replacing their functions with private market
solutions will be both risk free and guard against depotism. (False conclusion from false
premises. And there are plenty of financially despotic markets.)
Too bad Mises and Hayek didn't live in the UK or France or US or Canada or other long
established democracy; not perfect, always struggling to increase the franchise, but more
accountable to citizens than markets.
Substitute "neoliberal" for "Libertarian" and note the operations of "government-like
organizations" that already are systems of systems of predators and parasites that cooperate
(while snarling and snapping and biting at each other) to kill and loot and drive the rest of
us I guess "libertarians," whatever that term means any more, might be part of the Enabling
Class that provides "policy cover" and arguments in support of the rapine that is in play
Thanks very much for this link. I just read the entire series.
Chilling.
Normally I'd dismiss this sort of fevered certainty as lost-cause deadender writing.
The series was written 6 years ago; before the Kansas Real Time Experiment; Obamacare ACA
insurance-companies-will-sort-this-out; proposed TPP and TTIP and ISDS (arbitration and
insurance companies will sort it all out). Now talk of sea-steading and "island" cities and
organized voter suppression.
Chilling developments when placed against libertarian, anti-democratic, rise-of-the-supermen
manifestos.
I've just listened to the Mirowski interview* linked in the main article. According to
Mirowski it is the neo-classicals who want a weakened national govt, not the neo-liberals. So
I've confused the two and need a rethink.
Mirowski says (paraphrasing) the neo-liberals " changed the idea of what a market is " and
believe that " the market is a super information processor that knows more than any human
ever could ." (My aside: This is irrational, but that doesn't stop them.) Therefore
Mere humans should be subordinate to the market because the individual can never know as much
as the market and cannot even know himself outside of his relation to the market. (This is
also irrational and sounds despotic to me. Sounds like saying a person should be subordinate
to computer programs.)
Neo-liberals, therefore, want a strong national govt that they control to promote and expand
markets and the market ideology/idolatry everywhere. (Where have I heard that sort of
quazi-political/philosophical argument used before?)
* starts at the 6 min mark. 18 min mark "super information processor"
Too bad Mises and Hayek didn't live in the UK or France or US or Canada or other
long established democracy;
They did. von Hayek spent the 30s and 40s in the UK, the 50s in the US and retired to West
Germany. von Mises went to Switzerland in 1934 then the US in 1940 and stayed there. They
were, of course, esconced in academia (ie. in their own minds) the whole time.
here is a bit of the antidote–discussed 10/24 in NC regarding the efforts to restore
Puerto Rico–
Farmers' groups are now calling for the proliferation of community-controlled agricultural
cooperatives that would grow food for local consumption. Like the renewable energy
micro-grids, it's a model that is far less vulnerable to supply-chain shocks like hurricanes
-- and it has the additional benefit of generating local wealth and increasing
self-sufficiency.
As with the solar-powered generators, Puerto Rico's farmers aren't waiting for the emergency
to subside before beginning this transition. On the contrary, groups like Boricuá
Organization for Ecological Agriculture have "agroecology brigades" traveling from community
to community to deliver seeds and soil so that residents can begin planting crops
immediately. Katia Avilés-Vázquez, one of Boricuá's farmers, said of a
recent brigade: "Today I saw the Puerto Rico that I dream being born. This week I worked with
those who are giving it birth."
The CoOperative movement emerged in the USA at the end of the 19th century to provide
funding and resources where there was plenty of need but not too much profit to be made.
Isn´t this one of the problems with -isms in general? Communism also has a thousand
meanings depending on who you talk with. Could be everything between the theoretical
Marx-Engels version and the practical realities of Soviet Union/China and other countries
claiming to be "communists".
It seems to me that neoliberalism has been so efficient in establish itself thanks to:
1) being implemented by military forces = the rest of the world outside Europe/US, and now
being maintained through the thorough militarization of western societies: police, censorship
etc.
2) not focusing on being and -ism/ideology but on concrete advises/policies presented in
numbers/graphs (the mathematification of economics)
3) useful idiots in the form of the identity politicians: if they would have been focused and
using their vast amount of energy on countering the maths of economics (before Steve
Keen´s Debunking Economics), instead of counting how many oppressed minority identities
can dance on the head of white middle-aged man, it would have been much more difficult to
implement the neoliberal policies. Or it would have at least accelerated the militarization
of western societies so that the clash between class interests will start, as they always
do.
Maybe better to focus on concrete stuff in arguments, like,
– public ownership of energy and infrastructure in order to guarantee all citizens
access. E.g. Sweden privatized energy production and distribution in the 90s. During one
winter there wasn´t electricity enough to heat houses because the private companies had
done away with excess capacity. Privatization/neoliberalism = not serving the society with
electricity when the society needs it the most.
– Public healthcare, education etc. Every % of profit a company requires for the
owners, this means the same % less to the citizens
and so on.
OK with most of this, but members of congress and staff don't get free healthcare. Though
members have access to some free services, they and some staff purchase insurance on an ACA
exchange called. Other staff remain on the pre-ACA FEHB program in place for other federal
employees. Both programs are employer (taxpayer) subsidized so they only pay a portion of
their premiums, plus whatever their deductible is. For the ACA policies, to get the premium
subsidy they need to choose a gold plan, so will have about 10% in copays.
Nice exposition of the term, neoliberalism, Gaius. Thank you.
I think I first began seeing the term about eight years ago, right after the financial
meltdown. About five years ago, I proposed writing a series of pieces for a group that had
arisen out of the Denver Occupy movement, kind of an "Ask a Neo-Liberal," column, but most
people had never even heard of the term and when I did a bit of research, I just could not
pin down definitions or examples.
So, how do we begin to counter the main tenets of neoliberalism: glorification of 'the
market' as the arbiter of lives, with the resulting dominance of competition over cooperation
and the atomization and breakdown of social ties; we live in a 'dog eat dog' world, only the
strong survive, self-reliance got me where I am?
Some days I think that this creed is the natural result of a Planet that has exceeded its
carrying capacity of humans. When there were far fewer humans, cooperation and strong social
bonds were the only means of survival. Really. The development of Neo-liberalism is Nature's
way of getting rid of us.
But, Neo-liberalism decrees that the survivors will be, at best, rapacious, aggressive and
materialistic. At worst, they will be socio-paths. It's like the Planet if only jaguars,
vultures and leeches, out of all our animal relatives, survived. Do we want that to happen?
OK, I realize that some of us have just given up and are sitting back to watch the slow
motion disaster unfold.
First, admit that under the current system, the vast majority of us are Prey, and the .01%
are Apex Predators, hunting us down, ripping, squeezing and sucking the life (and our
livelihoods) out of us. How do our animal relatives who are not equipped with claws, sharp
teeth and muscles built for speed, survive?
We run even faster, we develop camouflage and hide, we grow armor, we refine cooperative
social skills and live in enormous colonies, (preferably underground!) where our vast numbers
and ability to mobilize for work and protection provide security, we develop symbiotic
relationships with larger and stronger organisms (although some might label this as
'vichy-ism,') we become almost invisible, yet with a deadly sting or poisonous coating, and
we realize that sometimes we have die so that other members of the group can survive.
And, we realize that the area in which we live, our little eco-system, is crucial to our
survival. We don't mess it up.
"Under a neoliberal regime, everyone gets what they deserve. Big fish deserve their meal.
Little fish deserve their death. And government sets the table for the feast."
How to talk about neoliberalism, which is indeed a mouthful? I was at a dinner last night
of two generations of UofChicago products (as am I). We all agreed that the "Law &
Economics" movement there should be dismissed out of hand as plain stupidity. I think that we
spend too much time imagining that there is some Ideal Marketplace of Ideas in which the good
ideas drive out the bad. And then we come up against Facebook and Twitter. So one way of
talking about it is that the law has to govern markets: Neoliberalism is lawlessness. You can
have law or you can have looting.
And we've certainly seen plenty of lawlessness.
Another way is to call it unconstitutional, if your interlocutor knows the U.S.
Constitution. The U.S Constitution doesn't have much to say about economics, and it doesn't
assume that laissez-faire is a-okay.
Further on it being unconstitutional: The U.S. Constitution brilliantly foresaw the need
for some kind of bureacracy to maintain the government, rather than a claque of courtiers. So
it set up the Post Office–that bureaucratic agent of oppression, Uncle Mises! It called
for a census and a Census Bureau–woe betide us Uncle Milton!
You can either have the U.S. Constitution with its flaws, or you can have people eating
bagels with gold foil and telling you that markets rule our lives? So which is it?
Maybe we should just call neoliberalism Gold-Bagel-ism. The antidote, as mentioned above
in the thread by commentes like marym, is to return to some discussion of our Commonwealth
and what to do to maintain it.
For me, the most effective opener (both in the sense of opening discussion as well as the
listener's mind) is to state that neoliberalism is to nearly everyone in the "developed"
world (and beyond) like water for fish: it's the environment in which we live, and thus
becomes invisible to us. Excellent elaboration from above: it's as if citizens of the USSR
had never heard of the word "communism;" instead it's just how life works.
If we can get this opening across, then the definitions and explanations discussed above
in this thread may be much more effective.
Thank you Gaius for a great post – and a thanks as well are due to the authors of
the good comments. As I've been reading these it occurred to me that perhaps a good
conversation starter would be to ask the person what they thought of Margaret Thatcher's
remark, "There's no such thing as society. There are only individuals and families." You'll
have to wing it from there depending on the responses you get.
I also wonder aloud to them, "Why it is that when individuals do whatever they want it is
called lawlessnes or anarchy, Bad Things, but when corporations do whatever they want it is
considered a Good Thing?"
The roots of neoliberalism in the Mont Pelerin Society is also well covered in MacLean's
Democracy in Chains.
While I like this article, I disagree with the relationship of neoliberals to markets and
to competition. Markets are held up to displace blame for decisions and policies made by men.
The powerful use competition to explain why you deserve less and they deserve more, even when
actual competition is not happening, and they actively work to prevent it.
Predators and prey do not compete for resources. A system that enshrines predation among
humans is not based on a buyer and a seller making a transaction at the efficient price that
maximizes each's utility and produces the best use of society's resources.
Agree, but for most of the people I talk to, that argument comes second. First I try to
demonstrate that NeoLiberalism doing what it *says* it does is bad for us. Once they have
that then I can proceed to 'NeoLiberalism doesn't even do what it says it does'. Although, I
think that your point is a good first argument with small business people, "You mean that you
think that your 5-employee cabinet shop makes you buddies with Elon Musk? (sub whatever rich
guy your would aspire to be)" If the time seems right I might add, "He would have you on
*toast*." If they think about that, they usually get it.
I seldom even get to the point of being able to argue about these issues at all, much less
take people thru the layers of consideration I've gone through over the years to reach my
current model of how the world works.
I have been told that all of the books and weird websites that I read as I study a subject
in depth are evidence that I lack objectivity about it and that people who know what they
know from reading ordinary news have a clearer understanding than I.
"I suppose the neo-liberal philosophy could best be summed up by their rallying cry: the
freedom to choose to own slaves."
"But that doesn't make sense. Freedom to choose is logically incompatible with slavery.
And they never said that."
"Indeed. They would claim to be all for freedom, and against slavery. But if someone was
profiting from owning slaves, they would fight tooth and nail to protect them, because any
attempt at restricting the profits of slavery was seen as an intolerable corruption of the
sacred free market. It was how they operated. Depending on what their rich patrons wanted at
the time, sometimes they were all for free trade between the old nation states, and sometimes
they demanded that the wealthy have the 'freedom' to restrict trade. It did not matter that
what they said made no sense, or was logically incoherent, or at variance with reality. They
never apologized, never explained, but only acted with total arrogance and
self-confidence."
From "Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom."
It makes sense if you believe in freedom to choose how to spend your money. How much
choice you have, and how much choice you deserve to have, is measured fine-grain in dollars
and cents. Other forms of power are deemed illegitimate.
it's sliding-scale individualism, where everyone is on their own, and wealth determines
how much of an individual one is. The more of an individual you are, the more liberty you
have, and liberty should be protected by the state.
I tend to think of "one dollar, one vote" when considering elections and politics; while
at the same time neoliberalism is about interpersonal power without direct regard to the
functioning of the state.
By this I mean that if, for example, Peter Thiel decides to spend his money to destroy
you, and you don't have enough money to prevent it, then you deserve destruction. That's
liberty. You're free to choose to spend your money defending yourself. Or not.
Exactly. People in a democracy have been raised to think that they count as much as the
next person, no matter how rich or poor -- at least I hope that is till happening. Well,
unless they are rich, who think they rightfully account for more. So when I say "one dollar,
one vote" to poor/middle people (in an ironic sense, just so that is clear), they *feel* that
it is not fair. If that catches, I point out that it goes against what they have been taught
about how democracy works. I often bring this up in the context of campaign $$$ and Citizens
United. It opposes the 'if they have the money then it's theirs' argument, aka 'the
aristocratic' and 'it's his bat and ball'.
For a long time now I have tried to reconstruct what it was in 1978 that convinced me it
had become impossible to reform the United States.
Gaius has gotten me closer to a reconstruction of why I determined the only real solution was
to create another nation, and kicked off what I recognize now as my own modeling.
My sense of what difference the goal is makes is a government that is just and fair for all
citizens.
This is not the case in the neoliberal world is it. The goal of the neo-liberal world is to
advance a milder form of scientific socialism, meaning the good people, well spoken well
dressed no matter either in business or academia get the money for lives depicted on TV
shows.
Working class people must become super humans to become educated and properly dressed to be
accepted into a world of plenty and safety.
One thing I appreciate about Russians is a unique love of beauty. It is depressing that
American's whole aesthetic sense revolves around cars and art is of no interest until it is
ultra expensive.
Len Deighton's description of liberalism as developed in the 1840s which went on to mean the
children of the newly enriched engineers who made hand built the Industrial Revolution making
cotton underwear were given the money to for the schools of the old school rich people of
Britain and all the rich people were in finance whether they came from old money or new
money.
So I don't think of neoliberalism as about markets as much as I do think of it as the
complete ascendancy of the parasites of Finance.
Creditors do not write down or write off debts of the working classes. Finance now has been
given the US Treasury. Listening to Minuchin saying on the TV, in fact even seeing a face
saying, "We must let the States Go and they have to make it on their own." Means there is
simply no reason then to put any money by anyone into the US Treasury. The United States is
just a huge military engaged in little and large wars all over the world anyway. Why ought
anyone pay taxes to further the new owner of the Empire, Rome?
Deighton writes that since all the sewing machines and looms were moved to India, by the time
the 19th Century ended Finance had gambled away all of the wealth of the UK.
"I like to play with debt, but it is tricky." Says Trump.
As long as you are the "Loss Payee" bankruptcy is as fine as any sort of success aye? "I
don't pay taxes, I'm smart."
The aim is to lose all the money, then have it all given to you by the Treasury.
There is no citizenship of the World Citizen, or Jet Setter. They don't need any real
citizenship.
For the majority, the nation matters. It may be the only thing they have of any value. The
nation we are in love with it the nation that would go to defeat the Barbary Pirates over the
capture of one US citizen, a stand in for you.
The one we have makes heroes and a President of the parasitical pirates come from
neofeudalism.
In Texas even swords are coming back.
Yves, great article, and loved the interview with Mirowski.
Here's the thing I see Neo-liberalism has done for society as a whole. If I asked you to
"I present 2 humans before you and ask which one has more value to the world, which one, if
there was only one hamburger left to eat, deserves to eat that sandwich, deserves to survive
in a world with limited resources (which is what earth is), how would you go about choosing
which one"? I am saying Neo-liberalism says "look at their wealth". It judges people by how
much money/wealth they have. The only way to judge whether one human should survive over
another is by the amount of money they make.
Jimmy Carter said in 1980 how we are moving as a society to how we rate a man is by the
amount of money he has. If he was the proto-Neo-liberal, then it makes sense.
One of the conceits of neo-liberalism (and I guess capitalism in general) is that how much
wealth one has indicates how much one is owed for one's contribution to society (because
markets allocate resources optimally). Thus the biggest takers are transformed into the
biggest givers.
Neo-liberalism doesn't care or think all that much about it's actions, as long as they are
profitable.
We have this ridiculous never ending series of wars and nobody's marching in the streets
or even making a fuss about it, as we've accepted the premise as business as usual.
It has the feel of the Vietnam War still going in 1982, and nobody cared.
Other countries look at prisons as a necessary evil, whereas we can't have enough of them,
so much so that we allow private companies the right to incarcerate our own citizens.
nobody's marching in the streets or even making a fuss about it
Lessee, last time I recall Big Street Protests was Occupy. They got shut
down , brutally. NoDAPL, similar, even the Trump inauguration protests. Marches not
reported -- they might as well not have happened. But I believe they really, really did
happen.
An older friend was going to Cal State L.A. around 1970, when a good number of the student
body decided to walk onto the nearby 10 freeway and shut it down, as a protest against the
Vietnam War.
We incarcerate so many because it is profitable as jobs program for voters in poor
counties, slave labor for manufacturing, and profitable for corporations/donors.
I believe discussion of Neoliberalism is very much like discussion of Global Warming.
"Weedy" or not, "academic" or not both discussions require transit through some difficult
concepts and technical depth. In the case of Global Warming discussions you either come to
grips with some complicated climate science or you end up discussing matters of faith drawn
from popular "simplifications". In the case of Neoliberalism the discussion necessarily
enters a region which requires attention to fine details which when followed to their end
tend to have deep and broad implications.
In the interview referenced by this post Phillip Mirowski asserts Neoliberals believe the
Market is an information processor which "knows" more than you or I could ever know. He also
introduces the concept of a Thought Collective -- which he states he adapted from writings of
Ludwig Fleck related to describing a method for study and explanation of the history of
Science. I believe both these "weedy" "academic" distinctions are key to understanding
Neoliberalism and distinguishing it from Neoclassical economics and Libertarianism. The
concept of a Thought Collective greatly aids understanding the particularly slippery nature
of Neoliberalism as a term for discussion. That slippery nature is no accident. The Market as
a theory of knowledge -- an epistemology -- makes apparent the philosophical even "religious"
extent of Neoliberal thinking.
Two recent papers by Phillip Mirowski tackle the difficulties in defining and discussing
Neoliberalism. They are both "weedy" and "academic" and unfortunately help little in
addressing the issue RabidGhandhi raised at the root of the lengthy thread beginning the
comments to this post.
"The Political Movement that Dared not Speak its own Name: The Neoliberal Thought
Collective Under Erasure" 2014
[https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/research-papers/the-political-movement-that-dared-not-speak-its-own-name-the-neoliberal-thought-collective-under-erasure]
"This is Water (or is it Neoliberalism?)" 2016 -- this is a response to critics of the
previous paper.
[https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/this-is-water-or-is-it-neoliberalism]
There have been several oblique references to this story -- so I'll repeat it since I only
recently ran across it.
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish
swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And
the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other
and goes, "What the hell is water?"
I am afraid that little story says volumes about the problem RabidGhandhi raised. I
believe remaining "weedy" and "academic" is the very least service we might do to discussing
Neoliberalism and when arguing topics related to Neoliberalism -- and probably the least
damage.
"... Rabid, have you tried the term "market fundamentalists" or "market ideologues" with your three target audiences? Amongst both think tankers and regular folkz, (and possibly in Argentina too!) it is not usual to be happy to be considered a fundamentalist and ideologue, or to be associated too closely with such people. ..."
"... "Market Utopians", what sets NeoLiberalism apart is the faith that markets solve all problems. For markets to exist there must first be "money", a social institution, and "property ", another social institution and an enforcement mechanism mediating between the two. At this point the lack of primacy of markets, their necessary dependence on the prior existence of government leads to the question, "what is good government." This leads to the question of who's freedom good government should be concerned with. ..."
"... This has been my experience, as well. Often the Democrat is a Clinton apologist who can only perceive the term as somehow a slur against their Dear Leader, though they don't understand why. These people are hopeless. They will simply follow any politician with a (D) after their name who can win an election. Win over the rest of the people and such useless tools will just follow, regardless of ideology. ..."
"... "Just deserts for predators and prey" – yes, very much this. I remember talking with my father about a year ago in a quasi-philosophical sense about where I felt western society had gone wrong. I could not quite adequately express the essence of my thoughts beyond "a fundamental devaluation of people as individuals." ..."
"... The experience of every modern democratic nation-state proves that libertarianism is incompatible with democracy ..."
"... What is neoliberalism? A market-based ideology willing to employ fascism to impose the conditions necessary to establish the market state. (ie, throwing people out of helicopters.) The state is co-opted to ensure rule of the Market. The value of everything, human life-included, is to be decided by the Market. (Except when the outcome is not favorable to the elite. Hence the need to takeover the state.) ..."
"... The only ray of hope is that neoliberalism seems, by stripping the vast majority of people of income and assets, to be wildly successful at suppressing aggregate demand and so contains the seeds of its own demise. Maybe. ..."
"... Too bad Mises and Hayek didn't live in the UK or France or US or Canada or other long established democracy; ..."
"... nobody's marching in the streets or even making a fuss about it ..."
For years I've been using the term "neoliberalism" (or sometimes neo-liberalism*) and I'm
always uncomfortable, since it sounds so academic. So I usually add one-phrase definitions and
move on. For example, this from a recent piece
on Puerto Rico :
If neoliberalism is the belief that the proper role of government is to enrich the
rich -- in Democratic circles they call it "wealth creation" to hide the recipients;
Republicans are much more blatant -- then the "shock doctrine" is its action plan.
That's sounds pretty blunt, but it's a true statement, even among academics. See this great
interview (start at about 6:15) with Professor Philip Miroski of the University of Notre
Dame on how modern neoliberals have come to see the role of government in society. It's weedy
but excellent.
I want to offer our readers a better description of neoliberalism though, yet not get into
too many weeds. So consider these exceprts from a longer Guardian
essay by the British writer George Monbiot . (My thanks to Naked Capitalism commenter
nonclassical for the link and the idea for this piece.)
Neoliberalism -- The Invisible Water the West Is Swimming In
We'll start with Monbiot's brief intro, just to set the scope of the problem:
Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that
dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be
rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle
to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?
Ask people to define "neoliberalism," even if they've heard of it, and almost no one can.
Yet the comparison of our governing ideology to that of the Soviet Union's is a good one --
like "communism," or the Soviet Union's version of it, neoliberalism defines and controls
almost everything our government does, no matter which party is in office.
The Birth of Neoliberalism
What is neoliberalism and where did it come from? Monbiot writes:
The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were
two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles
from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the
gradual development of Britain's welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that
occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.
Neoliberalism is an explicit reaction to Franklin Roosevelt and the welfare state, which by
a quirk of history was called "liberalism" at the time, even though, in the nineteenth century,
"liberalism" had roughly the same meaning that "neoliberalism" has today. In other words, "FDR
liberalism" is in many ways the opposite of classical "liberalism," which meant "liberty
(freedom) from government," and a quirk of history has confused these terms.
Back to Monbiot and Hayek:
In The Road to Serfdom , published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning,
by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises's book
Bureaucracy , The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of
some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from
regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the
doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially
by millionaires and their foundations.
As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek's view that governments should
regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way – among American
apostles such as Milton
Friedman – to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for
efficiency.
Note the mention of Milton Friedman above. Neoliberalism is a bipartisan ideology, not just
a Clintonist-Obamist one.
Democrats, Republicans and Neoliberalism
As Monbiot explains, for a while neoliberalism "lost its name" and was more or less a fringe
ideology in a world still dominated by the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and Keynesian
economics. When neoliberalism later came back strong in the Republican Party, it wasn't called
"neoliberalism" but "Milton Friedman free market conservativism," or something similar.
Only when Bill Clinton and his Democratic Party allies adopted it in the 1980s did the term
"neoliberal" re-emerge in public discourse.
[I]n the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on
both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Friedman
remarked, "when the time came that you had to change there was an alternative ready there to
be picked up". With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements
of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy
Carter's administration in the US and Jim Callaghan's government in Britain.
After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon
followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation,
privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services . Through the IMF, the
World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were
imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most
remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the
Democrats, for example. [emphasis added]
Note the role of Jimmy Carter and start of deregulation in the late 1970s. For that reason,
many consider Jimmy Carter to be the "proto-neoliberal," both for the nation and the Democratic
Party.
Neoliberalism -- "Just Deserts" for Predators and Prey
What makes "neoliberalism" or "free market conservatism" such a radical -- and destructive
-- ideology? It reduces all human activity to economic competition. It creates and glorifies,
in other words, a world of predators and prey, a world like the one we live in as today:
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It
redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and
selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the
market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
In a world where competition is right and good, a world in which the "market" is the
defining metaphor for human activity, all social ties are broken, the individual is an atom
left to survive as an individual only, the strongest relentlessly consume the weakest -- and
that's as it should be. (It's easy to imagine how the apex predators of our social order would
be attracted to this, and insist on it with force.
Thus the bipartisan world we live in today. Under a neoliberal regime, everyone gets what
they deserve. Big fish deserve their meal. Little fish deserve their death. And government sets
the table for the feast.
The Role of Government in a Neoliberal World
Since for neoliberals, the "market" is the source of all that is good in human interaction,
non-interference in "the market" is rule one for government.
Over time that has changed, however, as winners have grown more successful and their control
of government more absolute. The proper role of government in today's neoliberal regime is not
merely to allow the market to operate for the benefit of wealth-holders; it's to make
sure the market operates for the benefit of wealth-holders.
In other words, the role of government is to intervene in the market on behalf of
wealth-holders, or, as I put it more colloquially, to proactively enrich the rich. The
interview with Professor Mirowski, as I noted above, makes that same point, but from an
academic standpoint.
From this it should be also clear that until we free ourselves of rule by neoliberals and
the pain and misery they create, we'll always be victims to the predatory giants -- the very
very wealthy and the corporations they use as power-extenders -- those, in other words, who
want merely to own everything else in the world.
This means we need to free ourselves from neoliberals in both parties, not just the
ones in current seats of power. But that idea seems to have been excised from most discussions
these days. Fair warning though. If the Age of Trump ends with the Restoration of Mainstream
Democrats, we'll have won almost nothing at all.
____________
* I sometimes spell "neo-liberalism" with the hyphen to suggest the following connection:
Neo-liberalism is "new liberalism," and has the same relationship to FDR liberalism as New
Labour has to Labour -- the two are exactly opposite.
The burning question I have is how to deploy the terminology in discussion/debate. Here at
NC and other similar sites, practically everyone knows what neoliberalism is and is solidly
against it[1]. But outside of our own bubble, the term generally conveys no meaning
whatsoever, for the following reasons:
(1) if I am speaking to policy-wonk types reared on "conventional wisdom", they tend to
hear being anti-neoliberal as being anti-Copernican. The challenge to basic assumptions is
outside of their window of acceptable ideas, so I am dismissed as a conspiracy wacko; all
communication ends.
(2) If I am speaking to a Fox/Daily Mail/Clarín type, in my experience if they
have even heard the term before, they generally draw no distinction between "Neoliberal"
and "Liberal", so I can rail against the neoliberal capture of government regulatory
powers, and I get nods of agreement "yes the hippies are taking over our public
universities". Again, no real communication there.
(3) Lastly there is the case here in Argentina, where the word has not only been
healthily peppered into the public discourse since at least 2000, but it was even a major
rhetorical enemy of three successive governments. In this case, after so much experience
and rhetoric, everyone knows that "neoliberalism" is bad and evil, but (since it is the
assumed framework of interpretation, as GP notes) the consensus of what this neoliberalism
we're fighting against really is becomes blurry. The evil any politician wants to inveigh
against inevitably gets called "neoliberal", regardless of what the facts may actually be.
All politicians here– even notably those most implicated in forcing neoliberalism on
us in the 90s– now rail against evil "neoliberalism" and the evils of privatisation,
even when nevertheless working to strengthen neoliberalism's actual tenets and re-entrench
privatisation. In sum, the term has been co-opted beyond all meaning.
With all this mess in mind, I have to admit that I really only use the word amongst allies
who I know share my understanding of the term. To do otherwise does not further the debate.
Furthermore, in debates against stalwart neolibs, deploying the term and calling a privatised
deregulated spade a neoliberal spade only has the effect of an ad-hominem; it may be
technically spot-on, but it does nothing to convince the unswayed.
When in doubt I just define neoliberalism as putting markets first and trying to insert
markets where they have no business being (e.g. obamacare). And of course send them
here.
Yes I agree with you and with Strategist below: another (yet to be debased) term stressing
an irrational religious fetish for markets would indeed be much more effective. Then again,
as much as I love Lambert's post (and quote it here often myself), I do not see saying "go
read this 2500 word article from some lefty site you've never heard of" as an argument that
is going to win over most of my interlocutors.
If your desire is to persuade then you might want to try a different approach. Try giving
a person the space to persuade themselves they have got it wrong. This is quite different
from the academic approach – persuade by the logic of the presented argument. Instead
be sympathetic and interested. Ask pertinent questions, don't preach, don't undermine with
your superior knowledge. Still don't expect agreement at the time. People rarely change their
minds at the drop of a hat. If they are genuine, then they will come around in their own
time.
By the way, this is really hard to do and I am completely useless at it, but I have seen the
effects of this approach first hand, and I have seen people change their mind.
Well, ya know, you have to meet them where they are. Richard Wolff has a parable about a family dinner, after which
the mother does not charge the family members, and the son does not offer to do the dishes
for a fee. Some things we just give one another. Mostly people understand about social
obligations at the family level.
I have used a similar argument with a libertarian friend. He is very generous with his
family and friends and looks after their wellbeing in many ways. I tell him that I *totally*
agree, it is just that, as a socialist, I have a broader definition of 'family and friends'.
I think this helps us to understand one another.
I also describe the govt as a 'big buying club' (he is a Costco member, Sam's, etc. and
clubs in with friends to buy bags of green coffee). As group buyers we can get really good
deals on stuff we all need such as schools, roads, police, garbage removal and health care
through group (I don't say 'collective') buying power *plus* we have input through our MP's
and other elected representatives. Whereas, with private biz, we have to take whatever they
want to give us, they skim as much off the top as they can, and if we don't like it we can
call Customer Care in the Philippines. He hasn't come around totally to my viewpoint, but we
are still on speaking terms.
Oh, he had refused to sign up for that socialized medicine OHIP card back when we had to
pay premiums (all govt-pd now, no premiums anymore). He made good health choices, ate
healthily, watched hi weight, exercised and proudly paid his doctor cash for checkups, by
golly. Yeah, proud and free! Until he found an odd protrusion in his belly one day whilst
showering, and found out how much a hernia repair cost. Went and got him that health card
right away
I later bought him a Guinness and permitted myself to ask him how he was finding that
socialized medicine.
The term "market fundamentalism" comes to mind and conveys more meaning than
neo-liberalism, since the term liberalism has come to be associated with "socially liberal"
as opposed to "economically liberal". The phrase also implies dogmatic orthodoxy and
cultism.
Rabid, have you tried the term "market fundamentalists" or "market ideologues" with your
three target audiences? Amongst both think tankers and regular folkz, (and possibly in
Argentina too!) it is not usual to be happy to be considered a fundamentalist and ideologue,
or to be associated too closely with such people.
"Market Utopians", what sets NeoLiberalism apart is the faith that markets solve all
problems. For markets to exist there must first be "money", a social institution, and
"property ", another social institution and an enforcement mechanism mediating between the
two. At this point the lack of primacy of markets, their necessary dependence on the prior
existence of government leads to the question, "what is good government." This leads to the
question of who's freedom good government should be concerned with.
I widen my eyes and say, "Do you *really* want your life to be run by *ROGERS*?" Sub
Comcast, PG&E, Bell, or whatever your local Big Biz that features arbitrary policies,
high prices, poor service, pointless 'packages', surly customer service, long lines, circular
voicemail and excellent shareholder value.
One type I seem to regularly encounter (on the internet, mostly) is the Democrat who's
decided the term has no substantive meaning -- they perceive it to be a slur. Wrong
as they are, the useful term is reduced to a shibboleth in their midst.
This has been my experience, as well. Often the Democrat is a Clinton apologist who can
only perceive the term as somehow a slur against their Dear Leader, though they don't
understand why. These people are hopeless. They will simply follow any politician with a (D)
after their name who can win an election. Win over the rest of the people and such useless
tools will just follow, regardless of ideology.
The people to actually use this as a line of argument with are those not yet assimilated
by The Borg.
Working class people are especially amenable to this logic. This article has a lot of helpful
rhetoric and metaphor for that purpose. I have actually had considerable luck explaining the
ideology as "rule by the markets" or "public good sold off for private purposes"; by showing
a few examples -- such as the constant attempts to destroy Social Security and Medicare; the
cessation of Pell Grants and the commodification of education and health care; all the way
down to the "privatization" (note the 5-syllable word) of Chicago's street parking and its
deleterious effects on quality of life and the environment.
So some posit that the word "neoliberal" is not a real word, but was invented just used to
attack the Democratic Party, and often as a slur against its leadership in general, and the
Clintons in particular; that reasoning reminds me of the extremist Republican partisans who
argue that Nixon's Southern Strategy is a myth, and/or the modern Democratic Party is the
same as the old Jim Crow Democratic Party, and that Lincoln's Republican Party was much the
same as the current one.
Okay, but that is like not using the term "socialist" as in Socialism because some insist
that the National Socialism in the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Words do have
specific meanings, and the decision to discard neoliberal because some choose wilful
ignorance is the same as discarding "liberal" because the Republican Party has used
propaganda, more accurately said lies, to distort its meaning from the original American, or
European, meanings. There has been a century long effort to smear, distort, change the
meanings of words so that having an honest conversation becomes impossible and people's
thoughts run along the approved mental paths.
Communism is Socialism is not Nazism. The Democratic Party is not synonymous with
Neoliberalism, and certainly not Liberalism, or Leftist. Just as the Republican Party is not
synonymous with Conservatism, or Libertarianism, or Rightist.
Working Class is not synonymous with the White Working Class. Being an American
Nationalist is not the same as being a White Nationalist. The Alt-Right is not some new
conservative movement. It's the old racist White Nationalists dressed up with a cutesy new
label.
Conservative does not equal Racist. Liberal does not equal anti-racist, or equality. Just
as the old Progressive Movement did not equal either.
The American Nation is not the same as the White Nation which is not the same as the
Federal Government, let alone the American Government, which is not the same as the American
Constitution, which is not the same as Human Rights.
Justice does not equal legal; legal does not equal fairness.
Free Market does not mean Capitalism, which does not mean Democracy. Those are three
different things.
Words have meaning, and we either use them as they are meant in conversation, or we do not
have a conversation. Maybe a shouting match, but not a conversation. If some Democrats want
to deliberately be ignorant of the the etymology of neoliberalism, to heck with them.
I think we ought to be creative and devise our own new terms of debate. We ought to avoid
overly-academic words. To avoid confusion, I think we should side-step the terms "liberal"
and "neo-liberal" at least until the public imagination has been engaged.
The metaphor about "predator" and "prey" is excellent. So is the idea that when you
idolize "markets", you are reducing human relations to a single dynamic: competition. We
should incorporate these into our daily conversations with others. These two concepts can be
powerful motivators for everyday Americans, and they are simple ideas that can be used to
appeal to almost anyone regardless of literacy or prior political engagement/commitment.
We also need a language for the alternative: a concept of the commons. What should belong
to (the public, the community, the workers ) and be administered for the common good? What do
we want for ourselves that can best be provided if we provide it for everyone (healthcare by
now being the most obvious)?
honestly what does it even matter if people don't identify the water they are swimming in
as neoliberalism and call it say capitalism instead? Most leftists do so, but so will many
ordinary people (and so the young want socialism). Of course the term capitalism is broad
enough to only add minimal clarity (except that it does add one real piece of clarity in
identifying WHOM the system is run for the benefit of, although it excludes rentiers who of
course play no small part). And so with ever evolving capitalism the Marxists may call it
finance capitalism etc.
Market fundamentalism would indeed be a more useful term if that is what is being
critiqued.
RabidGhandi: This is an important discussion. I agree that "neoliberal" is a stumbling
block and not a word we can use to explain ourselves outside this community. I hope we
revisit this problem regularly.
Maybe one way is to try a whole other direction outlined in Game of Mates written by two
Australian economists, Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters.
Murray and Frijters explain how current Australian laws create a system that hurts Bruce
while enriching James. AND IN THE SAME BOOK, they offer suggestions of how this could be
changed. They use "James" to represent the few land developers who purchase the land and are
granted rezoning permission or "grey gifts" while the "Bruces" do not benefit from the
rezoning.
The authors do not present James as avaricious since the way the current rules and
regulations are written anyone of us would do the same.
Since Australian regulatons parallel our own laws, I wish someone would "translate" the
book for U.S. situations. Maybe NC geeks can do this but most people would not. Great
book.
It has two meanings and it is usually impossible to tell in which way it is being
used.
1) Liberal as it was used in the 1950s – 1970s.
2) Liberal – neo-liberal / economically liberal
The early neo-liberals didn't like its 1950s -1970s connotations, later on they realised
the benefits of obfuscating what they were up to.
A very right wing neo-liberalism is deliberately confused with a left wing liberalism to
hide what they are up to.
Francis Fukuyama talked of liberal democracy, which sounded good.
What he meant was neo-liberal democracy, which isn't.
How does identity politics work for neo-liberals? Imagine inequality plotted on two axes. Inequality between genders, races and cultures is what liberals have been concentrating
on. This is the x-axis and the focus of identity politics and the liberal left. On the y-axis we have inequality from top to bottom.
2014 – "85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world"
2016 – "Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world's population"
2017 – Richest 8 people as wealthy as half of world's population
This is what the traditional left normally concentrate on, but as they have switched to
identity politics this inequality has gone through the roof.
Labour (traditional left) – y-axis inequality
Liberal (liberal left) – x-axis inequality
George Soros is a [neo]liberal, can you work out why?
A liberal left leave neoliberals free to pursue an economically right wing agenda and push
y-axis inequality to new extremes.
"Just deserts for predators and prey" – yes, very much this. I remember talking with
my father about a year ago in a quasi-philosophical sense about where I felt western society
had gone wrong. I could not quite adequately express the essence of my thoughts beyond "a
fundamental devaluation of people as individuals."
I think it applies to foreign policy as well – however you want to put things. The
ghouls/neocons/neolibs decide to start some regime change war somewhere. Hundreds of
thousands/millions of the wrong people die. But the pipeline (or whatever) gets built on the
correct parts of the map. No harm no foul and it's on to the next part of the giant "Risk"
board.
Come to think, I actually quite like "ghoul" as a catch-all term for all these evil
bastards. Can't remember where I first saw that – might have been here – but it
fits.
A good article on the neoliberal links to fascism:
Why
libertarians apologize for autocracy The experience of every modern democratic nation-state proves that libertarianism is
incompatible with democracy by Michael Lind.
Libertarianism is the version of neoliberalism used to get teenagers hooked on
markets.
What is neoliberalism?
A market-based ideology willing to employ fascism to impose the conditions necessary to
establish the market state. (ie, throwing people out of helicopters.)
The state is co-opted to ensure rule of the Market.
The value of everything, human life-included, is to be decided by the Market. (Except when
the outcome is not favorable to the elite. Hence the need to takeover the state.)
The market state will impose Freedom™. Freedom™ means the law of the jungle
and consequently many rebellious serfs, er, citizens unhappy with Freedom™. (Another
reason the state will be needed – to reimpose Freedom™. That is, prison or maybe
helicopter trips.)
In 2015, he discovered that he was enrolled in a particular type of ineligible payment
plan and would need to start his decade of payments all over again, even though he had been
paying more each month than he would have if he had been in an eligible plan. Because of
his 8.25 percent interest rate, which he could not refinance due to loan rules, even those
higher payments weren't putting a dent in his principal. So the $70,000 or so that he did
pay over the period amounted to nothing, and he'll most likely pay at least that much going
forward.
So this is who we are now. For all sorts of reasons that made perfect sense at the time,
we built additional repayment programs onto existing complexity onto well-meaning
forgiveness overseen by multiple layers of responsible parties. And once that was done, Mr.
Shafer, teacher of shelter dwellers and street kids and others whom fellow educators failed
to reach, wasted a small fortune and will now shovel another one into the federal
coffers.
Which leaves just one more question: If this is who we are, is it who we actually want
to be?
Apparently, yes.
The only ray of hope is that neoliberalism seems, by stripping the vast majority of people
of income and assets,
to be wildly successful at suppressing aggregate demand and so contains the seeds of its own
demise. Maybe.
The only ray of hope is that neoliberalism seems, by stripping the vast majority of
people of income and assets, to be wildly successful at suppressing aggregate demand and so
contains the seeds of its own demise. Maybe.
Exactly.. once the majority are stripped of their assets and have to commit most of their
income to rent, there *should* be no growth. Unless the entire system is running around asset
inflation, which it is now. But that cannot last forever.
The only ray of hope is that neoliberalism seems, by stripping the vast majority of
people of income and assets,
to be wildly successful at suppressing aggregate demand and so contains the seeds of its
own demise. Maybe.
I don't think that this is what They are thinking. The 'make it up on volume' is a
retailer strategy, our MOTU are playing well above wholesale and actually are not in the
goods-transferring biz at all. Finance, you know. Long before we are all gone, eaten alive or
whatever, They will be turning their sights on where the real money is -- each other. Perhaps
a few corners of life will survive, and I am curious as to what the new life forms, if any,
that emerge out of this sea of pesticides, herbicides, garbage, and too much CO2 will be.
Academic question, of course. Perhaps this is why there is no evidence of other intelligent
life in the universe? That's too depressing, I'm gonna go make some cinnamon toast.
To create a feudal aristocracy using pseudoscientific propaganda. The government uses a
combination of tax policy, deregulation, the destruction of legal protections (ex: labour
laws), privatization, free trade, mass immigration, propaganda, and frankly, blunt force
where needed to slowly dismantle the middle class.
The end result is a society that looks something like Russia in the 1990s or perhaps South
Africa, with very high inequality along with high multiculturalism.
Enforcement is not consistent. For example, low and middle class workers are expected to
compete in terms of lowest wages and poorest job security with the developing world.
Meanwhile, the very rich can do whatever they want and not pay much taxes. Intellectual
property is another example of this inconsistency, and allows corporations to rent seek on
their IP, itself often a product of taxpayer funded R&D or bought from a small company
(witness how big pharmaceutical companies are guilty of both of these).
Very true, speaking specifically of South Africa where I live, your analysis of the
situation hits the mark. We have an openly neoliberal opposition party that fashions itself
as a pro-poor party yet even a cursory glance at its policy stance reveals where the dictates
it shouts regularly from its benches originate, and whose interests it represents (it's
certainly not the poor). It campaigns heavily for the gutting of labour laws while advocating
for the destruction of local industries by coddling up to foreign investors and free trade
cheerleaders. Yet nobody seems to see the contradiction, because, as Altandmain says above,
it's all about building a narrative through propaganda with the media as an echo chamber (if
people think media ownership in the US is concentrated, they must try visiting SA). And the
trickle down economics myth is very much the dominant narrative down here, with the rich
being worshipped as demigods who hold the fate of the country in their hands, and as such,
must have carte blanche to do as they please
Intellectual capture of the general populace by co-opting (read buying) academia and the
msm to extol the virtues of neoliberalism is what allows its pernicious effects to spread
like wildfire. Credentialism and the pretentious grounding of neoliberal discourse in
pseudoscientific rigor discourages critique from ordinary, "non-expert" people and co-opts
even these lemmings (queitly being marched to their demise) to defend its ideological
soundness. The question i've always had is this: how do countries get grassroots movements
against neoliberalism going when the precursor to success against it seems to be eliminating
basic and functional illiteracy among the general population about its inner workings and the
instruments it uses to legitimize its evils (e.g. propaganda)? Outside of niche communities
like here at NC, most people seem to care more about the Kardashians than equipping
themselves with the chops (financial, technical etc) to call BS on all this. And this seems
to be a war that will require numbers to win, but how to get those numbers when so many
people appear to be so enchanted by the supposed virtues of neoliberalism ("getting ahead",
ruthless competition etc).
PS: Some of us here at NC live in developing countries and the tentacles of this ideology
have proven to be no respector of borders, as such, imho said grassroots movements would
necessarily have to be transnational by spreading beyond the heartlands of global capitalism
(Western Europe & US/North America).
Great article. Now when I hear TV/Journalist commentators suggest the nation-state is
useless and democracy is obsolete I will know their point of reference and unspoken
arguments. I will also listen for what they do not report on or talk about. 'The dog that did
not bark in the night.' Thanks for posting. Two things:
1.
"Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, "
Austria in 1938 had no deep-rooted democratic history. It was part of the aristocratic
Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, when that collapsed post WWI. Hayek and Mises grounded
their philosophy in their post-empire/post-autocratic-rule chaotic national experiences
– unstable newly imposed democratic societies which previously had a long history of
autocratic rule and a bad or poorly done recent (post WWI) transition to democracy. E.g. Post
WWI Weimar Germany was chaos, as reported by on-the-ground correspondent William Shirer.
Mises and Hayek also applied their ideas to well-established older democratic nations. In
context, their philosophy did not apply to the well-established democracies. If anything,
Mises and Hayek assumed a strong central govt inevitably meant a 'strong man' govt and not a
democratic govt, it seems.
2.
" Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation,
neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of
the world."
The IMF and WTO and neoliberalism itself have become a 'strong man' or 'strong committee'
supra-govt rule, imo. Neoliberalism's economic application has lead to the very conditions of
weakening democracy and subjecting people to 'strong man/committee rule' Mises and Hayek
tried to prevent by weakening the power of the nation-state, without regard to differences in
nation-state governments and polity.
shorter neolib args:
All* strong govts lead to despotism. (*All? nope. false premise)
Weakening the power of all govt's will guard against despotism. (Really? nope. some forms
of govt are a strong guard against despotism. false premise)
Replacing govt functions with market functions has no risk. (nope. see astronomical price
increases in privatized govt services and deregulated markets. epi-pen?)
Therefore, weakening central govts and replacing their functions with private market
solutions will be both risk free and guard against depotism. (False conclusion from false
premises. And there are plenty of financially despotic markets.)
Too bad Mises and Hayek didn't live in the UK or France or US or Canada or other long
established democracy; not perfect, always struggling to increase the franchise, but more
accountable to citizens than markets.
Substitute "neoliberal" for "Libertarian" and note the operations of "government-like
organizations" that already are systems of systems of predators and parasites that cooperate
(while snarling and snapping and biting at each other) to kill and loot and drive the rest of
us I guess "libertarians," whatever that term means any more, might be part of the Enabling
Class that provides "policy cover" and arguments in support of the rapine that is in play
Thanks very much for this link. I just read the entire series.
Chilling.
Normally I'd dismiss this sort of fevered certainty as lost-cause deadender writing.
The series was written 6 years ago; before the Kansas Real Time Experiment; Obamacare ACA
insurance-companies-will-sort-this-out; proposed TPP and TTIP and ISDS (arbitration and
insurance companies will sort it all out). Now talk of sea-steading and "island" cities and
organized voter suppression.
Chilling developments when placed against libertarian, anti-democratic, rise-of-the-supermen
manifestos.
I've just listened to the Mirowski interview* linked in the main article. According to
Mirowski it is the neo-classicals who want a weakened national govt, not the neo-liberals. So
I've confused the two and need a rethink.
Mirowski says (paraphrasing) the neo-liberals " changed the idea of what a market is " and
believe that " the market is a super information processor that knows more than any human
ever could ." (My aside: This is irrational, but that doesn't stop them.) Therefore
Mere humans should be subordinate to the market because the individual can never know as much
as the market and cannot even know himself outside of his relation to the market. (This is
also irrational and sounds despotic to me. Sounds like saying a person should be subordinate
to computer programs.)
Neo-liberals, therefore, want a strong national govt that they control to promote and expand
markets and the market ideology/idolatry everywhere. (Where have I heard that sort of
quazi-political/philosophical argument used before?)
* starts at the 6 min mark. 18 min mark "super information processor"
Too bad Mises and Hayek didn't live in the UK or France or US or Canada or other
long established democracy;
They did. von Hayek spent the 30s and 40s in the UK, the 50s in the US and retired to West
Germany. von Mises went to Switzerland in 1934 then the US in 1940 and stayed there. They
were, of course, esconced in academia (ie. in their own minds) the whole time.
here is a bit of the antidote–discussed 10/24 in NC regarding the efforts to restore
Puerto Rico–
Farmers' groups are now calling for the proliferation of community-controlled agricultural
cooperatives that would grow food for local consumption. Like the renewable energy
micro-grids, it's a model that is far less vulnerable to supply-chain shocks like hurricanes
-- and it has the additional benefit of generating local wealth and increasing
self-sufficiency.
As with the solar-powered generators, Puerto Rico's farmers aren't waiting for the emergency
to subside before beginning this transition. On the contrary, groups like Boricuá
Organization for Ecological Agriculture have "agroecology brigades" traveling from community
to community to deliver seeds and soil so that residents can begin planting crops
immediately. Katia Avilés-Vázquez, one of Boricuá's farmers, said of a
recent brigade: "Today I saw the Puerto Rico that I dream being born. This week I worked with
those who are giving it birth."
The CoOperative movement emerged in the USA at the end of the 19th century to provide
funding and resources where there was plenty of need but not too much profit to be made.
Isn´t this one of the problems with -isms in general? Communism also has a thousand
meanings depending on who you talk with. Could be everything between the theoretical
Marx-Engels version and the practical realities of Soviet Union/China and other countries
claiming to be "communists".
It seems to me that neoliberalism has been so efficient in establish itself thanks to:
1) being implemented by military forces = the rest of the world outside Europe/US, and now
being maintained through the thorough militarization of western societies: police, censorship
etc.
2) not focusing on being and -ism/ideology but on concrete advises/policies presented in
numbers/graphs (the mathematification of economics)
3) useful idiots in the form of the identity politicians: if they would have been focused and
using their vast amount of energy on countering the maths of economics (before Steve
Keen´s Debunking Economics), instead of counting how many oppressed minority identities
can dance on the head of white middle-aged man, it would have been much more difficult to
implement the neoliberal policies. Or it would have at least accelerated the militarization
of western societies so that the clash between class interests will start, as they always
do.
Maybe better to focus on concrete stuff in arguments, like,
– public ownership of energy and infrastructure in order to guarantee all citizens
access. E.g. Sweden privatized energy production and distribution in the 90s. During one
winter there wasn´t electricity enough to heat houses because the private companies had
done away with excess capacity. Privatization/neoliberalism = not serving the society with
electricity when the society needs it the most.
– Public healthcare, education etc. Every % of profit a company requires for the
owners, this means the same % less to the citizens
and so on.
OK with most of this, but members of congress and staff don't get free healthcare. Though
members have access to some free services, they and some staff purchase insurance on an ACA
exchange called. Other staff remain on the pre-ACA FEHB program in place for other federal
employees. Both programs are employer (taxpayer) subsidized so they only pay a portion of
their premiums, plus whatever their deductible is. For the ACA policies, to get the premium
subsidy they need to choose a gold plan, so will have about 10% in copays.
Nice exposition of the term, neoliberalism, Gaius. Thank you.
I think I first began seeing the term about eight years ago, right after the financial
meltdown. About five years ago, I proposed writing a series of pieces for a group that had
arisen out of the Denver Occupy movement, kind of an "Ask a Neo-Liberal," column, but most
people had never even heard of the term and when I did a bit of research, I just could not
pin down definitions or examples.
So, how do we begin to counter the main tenets of neoliberalism: glorification of 'the
market' as the arbiter of lives, with the resulting dominance of competition over cooperation
and the atomization and breakdown of social ties; we live in a 'dog eat dog' world, only the
strong survive, self-reliance got me where I am?
Some days I think that this creed is the natural result of a Planet that has exceeded its
carrying capacity of humans. When there were far fewer humans, cooperation and strong social
bonds were the only means of survival. Really. The development of Neo-liberalism is Nature's
way of getting rid of us.
But, Neo-liberalism decrees that the survivors will be, at best, rapacious, aggressive and
materialistic. At worst, they will be socio-paths. It's like the Planet if only jaguars,
vultures and leeches, out of all our animal relatives, survived. Do we want that to happen?
OK, I realize that some of us have just given up and are sitting back to watch the slow
motion disaster unfold.
First, admit that under the current system, the vast majority of us are Prey, and the .01%
are Apex Predators, hunting us down, ripping, squeezing and sucking the life (and our
livelihoods) out of us. How do our animal relatives who are not equipped with claws, sharp
teeth and muscles built for speed, survive?
We run even faster, we develop camouflage and hide, we grow armor, we refine cooperative
social skills and live in enormous colonies, (preferably underground!) where our vast numbers
and ability to mobilize for work and protection provide security, we develop symbiotic
relationships with larger and stronger organisms (although some might label this as
'vichy-ism,') we become almost invisible, yet with a deadly sting or poisonous coating, and
we realize that sometimes we have die so that other members of the group can survive.
And, we realize that the area in which we live, our little eco-system, is crucial to our
survival. We don't mess it up.
"Under a neoliberal regime, everyone gets what they deserve. Big fish deserve their meal.
Little fish deserve their death. And government sets the table for the feast."
How to talk about neoliberalism, which is indeed a mouthful? I was at a dinner last night
of two generations of UofChicago products (as am I). We all agreed that the "Law &
Economics" movement there should be dismissed out of hand as plain stupidity. I think that we
spend too much time imagining that there is some Ideal Marketplace of Ideas in which the good
ideas drive out the bad. And then we come up against Facebook and Twitter. So one way of
talking about it is that the law has to govern markets: Neoliberalism is lawlessness. You can
have law or you can have looting.
And we've certainly seen plenty of lawlessness.
Another way is to call it unconstitutional, if your interlocutor knows the U.S.
Constitution. The U.S Constitution doesn't have much to say about economics, and it doesn't
assume that laissez-faire is a-okay.
Further on it being unconstitutional: The U.S. Constitution brilliantly foresaw the need
for some kind of bureacracy to maintain the government, rather than a claque of courtiers. So
it set up the Post Office–that bureaucratic agent of oppression, Uncle Mises! It called
for a census and a Census Bureau–woe betide us Uncle Milton!
You can either have the U.S. Constitution with its flaws, or you can have people eating
bagels with gold foil and telling you that markets rule our lives? So which is it?
Maybe we should just call neoliberalism Gold-Bagel-ism. The antidote, as mentioned above
in the thread by commentes like marym, is to return to some discussion of our Commonwealth
and what to do to maintain it.
For me, the most effective opener (both in the sense of opening discussion as well as the
listener's mind) is to state that neoliberalism is to nearly everyone in the "developed"
world (and beyond) like water for fish: it's the environment in which we live, and thus
becomes invisible to us. Excellent elaboration from above: it's as if citizens of the USSR
had never heard of the word "communism;" instead it's just how life works.
If we can get this opening across, then the definitions and explanations discussed above
in this thread may be much more effective.
Thank you Gaius for a great post – and a thanks as well are due to the authors of
the good comments. As I've been reading these it occurred to me that perhaps a good
conversation starter would be to ask the person what they thought of Margaret Thatcher's
remark, "There's no such thing as society. There are only individuals and families." You'll
have to wing it from there depending on the responses you get.
I also wonder aloud to them, "Why it is that when individuals do whatever they want it is
called lawlessnes or anarchy, Bad Things, but when corporations do whatever they want it is
considered a Good Thing?"
The roots of neoliberalism in the Mont Pelerin Society is also well covered in MacLean's
Democracy in Chains.
While I like this article, I disagree with the relationship of neoliberals to markets and
to competition. Markets are held up to displace blame for decisions and policies made by men.
The powerful use competition to explain why you deserve less and they deserve more, even when
actual competition is not happening, and they actively work to prevent it.
Predators and prey do not compete for resources. A system that enshrines predation among
humans is not based on a buyer and a seller making a transaction at the efficient price that
maximizes each's utility and produces the best use of society's resources.
Agree, but for most of the people I talk to, that argument comes second. First I try to
demonstrate that NeoLiberalism doing what it *says* it does is bad for us. Once they have
that then I can proceed to 'NeoLiberalism doesn't even do what it says it does'. Although, I
think that your point is a good first argument with small business people, "You mean that you
think that your 5-employee cabinet shop makes you buddies with Elon Musk? (sub whatever rich
guy your would aspire to be)" If the time seems right I might add, "He would have you on
*toast*." If they think about that, they usually get it.
I seldom even get to the point of being able to argue about these issues at all, much less
take people thru the layers of consideration I've gone through over the years to reach my
current model of how the world works.
I have been told that all of the books and weird websites that I read as I study a subject
in depth are evidence that I lack objectivity about it and that people who know what they
know from reading ordinary news have a clearer understanding than I.
"I suppose the neo-liberal philosophy could best be summed up by their rallying cry: the
freedom to choose to own slaves."
"But that doesn't make sense. Freedom to choose is logically incompatible with slavery.
And they never said that."
"Indeed. They would claim to be all for freedom, and against slavery. But if someone was
profiting from owning slaves, they would fight tooth and nail to protect them, because any
attempt at restricting the profits of slavery was seen as an intolerable corruption of the
sacred free market. It was how they operated. Depending on what their rich patrons wanted at
the time, sometimes they were all for free trade between the old nation states, and sometimes
they demanded that the wealthy have the 'freedom' to restrict trade. It did not matter that
what they said made no sense, or was logically incoherent, or at variance with reality. They
never apologized, never explained, but only acted with total arrogance and
self-confidence."
From "Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom."
It makes sense if you believe in freedom to choose how to spend your money. How much
choice you have, and how much choice you deserve to have, is measured fine-grain in dollars
and cents. Other forms of power are deemed illegitimate.
it's sliding-scale individualism, where everyone is on their own, and wealth determines
how much of an individual one is. The more of an individual you are, the more liberty you
have, and liberty should be protected by the state.
I tend to think of "one dollar, one vote" when considering elections and politics; while
at the same time neoliberalism is about interpersonal power without direct regard to the
functioning of the state.
By this I mean that if, for example, Peter Thiel decides to spend his money to destroy
you, and you don't have enough money to prevent it, then you deserve destruction. That's
liberty. You're free to choose to spend your money defending yourself. Or not.
Exactly. People in a democracy have been raised to think that they count as much as the
next person, no matter how rich or poor -- at least I hope that is till happening. Well,
unless they are rich, who think they rightfully account for more. So when I say "one dollar,
one vote" to poor/middle people (in an ironic sense, just so that is clear), they *feel* that
it is not fair. If that catches, I point out that it goes against what they have been taught
about how democracy works. I often bring this up in the context of campaign $$$ and Citizens
United. It opposes the 'if they have the money then it's theirs' argument, aka 'the
aristocratic' and 'it's his bat and ball'.
For a long time now I have tried to reconstruct what it was in 1978 that convinced me it
had become impossible to reform the United States.
Gaius has gotten me closer to a reconstruction of why I determined the only real solution was
to create another nation, and kicked off what I recognize now as my own modeling.
My sense of what difference the goal is makes is a government that is just and fair for all
citizens.
This is not the case in the neoliberal world is it. The goal of the neo-liberal world is to
advance a milder form of scientific socialism, meaning the good people, well spoken well
dressed no matter either in business or academia get the money for lives depicted on TV
shows.
Working class people must become super humans to become educated and properly dressed to be
accepted into a world of plenty and safety.
One thing I appreciate about Russians is a unique love of beauty. It is depressing that
American's whole aesthetic sense revolves around cars and art is of no interest until it is
ultra expensive.
Len Deighton's description of liberalism as developed in the 1840s which went on to mean the
children of the newly enriched engineers who made hand built the Industrial Revolution making
cotton underwear were given the money to for the schools of the old school rich people of
Britain and all the rich people were in finance whether they came from old money or new
money.
So I don't think of neoliberalism as about markets as much as I do think of it as the
complete ascendancy of the parasites of Finance.
Creditors do not write down or write off debts of the working classes. Finance now has been
given the US Treasury. Listening to Minuchin saying on the TV, in fact even seeing a face
saying, "We must let the States Go and they have to make it on their own." Means there is
simply no reason then to put any money by anyone into the US Treasury. The United States is
just a huge military engaged in little and large wars all over the world anyway. Why ought
anyone pay taxes to further the new owner of the Empire, Rome?
Deighton writes that since all the sewing machines and looms were moved to India, by the time
the 19th Century ended Finance had gambled away all of the wealth of the UK.
"I like to play with debt, but it is tricky." Says Trump.
As long as you are the "Loss Payee" bankruptcy is as fine as any sort of success aye? "I
don't pay taxes, I'm smart."
The aim is to lose all the money, then have it all given to you by the Treasury.
There is no citizenship of the World Citizen, or Jet Setter. They don't need any real
citizenship.
For the majority, the nation matters. It may be the only thing they have of any value. The
nation we are in love with it the nation that would go to defeat the Barbary Pirates over the
capture of one US citizen, a stand in for you.
The one we have makes heroes and a President of the parasitical pirates come from
neofeudalism.
In Texas even swords are coming back.
Yves, great article, and loved the interview with Mirowski.
Here's the thing I see Neo-liberalism has done for society as a whole. If I asked you to
"I present 2 humans before you and ask which one has more value to the world, which one, if
there was only one hamburger left to eat, deserves to eat that sandwich, deserves to survive
in a world with limited resources (which is what earth is), how would you go about choosing
which one"? I am saying Neo-liberalism says "look at their wealth". It judges people by how
much money/wealth they have. The only way to judge whether one human should survive over
another is by the amount of money they make.
Jimmy Carter said in 1980 how we are moving as a society to how we rate a man is by the
amount of money he has. If he was the proto-Neo-liberal, then it makes sense.
One of the conceits of neo-liberalism (and I guess capitalism in general) is that how much
wealth one has indicates how much one is owed for one's contribution to society (because
markets allocate resources optimally). Thus the biggest takers are transformed into the
biggest givers.
Neo-liberalism doesn't care or think all that much about it's actions, as long as they are
profitable.
We have this ridiculous never ending series of wars and nobody's marching in the streets
or even making a fuss about it, as we've accepted the premise as business as usual.
It has the feel of the Vietnam War still going in 1982, and nobody cared.
Other countries look at prisons as a necessary evil, whereas we can't have enough of them,
so much so that we allow private companies the right to incarcerate our own citizens.
nobody's marching in the streets or even making a fuss about it
Lessee, last time I recall Big Street Protests was Occupy. They got shut
down , brutally. NoDAPL, similar, even the Trump inauguration protests. Marches not
reported -- they might as well not have happened. But I believe they really, really did
happen.
An older friend was going to Cal State L.A. around 1970, when a good number of the student
body decided to walk onto the nearby 10 freeway and shut it down, as a protest against the
Vietnam War.
We incarcerate so many because it is profitable as jobs program for voters in poor
counties, slave labor for manufacturing, and profitable for corporations/donors.
I believe discussion of Neoliberalism is very much like discussion of Global Warming.
"Weedy" or not, "academic" or not both discussions require transit through some difficult
concepts and technical depth. In the case of Global Warming discussions you either come to
grips with some complicated climate science or you end up discussing matters of faith drawn
from popular "simplifications". In the case of Neoliberalism the discussion necessarily
enters a region which requires attention to fine details which when followed to their end
tend to have deep and broad implications.
In the interview referenced by this post Phillip Mirowski asserts Neoliberals believe the
Market is an information processor which "knows" more than you or I could ever know. He also
introduces the concept of a Thought Collective -- which he states he adapted from writings of
Ludwig Fleck related to describing a method for study and explanation of the history of
Science. I believe both these "weedy" "academic" distinctions are key to understanding
Neoliberalism and distinguishing it from Neoclassical economics and Libertarianism. The
concept of a Thought Collective greatly aids understanding the particularly slippery nature
of Neoliberalism as a term for discussion. That slippery nature is no accident. The Market as
a theory of knowledge -- an epistemology -- makes apparent the philosophical even "religious"
extent of Neoliberal thinking.
Two recent papers by Phillip Mirowski tackle the difficulties in defining and discussing
Neoliberalism. They are both "weedy" and "academic" and unfortunately help little in
addressing the issue RabidGhandhi raised at the root of the lengthy thread beginning the
comments to this post.
"This is Water (or is it Neoliberalism?)" 2016 -- this is a response to critics of the
previous paper.
[https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/this-is-water-or-is-it-neoliberalism]
There have been several oblique references to this story -- so I'll repeat it since I only
recently ran across it.
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish
swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And
the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other
and goes, "What the hell is water?"
I am afraid that little story says volumes about the problem RabidGhandhi raised. I
believe remaining "weedy" and "academic" is the very least service we might do to discussing
Neoliberalism and when arguing topics related to Neoliberalism -- and probably the least
damage.
"... Google is algorithmically burying leftist news and opinion sources such as Alternet, Counterpunch, Global Research, Consortium News, and Truthout, among others. ..."
"... my political essays are often reposted by right-wing and, yes, even pro-Russia blogs. I get mail from former Sanders supporters, Trump supporters, anarchists, socialists, former 1960s radicals, anti-Semites, and other human beings, some of whom I passionately agree with, others of whom I passionately disagree with. As far as I can tell from the emails, none of these readers voted for Clinton, or Macron, or supported the TPP, or the debt-enslavement and looting of Greece, or the ongoing restructuring of the Greater Middle East (and all the lovely knock-on effects that has brought us), or believe that Trump is a Russian operative, or that Obama is Martin Luther Jesus-on-a-stick. ..."
"... What they share, despite their opposing views, is a general awareness that the locus of power in our post-Cold War age is primarily corporate, or global capitalist, and neoliberal in nature. They also recognize that they are being subjected to a massive propaganda campaign designed to lump them all together (again, despite their opposing views) into an intentionally vague and undefinable category comprising anyone and everyone, everywhere, opposing the hegemony of global capitalism, and its non-ideological ideology (the nature of which I'll get into in a moment). ..."
"... Although the term has been around since the Fifth Century BC, the concept of "extremism" as we know it today developed in the late Twentieth Century and has come into vogue in the last three decades. During the Cold War, the preferred exonymics were "subversive," "radical," or just plain old "communist," all of which terms referred to an actual ideological adversary. ..."
"... Which is why, despite the "Russiagate" hysteria the media have been barraging us with, the West is not going to war with Russia. Nor are we going to war with China. Russia and China are developed countries, whose economies are entirely dependent on global capitalism, as are Western economies. The economies of every developed nation on the planet are inextricably linked. This is the nature of the global hegemony I've been referring to throughout this essay. Not American hegemony, but global capitalist hegemony. Systemic, supranational hegemony (which I like to prefer "the Corporatocracy," as it sounds more poetic and less post-structural). ..."
"... Global capitalism, since the end of the Cold War (i.e, immediately after the end of the Cold War), has been conducting a global clean-up operation, eliminating actual and potential insurgencies, mostly in the Middle East, but also in its Western markets. Having won the last ideological war, like any other victorious force, it has been "clear-and-holding" the conquered territory, which in this case happens to be the whole planet. Just for fun, get out a map, and look at the history of invasions, bombings, and other "interventions" conducted by the West and its assorted client states since 1990. Also, once you're done with that, consider how, over the last fifteen years, most Western societies have been militarized, their citizens placed under constant surveillance, and an overall atmosphere of "emergency" fostered, and paranoia about "the threat of extremism" propagated by the corporate media. ..."
"... Short some sort of cataclysm, like an asteroid strike or the zombie apocalypse, or, you know, violent revolution, global capitalism will continue to restructure the planet to conform to its ruthless interests. The world will become increasingly "normal." The scourge of "extremism" and "terrorism" will persist, as will the general atmosphere of "emergency." There will be no more Trumps, Brexit referendums, revolts against the banks, and so on. Identity politics will continue to flourish, providing a forum for leftist activist types (and others with an unhealthy interest in politics), who otherwise might become a nuisance, but any and all forms of actual dissent from global capitalist ideology will be systematically marginalized and pathologized. ..."
"... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
"... That is certainly what the geopolitical establishment is hoping for, but I remain skeptical of their ability to contain what forces they've used to balance the various camps of dissenting proles. They've painted themselves into a corner with non-white identity politics combined with mass immigration. The logical conclusion of where they're going is pogroms and none of the kleptocracy seem bold enough to try and stop this from happening. ..."
"... Germany is the last EU member state where an anti EU party entered parliament. In the last French elections four out of every ten voters voted on anti EU parties. In Austria the anti EU parties now have a majority. So if I were leading a big corporation, thriving by globalism, what also the EU is, I would be worried. ..."
"... This is a great article. The author's identification of "normality" & "extremism" as Capitalism's go-to concepts for social control is spot on accurate. That these terms can mean anything or nothing & are infinitely flexible is central to their power. ..."
Back in October of 2016, I wrote
a somewhat divisive essay in which I suggested that political dissent is being systematically
pathologized. In fact, this process has been ongoing for decades, but it has been significantly accelerated
since the Brexit referendum and the Rise of Trump (or, rather, the Fall of Hillary Clinton, as it
was Americans' lack of enthusiasm for eight more years of corporatocracy with a sugar coating of
identity politics, and not their enthusiasm for Trump, that mostly put the clown in office.)
In the twelve months since I wrote that piece, we have been subjected to a concerted campaign
of corporate media propaganda for which there is no historical precedent. Virtually every major organ
of the Western media apparatus (the most powerful propaganda machine in the annals of powerful propaganda
machines) has been relentlessly churning out variations on a new official ideological narrative designed
to generate and enforce conformity. The gist of this propaganda campaign is that "Western democracy"
is under attack by a confederacy of Russians and white supremacists, as well as "the terrorists"
and other "extremists" it's been under attack by for the last sixteen years.
I've been writing about this campaign for a year now, so I'm not going to rehash all the details.
Suffice to say we've gone from
Russian operatives hacking the American elections to "Russia-linked" persons "apparently" setting
up "illegitimate" Facebook accounts, "likely operated out of Russia," and publishing ads that are
"indistinguishable from legitimate political speech" on the Internet. This is what the corporate
media is presenting as evidence of
"an unprecedented foreign invasion of American democracy," a handful of political ads on Facebook.
In addition to the Russian hacker propaganda, since August, we have also been treated to relentless
white supremacist hysteria and daily reminders from the corporate media that
"white nationalism is destroying the West." The negligible American neo-Nazi subculture has been
blown up into a biblical Behemoth inexorably slouching its way towards the White House to officially
launch the Trumpian Reich.
At the same time, government and corporate entities have been aggressively restricting (and in
many cases eliminating) fundamental civil liberties such as freedom of expression, freedom of the
press, the right of assembly, the right to privacy, and the right to due process under the law. The
justification for this curtailment of rights (which started in earnest in 2001, following the September
11 attacks) is protecting the public from the threat of "terrorism," which apparently shows no signs
of abating. As of now, the United States has been in
a State of Emergency for over sixteen years. The UK is in
a virtual State of Emergency . France is now in the process of enshrining
its permanent State of Emergency into law. Draconian counter-terrorism measures have been
implemented throughout the EU . Not just
the notorious American police but
police
throughout the West have been militarized . Every other day we learn of some
new emergency security measure designed to keep us safe from "the terrorists," the "lone wolf
shooters," and other "extremists."
Conveniently, since the Brexit referendum and unexpected election of Trump (which is when the
capitalist ruling classes first recognized that they had a widespread nationalist backlash on their
hands), the definition of "terrorism" (or, more broadly, "extremism") has been expanded to include
not just Al Qaeda, or ISIS, or whoever we're calling "the terrorists" these days, but anyone else
the ruling classes decide they need to label "extremists." The FBI has designated Black Lives Matter
"Black Identity Extremists." The FBI and the DHS have designated Antifa
"domestic terrorists."
Whatever your opinion of these organizations and "extremist" persons is beside the point. I'm
not a big fan of neo-Nazis, personally, but neither am I a fan of Antifa. I don't have much use for
conspiracy theories, or a lot of the nonsense one finds on the Internet, but I consume a fair amount
of alternative media, and I publish in CounterPunch, The Unz Review, ColdType, and other non-corporate
journals.
I consider myself a leftist, basically, but my political essays are often reposted by right-wing
and, yes, even pro-Russia blogs. I get mail from former Sanders supporters, Trump supporters, anarchists,
socialists, former 1960s radicals, anti-Semites, and other human beings, some of whom I passionately
agree with, others of whom I passionately disagree with. As far as I can tell from the emails, none
of these readers voted for Clinton, or Macron, or supported the TPP, or the debt-enslavement and
looting of Greece, or the ongoing restructuring of the Greater Middle East (and all the lovely knock-on
effects that has brought us), or believe that Trump is a Russian operative, or that Obama is Martin
Luther Jesus-on-a-stick.
What they share, despite their opposing views, is a general awareness that the locus of power
in our post-Cold War age is primarily corporate, or global capitalist, and neoliberal in nature.
They also recognize that they are being subjected to a massive propaganda campaign designed to lump
them all together (again, despite their opposing views) into an intentionally vague and undefinable
category comprising anyone and everyone, everywhere, opposing the hegemony of global capitalism,
and its non-ideological ideology (the nature of which I'll get into in a moment).
As I wrote in that essay a year ago, "a line is being drawn in the ideological sand." This line
cuts across both Left and Right, dividing what the capitalist ruling classes designate "normal" from
what they label "extremist." The traditional ideological paradigm, Left versus Right, is disappearing
(except as a kind of minstrel show), and is being replaced, or overwritten, by a pathological
paradigm based upon the concept of "extremism."
* * *
Although the term has been around since the Fifth Century BC, the concept of "extremism" as
we know it today developed in the late Twentieth Century and has come into vogue in the last three
decades. During the Cold War, the preferred exonymics were "subversive," "radical," or just plain
old "communist," all of which terms referred to an actual ideological adversary.
In the early 1990s, as the U.S.S.R. disintegrated, and globalized Western capitalism became the
unrivaled global-hegemonic ideological system that it is today, a new concept was needed to represent
the official enemy and its ideology. The concept of "extremism" does that perfectly, as it connotes,
not an external enemy with a definable ideological goal, but rather, a deviation from the norm. The
nature of the deviation (e.g., right-wing, left-wing, faith-based, and so on) is secondary, almost
incidental. The deviation itself is the point. The "terrorist," the "extremist," the "white supremacist,"
the "religious fanatic," the "violent anarchist" these figures are not rational actors whose ideas
we need to intellectually engage with in order to debate or debunk. They are pathological deviations,
mutant cells within the body of "normality," which we need to identify and eliminate, not for ideological
reasons, but purely in order to maintain "security."
A truly global-hegemonic system like contemporary global capitalism (the first of this kind in
human history), technically, has no ideology. "Normality" is its ideology an ideology which erases
itself and substitutes the concept of what's "normal," or, in other words, "just the way it is."
The specific characteristics of "normality," although not quite arbitrary, are ever-changing. In
the West, for example, thirty years ago, smoking was normal. Now, it's abnormal. Being gay was abnormal.
Now, it's normal. Being transgender is becoming normal, although we're still in the early stages
of the process. Racism has become abnormal. Body hair is currently abnormal. Walking down the street
in a semi-fugue state robotically thumbing the screen of a smartphone that you just finished thumbing
a minute ago is "normal." Capitalism has no qualms with these constant revisions to what is considered
normal, because none of them are threats to capitalism. On the contrary, as far as values are concerned,
the more flexible and commodifiable the better.
See, despite what intersectionalists will tell you, capitalism has no interest in racism, misogyny,
homophobia, xenophobia, or any other despotic values (though it has no problem working with these
values when they serve its broader strategic purposes). Capitalism is an economic system, which we
have elevated to a social system. It only has one fundamental value, exchange value, which isn't
much of a value, at least not in terms of organizing society or maintaining any sort of human culture
or reverence for the natural world it exists in. In capitalist society, everything, everyone, every
object and sentient being, every concept and human emotion, is worth exactly what the market will
bear no more, no less, than its market price. There is no other measure of value.
Yes, we all want there to be other values, and we pretend there are, but there aren't, not really.
Although we're free to enjoy parochial subcultures based on alternative values (i.e., religious bodies,
the arts, and so on), these subcultures operate within capitalist society, and ultimately conform
to its rules. In the arts, for example, works are either commercial products, like any other commodity,
or they are subsidized by what could be called "the simulated aristocracy," the ivy league-educated
leisure classes (and lower class artists aspiring thereto) who need to pretend that they still have
"culture" in order to feel superior to the masses. In the latter case, this feeling of superiority
is the upscale product being sold. In the former, it is entertainment, distraction from the depressing
realities of living, not in a society at all, but in a marketplace with no real human values. (In
the absence of any real cultural values, there is no qualitative difference between Gerhard
Richter and Adam Sandler, for example. They're both successful capitalist artists. They're just selling
their products in different markets.)
The fact that it has no human values is the evil genius of global capitalist society. Unlike the
despotic societies it replaced, it has no allegiance to any cultural identities, or traditions, or
anything other than money. It can accommodate any form of government, as long as it plays ball with
global capitalism. Thus, the window dressing of "normality" is markedly different from country to
country, but the essence of "normality" remains the same. Even in countries with state religions
(like Iran) or state ideologies (like China), the governments play by the rules of global capitalism
like everyone else. If they don't, they can expect to receive a visit from global capitalism's Regime
Change Department (i.e., the US military and its assorted partners).
Which is why, despite the "Russiagate" hysteria the media have been barraging us with, the
West is not going to war with Russia. Nor are we going to war with China. Russia and China are developed
countries, whose economies are entirely dependent on global capitalism, as are Western economies.
The economies of every developed nation on the planet are inextricably linked. This is the nature
of the global hegemony I've been referring to throughout this essay. Not American hegemony, but global
capitalist hegemony. Systemic, supranational hegemony (which I like to prefer "the Corporatocracy,"
as it sounds more poetic and less post-structural).
We haven't really got our minds around it yet, because we're still in the early stages of it,
but we have entered an epoch in which historical events are primarily being driven, and societies
reshaped, not by sovereign nation states acting in their national interests but by supranational
corporations acting in their corporate interests. Paramount among these corporate interests is the
maintenance and expansion of global capitalism, and the elimination of any impediments thereto. Forget
about the United States (i.e., the actual nation state) for a moment, and look at what's been happening
since the early 1990s. The US military's "disastrous misadventures" in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan,
Syria, and the former Yugoslavia, among other exotic places (which have obviously had nothing to
do with the welfare or security of any actual Americans), begin to make a lot more sense.
Global capitalism, since the end of the Cold War (i.e, immediately after the end of the Cold
War), has been conducting a global clean-up operation, eliminating actual and potential insurgencies,
mostly in the Middle East, but also in its Western markets. Having won the last ideological war,
like any other victorious force, it has been
"clear-and-holding" the
conquered territory, which in this case happens to be the whole planet. Just for fun, get out a map,
and look at the history of invasions, bombings, and other "interventions" conducted by the West and
its assorted client states since 1990. Also, once you're done with that, consider how, over the last
fifteen years, most Western societies have been militarized, their citizens placed under constant
surveillance, and an overall atmosphere of "emergency" fostered, and paranoia about "the threat of
extremism" propagated by the corporate media.
I'm not suggesting there's a bunch of capitalists sitting around in a room somewhere in their
shiny black top hats planning all of this. I'm talking about systemic development, which is a little
more complex than that, and much more difficult to intelligently discuss because we're used to perceiving
historico-political events in the context of competing nation states, rather than competing ideological
systems or non-competing ideological systems, for capitalism has no competition . What it
has, instead, is a variety of insurgencies, the faith-based Islamic fundamentalist insurgency and
the neo-nationalist insurgency chief among them. There will certainly be others throughout the near
future as global capitalism consolidates control and restructures societies according to its values.
None of these insurgencies will be successful.
Short some sort of cataclysm, like an asteroid strike or the zombie apocalypse, or, you know,
violent revolution, global capitalism will continue to restructure the planet to conform to its ruthless
interests. The world will become increasingly "normal." The scourge of "extremism" and "terrorism"
will persist, as will the general atmosphere of "emergency." There will be no more Trumps, Brexit
referendums, revolts against the banks, and so on. Identity politics will continue to flourish, providing
a forum for leftist activist types (and others with an unhealthy interest in politics), who otherwise
might become a nuisance, but any and all forms of actual dissent from global capitalist ideology
will be systematically marginalized and pathologized.
This won't happen right away, of course. Things are liable to get ugly first (as if they weren't
ugly enough already), but probably not in the way we're expecting, or being trained to expect by
the corporate media. Look, I'll give you a dollar if it turns out I'm wrong, and the Russians, terrorists,
white supremacists, and other "extremists" do bring down "democracy" and launch their Islamic, white
supremacist, Russo-Nazi Reich, or whatever, but from where I sit it looks pretty clear tomorrow belongs
to the Corporatocracy.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin.
His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut
novel,
ZONE
23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at
cjhopkins.com or
consentfactory.org .
Brilliant Article. But this has been going on for nearly a century or more. New York Jewish bankers
fund the Bolshevik revolution which gets rid of the Romanov dynasty and many of the revolutionaries
are not even Russian. What many people do not know is that many Western companies invested money
in Bolshevik Russia as the Bolsheviks were speeding up the modernising of the country. What many
do not know is that Feminism, destruction of families and traditional societies, homoerotic art
etc . was forced on the new Soviet population in a shock therapy sort of way. The same process
has been implemented in the West by the elites using a much slower 'boiling the frog' method using
Cultural Marxism. The aim of the Soviet Union was to spread Communism around the World and hence
bring about the One World Government as wished by the globalists. Their national anthem was the
'Internationale'. The globalists were funding revolutionary movements throughout Europe and other
parts of the world. One such attempt went extremely wrong and that was in Germany where instead
of the Communists coming in power, the National Socialists come in power which was the most dangerous
challenge faced by the Zio/globalists/elite gang. The Globalists force a war using false flag
events like Pearl Harbour etc and crushed the powers which challenged their rule i.e. Germany,
Japan and Italy. That is why Capitalist USA funded Communist Soviet Union using the land lease
program, which on the surface never makes any sense.
However in Soviet Russia, a power struggle leads to Stalin destroying the old Communist order
of Lenin Trotsky. Trotsky and his supporters leave the Soviet Union. Many of the present Neo Cons
are ex Trotskyites and hence the crazy hatred for Russia even today in American politics. These
Neocons do not have any principles, they will use any ideology such as Communism, Islam, twisted
Western Conservatism anything to attain their global goals.
Now with Stalin coming to power, things actually improved and the war with Hitler's Third Reich
gave Stalin the chance to purge many old school globalist commies and then the Soviet Union went
towards a more nationalist road. Jews slowly started losing their hold on power with Russians
and eventually other Soviets gaining more powerful positions. These folks found the ugly modern
art culture of the early Soviet period revolting and started a new movement where the messages
of Socialism can be delivered with more healthy beautiful art and culture. This process was called
'Social Realism'. So strangely what happened was that the Capitalist Christian West was becoming
more and more less traditional with time (Cultural Marxism/Fabien Socialism via media, education,
Hollywood) while the Eastern block was slowly moving in an opposite direction. The CIA (which
is basically the intelligence agency arm of Wall Street Bankers) was working to stop this 'Social
Realism' movement.
These same globalists also funded Mao and pulled the rug under Chiang Kai Shek who they were
supporting earlier. Yes, Mao was funded by the Rockerfeller/ Rothschild Cabal. Now, even if the
Globalists were not happy with Stalin gaining power in the Soviet Union (they preferred the internationalist
Trotskyites), they still found that they could work out with the Soviet Union. That is why during
the 2nd World war, the USA supports the USSR with money and material, Stalin gets a facelift as
'friendly Uncle Joe' for the Western audience. Many Cossack families who had escaped the Soviet
Union to the West were sent to their deaths after the War to the Soviet Union. Why? Mr. Eden of
Britain who could not stand Hitler wanted a New World Order where they could work with the more
murderous Soviet Union.
Now we have the cold war. What is not known is that behind the scenes at a higher level, the
Americans and the Soviets cooperated with each other exchanging technology, basically the cold
war was quite fake. But the Cold war gave the American government (basically the Globalists) to
take American Tax payers hard earned money to fund many projects such as Star Wars programme etc
All this was not needed, as a gentleman named Keenan had shown in his book that all the Americans
needed to do was to make sure Japan, Germany and Britain did not fall to the Soviets, that's it.
Thus trillions of American tax payer money would be saved. But obviously the Military Industrial
Complex did not like that idea. Both the Soviet and the American governments got the excuse spend
their people's hard money on weapons research as well as exchanging some of that technology in
the back ground. It is during this period that the precursor to the Internet was already developed.
Many of the technology we use today was already invented much earlier by government agencies but
released to the people later.
Then we have the Vietnam war. Now you must realise that the Globalist government of America
uses wars not only to change enemy societies but also the domestic society in the West. So during
the Vietnam War, the US government using the alphabet agencies such as the CIA kick start the
fake opposition hippie movements. The CIA not only drugged the Vietnamese population using drugs
from the Golden Triangle but later released them on the home population in the USA and the West.
This was all part of the Cultural Marxist plan to change or social engineer American/ Western
society. Many institutes like the Travestock Institute were part of this process. For example
one of the main hochos of the Cultural Marxism, a Mr. Aderno was closely related to the Beatles
movement.
Several experiments was done on mind control such as MK Ultra, monarch programming, Edward
Bernay's works etc Their aim was to destroy traditional Western society and the long term goal
is a New World Order. Blacks for example were used as weapons against Whites at the same time
the black social order was destroyed further via the media etc
Now, Nixon going to China was to start a long term (long planned) process to bring about Corporate
Communism. Yes that is going to be economic system in the coming New World Order. China is the
test tube, where the Worst of Communism and the Worst of Crony Capitalism be brought together
as an experiment. As the Soviet Union was going in a direction, the globalist was not happy about
(it was becoming more nationalist), they worked to bring the Soviet Union down and thus the Soviet
experiment ended only to be continued in China.
NATO today is the core military arm of the globalists, a precursor to a One World Military
Force. That explains why after the Warsaw pact was dismantled, NATO was not or why NATO would
interfere in the Middle East which is far away from the Atlantic Ocean.
The coming Cashless society will finally lead to a moneyless or distribution society, in other
words Communism, that is the long term plan.
My point is, many of the geo political events as well as social movements of the last century
(feminism for example) were all planned for a long time and are not accidents. The coming technologies
like the internet of things, 5G technology, Cashless society, biometric identification everywhere
etc are all designed to help bring about the final aim of the globalists. The final aim is a one
world government with Corporate ruled Communism where we, the worker bees will be living in our
shitty inner city like ghetto homes eating GM plastic foods and listening to crappy music. That
is the future they have planned for us. A inner city ghetto like place under Communism ruled by
greedy evil corporates.
"Short some sort of cataclysm, like an asteroid strike or the zombie apocalypse, or, you know,
violent revolution, global capitalism will continue to restructure the planet to conform to its
ruthless interests."
That is certainly what the geopolitical establishment is hoping for, but I remain skeptical
of their ability to contain what forces they've used to balance the various camps of dissenting
proles. They've painted themselves into a corner with non-white identity politics combined with
mass immigration. The logical conclusion of where they're going is pogroms and none of the kleptocracy
seem bold enough to try and stop this from happening.
That is certainly what the geopolitical establishment is hoping for, but I remain skeptical
of their ability to contain what forces they've used to balance the various camps of dissenting
proles.
There must be some evidence for your assertions about the long term plans and aims of globalists
and others if there is truth in them. The sort of people you are referring to would often have
kept private diaries and certainly written many hundreds or thousands of letters. Can you give
any references to such evidence of say 80 to 130 years ago?
.. puzzling that the writer feels the need to virtue-signal by saying he "doesn't have much
time for conspiracy theories" while condemning an absolutely massive conspiracy to present establishment
lies as truth.
That is one of the most depressing demonstrations of the success of the ruling creeps that
I have yet come across.
Germany is the last EU member state where an anti EU party entered parliament. In the last
French elections four out of every ten voters voted on anti EU parties. In Austria the anti EU
parties now have a majority. So if I were leading a big corporation, thriving by globalism, what
also the EU is, I would be worried.
"See, despite what intersectionalists will tell you, capitalism has no interest in racism, misogyny,
homophobia, xenophobia, or any other despotic values (though it has no problem working with these
values when they serve its broader strategic purposes). Capitalism is an economic system, which
we have elevated to a social system. It only has one fundamental value, exchange value, which
isn't much of a value, at least not in terms of organizing society or maintaining any sort of
human culture or reverence for the natural world it exists in. In capitalist society, everything,
everyone, every object and sentient being, every concept and human emotion, is worth exactly what
the market will bear no more, no less, than its market price. There is no other measure of value."
This is a great article. The author's identification of "normality" & "extremism" as Capitalism's
go-to concepts for social control is spot on accurate. That these terms can mean anything or nothing
& are infinitely flexible is central to their power.
Mr Hopkins is also correct when he points out that Capitalism has essentially NO values (exchange
value is a value, but also a mechanism). Again, Capitalism stands for nothing: any form of government
is acceptable as long as it bows to neoliberal markets.
However, the author probably goes to far:
"Nor are we going to war with China. Russia and China are developed countries, whose economies
are entirely dependent on global capitalism, as are Western economies. The economies of every
developed nation on the planet are inextricably linked. This is the nature of the global hegemony
I've been referring to throughout this essay. Not American hegemony, but global capitalist hegemony.
Systemic, supranational hegemony".
Capitalism has no values: however the Masters of the capitalist system most certainly do: Capitalism
is a means, the most thorough, profound means yet invented, for the attainment of that value which
has NO exchange value: POWER.
Capitalism is a supranational hegemony – yet the Elites which control it, who will act as one
when presented with any external threats to Capitalism itself, are not unified internally. Indeed,
they will engage in cut throat competition, whether considered as individuals or nations or as
particular industries.
US Imperialism is not imaginary, it is not a mere appearance or mirage of Capitalism, supranational
or not. US Imperialism in essence empowers certain sets of Capitalists over other sets. No, they
may not purposely endanger the System as a whole, however, that still leaves plenty of space for
aggressive competition, up to & including war.
Imperialism is the political corollary to the ultimate economic goal of the individual Capitalist:
Monopoly.
Psychologically daring (being no minstrel to corporatocracy nor irrelevant activism and other
"religions" that endorse the current world global system as the overhead), rationally correct,
relevant, core definition of the larger geo-world and deeper "ideological" grounding( in the case
of capitalism the quite shallow brute forcing of greed as an incentive, as sterile a society as
possible), and adhering to longer timelines of reality of planet earth. Perfectly captures the
"essence" of the dynamics of our times.
The few come to the authors' through-sites by many venue-ways, that's where some of the corporocratic
world, by sheer statistics wind up also. Why do they not get the overhand into molding the shallow
into anything better in the long haul. No world leader, no intellectual within power circles,
even within confined quarters, speaks to the absurdity of the ongoing slugging and maltering of
global human?
The elites of now are too dumb to consider the planet exo-human as a limited resource. Immigration,
migration, is the de facto path to "normalization" in the terms of the author. Reducing the world
population is not "in" the capitalist ideology. A major weakness, or if one prefers the stake
that pinches the concept of capitalism: more instead of quality principles.
The game changers, the possible game changers: eugenics and how they play out as to the elites
( understanding the genome and manipulating it), artificial intelligence ( defining it first,
not the "Elon Musk" definition), and as a far outlier exo-planetary arguments.
Confront the above with the "unexpected", the not-human engineered possible events (astroids
and the like, secondary effects of human induced toxicity, others), and the chances to get to
the author's "dollar" and what it by then might mean is indeed tiny.
As to the content, one of the utmost relevant articles, it is "art" to condense such broad
a world view into a few words, it requires a deep understanding foremost, left to wonder what
can be grasped by most reading above. Some-one try the numbers?, "big data" anyone, they might
turn out in favor of what the author undoubtedly absorbed as the nucleus of twenty-first thinking,
strategy and engineering.
This kind of thinking and "Harvard" conventionality, what a distance.
Great article, spot on. Indeed we are all at the mercy now of a relatively small clique of ruthless
criminals who are served by armies of desensitized, stupid mercenaries: MBAs, politicians, thugs,
college professors, "whorenalists", etc. I am afraid that the best answer to the current and future
dystopia is what the Germans call "innere Emigration," to psychologically detach oneself
from the contemporary world.
Thus, the only way out of this hellhole is through reading and thinking, which every self-respecting
individual should engage in. Shun most contemporary "literature" and instead turn to the classics
of European culture: there you will find all you need.
For an earlier and ever so pertinent analysis of the contemporary desert, I can heartily recommend
Umberto Galimberti's I vizi capitali e i nuovi vizi (Milan, 2003).
And yes, another verbally strong expression of the in your face truth, though for so few to
grasp. The author again has a deep understanding, if one prefers, it points to the venueway of
coming to terms, the empirical pathway as to the understanding.
"Plasticky" society is my preferred term for designating the aberrance that most (within the
elites), the rest who cares (as an historical truth), do not seem to identify as proper cluelessness
in the light of longer timelines. The current global ideology, religion of capitalism-democracy
is the equivalent of opportunistic naval staring of the elites. They are not aware that suffocation
will irreversibly affect oneself. Not enough air is the equivalent of no air in the end.
The negligible American neo-Nazi subculture has been blown up into a biblical Behemoth inexorably
slouching its way towards the White House to officially launch the Trumpian Reich.
While the above is true, I hope most folks understand that the basic concept of controlling
people through fear is nothing new. The much vaunted constitution was crammed down our collective
throats by the rich scoundrels of the time in the words of more than one anti-federalist through
the conjuring of quite a set of threats, all bogus.
I address my most fervent prayer to prevent our adopting a system destructive to liberty
We are told there are dangers, but those dangers are ideal; they cannot be demonstrated.
- Patrick Henry, Foreign Wars, Civil Wars, and Indian Wars -- Three Bugbears, June 5, 7,
and 9, 1788
Bottom line: Concentrated wealth and power suck.The USA was ruled by a plutoligarchy from its
inception, and the material benefits we still enjoy have occurred not because of it but
despite it.
For today's goofy "right wing" big business "conservatives" who think the US won WW2, I got news
for you. Monopoly capitalism, complete with increasing centralization of the economy and political
forces were given boosts by both world wars.
It was precisely in reaction to their impending defeat at the hands of the competitive storms
of the market tha t business turned, increasingly after the 1900′s, to the federal government
for aid and protection. In short, the intervention by the federal government was designed,
not to curb big business monopoly for the sake of the public weal, but to create monopolies
that big business (as well as trade associations smaller business) had not been able
to establish amidst the competitive gales of the free market. Both Left and Right have been
persistently misled by the notion that intervention by the government is ipso facto leftish
and anti-business. Hence the mythology of the New-Fair Deal-as-Red that is endemic on the Right.
Both the big businessmen, led by the Morgan interests, and Professor Kolko almost uniquely
in the academic world, have realized that monopoly privilege can only be created by the
State and not as a result of free market operations.
-Murray N. Rothbard, Rothbard Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty, [Originally appeared
in Left and Right, Spring 1965, pp. 4-22.]
It was all about connecting the dots really. Connecting the dots of too many books I have gobe
through and videos I have seen. Too many to list here.
You can get a lot of info from the book 'Tragedy and Hope' by Carroll Quigley though he avoids
mantioning Jews and calls it the Anglo American establishment, Anthony Sutton however I completely
disagree about funding of the Third Reich but he does talk a lot about the secret relationship
between the USA and the USSR, Revilo Oliver etc.. etc Well you could read the Protocols. Now if
you think that the protocols was a forgery, you gotta see this, especially the last part.
Also check this out
Also check out what this Wall Street guy realised in his career.
Also this 911 firefighter, what he found out after some research
Capitalism is an economic system, which we have elevated to a social system. It only
has one fundamental value, exchange value, which isn't much of a value, at least not in terms
of organizing society or maintaining any sort of human culture or reverence for the natural
world it exists in. In capitalist society, everything, everyone, every object and sentient
being, every concept and human emotion, is worth exactly what the market will bear no more,
no less, than its market price. There is no other measure of value.
This looks like the "financialization" of society with Citizens morphing into Consumers.
And it's worth saying that Citizenship and Consumership are completely different concepts:
Citizenship – Dictionary.com
1. – the state of being vested with the rights, privileges, and duties of a citizen.
2. – the character of an individual viewed as a member of society;behavior in terms of the
duties, obligations, and functions of a citizen:
an award for good citizenship.
The Consumer – Dictionary.com
1. a person or thing that consumes.
2. Economics. a person or organization that uses a commodity or service.
A good citizen can then define themselves in a rather non-selfish, non-financial way as for
example, someone who respects others, contributes to local decisions (politically active), gains
respect through work and ethical standards etc.
A good consumer on the other hand, seems to be more a self-idea, essentially someone who buys
and consumes a lot (financial idea), has little political interest – and probably defines themselves
(and others) by how they spend money and what they own.
It's clear that US, and global capitalism, prefers active consumers over active citizens, and
maybe it explains why the US has such a worthless and dysfunctional political process.
Some folks are completely unable to connect the dots even when spoon fed the evidence. You'll
note that some, in risible displays of quasi-intellectual arrogance, make virtually impossible
demands for proof, none of which they'll ever accept. Rather, they flock to self aggrandizing
mythology like flies to fresh sewage which the plutoligarchy produces nearly infinitely.
Your observations appear pretty accurate and self justifying I'd say.
Look up the film director Aaron Russo (recently deceased), discussing how David Rockefeller
tried to bring him over to the dark side. Rockefeller discussed for example the women's movement,
its engineering. Also, there's Aldous Huxley's speech The Ultimate Revolution, on how drugs are
the final solution to rabble troubles–we will think we're happy even in the most appalling societal
conditions.
I can only say Beware of Zinn, best friend of Chomsky, endlessly tauted by shysters like Amy
Goodman and Counterpunch. Like all liberal gatekeepers, he wouldn't touch 911. I saw him speak
not long before he died, and when questioned on this he said, 'That was a long time ago, let's
talk about now.'
This from a professed historian, and it was only 7 years after 911. He seemed to have the same
old Jewish agenda, make Europeans look really bad at all times. He was always on message, like
the shyster Chomsky. Sincerely probing for the truth was not part of his agenda; his truths were
highly selective, and such a colossal event as 911 concerned him not at all, with the ensuing
wars, Patriot Acts, bullshit war on Terror, etc etc
" capitalism has no interest in racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, or any other despotic
values (though it has no problem working with these values when they serve its broader strategic
purposes). Capitalism is an economic system, which we have elevated to a social system."
This is a typical Left Lie. Capitalism in its present internationalist phase absolutely requires
Anti-Racism to lubricate sales uh, internationally and domestically. We are all Equal.
Then, the ticking-off of the rest of the bad isms, and labeling them 'despotic' is another
Leftwing and poetic attack on more or less all of us white folks, who have largely invented Capitalism,
from a racialist point of view.
"Poetic" because it is an emotional appeal, not a rational argument. The other 'despotisms'
are not despotic, unless you claim, like I do that racial personalities are more, or less despotic,
with Whites being the least despotic. The Left totalitarian thinks emotional despotism's source
is political or statist. It are not. However, Capitalism has been far less despotic than communism,
etc.
Emotional Despotism is part of who Homo Sapiens is, and this emotional despotism is not racially
equal. Whites are the least despotic, and have organized law and rules to contain such despotism.
Systems arise naturally from the Human Condition, like it or not. The attempt here is to sully
the Capitalist system, and that is all it is. This article itself is despotic propaganda.
Arguably, human nature is despotic, and White civilization has attempted to limit our despotic
nature.
This is another story.
As for elevating capitalism into a 'social system' .this is somewhat true. However, that is
not totally bad, as capitalism delivers the goods, which is the first thing, after getting out
of bed.
The second thing, is having a conformable social environment, and that is where racial accord
enters.
People want familiar and trustworthy people around them and that is just the way human nature
is genetic similarity, etc.
Beyond that, the various Leftie complaints-without-end, are also just the way it is. And yes
they can be addressed and ameliorated to some degree, but human nature is not a System to be manipulated,
even thought the current crop of scientistic lefties talk a good storyline about epigenetics and
other Hopes, false of course, like communist planning which makes its first priority, Social Change
which is always despotic. Society takes care of itself, especially racial society.
As Senator Vail said about the 1924 Immigration Act which held the line against Immigration,
"if there is going to be any changing being done, we will do it and nobody else." That 'we' was
a White we.
Capitalism must be national. International capital is tyranny.
US oil companies make about five cents off a single gallon of gasoline, on the other hand US
Big Government taxes on a single gallon are around seventy-one cents for US states & rising, the
tax is now $1.00 per gallon for CA.
IOW, greedy US governments make fourteen to twenty times what oil companies make, and it is
the oil companies who make & deliver the vital product to the marketplace.
And that is just in the US. Have a look at Europe's taxes. My, my.
Some agendas require the "state sponsored" part to be hidden.
That is part of the reason why the constitutional convention was held in secret as well.
The cunning connivers who ram government down our throats don't like their designs exposed,
and it's an old trick which nearly always works.
Here's Aristophanes on the subject. His play is worth a read. Short and great satire on the
politicians of the day.
SAUSAGE-SELLER
No, Cleon, little you care for his reigning in Arcadia, it's to pillage and impose on the
allies at will that you reckon; y ou wish the war to conceal your rogueries as in a mist,
that Demos may see nothing of them, and harassed by cares, may only depend on yourself for
his bread. But if ever peace is restored to him, if ever he returns to his lands to comfort
himself once more with good cakes, to greet his cherished olives, he will know the blessings
you have kept him out of, even though paying him a salary; and, filled with hatred and rage,
he will rise, burning with desire to vote against you. You know this only too well; it is
for this you rock him to sleep with your lies.
The first loyalty of jews is supposed to be to jews.
Norman Finkelstein is called a traitor by jews, the Dutch jew Hamburger is called a traitor
by Dutch jews, he's the chairman of 'Een ander joodse geluid', best translated by 'another jewish
opinion', the organisation criticises Israel.
Jewish involvement in Sept 11 seems probable, the 'dancing Israelis', the assertion that most
jews working in the Twin Towers at the time were either sick or took a day off, the fact that
the Towers were jewish property, ready for a costly demolition, much abestos in the buildings,
thus the 'terrorist' act brought a great profit.
Can one expect a jew to expose things like this ?
On his book, I did not find inconsistencies with literature I already knew.
The merit of the book is listing many events that affected common people in the USA, and destroying
the myth that 'in the USA who is poor has only himself to blame'.
This nonsense becomes clear even from the diaries of Harold L Ickes, or from Jonathan Raban
Bad Land, 1997.
As for Zinn's criticism of the adored USA constitution, I read that Charles A Beard already
in 1919 resigned because he also criticised this constitution.
Indeed, in our countries about half the national income goes to the governments by taxes, this
is the reason a country like Denmark is the best country to live in.
"... Faced with this mess, the obituarists for neoliberalism are out again. Some I recognise from 2008 - the definition of a left-wing economist being one who has spotted ten out of the last two crises of capitalism. Others have joined them, perhaps spurred on by the Brexit vote, or the rise of Donald Trump or the nice-sounding promises made by Theresa May. ..."
"... This is where, I think, we need to pay close attention to a key dimension of neoliberalism, which I focus on at length in this book, namely competition. One of my central arguments here is that neoliberalism is not simply reducible to 'market fundamentalism', even if there are areas (such as financial markets) where markets have manifestly attained greater reach and power since the mid1970s. Instead, the neoliberal state takes the principle of competition and the ethos of competitiveness (which historically have been found in and around markets), and seeks to reorganise society around them. Quite how competition and competitiveness are defined and politically instituted is a matter for historical and theoretical exploration, which is partly what The Limits of Neoliberalism seeks to do. But at the bare minimum, organising social relations in terms of competition' means that individuals, organisations, cities, regions and nations are to be tested in terms of their capacity to out-do each other. Not only that, but the tests must be considered fair in some way, if the resulting inequalities are to be recognised as legitimate. When applied to individuals, this ideology is often known as 'meritocracy'. ..."
"... Under these neoliberal conditions, remorse becomes directed inwards, producing the depressive psychological effect (or what Freud termed 'melancholia') whereby people search inside themselves for the source of their own unhappiness and imperfect lives (Davies, 2015). Viewed from within the cultural logic of neoliberalism, uncompetitive regions, individuals or communities are not just 'left behind by globalisation', but are discovered to be inferior in comparison to their rivals, just like the contestants ejected from a talent show. Rising household indebtedness compounds this process for those living in financial precarity, by forcing individuals to pay for their own past errors, illness or sheer bad luck ..."
"... Hardship itself doesn't necessarily lead to the hopelessness and fury of which Donald Trump seemingly speaks. But when hardship feels both permanent and undeserved, the psychological appeal of demagogues promising to divert blame elsewhere, be it towards Muslims, 'experts', immigrants, the Chinese, Brussels or wherever, becomes irresistible. Seemingly irrational or even nihilistic popular upheavals make some sense, if understood in terms of the relief they offer for those who have felt trapped by their own impotence for too long, with nobody available to blame but themselves. ..."
"... Statistical studies have shown how societies such as Britain and the United States have become afflicted by often inexplicable rising mortality rates amongst the white working class, connected partly to rising suicide rates, alcohol and drug abuse (Dorling, 2016). The Washington Post identified close geographic correlations between this trend and support for Donald Trump (Guo, 2016). In sum, a moral-economic system aimed at identifying and empowering the most competitive people, institutions and places has become targeted, rationally or otherwise, by the vast number of people, institutions and places that have suffered not only the pain of defeat but the punishment of defeat for far too long. ..."
"... The re-emergence of national borders as obstacles to the flow r of goods, finance, services and above all people, represents at least an interruption in the vision of globalisation that accompanied the heyday of neoliberal policy making between 1989-2008. If events such as Brexit signal the first step towards greater national mercantilism and protectionism, then we may be witnessing far more profound transformations in our model of political economy, the consequences of which could become very ugly. ..."
"... Once governments (and publics) no longer view economics as the best test of optimal policies, then opportunities for post-liberal experimentation expand rapidly, with unpredictable and potentially frightening consequences. It was telling that, when the British Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, suggested in October 2016 that companies be compelled to publicly list their foreign workers, she defended this policy as a 'nudge'. ..."
"... The Limits of Neolibcralism is a piece of interpretive sociology. It starts from the recognition that neoliberalism rests on claims to legitimacy, which it is possible to imagine as valid, even for critics of this system. Inspired by Luc Boltanski, the book assumes that political-economic systems typically need to offer certain limited forms of hope, excitement and fairness in order to survive, and cannot operate via domination and exploitation alone. ..."
"... The attempt to reduce all of human life to economic calculation runs up against limits. A political rationality that fails to recognise politics as a distinctive sphere of human existence was always going to be dumbfounded, once that sphere took on its own extra-economic life. As Bob Dylan sang to Mr Jones, so one might now say to neoliberal intellectuals or technocrats: 'something is happening here, but you don't know what it is'. ..."
The crash has sharpened the central contradiction in neoliberal economics: it has become
purely a system that rewards dead money even while it fails to create new money. No ideology
can survive unless it has something to offer the young and the almost young. You cant keep
winning elections if you cant promise reasonable jobs, wage rises, affordable groceries and
housing. Put another way, you can have neoliberalism but you cant have democratic validity.
This is the contradiction over which mainstream politicians wedded to neoliberalism - both
left and Right - keep stumbling. Where they can, they rely on the old tricks to get by:
operating party machinery, access to big money funders, consulting the manual of TV
presentability. But the formula isn't reliable, as the New Labour generation can tell you. And
where it can deliver majorities it doesn't confer legitimacy, as David Cameron and Hilary
Clinton now know.
Faced with this mess, the obituarists for neoliberalism are out again. Some I recognise
from 2008 - the definition of a left-wing economist being one who has spotted ten out of the
last two crises of capitalism. Others have joined them, perhaps spurred on by the Brexit vote,
or the rise of Donald Trump or the nice-sounding promises made by Theresa May.
I understand the thinking and I certainly get the thinking. But to imagine that an ideology
that has ruled Britain for longer than Yugoslavia was communist will now just fall apart is
sheer fantasy. It is to mistake word for deed, symbolism for policy. In Brexit Britain, not
much has changed yet except for rhetoric. The Treasury continues with its austerity programme;
the government presses on with its privatisations of whatever is left in public hands, from
social housing to the Green Investment Bank; the establishment still hankers after those grand
free-trade deals such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). True, there
is more talk now about those 'left behind' by globalization, but the very phrasing gives away
how shallow the concern is - this is your fault for not keeping up.
Besides, politics is never a simple test of logic. Winning or exercising power is not a
chess game. As Will Davies points out in this book, neoliberalism began as, and largely
remains, an elite project. What four decades of neoliberalism in practice have achieved is the
bulldozing of many sites of dissent. To see what I mean, visit any of the places in Britain
that have done worst out of it - from the North East to South Wales. The regional business
elites have nearly all died or fled to London. The trade unions are a shadow of their former
selves, as are the fierce tenants' associations. The universities are now largely anodyne. The
local newspapers are typically mere repositories of agency copy and local advertisements, while
the regional BBC studios have either shrunk or consolidated elsewhere. Without such civic
institutions there is no hope of building an alternative.
The answer to neoliberalism isn't another ideology. It certainly isn't a Mont Pelerin
Society of the Left, which would surely be as ghastly as it sounds. No, the answer is
democracy. Without that, we will continue with the same bankrupt ideology -- expecting failure,
and not being surprised or even angry' any more when it comes.
Adilya Chakrabortty
Senior Economics Commentator, The Guardian
Introduction
When exploring paradigm shifts in political economy, maybe it makes more sense to identify
how protracted crises were book-ended historically than to seek specific turning points.
Consider the crisis of Keynesianism, which provided the opening for the neoliberal take-over
and overhaul of economic policy, including those Thatcher and Reagan victories. 1968 was a
critical year, not only for the civic unrest that swept the world, but also for the early signs
that the US economy would be unable to sustain its role in the global financial system on which
Keynesian domestic policies depended. A slow-down in US productivity growth that year, combined
with the fiscal costs of an escalation of the Vietnam war, meant that the dollar started to
come under increased strain. The 'Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, with the dollar
(convertible to gold) at its centre, struggled on for another five years, before being
abandoned under Richard Nixon.
It was a further three years before the final death-knell of Keynesianism was sounded, most
loudly in Britain. In 1976, Britain's Labour government had to turn to the IMF for a loan, and
agreed to adopt a new monetarist, neoliberal strategy for restoring the public finances. That
September, Jim Callaghan, the leader of the Labour Party, famously addressed his party
conference with the words:
... ... ...
In one sense, the 'book-ends' of this recent crisis are the inverse of the ones that killed
Keynesianism. 1968 was a year of political and civic uprisings, under circumstances of rising
prosperity and a still relatively coherent paradigm for economic policy making, albeit one that
was showing early signs of deterioration. It was a public and political crisis, which posed a
threat to a society of rising prosperity and falling inequality. The technical failings of
Keynesianism only really emerged subsequently, before snowballing to the point where the
macroeconomic paradigm could simply not be sustained any longer.
The crisis of neoliberalism has reversed this ordering. 2008 was an implosion of technical
capabilities on the part of banks and financial regulators, which was largely unaccompanied by
any major political or civic eruption, at least until the consequences were felt in terms of
public sector cuts that accelerated after 2010, especially in Southern Europe. The economic
crisis was spookily isolated from any accompanying political crisis, at least in the beginning.
The eruptions of 2016 therefore represented the long-awaited politicisation and publicisation
of a crisis that, until then, had been largely dealt with by the same cadre of experts whose
errors had caused it in the first place.
Faced with these largely unexpected events and the threat of more, politicians and media
pundits have declared that we now need to listen to those people 'left behind by globalisation.
Following the Brexit referendum, in her first speech as Prime Minister, Theresa May made a vow
to the less prosperous members of society, 'we will do everything we can to give you more
control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we'll think not of the powerful, but you.'
This awakening to the demands and voices of marginalised demographics may represent a new
recognition that economic policy cannot be wholly geared around the pursuit of 'national
competitiveness' in the global race', a pursuit that in practice meant seeking to prioritise
the interests of financial services and mobile capital. It signals mainstream political
acceptance that inequality cannot keep rising forever. But it is still rooted in a somewhat
economistic vision of politics, as if those people 'left behind by globalisation' simply want
more material wealth and 'opportunity', plus fewer immigrants competing for jobs. What this
doesn't do is engage with the distinctive political and cultural sociology of events such as
Brexit and Trump, which are fuelled by a spirit of rage, punishment and self-punishment, and
not simply by a desire to get a slightly larger slice of the pie.
This is where, I think, we need to pay close attention to a key dimension of
neoliberalism, which I focus on at length in this book, namely competition. One of my central
arguments here is that neoliberalism is not simply reducible to 'market fundamentalism', even
if there are areas (such as financial markets) where markets have manifestly attained greater
reach and power since the mid1970s. Instead, the neoliberal state takes the principle of
competition and the ethos of competitiveness (which historically have been found in and around
markets), and seeks to reorganise society around them. Quite how competition and
competitiveness are defined and politically instituted is a matter for historical and
theoretical exploration, which is partly what The Limits of Neoliberalism seeks to do. But at
the bare minimum, organising social relations in terms of competition' means that individuals,
organisations, cities, regions and nations are to be tested in terms of their capacity to
out-do each other. Not only that, but the tests must be considered fair in some way, if the
resulting inequalities are to be recognised as legitimate. When applied to individuals, this
ideology is often known as 'meritocracy'.
The appeal of this as a political template for society is that, according to its advocates,
it involves the discovery of brilliant ideas, more efficient business models, naturally
talented individuals, new urban visions, successful national strategies, potent entrepreneurs
and so on. Even if this is correct (and the work of Thomas Piketty on how wealth begets wealth
is enough to cast considerable doubt on it) there is a major defect: it consigns the majority
of people, places, businesses and institutions to the status of'losers'. The normative and
existential conventions of a neoliberal society stipulate that success and prowess are things
that are earned through desire, effort and innate ability, so long as social and economic
institutions are designed in such a way as to facilitate this. But the corollary of this is
that failure and weakness are also earned: when individuals and communities fail to succeed,
this is a reflection of inadequate talent or energy on their part.
This has been critically noted in how 'dependency' and 'welfare' have become matters of
shame since the conservative political ascendency of the 1980s. But this is just one example of
how a culture of obligatory competitiveness exerts a damaging moral psychology, not only in how
people look down on others, but in how they look down on themselves. A culture which valorises
'winning' and 'competitiveness' above all else provides few sources of security or comfort,
even to those doing reasonably well. Everyone could be doing better, and if they're not, they
have themselves to blame. The vision of society as a competitive game also suggests that anyone
could very quickly be doing worse.
Under these neoliberal conditions, remorse becomes directed inwards, producing the
depressive psychological effect (or what Freud termed 'melancholia') whereby people search
inside themselves for the source of their own unhappiness and imperfect lives (Davies, 2015).
Viewed from within the cultural logic of neoliberalism, uncompetitive regions, individuals or
communities are not just 'left behind by globalisation', but are discovered to be inferior in
comparison to their rivals, just like the contestants ejected from a talent show. Rising
household indebtedness compounds this process for those living in financial precarity, by
forcing individuals to pay for their own past errors, illness or sheer bad luck (Davies,
Montgomerie 8t Wallin, 2015).
In order to understand political upheavals such as Brexit, we need to perform some
sociological interpretation. We need to consider that our socio-economic pathologies do not
simply consist in the fact that opportunity and wealth are hoarded by certain industries (such
as finance) or locales (such as London) or individuals (such as the children of the wealthy),
although all of these things are true. We need also to reflect on the cultural and
psychological implications of how this hoarding has been represented and justified over the
past four decades, namely that it reflects something about the underlying moral worth of
different populations and individuals.
Hardship itself doesn't necessarily lead to the hopelessness and fury of which Donald
Trump seemingly speaks. But when hardship feels both permanent and undeserved, the
psychological appeal of demagogues promising to divert blame elsewhere, be it towards Muslims,
'experts', immigrants, the Chinese, Brussels or wherever, becomes irresistible. Seemingly
irrational or even nihilistic popular upheavals make some sense, if understood in terms of the
relief they offer for those who have felt trapped by their own impotence for too long, with
nobody available to blame but themselves.
One psychological effect of this is authoritarian attitudes towards social deviance: Brexit
and Trump supporters both have an above-average tendency to support the death penalty, combined
with a belief that political authorities are too weak to enforce justice (Kaufman, 2016).
However, it is also clear that psychological and physical pain have become far more widespread
in neoliberal societies than has been noticed by most people. Statistical studies have
shown how societies such as Britain and the United States have become afflicted by often
inexplicable rising mortality rates amongst the white working class, connected partly to rising
suicide rates, alcohol and drug abuse (Dorling, 2016). The Washington Post identified close
geographic correlations between this trend and support for Donald Trump (Guo, 2016). In sum, a
moral-economic system aimed at identifying and empowering the most competitive people,
institutions and places has become targeted, rationally or otherwise, by the vast number of
people, institutions and places that have suffered not only the pain of defeat but the
punishment of defeat for far too long.
The question inevitably arises, is this thing called 'neoliberalism' now over? And if not,
when might it be and how would w r e know? In the UK, the prospect of Brexit
combined with the political priority of reducing immigration means that the efficient movement
of capital (together with that of labour) is being consciously impeded in a w r ay
that would have been unthinkable during the 1990s and early 2000s. The re-emergence of
national borders as obstacles to the flow r of goods, finance, services and above
all people, represents at least an interruption in the vision of globalisation that accompanied
the heyday of neoliberal policy making between 1989-2008. If events such as Brexit signal the
first step towards greater national mercantilism and protectionism, then we may be witnessing
far more profound transformations in our model of political economy, the consequences of which
could become very ugly.
Before we reach that point, it is already possible to identify a reorientation of national
economic policy making away from some core tenets of neoliberal doctrine. One of the main case
studies of this book is antitrust law and policy, which has been a preoccupation for neoliberal
intellectuals, reformers and lawyers ever since the 1930s. The rise of the Chicago School view
of competition (which effectively granted far greater legal rights to monopolists, while also
being tougher on cartels) in the American legal establishment from the 1970s onwards, later
repeated in the European Commission, meant that market regulation became a more expert,
esoteric and ostensibly non-political means of power. One of the ideals of neoliberal scholars,
both in the Austrian tradition of Friedrich Hayek and the Chicago School of Milton Friedman,
was that the economic 'rules of the game' be established beyond the reach of democratic
politics, where they might be manipulated to suit particular short-sighted intellectual, social
or political agendas. Independent central banks are one of the more prominent examples of this,
but the establishment of rational, apolitical and European-wide antitrust and state aid rules
would be another.
As I explore in Chapter 5, the banking crisis caused some immediate damage to this vision of
apolitical, permanent rules of competitive economic activity. The need to rescue the financial
system at all costs saw EU state aid rules being overlooked, at least for a few months,
suggesting that neoliberalism entered a state of'exception where the state took rapid executive
decisions, wherever they were deemed necessary. Takeover rules were suspended to allow banks to
buy failing competitors, again on the basis that this was necessary to secure the existential
viability of the economy as such. But as is common in the state of 'exception, this was all
done to preserve the status quo on the basis that an emergency had struck. It wasn't done with
the aim of transforming the economic paradigm.
While anti-trust and state aid are only one small area of European Commission powers, they
are symbolically very important. Competition regulations represent the normative ideal of the
marketplace, which - in the case of post-war Europe - is imagined as an international, even
post-national space of freedom, transcending cultural, linguistic and political differences.
The liberal vision of cosmopolitan Europe becomes realised in economic institutions such as the
single currency, but also the rules that govern market competitors. For these reasons,
Britain's post-Brexit opportunity to withdraw from European anti-trust and state-aid
regulations is symbolic of the new post-liberal or post-neoliberal era that is emerging.
Already, Theresa May has used her first few speeches as UK Prime Minister to push for a more
interventionist state, that seeks to shape economic outcomes around national, political and
social priorities (a reduction of immigration above all else) no doubt mindful of the fact that
the British state will soon have far more discretion to do this, once it is no longer bound by
state aid rules.
At the time of writing, the odds are against Trump becoming President of the United States,
though one lesson of 2016 is not to be too confident regarding political odds. This means that
the prospect of the United States abandoning its
... ... ...
The rise of behavioural economics, for example, represents an attempt to preserve a form of
market rationality in the face of crisis, by incorporating expertise provided by psychologists
and neuroscientists. A form of 'neo-communitarianism' emerges, which takes seriously the role
of relationships, environmental conditioning and empathy in the construction of independent,
responsible subjects. This remains an economists logic, inasmuch as it prepares people to live
efficient, productive, competitive lives. But by bringing culture, community and contingency
within the bounds of neoliberal rationality, one might see things like behavioural economics or
'social neuroscience and so on as early symptoms of a genuinely post-liberal politics. Once
governments (and publics) no longer view economics as the best test of optimal policies, then
opportunities for post-liberal experimentation expand rapidly, with unpredictable and
potentially frightening consequences. It was telling that, when the British Home Secretary,
Amber Rudd, suggested in October 2016 that companies be compelled to publicly list their
foreign workers, she defended this policy as a 'nudge'.
The Limits of Neolibcralism is a piece of interpretive sociology. It starts from the
recognition that neoliberalism rests on claims to legitimacy, which it is possible to imagine
as valid, even for critics of this system. Inspired by Luc Boltanski, the book assumes that
political-economic systems typically need to offer certain limited forms of hope, excitement
and fairness in order to survive, and cannot operate via domination and exploitation
alone.
For similar reasons, we might soon find that we miss some of the normative and political
dimensions of neoliberalism, for example the internationalism that the EU was founded to
promote and the cosmopolitanism that competitive markets sometimes inculcate. There may be some
elements of neoliberalism that critics and activists need to grasp, refashion and defend,
rather than to simply denounce: this books Afterword offers some ideas of what this might mean.
But if the book is to be read in a truly post-neoliberal world, I hope that in its interpretive
aspirations, it helps to explain what was internally and normatively coherent about the
political economy known as 'neoliberalism', but also why the system really had no account of
its own preconditions or how to preserve them adequately.
The attempt to reduce all of human life to economic calculation runs up against limits.
A political rationality that fails to recognise politics as a distinctive sphere of human
existence was always going to be dumbfounded, once that sphere took on its own extra-economic
life. As Bob Dylan sang to Mr Jones, so one might now say to neoliberal intellectuals or
technocrats: 'something is happening here, but you don't know what it is'.
"... Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook. ..."
"... No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that. ..."
"... a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without ..."
"... Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'. ..."
"... A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and independence movements. ..."
"... "Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s), that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run brainwashing factories. ..."
Well all right, let's review what happened, or at least the official version of what
happened. Not Hillary Clinton's version of what happened, which Jeffrey St. Clair so
incisively skewered , but the Corporatocracy's version of what happened, which overlaps
with but is even more ridiculous than Clinton's ridiculous version. To do that, we need to
harken back to the peaceful Summer of 2016, (a/k/a the
"Summer of Fear" ), when the United States of America was still a shiny city upon a hill
whose beacon light guided freedom-loving people, the Nazis were still just a bunch of ass
clowns meeting in each other's mother's garages, and Russia was, well Russia was Russia.
Back then, as I'm sure you'll recall, Western democracy, was still primarily being menaced
by the lone
wolf terrorists, for absolutely no conceivable reason, apart from the terrorists' fanatical
desire to brutally murder all non-believers. The global Russo-Nazi Axis had not yet reared its
ugly head. President Obama, who, during his tenure, had single-handedly restored America to the
peaceful, prosperous, progressive paradise it had been before George W. Bush screwed it up, was
on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon slow
jamming home the TPP . The Wall Street banks had risen from the ashes of the 2008 financial
crisis, and were buying back all the foreclosed homes of the people they had fleeced with
subprime mortgages. American workers were enjoying the freedom and flexibility of the new gig
economy. Electioneering in the United States was underway, but it was early days. It was
already clear that Donald Trump was literally
the Second Coming of Hitler , but no one was terribly worried about him yet. The Republican
Party was in a shambles. Neither Trump nor any of the other contenders had any chance of
winning in November. Nor did Sanders, who had been defeated, fair and square, in the Democratic
primaries, mostly because of
his racist statements and crazy, quasi-Communist ideas. Basically, everything was hunky
dory. Yes, it was going to be terribly sad to have to bid farewell to Obama, who had bailed out
all those bankrupt Americans the Wall Street banks had taken to the cleaners, ended all of Bush
and Cheney's wars, closed down Guantanamo, and just generally served as a multicultural messiah
figure to affluent consumers throughout the free world, but Hope-and-Change was going to
continue. The talking heads were all in agreement Hillary Clinton was going to be President,
and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Little did we know at the time that an epidemic of Russo-Nazism had been festering just
beneath the surface of freedom-loving Western societies like some neo-fascist sebaceous cyst.
Apparently, millions of theretofore more or less normal citizens throughout the West had been
infected with a virulent strain of Russo-Nazi-engineered virus, because they simultaneously
began exhibiting the hallmark symptoms of what we now know as White Supremacist Behavioral
Disorder, or Fascist Oppositional Disorder (the folks who update the DSM are still arguing over
the official name). It started with the Brexit referendum, spread to America with the election
of Trump, and there have been a rash of outbreaks in Europe, like
the one we're currently experiencing in Germany . These fascistic symptoms have mostly
manifest as people refusing to vote as instructed, and expressing oppressive views on the
Internet, but there have also been more serious crimes, including several assaults and murders
perpetrated by white supremacists (which, of course, never happened when Obama was President,
because the Nazis hadn't been "emboldened" yet).
Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of
fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with
neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire
with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with
supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by
corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or
the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced
with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a
simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is
its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural
values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch
together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook.
No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the
mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following
the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring
the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national
sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world
where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns
completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this
outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical
development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that.
This hypothetical leftist analysis might want to focus on how Capitalism is fundamentally
opposed to Despotism, and is essentially a value-decoding machine which renders everything and
everyone it touches essentially valueless interchangeable commodities whose worth is determined
by market forces, rather than by societies and cultures, or religions, or other despotic
systems (wherein values are established and enforced arbitrarily, by the despot, the church, or
the ruling party, or by a group of people who share an affinity and decide they want to live a
certain way). This is where it would get sort of tricky, because it (i.e., this hypothetical
analysis) would have to delve into the history of Capitalism, and how it evolved out of
medieval Despotism, and how it has been decoding despotic values for something like five
hundred years. This historical delving (which would probably be too long for people to read on
their phones) would demonstrate how Capitalism has been an essentially progressive force in
terms of getting us out of Despotism (which, for most folks, wasn't very much fun) by fomenting
bourgeois revolutions and imposing some semblance of democracy on societies. It would follow
Capitalism's inexorable advance all the way up to the Twentieth Century, in which its final
external ideological adversary, fake Communism, suddenly imploded, delivering us to the world
we now live in a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without
, and where any opposition to that global ideology can only be internal, or insurgent, in
nature (e.g, terrorism, extremism, and so on). Being a hypothetical leftist analysis,
it would, at this point, need to stress that, despite the fact that Capitalism helped deliver
us from Despotism, and improved the state of society generally (compared to most societies that
preceded it), we nonetheless would like to transcend it, or evolve out of it toward some type
of society where people, and everything else, including the biosphere we live in, are not
interchangeable, valueless commodities exchanged by members of a global corporatocracy who have
no essential values, or beliefs, or principles, other than the worship of money. After having
covered all that, we might want to offer more a nuanced view of the current neo-nationalist
reaction to the Corporatocracy's ongoing efforts to restructure and privatize the rest of the
planet. Not that we would support this reaction, or in any way refrain from calling
neo-nationalism what it is (i.e., reactionary, despotic, and doomed), but this nuanced view
we'd hypothetically offer, by analyzing the larger sociopolitical and historical forces at
play, might help us to see the way forward more clearly, and who knows, maybe eventually
propose some kind of credible leftist alternative to the "global neoliberalism vs.
neo-nationalism" double bind we appear to be hopelessly stuck in at the moment.
Luckily, we don't have to do that (i.e., articulate such a leftist analysis of any such
larger historical forces). Because there is no corporatocracy not really. That's just a fake
word the Russians made up and are spreading around on the Internet to distract us while the
Nazis take over. No, the logical explanation for Trump, Brexit, and anything else that
threatens the expansion of global Capitalism, and the freedom, democracy, and prosperity it
offers, is that millions of people across the world, all at once, for no apparent reason, woke
up one day full-blown fascists and started looking around for repulsive demagogues to swear
fanatical allegiance to. Yes, that makes a lot more sense than all that complicated stuff about
history and hegemonic ideological systems, which is probably just Russian propaganda anyway, in
which case there is absolutely no reason to read any boring year-old pieces, like this one in TheEuropeanFinancialReview , or this report by
Corporate Watch , from way back in the year 2000, about the rise of global corporate
power.
So, apologies for wasting your time with all that pseudo-Marxian gobbledygook. Let's just
pretend this never happened, and get back to more important matters, like statistically proving
that Donald Trump got elected President because of racism, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia,
or some other type of behavioral disorder, and pulling down Confederate statues, or kneeling
during the National Anthem, or whatever happens to be trending this week. Oh, yeah, and
debating punching Nazis, or people wearing MAGA hats. We definitely need to sort all that out
before we can move ahead with helping the Corporatocracy remove Trump from office, or at least
ensure he remains surrounded by their loyal generals, CEOs, and Goldman Sachs guys until the
next election. Whatever we do, let's not get distracted by that stuff I just distracted you
with. I know, it's tempting, but, given what's at stake, we need to maintain our laser focus on
issues related to identity politics, or else well, you know, the Nazis win.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in
Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing
(USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Yesterday evening on RT a USA lady, as usual forgot the name, spoke about the USA. In a
matter of fact tone she said things like 'they (Deep State) have got him (Trump) in the
box'.
They, Deep State again, are now wondering if they will continue to try to control the
world, or if they should stop the attempt, and retreat into the USA.
Also as matter of fact she said 'the CIA has always been the instrument of Deep State, from
Kenndy to Nine Eleven'.
Another statement was 'no president ever was in control'.
How USA citizens continue to believe they live in a democracy, I cannot understand.
Yesterday the intentions of the new Dutch government were made public, alas most Dutch
also dot not see that the Netherlands since 2005 no longer is a democracy, just a province of
Brussels.
Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting
stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'.
No doubt many do want their country back, but what concerns me is that all of a sudden we
have the concept of "independence" plastered all over the place. Such concepts don't get
promoted unless the ruling elites see ways to turn those sentiments to their favor.
A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted
and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and
independence movements. (And everything else.)
"Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s),
that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the
US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run
brainwashing factories.
"Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of
fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with
neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire
with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with
supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by
corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything,
or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and
replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which
is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because
exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their
eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer
brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on
Facebook."
Very impressed with this article, never really paid attention to CJ's articles but that is
now changing!
Chris Hedges, who is doubtless a courageous journalist and an intelligent commentator, suggests
that if we are to discuss the anti-Russia campaign realistically, as baseless in fact, and as
contrived for an effect and to further/protect some particular interests, we can hardly avoid the
question: Who or what interest is served by the anti-Russia campaign?
An interesting observation "The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political
party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid
for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of
the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out."
The other relevant observation is that there is no American left. It was destroyed as a
political movement. The USA is a right wing country.
Notable quotes:
"... This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. ..."
"... It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. ..."
"... The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. ..."
"... Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. ..."
"... The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. ..."
"... These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. ..."
"... The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. ..."
"... The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the "left." ..."
"... Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left -- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. ..."
"... For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. ..."
"... The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. ..."
"... The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You won't get grants. ..."
"... The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! ..."
"... Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. ..."
But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It's really premised
on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these
emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn't make
any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where
I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.
This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic
Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their
policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of
color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union
jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour.
It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the
1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of
the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation,
a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations.
It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the
right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they
have done to the country.
Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities,
where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over
three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control.
They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population
that becomes restive.
The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face
its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault
on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our
economy and our democratic institutions.
Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why
they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without
Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn't actually function
as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations
arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or
the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile
political theater.
These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political
process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.
... ... ...
DN: Let's come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability
to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various
intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation
of this?
CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business
of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They
speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat
what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable
news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue
streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on
"Celebrity Apprentice," has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity,
meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying,
racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused
by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.
I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq
War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby,
Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story
the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can't
go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming
the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any
rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie.
The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or
Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies
the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and
one the paper has never faced.
DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who
pitch it to them.
CH: It's not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA The CIA wasn't buying the
"weapons of mass destruction" hysteria.
DN: It goes the other way too?
CH: Sure. Because if you're trying to have access to a senior official, you'll constantly be putting
in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see
you, it's usually because they have something to sell you.
DN: The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself
as the "left."
CH: Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left --
not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories,
that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate
and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the
rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom
of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease.
If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this
cartoonish vision of politics.
The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements
under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor
movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged
the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated
capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France.
There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon.
But here we almost have to begin from scratch.
I've battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they're kind of poster children
for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis.
We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already
hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient
organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down.
So Trump's not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with
people who consider themselves part of the left.
The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique.
You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You
won't get grants. The New York Times , if they review your book, will turn it over to a
dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it -- as he did with my last book. The elite schools,
and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate
the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much
less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly
stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates
of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!
Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they
run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual,
cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these
people: traitors.
"... Mirowski identifies three basic aspects of neoliberalism that the Left has failed to understand: the movement's intellectual history, the way it has transformed everyday life, and what constitutes opposition to it. Until we come to terms with them, Mirowski suggests, right-wing movements such as the Tea Party (a prominent player in the book) will continue to reign triumphant. ..."
"... Joining a long line of thinkers, most famously Karl Polanyi, Mirowski insists that a key error of the Left has been its failure to see that markets are always embedded in other social institutions. Neoliberals, by contrast, grasp this point with both hands -- and therefore seek to reshape all of the institutions of society, including and especially the state, to promote markets. Neoliberal ascendancy has meant not the retreat of the state so much as its remaking. ..."
"... he also recognizes that the neoliberals themselves have been canny about keeping the real nature of their project hidden through a variety of means. Neoliberal institutions tend to have what he calls a "Russian doll" structure, with the most central ones well hidden from public eyes. Mirowski coins an ironic expression, "the Neoliberal Thought Collective," for the innermost entities that formulate the movement's doctrine. The venerable Mont Pelerin Society is an NTC institution. Its ideas are frequently disseminated through venues which, formally at least, are unconnected to the center, such as academic economics departments. Thus, neoclassical economists spread the gospel of the free market while the grand project of remaking the state falls to others. ..."
"... At the same time as neoliberal commonsense trickles down from above, Mirowski argues that it also wells up from below, reinforced by our daily patterns of life. Social networking sites like Facebook encourage people to view themselves as perpetual cultural entrepreneurs, striving to offer a newer and better version of themselves to the world. Sites like LinkedIn prod their users to present themselves as a fungible basket of skills, adjustable to the needs of any employer, without any essential characteristics beyond a requisite subservience. Classical liberalism always assumes the coherent individual self as its basic unit. Neoliberalism, by contrast, sees people as little more than variable bundles of human capital, with no permanent interests or even attributes that cannot be remade through the market. For Mirowski, the proliferation of these forms of everyday neoliberalism constitute a "major reason the neoliberals have emerged from the crisis triumphant." ..."
"... Finally, Mirowski argues that the Left has too often been sucked in by neoliberalism's loyal opposition. Figures like Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman, while critical of austerity and supportive of the welfare state, accept the fundamental neoclassical economic precepts at the heart of neoliberal policy. Mirowski argues that we must ditch this tradition in its entirety. Even attempts to render its assumptions more realistic -- as in the case of behavioral economics, for example, which takes account of the ways real people diverge from the hyperrationality of homo economicus -- provide little succor for those seeking to overturn the neoliberals. ..."
"... Mirowski's insistence on the centrality of the state to the neoliberal project helps correct the unfortunate tendency of many leftists over the past decade to assent to neoliberal nostrums about the obsolescence of the state. Indeed, Mirowski goes further than many other critics who have challenged the supposed retreat of the state under neoliberalism. ..."
"... Loďc Wacquant, for instance, has described the "centaur state" of neoliberalism, in which a humanist liberalism reigns for the upper classes, while the lower classes face the punitive state apparatus in all its bestiality. ..."
"... Mirowski shows us that the world of the rich under neoliberalism in no way corresponds to the laissez-faire of classical liberalism. The state does not so much leave the rich alone as actively work to reshape the world in their interests, helping to create markets for the derivatives and securities that made (and then destroyed) so many of the fortunes of the recent past. The neoliberal state is an eminently interventionist one, and those mistaking it for the austere nightwatchman of libertarian utopianism have little hope of combating it. ..."
"... Mirowski's concern to disabuse his readers of the notion that the wing of neoliberal doctrine disseminated by neoclassical economists could ever be reformed produces some of the best sections of the book. His portrait of an economics profession in haggard disarray in the aftermath of the crisis is both comic and tragic, as the amusement value of the buffoonery on display diminishes quickly when one realizes the prestige still accorded to these figures. Reading his comprehensive examination of the discipline's response to the crisis, one is reminded of Freud's famous broken kettle. The professional economists' account of their role in the crisis went something like (a) there was no bubble and (b) bubbles are impossible to predict but (c) we knew it was a bubble all along. ..."
"... Though Krugman and Stiglitz have attacked concepts like the efficient markets hypothesis (which holds that prices in a competitive financial market reflect all relevant economic information), Mirowski argues that their attempt to do so while retaining the basic theoretical architecture of neoclassicism has rendered them doubly ineffective. ..."
"... First, their adoption of the battery of assumptions that accompany most neoclassical theorizing -- about representative agents, treating information like any other commodity, and so on -- make it nearly impossible to conclusively rebut arguments like the efficient markets hypothesis. ..."
To understand how a body of thought became an era of capitalism requires more than intellectual
history.
"What is going to come after neoliberalism?" It was the question on many radicals' lips, present
writer included, after the financial crisis hit in 2008. Though few were so sanguine about our prospects
as to repeat the suicidal optimism of previous radical movements ("After Hitler, Our Turn!"), the
feeling of the day was that the era of unfettered marketization was coming to a close. A new period
of what was loosely referred to as Keynesianism would be the inevitable result of a crisis caused
by markets run amok.
Five years later, little has changed. What comes after neoliberalism? More neoliberalism, apparently.
The prospects for a revived Left capable of confronting it appear grim.
Enter Philip Mirowski's Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived
the Financial Meltdown . Mirowski maintains that the true nature of neoliberalism has gone
unrecognized by its would-be critics, allowing the doctrine to flourish even in conditions, such
as a massive financial crisis, that would seem to be inimical to its survival. Leftists keep busy
tilting at the windmill of deregulation as the giants of neoliberalism go on pillaging unmolested.
Mirowski identifies three basic aspects of neoliberalism that the Left has failed to understand:
the movement's intellectual history, the way it has transformed everyday life, and what constitutes
opposition to it. Until we come to terms with them, Mirowski suggests, right-wing movements such
as the Tea Party (a prominent player in the book) will continue to reign triumphant.
The book begins with the war of ideas -- a conflict in which, Mirowski argues, the Left has been
far too generous in taking neoliberals at their word, or at least their best-publicized word. We
have, in effect, been suckered by kindly old Milton Friedman telling us how much better off we'd
all be if the government simply left us "free to choose." But neoliberals have at times been forthright
about their appreciation for the uses of state power. Markets, after all, do not simply create themselves.
Joining a long line of thinkers, most famously Karl Polanyi, Mirowski insists that a key error
of the Left has been its failure to see that markets are always embedded in other social institutions.
Neoliberals, by contrast, grasp this point with both hands -- and therefore seek to reshape all of
the institutions of society, including and especially the state, to promote markets. Neoliberal ascendancy
has meant not the retreat of the state so much as its remaking.
If Mirowski is often acidic about the Left's failure to understand this point, he also recognizes
that the neoliberals themselves have been canny about keeping the real nature of their project hidden
through a variety of means. Neoliberal institutions tend to have what he calls a "Russian doll" structure,
with the most central ones well hidden from public eyes. Mirowski coins an ironic expression, "the
Neoliberal Thought Collective," for the innermost entities that formulate the movement's doctrine.
The venerable Mont Pelerin Society is an NTC institution. Its ideas are frequently disseminated through
venues which, formally at least, are unconnected to the center, such as academic economics departments.
Thus, neoclassical economists spread the gospel of the free market while the grand project of remaking
the state falls to others.
At the same time as neoliberal commonsense trickles down from above, Mirowski argues that
it also wells up from below, reinforced by our daily patterns of life. Social networking sites like
Facebook encourage people to view themselves as perpetual cultural entrepreneurs, striving to offer
a newer and better version of themselves to the world. Sites like LinkedIn prod their users to present
themselves as a fungible basket of skills, adjustable to the needs of any employer, without any essential
characteristics beyond a requisite subservience. Classical liberalism always assumes the coherent
individual self as its basic unit. Neoliberalism, by contrast, sees people as little more than variable
bundles of human capital, with no permanent interests or even attributes that cannot be remade through
the market. For Mirowski, the proliferation of these forms of everyday neoliberalism constitute a
"major reason the neoliberals have emerged from the crisis triumphant."
Finally, Mirowski argues that the Left has too often been sucked in by neoliberalism's loyal
opposition. Figures like Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman, while critical of austerity and supportive
of the welfare state, accept the fundamental neoclassical economic precepts at the heart of neoliberal
policy. Mirowski argues that we must ditch this tradition in its entirety. Even attempts to render
its assumptions more realistic -- as in the case of behavioral economics, for example, which takes
account of the ways real people diverge from the hyperrationality of homo economicus -- provide
little succor for those seeking to overturn the neoliberals.
For Mirowski, these three failures of the Left go a long way toward explaining how neoliberals
have largely escaped blame for a crisis they created. The Left persistently goes after phantoms like
deregulation or smaller government, which neoliberals easily parry by pointing out that the regulatory
apparatus has never been bigger. At the same time, we ignore the deep roots of neoliberal ideology
in everyday life, deceiving ourselves as to the scale of the task in front of us.
Whatever criticisms of Mirowski's analysis are in order, much of it is compelling, particularly
in regard to the intellectual history of the NTC. Mirowski's insistence on the centrality of
the state to the neoliberal project helps correct the unfortunate tendency of many leftists over
the past decade to assent to neoliberal nostrums about the obsolescence of the state. Indeed, Mirowski
goes further than many other critics who have challenged the supposed retreat of the state under
neoliberalism.
Loďc Wacquant, for instance, has described the "centaur state" of neoliberalism, in which
a humanist liberalism reigns for the upper classes, while the lower classes face the punitive state
apparatus in all its bestiality. But Mirowski shows us that the world of the rich under
neoliberalism in no way corresponds to the laissez-faire of classical liberalism. The state does
not so much leave the rich alone as actively work to reshape the world in their interests, helping
to create markets for the derivatives and securities that made (and then destroyed) so many of the
fortunes of the recent past. The neoliberal state is an eminently interventionist one, and those
mistaking it for the austere nightwatchman of libertarian utopianism have little hope of combating
it.
It's here that we begin to see the strategic genius of neoliberal infrastructure, with its teams
of college economics professors teaching the wondrous efficacy of supply and demand on the one hand,
and the think tanks and policy shops engaged in the relentless pursuit of state power on the other.
The Left too often sees inconsistency where in fact there is a division of labor.
Mirowski's concern to disabuse his readers of the notion that the wing of neoliberal doctrine
disseminated by neoclassical economists could ever be reformed produces some of the best sections
of the book. His portrait of an economics profession in haggard disarray in the aftermath of the
crisis is both comic and tragic, as the amusement value of the buffoonery on display diminishes quickly
when one realizes the prestige still accorded to these figures. Reading his comprehensive examination
of the discipline's response to the crisis, one is reminded of Freud's famous broken kettle. The
professional economists' account of their role in the crisis went something like (a) there was no
bubble and (b) bubbles are impossible to predict but (c) we knew it was a bubble all along.
Incoherence notwithstanding, however, little in the discipline has changed in the wake of the
crisis. Mirowski thinks that this is at least in part a result of the impotence of the loyal opposition
-- those economists such as Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman who attempt to oppose the more viciously
neoliberal articulations of economic theory from within the camp of neoclassical economics. Though
Krugman and Stiglitz have attacked concepts like the efficient markets hypothesis (which holds that
prices in a competitive financial market reflect all relevant economic information), Mirowski argues
that their attempt to do so while retaining the basic theoretical architecture of neoclassicism has
rendered them doubly ineffective.
First, their adoption of the battery of assumptions that accompany most neoclassical theorizing
-- about representative agents, treating information like any other commodity, and so on -- make
it nearly impossible to conclusively rebut arguments like the efficient markets hypothesis.
Instead, they end up tinkering with it, introducing a nuance here or a qualification there. This
tinkering causes their arguments to be more or less ignored in neoclassical pedagogy, as economists
more favorably inclined toward hard neoliberal arguments can easily ignore such revisions and hold
that the basic thrust of the theory is still correct. Stiglitz's and Krugman's arguments, while receiving
circulation through the popular press, utterly fail to transform the discipline.
Mirowski also heaps scorn on the suggestion, sometimes made in leftist circles, that the problem
at the heart of neoclassical economics is its assumption of a hyperrational homo economicus
, relentlessly comparing equilibrium states and maximizing utility. Though such a revision may
be appealing to a certain radical romanticism, Mirowski shows that a good deal of work going on under
the label of behavioral economics has performed just this revision, and has come up with results
that don't differ substantively from those of the mainstream. The main problem with neoclassicism
isn't its theory of the human agent but rather its the theory of the market -- which is precisely
what behavioral economics isn't interested in contesting.
In all, Mirowski's indictment of the state of economic theory and its imbrication with the neoliberal
project is devastating. Unfortunately, he proves much less successful in explaining why
things have turned out as they have. The book ascribes tremendous power to the Neoliberal Thought
Collective, which somehow manages to do everything from controlling the economics profession to reshaping
the state to forging a new sense of the human self. The reader is left wondering how the NTC came
to acquire such power. This leads to the book's central flaw: a lack of any theory of the structure
of modern capitalism. Indeed, the NTC seems to operate in something of a vacuum, without ever confronting
other institutions or groups, such as the state or popular movements, with interests and agendas
of their own.
To be fair, Mirowski does offer an explanation for the failure of popular movements to challenge
neoliberalism, largely through his account of "everyday" neoliberalism. At its strongest, the book
identifies important strategic failures, such as Occupy's embrace of "a mimicry of media technologies
as opposed to concerted political mobilization." However, Mirowski extends the argument well beyond
a specific failure of the Occupy movement to propose a general thesis that developments like Facebook
and reality TV have transmitted neoliberal ideology to people who have never read Friedman and Hayek.
In claiming that this embodied or embedded ideology plays an important role in the failure of the
Left, he places far more explanatory weight on the concept of everyday neoliberalism than it is capable
of bearing.
At the simplest level, it's just not clear that everyday neoliberalism constitutes the kind of
block to political action that Mirowski thinks it does. No doubt, many people reading this article
right now simultaneously have another browser tab open to monster.com or LinkedIn, where they are
striving to present themselves as a fungible basket of skills to any employer that will have them.
In this economy, everyone has to hustle, and that means using all available means. That many of these
same readers have probably also done things like organize against foreclosures should give pause
to any blurring of the distinction between using various media technologies and embracing the ideology
Mirowski sees embodied in them.
Indeed, the ubiquity of participation in such technologies by people who support, oppose, or are
apathetic about neoliberalism points to a larger phenomenon on which Mirowski is silent: the labor
market. Put bluntly, it is difficult to imagine anyone engaging in the painfully strained self-advertisement
facilitated by LinkedIn in a labor market with, say, 2-percent unemployment. In such a market, in
which employers were competing for comparatively scarce workers, there would be very little need
for those workers to go through the self-abasing ritual of converting themselves into fungible baskets
of skills. In our current situation, by contrast, where secure and remunerative employment is comparatively
scarce, it is no surprise that people turn to whatever technologies are available to attempt to sell
themselves. As Joan Robinson put it, the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not
being exploited by it.
In evaluating the role of everyday neoliberalism, it is also helpful to move, for the moment,
beyond the perspective of the United States, where the NTC has clearly had great success, and adopt
that of countries where resistance is significantly more developed, such as Venezuela or South Africa.
Especially in the former, popular movements have been notably successful in combating neoliberal
efforts to take over the state and reshape the economy, and have instead pushed the country in the
opposite direction. Is it really plausible that a main reason for this difference is that everyday
neoliberalism is more intense in the United States? I doubt it. For one thing, the strength of Venezuela's
radical movements, in comparison with the US, clearly antedates the developments (social media,
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo , and so on) that Mirowski discusses.
Moreover, it is just as plausible that the entrepreneurial culture he describes is even more extensive
in the slums of the global South, where neoliberal devastation has forced many poor households to
rely on at least one family member engaging in semi-legal arbitrage in goods salvaged from garbage
or made at home. Surely such activities provide a firmer foundation for commercial subjectivity than
having a 401(k). That resistance has grown in such circumstances suggests that looking to malignant
subjectivities to explain popular passivity is an analytic dead-end.
If everyday neoliberalism doesn't explain the comparative weakness of the US left, what does?
This is, of course, the key question, and I can do no more than gesture at an answer here. But I
would suggest that the specific histories of the institutions of the American left, from the Communist
Party to Students for a Democratic Society to labor unions, and the histories of the situations they
confronted, provide us with a more solid foundation for understanding our current weakness than the
hegemony of neoliberal culture does. Moreover, with a theory of capitalism that emphasizes the way
the structure of the system makes it both necessary and very difficult for most people to organize
to advance their interests, it becomes very easy to explain the persistence of a low level of popular
mobilization against neoliberalism in the context of a weakened left.
If Mirowski's account doesn't give us a good basis for explaining why popular resistance has been
so lacking in the US, it nonetheless suggests why he is so concerned with explaining the supposed
dominance of neoliberal ideology among the general population. From the beginning, he raises the
specter of right-wing resurgence, whether in the form of Scott Walker surviving the recall campaign
in Wisconsin, the Tea Party mania of 2010, or the success of right-wing parties in Europe. However,
much of this seems overstated, especially from a contemporary perspective. The Tea Party has, for
all intents and purposes, disappeared from the front lines of American politics, and the Republican
Party, while capable of enacting all kinds of sadistic policies on the state level, has remained
in a state of disarray on the national level since the 2006 congressional elections.
More fundamentally, the argument that the voting public embraces neoliberalism doesn't square
well with recent research by political scientists like Larry Bartels and Martin Gilens emphasizing
the profound disconnect between the policy preferences of the poor and what transpires in Washington.
What appears to be happening is less the general populace's incorporation into neoliberalism than
their exclusion from any institutions that would allow them to change it. Importantly, this alternative
explanation does not rely on the Left conceit that rebellion lurks perpetually just below the placid
social surface, ready to explode into radical insurgency at any moment. It simply contends that the
political passivity of neoliberalism's victims reflects a real diminution of their political options.
Mirowski's failure to address these larger institutional and structural dynamics vitiates much
of the explanatory power of his book. On a purely descriptive level, the sections on the intellectual
history of neoliberalism and the non-crisis of neoclassical economics illuminate many of the hidden
corners of neoliberal ideology. However, if Mirowski is right to suggest that we need to understand
neoliberalism better to be successful in fighting it -- and he surely is -- then much more is needed
to explain neoliberal success and Left failure.
To understand how a body of thought became an era of capitalism requires more than intellectual
history. It demands an account of how capitalism actually works in the period in question, and how
the ideas of a small group of intellectuals came to be the policy preferences of the rich. Mirowski
has given us an excellent foundation for understanding the doctrine, but it will remain for others
to explain its actual development.
"... Following Frances Fox Piven, "neoliberal economic policies" refers to the set of policies carried out, in the name of individualism and unfettered markets, for "the deregulation of corporations, and particularly of financial institutions; the rollback of public services and benefit programs; curbing labor unions; 'free trade' policies that would pry open foreign markets; and wherever possible the replacement of public programs with private markets" (Piven, 2007: 13). ..."
"... The case of the United States is particularly useful to examine because its elites have projected themselves as "first among equals" of the globalization project ( Bello , 2006), and it is the place of the Global North where the neoliberal project has been pursued most resolutely and has advanced the farthest. In other words, the experiences of American workers illuminate the affects of the neoliberal project in the Global North to the greatest extent, and suggest what will happen to working people in other northern countries should they accept their respective government's adoption of such policies. ..."
"... However, it is believed that the implementation of these neoliberal economic policies and the cultural wars to divert public attention are part of a larger, conscious political program by the elites within this country that is intended to prevent re-emergence of the collective solidarity among the American people that we saw during the late 1960s-early 1970s (see Piven, 2004, 2007) -- of which the internal breakdown of discipline within the US military, in Vietnam and around the world, was arguably the most crucial (see Moser, 1996; Zeiger, 2006) -- that ultimately challenged, however inchoately, the very structure of the established social order, both internationally and in the United States itself. ..."
Most contemporary discussions of globalization, and especially of the impact of neoliberal economic
policies, focus on the countries of the Global South (see, for example, Bond, 2005; Ellner and Hellinger,
eds., 2003; a number of articles in Harris, ed., 2006; Klein, 2007; Monthly Review, 2007;
and, among others, see Scipes, 1999, 2006b). Recent articles arguing that the globalization project
has receded and might be taking different approaches (Bello, 2006; Thornton, 2007) have also focused
on the Global South. What has been somewhat discussed (see Giroux, 2004; Piven, 2004; Aronowitz,
2005) but not systematically addressed, however, is what has been the impact of globalization and
especially related neoliberal economic policies on working people in a northern country?
[i]
This paper specifically addresses this question by looking at the impact of neoliberal economic
policies on working people in the United States . Following Frances Fox Piven, "neoliberal economic
policies" refers to the set of policies carried out, in the name of individualism and unfettered
markets, for "the deregulation of corporations, and particularly of financial institutions; the rollback
of public services and benefit programs; curbing labor unions; 'free trade' policies that would pry
open foreign markets; and wherever possible the replacement of public programs with private markets"
(Piven, 2007: 13).
The case of the United States is particularly useful to examine because its elites have projected
themselves as "first among equals" of the globalization project ( Bello , 2006), and it is the place
of the Global North where the neoliberal project has been pursued most resolutely and has advanced
the farthest. In other words, the experiences of American workers illuminate the affects of the neoliberal
project in the Global North to the greatest extent, and suggest what will happen to working people
in other northern countries should they accept their respective government's adoption of such policies.
However, care must be taken as to how this is understood. While sociologically-focused textbooks
(e.g., Aguirre and Baker, eds., 2008; Hurst, 2007) have joined together some of the most recent thinking
on social inequality -- and have demonstrated that inequality not only exists but is increasing --
this has been generally presented in a national context; in this case, within the United States.
And if they recognize that globalization is part of the reason for increasing inequality, it is generally
included as one of a set of reasons.
This paper argues that we simply cannot understand what is happening unless we put developments
within a global context: the United States effects, and is affected by, global processes.
Thus, while some of the impacts can be understood on a national level, we cannot ask related questions
as to causes -- or future consequences -- by confining our examination to a national level: we absolutely
must approach this from a global perspective (see Nederveen Pieterse, 2004, 2008).
This also must be put in historical perspective as well, although the focus in this piece will
be limited to the post-World War II world. Inequality within what is now the United States today
did not -- obviously -- arise overnight. Unquestionably, it began at least 400 years ago in Jamestown
-- with the terribly unequal and socially stratified society of England's colonial Virginia before
Africans were brought to North America (see Fischer, 1989), much less after their arrival in
1619, before the Pilgrims. Yet, to understand the roots of development of contemporary social
inequality in the US , we must understand the rise of " Europe " in relation to the rest of the world
(see, among others, Rodney, 1972; Nederveen Pieterse, 1989). In short, again, we have to understand
that the development of the United States has been and will always be a global project and, without
recognizing that, we simply cannot begin to understand developments within the United States .
We also have to understand the multiple and changing forms of social stratification and resulting
inequalities in this country. This paper prioritizes economic stratification, although is not limited
to just the resulting inequalities. Nonetheless, it does not focus on racial, gender or any other
type of social stratification. However, this paper is not written from the perspective that economic
stratification is always the most important form of stratification, nor from the perspective
that we can only understand other forms of stratification by understanding economic stratification:
all that is being claimed herein is that economic stratification is one type of social stratification,
arguably one of the most important types yet only one of several, and investigates the issue of economic
stratification in the context of contemporary globalization and the neoliberal economic policies
that have developed to address this phenomenon as it affects the United States.
Once this global-historical perspective is understood and after quickly suggesting in the "prologue"
why the connection between neoliberal economic policies and the affects on working people
in the United States has not been made usually, this paper focuses on several interrelated issues:
(1) it reports the current economic situation for workers in the United States; (2) it provides a
historical overview of US society since World War II; (3) it analyzes the results of US Government
economic policies; and (4) it ties these issues together. From that, it comes to a conclusion about
the affects of neoliberal economic policies on working people in the United States .
Prologue: Origins of neoliberal economic policies in the United States
As stated above, most of the attention directed toward understanding the impact of neoliberal
economic policies on various countries has been confined to the countries of the Global South. However,
these policies have been implemented in the United States as well. This arguably began in 1982, when
the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, launched a vicious attack on inflation -- and
caused the deepest US recession since the Great Depression of the late 1920s-1930s.
However, these neoliberal policies have been implemented in the US perhaps more subtly than in
the Global South. This is said because, when trying to understand changes that continue to take place
in the United States, these economic policies are hidden "under" the various and sundry "cultural
wars" (around issues such as drugs, premarital sex, gun control, abortion, marriages for gays and
lesbians) that have been taking place in this country and, thus, not made obvious: most Americans,
and especially working people, are not aware of the changes detailed below.
[ii]
However, it is believed that the implementation of these neoliberal economic policies and
the cultural wars to divert public attention are part of a larger, conscious political program
by the elites within this country that is intended to prevent re-emergence of the collective solidarity
among the American people that we saw during the late 1960s-early 1970s (see Piven, 2004, 2007) --
of which the internal breakdown of discipline within the US military, in Vietnam and around
the world, was arguably the most crucial (see Moser, 1996; Zeiger, 2006) -- that ultimately challenged,
however inchoately, the very structure of the established social order, both internationally and
in the United States itself. Thus, we see both Democratic and Republican Parties in agreement
to maintain and expand the US Empire (in more neutral political science-ese, a "uni-polar world"),
but the differences that emerge within each party and between each party are generally confined to
how this can best be accomplished. While this paper focuses on the economic and social changes going
on, it should be kept in mind that these changes did not "just happen": conscious political decisions
have been made that produced social results (see Piven, 2004) that make the US experience -- at the
center of a global social order based on an "advanced" capitalist economy -- qualitatively different
from experiences in other more economically-developed countries.
So, what has been the impact of these policies on workers in the US?
1) The current situation for workers and growing economic inequality
Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times published a piece on September 4, 2006, writing
about entry-level workers, young people who were just entering the job market. Mr. Greenhouse noted
changes in the US economy; in fact, there have been substantial changes since early 2000, when the
economy last created many jobs.
Median incomes for families with one parent age 25-34 fell 5.9 per cent between 2000-2005.
It had jumped 12 per cent during the late '90s. (The median annual income for these families today
is $48,405.)
Between 2000-2005, entry-level wages for male college graduates fell by 7.3 per cent (to $19.72/hr)
Entry-level wages for female college graduates fell by 3.5 per cent (to $17.08)
Entry-level wages for male high school graduates fell by 3.3 per cent (to $10.93)
Entry-level wages for female high school graduates fell by 4.9 per cent (to $9.08)
Yet, the percentage drop in wages hides the growing gap between college and high school graduates.
Today, on average, college grads earn 45 per cent more than high school graduates, where the gap
had "only" been 23 per cent in 1979: the gap has doubled in 26 years (Greenhouse, 2006b).
A 2004 story in Business Week found that 24 per cent of all working Americans received
wages below the poverty line ( Business Week , 2004).
[iii] In January 2004, 23.5 million
Americans received free food from food pantries. "The surge for food demand is fueled by several
forces -- job losses, expired unemployment benefits, soaring health-care and housing costs, and the
inability of many people to find jobs that match the income and benefits of the jobs they had." And
43 million people were living in low-income families with children (Jones, 2004).
A 2006 story in Business Week found that US job growth between 2001-2006 was really based
on one industry: health care. Over this five-year period, the health-care sector has added 1.7 million
jobs, while the rest of the private sector has been stagnant. Michael Mandel, the economics editor
of the magazine, writes:
information technology, the great electronic promise of the 1990s, has turned into one of
the greatest job-growth disappointments of all time. Despite the splashy success of companies
such as Google and Yahoo!, businesses at the core of the information economy -- software, semi-conductors,
telecom, and the whole range of Web companies -- have lost more than 1.1 million jobs in the past
five years. These businesses employ fewer Americans today than they did in 1998, when the Internet
frenzy kicked into high gear (Mandel, 2006: 56) .
In fact, "take away health-care hiring in the US, and quicker than you can say cardiac bypass,
the US unemployment rate would be 1 to 2 percentage points higher" (Mandel, 2006: 57).
There has been extensive job loss in manufacturing. Over 3.4 million manufacturing jobs have been
lost since 1998, and 2.9 million of them have been lost since 2001. Additionally, over 40,000 manufacturing
firms have closed since 1999, and 90 per cent have been medium and large shops. In labor-import intensive
industries, 25 per cent of laid-off workers remain unemployed after six months, two-thirds of them
who do find new jobs earn less than on their old job, and one-quarter of those who find new jobs
"suffer wage losses of more than 30 percent" (AFL-CIO, 2006a: 2).
The AFL-CIO details the US job loss by manufacturing sector in the 2001-05 period:
Computer and electronics: 543,000 workers or 29.2 per cent
Semiconductor and electronic components: 260,100 or 36.7 per cent
Electrical equipment and appliances: 152,500 or 26 per cent
Vehicle parts: 153,400 or 18.6 per cent
Machinery: 289,400 or 19.9 per cent
Fabricated metal products: 235,200 or 13.3 per cent
Primary metals: 144,800 or 23.5 per cent
Transportation equipment: 246,300 or 12.1 per cent
Furniture products: 58,500 or 13.4 per cent
Textile mills: 158,500 or 43.1 per cent
Apparel 220,000 or 46.6 per cent
Leather products: 24,700 or 38.3 per cent
Printing: 159,300 or 19.9 per cent
Paper products: 122,600 or 20.4 per cent
Plastics and rubber products: 141,400 or 15 per cent
Chemicals: 94,900 or 9.7 per cent
Aerospace: 46,900 or 9.1 per cent
Textiles and apparel declined by 870,000 jobs 1994-2006, a decline of 65.4 per cent (AFL-CIO,
2006a: 2).
As of the end of 2005, only 10.7 per cent of all US employment was in manufacturing -- down from
21.6 per cent at its height in 1979 -- in raw numbers, manufacturing employment totaled 19.426 million
in 1979, 17.263 million in 2000, and 14.232 million in 2005.
[iv] The number of production workers
in this country at the end of 2005 was 9.378 million.
[v] This was only slightly above
the 9.306 million production workers in 1983, and was considerably below the 11.463 million as recently
as 2000 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006b). As one writer puts it, this is "the biggest long-term
trend in the economy: the decline of manufacturing." He notes that employment in the durable goods
(e.g., cars and cable TV boxes) category of manufacturing has declined from 19 per cent of all employment
in 1965 to 8 per cent in 2005 (Altman, 2006). And at the end of 2006, only 11.7 per cent of all manufacturing
workers were in unions (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007).
In addition, in 2004 and 2005, "the real hourly and weekly wages of US manufacturing workers have
fallen 3 per cent and 2.2 per cent respectively" (AFL-CIO, 2006a: 2).
The minimum wage level went unchanged for nine years: until recently when there was a small increase
-- to $5.85 an hour on July 24, 2007 -- US minimum wage had remained at $5.15 an hour since September
1, 1997 . During that time, the cost of living rose 26 percent. After adjusting for inflation, this
was the lowest level of the minimum wage since 1955. At the same time, the minimum wage was only
31 per cent of the average pay of non-supervisory workers in the private sector, which is the lowest
share since World War II (Bernstein and Shapiro, 2006).
In addition to the drop in wages at all levels, fewer new workers get health care benefits with
their jobs: [vi] in 2005, 64 per
cent of all college grads got health coverage in entry-level jobs, where 71 per cent had gotten it
in 2000 -- a 7 per cent drop in just five years. Over a longer term, we can see what has happened
to high school grads: in 1979, two-thirds of all high school graduates got health care coverage in
entry-level jobs, while only one-third do today (Greenhouse, 2006b). It must be kept in mind that
only about 28 per cent of the US workforce are college graduates -- most of the work force only has
a high school degree, although a growing percentage of them have some college, but not college degrees.
Because things have gotten so bad, many young adults have gotten discouraged and given up. The
unemployment rate is 4.4 per cent for ages 25-34, but 8.2 per cent for workers 20-24. (Greenhouse,
2006b).
Yet things are actually worse than that. In the US , unemployment rates are artificially low.
If a person gets laid off and gets unemployment benefits -- which fewer and fewer workers even get
-- they get a check for six months. If they have not gotten a job by the end of six months -- and
it is taking longer and longer to get a job -- and they have given up searching for work, then not
only do they loose their unemployment benefits, but they are no longer counted as unemployed: one
doesn't even count in the statistics!
A report from April 2004 provides details. According to the then-head of the US Federal Reserve
System, Alan Greenspan, "the average duration of unemployment increased from twelve weeks in September
2000 to twenty weeks in March [2004]" (quoted in Shapiro, 2004: 4). In March 2004, 354,000 jobs workers
had exhausted their unemployment benefits, and were unable to get any additional federal unemployment
assistance: Shapiro (2004: 1) notes, "In no other month on record, with data available back to 1971,
have there been so many 'exhaustees'."
Additionally, although it's rarely reported, unemployment rates vary by racial grouping. No matter
what the unemployment rate is, it really only reflects the rate of whites who are unemployed because
about 78 per cent of the workforce is white. However, since 1954, the unemployment rate of African-Americans
has always been more than twice that of whites, and Latinos are about 1 1/2 times that of whites.
So, for example, if the overall rate is five percent, then it's at least ten per cent for African-Americans
and 7.5 per cent for Latinos.
However, most of the developments presented above -- other than the racial affects of unemployment
-- have been relatively recent. What about longer term? Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning Princeton
University economist who writes for The New York Times, pointed out these longer term affects:
non-supervisory workers make less in real wages today (2006) than they made in 1973! So, after inflation
is taken out, non-supervisory workers are making less today in real terms that their contemporaries
made 33 years ago (Krugman, 2006b). Figures provided by Stephen Franklin -- obtained from the US
Bureau of Statistics, and presented in 1982 dollars -- show that a production worker in January 1973
earned $9.08 an hour -- and $8.19 an hour in December 2005 (Franklin, 2006). Workers in 2005 also
had less long-term job security, fewer benefits, less stable pensions (when they have them), and
rising health care costs. [vii]
In short, the economic situation for "average Americans" is getting worse. A front-page story
in the Chicago Tribune tells about a worker who six years ago was making $29 an hour, working
at a nuclear power plant. He got laid off, and now makes $12.24 an hour, working on the bottom tier
of a two-tiered unionized factory owned by Caterpillar, the multinational earth moving equipment
producer, which is less than half of his old wages. The article pointed out, "Glued to a bare bones
budget, he saved for weeks to buy a five-pack of $7 T-shirts" ( Franklin , 2006).
As Foster and Magdoff point out:
Except for a small rise in the late 1990s, real wages have been sluggish for decades. The
typical (median-income) family has sought to compensate for this by increasing the number of jobs
and working hours per household. Nevertheless, the real (inflation-adjusted) income of the typical
household fell for five years in a row through 2004 (Foster and Magdoff, 2009: 28).
A report by Workers Independent News (WIN) stated that while a majority of metropolitan
areas have regained the 2.6 million jobs lost during the first two years of the Bush Administration,
"the new jobs on average pay $9,000 less than the jobs replaced," a 21 per cent decline from $43,629
to $34,378. However, WIN says that "99 out of the 361 metro areas will not recover jobs before 2007
and could be waiting until 2015 before they reach full recovery" (Russell, 2006).
At the same time, Americans are going deeper and deeper into debt. At the end of 2000, total US
household debt was $7.008 trillion, with home mortgage debt being $4.811 trillion and non-mortgage
debt $1.749 trillion; at the end of 2006, comparable numbers were a total of $12.817 trillion; $9.705
trillion (doubling since 2000); and $2.431 trillion (US Federal Reserve, 2007-rounding by author).
Foster and Magdoff (2009: 29) show that this debt is not only increasing, but based on figures from
the Federal Reserve, that debt as a percentage of disposable income has increased overall from 62%
in 1975 to 96.8% in 2000, and to 127.2% in 2005.
Three polls from mid-2006 found "deep pessimism among American workers, with most saying that
wages were not keeping pace with inflation, and that workers were worse off in many ways than a generation
ago" (Greenhouse, 2006a). And, one might notice, nothing has been said about increasing gas prices,
lower home values, etc. The economic situation for most working people is not looking pretty.
In fact, bankruptcy filings totaled 2.043 million in 2005, up 31.6 per cent from 2004 (Associated
Press, 2006), before gas prices went through the ceiling and housing prices began falling in mid-2006.
Yet in 1998, writers for the Chicago Tribune had written, " the number of personal bankruptcy
filings skyrocketed 19.5 per cent last year, to an all-time high of 1,335,053, compared with 1,117,470
in 1996" (Schmeltzer and Gruber, 1998).
And at the same time, there were 37 million Americans in poverty in 2005, one of out every eight.
Again, the rates vary by racial grouping: while 12.6 per cent of all Americans were in poverty, the
poverty rate for whites was 8.3 percent; for African Americans, 24.9 per cent were in poverty, as
were 21.8 per cent of all Latinos. (What is rarely acknowledged, however, is that 65 per cent of
all people in poverty in the US are white.) And 17.6 per cent of all children were in poverty (US
Census Bureau, 2005).
What about the "other half"? This time, Paul Krugman gives details from a report by two Northwestern
University professors, Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon, titled "Where Did the Productivity Growth
Go?" Krugman writes:
Between 1973 and 2001, the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile
of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 per cent per year. But income at the
99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income
at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint. Just to give you a sense
of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year, the 99th
percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of
$1,672,726. The Center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well
over $6 million a year (Krugman, 2006a) .
But how can we understand what is going on? We need to put take a historical approach to understand
the significance of the changes reported above.
(2) A historical look at the US social order since World War II
When considering the US situation, it makes most sense to look at "recent" US developments, those
since World War II. Just after the War, in 1947, the US population was about six per cent of the
world's total. Nonetheless, this six per cent produced about 48 per cent of all goods and services
in the world! [viii] With Europe
and Japan devastated, the US was the only industrialized economy that had not been laid waste. Everybody
needed what the US produced -- and this country produced the goods, and sent them around the world.
At the same time, the US economy was not only the most productive, but the rise of the industrial
union movement in the 1930s and '40s -- the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) -- meant that
workers had some power to demand a share of the wealth produced. In 1946, just after the war, the
US had the largest strike wave in its history: 116,000,000 production days were lost in early 1946,
as industry-wide strikes in auto, steel, meat packing, and the electrical industry took place across
the United States and Canada , along with smaller strikes in individual firms. Not only that, but
there were general strikes that year in Oakland , California and Stamford , Connecticut . Workers
had been held back during the war, but they demonstrated their power immediately thereafter (Lipsitz,
1994; Murolo and Chitty, 2001). Industry knew that if it wanted the production it could sell, it
had to include unionized workers in on the deal.
It was this combination -- devastated economic markets around the world and great demand for goods
and services, the world's most developed industrial economy, and a militant union movement -- that
combined to create what is now known as the "great American middle class."
[ix]
To understand the economic impact of these factors, changes in income distribution in US society
must be examined. The best way to illuminate this is to assemble family data on income or wealth
[x] -- income data is more available,
so that will be used; arrange it from the smallest amount to the largest; and then to divide the
population into fifths, or quintiles. In other words, arrange every family's annual income from the
lowest to the highest, and divide the total number of family incomes into quintiles or by 20 percents
(i.e., fifths). Then compare changes in the top incomes for each quintile. By doing so, one can then
observe changes in income distribution over specified time periods.
The years between 1947 and 1973 are considered the "golden years" of the US society.
[xi] The values are presented
in 2005 dollars, so that means that inflation has been taken out: these are real dollar values,
and that means these are valid comparisons.
Figure 1: US family income, in US dollars, growth and istribution, by quintile, 1947-1973 compared
to 1973-2001, in 2005 dollars
Source: US Commerce Department, Bureau of the Census (hereafter, US Census Bureau) at
www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f01ar.html
. All dollar values converted to 2005 dollars by US Census Bureau, removing inflation and comparing
real values. Differences and percentages calculated by author. Percentages shown in both rows labeled
"Difference" show the dollar difference as a percentage of the first year of the comparison.
Data for the first period, 1947-1973 -- the data above the grey line -- shows there was
considerable real economic growth for each quintile . Over the 26-year period, there was approximately
100 per cent real economic growth for the incomes at the top of each quintile, which meant incomes
doubled after inflation was removed; thus, there was significant economic growth in the society.
And importantly, this real economic growth was distributed fairly evenly . The data in
the fourth line (in parentheses) is the percentage relationship between the difference between 1947-1973
real income when compared to the 1947 real income, with 100 per cent representing a doubling of real
income: i.e., the difference for the bottom quintile between 1947 and 1973 was an increase
of $11,386, which is 97 per cent more than $11,758 that the top of the quintile had in 1947. As can
be seen, other quintiles also saw increases of roughly comparable amounts: in ascending order, 100
percent, 107 percent, 101 percent, and 91 percent. In other words, the rate of growth by quintile
was very similar across all five quintiles of the population.
When looking at the figures for 1973-2001, something vastly different can be observed. This is
the section below the grey line. What can be seen? First, economic growth has slowed considerably:
the highest rate of growth for any quintile was that of 58 per cent for those who topped the
fifth quintile, and this was far below the "lagger" of 91 per cent of the earlier period.
Second, of what growth there was, it was distributed extremely unequally . And the growth
rates for those in lower quintiles were generally lower than for those above them: for the bottom
quintile, their real income grew only 14 per cent over the 1973-2001 period; for the second quintile,
19 percent; for the third, 29 percent; for the fourth, 42 percent; and for the 80-95 percent, 58
percent: loosely speaking, the rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer.
Why the change? I think two things in particular. First, as industrialized countries recovered
from World War II, corporations based in these countries could again compete with those from the
US -- first in their own home countries, and then through importing into the US , and then ultimately
when they invested in the United States . Think of Toyota : they began importing into the US in the
early 1970s, and with their investments here in the early '80s and forward, they now are the largest
domestic US auto producer.
Second cause for the change has been the deterioration of the American labor movement: from 35.3
per cent of the non-agricultural workforce in unions in 1954, to only 12.0 per cent of all American
workers in unions in 2006 -- and only 7.4 per cent of all private industry workers are unionized,
which is less than in 1930!
This decline in unionization has a number of reasons. Part of this deterioration has been the
result of government policies -- everything from the crushing of the air traffic controllers when
they went on strike by the Reagan Administration in 1981, to reform of labor law, to reactionary
appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees administration of labor law. Certainly
a key government policy, signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, has been the North American
Free Trade Act or NAFTA. One analyst came straight to the point:
Since [NAFTA] was signed in 1993, the rise in the US trade deficit with Canada and Mexico
through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 US jobs. Most of
these lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries. The loss of these jobs is
just the most visible tip of NAFTA's impact on the US economy. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed
to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers' collective
bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits (Scott, 2003:
1).
These attacks by elected officials have been joined by the affects due to the restructuring of
the economy. There has been a shift from manufacturing to services. However, within manufacturing,
which has long been a union stronghold, there has been significant job loss: between July 2000 and
January 2004, the US lost three million manufacturing jobs, or 17.5 percent, and 5.2 million since
the historical peak in 1979, so that "Employment in manufacturing [in January 2004] was its lowest
since July 1950" (CBO, 2004). This is due to both outsourcing labor-intensive production overseas
and, more importantly, technological displacement as new technology has enabled greater production
at higher quality with fewer workers in capital-intensive production (see Fisher, 2004). Others have
blamed burgeoning trade deficits for the rise: " an increasing share of domestic demand for manufacturing
output is satisfied by foreign rather than domestic producers" (Bivens, 2005).
[xiii] Others have even attributed
it to changes in consumer preferences (Schweitzer and Zaman, 2006). Whatever the reason, of the 50
states, only five (Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming) did not see any job loss in manufacturing
between 1993-2003, yet 37 lost between 5.6 and 35.9 per cent of their manufacturing jobs during this
period (Public Policy Institute, 2004).
However, part of the credit for deterioration of the labor movement must be given to the labor
movement itself: the leadership has been simply unable to confront these changes and, at the same
time, they have consistently worked against any independent action by rank-and-file members.
[xiv]
However, it must be asked: are the changes in the economy presented herein merely statistical
manipulations, or is this indicating something real?
This point can be illustrated another way: by using CAGR, the Compound Annual Growth Rate. This
is a single number that is computed, based on compounded amounts, across a range of years, to come
up with an average number to represent the rate of increase or decrease each year across the entire
period. This looks pretty complex, but it is based on the same idea as compound interest used in
our savings accounts: you put in $10 today and (this is obviously not a real example) because you
get ten per cent interest, so you have $11 the next year. Well, the following year, interest is not
computed off the original $10, but is computed on the $11. So, by the third year, from your $10,
you now have $12.10. Etc. And this is what is meant by the Compound Annual Growth Rate: this is average
compound growth by year across a designated period.
Based on the numbers presented above in Figure 1, the author calculated the Compound Annual Growth
Rate by quintiles (Figure 2). The annual growth rate has been calculated for the first period, 1947-1973,
the years known as the "golden years" of US society. What has happened since then? Compare results
from the 1947-73 period to the annual growth rate across the second period, 1973-2001, again calculated
by the author.
Figure 2: Annual percentage of family income growth, by quintile, 1947-1973 compared to 1973-2001
What we can see here is that while everyone's income was growing at about the same rate in the
first period -- between 2.51 and 2.84 per cent annually -- by the second period, not only had growth
slowed down across the board, but it grew by very different rates: what we see here, again,
is that the rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer.
If these figures are correct, a change over time in the percentage of income received by each
quintile should be observable. Ideally, if the society were egalitarian, each 20 per cent of the
population would get 20 per cent of the income in any one year. In reality, it differs. To understand
Figure 3, below, one must not only look at the percentage of income held by a quintile across the
chart, comparing selected year by selected year, but one needs to look to see whether a quintile's
share of income is moving toward or away from the ideal 20 percent.
Figure 3: Percentage of family income distribution by quintile, 1947, 1973, 2001.
Population by quintiles
1947
1973
2001
Top fifth (lower limit of top 5percent, or 95th Percentile)-- $184,500
[xv]
Unfortunately, much of the data available publicly ended in 2001. However, in the summer of 2007,
after years of not releasing data any later than 2001, the Census Bureau released income data up
to 2005. It allows us to examine what has taken place regarding family income inequality during the
first four years of the Bush Administration.
Figure 4: US family income, in US dollars, growth and distribution, by quintile,
2001-2005, 2005 US dollars
Lowest 20%
Second 20%
Middle 20%
Fourth 20%
Lowest level of top 5%
2001
$26,467
$45,855
$68,925
$103,828
$180,973
2005
$25,616
$45,021
$68,304
$103,100
$184,500
Difference
(4 years)
-$851
(-3.2%)
-$834
(-1.8%)
-$621
(-.01%)
-$728
(-.007%)
$3,527
(1.94%)
Source: US Census Bureau at
www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f01ar.html
. (Over time, the Census Bureau refigures these amounts, so they have subsequently converted
amounts to 2006 dollar values. These values are from their 2005 dollar values, and were calculated
by the Census Bureau.) Differences and percentages calculated by author.
Thus, what we've seen under the first four years of the Bush Administration is that for at most
Americans, their economic situation has worsened: not only has over all economic growth for any quintile
slowed to a minuscule 1.94 per cent at the most, but that the bottom 80 per cent actually lost income;
losing money (an absolute loss), rather than growing a little but falling further behind the top
quintile (a relative loss). Further, the decrease across the bottom four quintiles has been suffered
disproportionately by those in the lowest 40 per cent of the society.
This can perhaps be seen more clearly by examining CAGR rates by period.
We can now add the results of the 2001-2005 period share of income by quintile to our earlier
chart:
Figure 5: Percentage of income growth per year by percentile, 1947-2005
As can be seen, the percentage of family income at each of the four bottom quintiles is less in
2005 than in 1947; the only place there has been improvement over this 58-year period is at the 95th
percentile (and above).
Figure 6: Percentage of family income distribution by quintile, 1947, 1973, 2001, 2005.
Population by quintiles
1947
1973
2001
2005
Top fifth (lower limit of top 5percent, or 95th Percentile)-- $184,500
What has been presented so far, regarding changes in income distribution, has been at the group
level; in this case, quintile by quintile. It is time now to see how this has affected the society
overall.
Sociologists and economists use a number called the Gini index to measure inequality. Family income
data has been used so far, and we will continue using it. A Gini index is fairly simple to use. It
measures inequality in a society. A Gini index is generally reported in a range between 0.000 and
1.000, and is written in thousandths, just like a winning percentage mark: three digits after the
decimal. And the higher the Gini score, the greater the inequality.
Looking at the Gini index, we can see two periods since 1947, when the US Government began computing
the Gini index for the country. From 1947-1968, with yearly change greater or smaller, the trend
is downward, indicating reduced inequality: from .376 in 1947 to .378 in 1950, but then downward
to .348 in 1968. So, again, over the first period, the trend is downward.
What has happened since then? From the low point in 1968 of .348, the trend has been upward. In
1982, the Gini index hit .380, which was higher than any single year between 1947-1968, and the US
has never gone below .380 since then. By 1992, it hit .403, and we've never gone back below .400.
In 2001, the US hit .435. But the score for 2005 has only recently been published: .440 (source:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f04.html
). So, the trend is getting worse, and with the policies established under George W. Bush, I
see them only continuing to increase in the forthcoming period. [And by the way, this increasing
trend has continued under both the Republicans and the Democrats, but since the Republicans have
controlled the presidency for 18 of the last 26 years (since 1981), they get most of the credit --
but let's not forget that the Democrats have controlled Congress across many of those years, so they,
too, have been an equal opportunity destroyer!]
However, one more question must be asked: how does this income inequality in the US, compare to
other countries around the world? Is the level of income inequality comparable to other "developed"
societies, or is it comparable to "developing" countries?
We must turn to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for our data. The CIA computes Gini scores
for family income on most of the countries around the world, and the last time checked in 2007 (August
1), they had data on 122 countries on their web page and these numbers had last been updated on July
19, 2007 (US Central Intelligence Agency, 2007). With each country listed, there is a Gini score
provided. Now, the CIA doesn't compute Gini scores yearly, but they give the last year it was computed,
so these are not exactly equivalent but they are suggestive enough to use. However, when they do
assemble these Gini scores in one place, they list them alphabetically, which is not of much comparative
use (US Central Intelligence Agency, 2007).
However, the World Bank categorizes countries, which means they can be compared within category
and across categories. The World Bank, which does not provide Gini scores, puts 208 countries into
one of four categories based on Gross National Income per capita -- that's total value of goods and
services sold in the market in a year, divided by population size. This is a useful statistic, because
it allows us to compare societies with economies of vastly different size: per capita income removes
the size differences between countries.
The World Bank locates each country into one of four categories: lower income, lower middle income,
upper middle income, and high income (World Bank, 2007a). Basically, those in the lower three categories
are "developing" or what we used to call "third world" countries, while the high income countries
are all of the so-called developed countries.
The countries listed by the CIA with their respective Gini scores were placed into the specific
World Bank categories in which the World Bank had previously located them (World Bank, 2007b). Once
grouped in their categories, median Gini scores were computed for each group. When trying to get
one number to represent a group of numbers, median is considered more accurate than an average, so
the median was used, which means half of the scores are higher, half are lower -- in other words,
the data is at the 50th percentile for each category.
The Gini score for countries, by Gross National Income per capita, categorized by the World Bank:
Figure 7: Median Gini Scores by World Bank income categories (countries selected by US Central
Intelligence Agency were placed in categories developed by the World Bank) and compared to 2004 US
Gini score as calculated by US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Income category
Median Gini score
Gini score, US (2004)
Low income countries (less than $875/person/year)
.406
.450
Lower-middle income countries (between $876-3,465/person/year)
.414
.450
Upper-middle income countries (between $3,466-10,725/person/year
.370
.450
Upper-income countries (over $10,726/person/year
.316
.450
As can be seen, with the (CIA-calculated) Gini score of .450, the US family income is more
unequal than the medians for each category, and is more unequal than some of the poorest countries
on earth, such as Bangladesh (.318 -- calculated in 2000), Cambodia (.400, 2004 est.), Laos (.370-1997),
Mozambique (.396, 1996-97), Uganda (.430-1999) and Vietnam (.361, 1998). This same finding also holds
true using the more conservative Census Bureau-calculated Gini score of .440.
Thus, the US has not only become more unequal over the 35 years, as has been demonstrated above,
but has attained a level of inequality that is much more comparable to those of developing countries
in general and, in fact, is more unequal today than some of the poorest countries on Earth. There
is nothing suggesting that this increasing inequality will lessen anytime soon. And since this increasing
income inequality has taken place under the leadership of both major political parties, there is
nothing on the horizon that suggests either will resolutely address this issue in the foreseeable
future regardless of campaign promises made.
However, to move beyond discussion of whether President Obama is likely to address these and related
issues, some consideration of governmental economic policies is required. Thus, he will be constrained
by decisions made by previous administrations, as well as by the ideological blinders worn by those
he has chosen to serve at the top levels of his administration.
3) Governmental economic policies
There are two key points that are especially important for our consideration: the US Budget and
the US National Debt. They are similar, but different -- and consideration of each of them enhances
understanding.
A) US budget. Every year, the US Government passes a budget, whereby governmental officials
estimate beforehand how much money needs to be taken in to cover all expenses. If the government
actually takes in more money than it spends, the budget is said to have a surplus; if it takes in
less than it spends, the budget is said to be in deficit.
Since 1970, when Richard Nixon was President, the US budget has been in deficit every year
except for the last four years under Clinton (1998-2001), where there was a surplus. But this
surplus began declining under Clinton -- it was $236.2 billion in 2000, and only $128.2 billion in
2001, Clinton 's last budget. Under Bush, the US has gone drastically into deficit: -$157.8 billion
in 2002; -$377.6 billion in 2003; -$412.7 billion in 2004; -$318.3 billion in 2005; and "only"-$248.2
billion in 2006 (Economic Report of the President, 2007: Table B-78).
Now, that is just yearly surpluses and deficits. They get combined with all the other surpluses
and deficits since the US became a country in 1789 to create to create a cumulative amount, what
is called the National Debt.
B) US national debt. Between 1789 and1980 -- from Presidents Washington through
Carter -- the accumulated US National Debt was $909 billion or, to put it another way, $.909 trillion.
During Ronald Reagan's presidency (1981-89), the National Debt tripled, from $.9 trillion to $2.868
trillion. It has continued to rise. As of the end of 2006, 17 years later and after a four-year period
of surpluses where the debt was somewhat reduced, National Debt (or Gross Federal Debt) was $8.451
trillion (Economic Report of the President, 2007: Table B-78).
To put it into context: the US economy, the most productive in the world, had a Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) of $13.061 trillion in 2006, but the National Debt was $8.451 trillion -- 64.7 per
cent of GDP -- and growing (Economic Report of the President, 2007: Table B-1).
In April 2006, one investor reported that "the US Treasury has a hair under $8.4 trillion in outstanding
debt. How much is that? He put it into this context: " if you deposited one million dollars into
a bank account every day, starting 2006 years ago, that you would not even have ONE trillion dollars
in that account" (Van Eeden, 2006).
Let's return to the budget deficit: like a family budget, when one spends more than one brings
in, they can do basically one of three things: (a) they can cut spending; (b) they can increase taxes
(or obviously a combination of the two); or (c) they can take what I call the "Wimpy" approach.
For those who might not know this, Wimpy was a cartoon character, a partner of "Popeye the Sailor,"
a Saturday morning cartoon that was played for over 30 years in the United States . Wimpy had a great
love for hamburgers. And his approach to life was summed up in his rap: "I'll gladly give you two
hamburgers on Tuesday, for a hamburger today."
What is argued is that the US Government has been taking what I call the Wimpy approach to its
budgetary problems: it does not reduce spending, it does not raise taxes to pay for the increased
expenditures -- in fact, President Bush has cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans
[xvi] -- but instead it sells
US Government securities, often known as Treasuries, to rich investors, private corporations or,
increasingly, to other countries to cover the budget deficit. In a set number of years, the US Government
agrees to pay off each bond -- and the difference between what the purchaser bought them for and
the increased amount the US Government pays to redeem them is the cost of financing the Treasuries,
a certain percentage of the total value. By buying US Treasuries, other countries have helped keep
US interest rates low, helping to keep the US economy in as good of shape as it has been (thus, keeping
the US market flourishing for them), while allowing the US Government not to have to confront its
annual deficits. At the end of 2006, the total value of outstanding Treasuries -- to all investors,
not just other countries -- was $8.507 trillion (Economic Report of the President, 2007: Table B-87).
It turns out that at in December 2004, foreigners owned approximately 61 per cent of all outstanding
US Treasuries. Of that, seven per cent was held by China ; these were valued at $223 billion (Gundzik,
2005).
The percentage of foreign and international investors' purchases of the total US public debt since
1996 has never been less than 17.7 percent, and it has reached a high of 25.08 per cent in September
2006. In September 2006, foreigners purchased $2.134 trillion of Treasuries; these were 25.08 per
cent of all purchases, and 52.4 per cent of all privately-owned purchases (Economic Report of the
President, 2007: Table B-89). [xvii]
Altogether, "the world now holds financial claims amounting to $3.5 trillion against the United
States , or 26 per cent of our GDP" (Humpage and Shenk, 2007: 4).
Since the US Government continues to run deficits, because the Bush Administration has refused
to address this problem, the United States has become dependent on other countries buying Treasuries.
Like a junky on heroin, the US must get other investors (increasingly countries) to finance
its budgetary deficits.
To keep the money flowing in, the US must keep interest rates high -- basically, interest rates
are the price that must be paid to borrow money. Over the past year or so, the Federal Reserve has
not raised interest rates, but prior to that, for 15 straight quarterly meetings, they did. And,
as known, the higher the interest rate, the mostly costly it is to borrow money domestically, which
means increasingly likelihood of recession -- if not worse. In other words, dependence on foreigners
to finance the substantial US budget deficits means that the US must be prepared to raise interests
rates which, at some point, will choke off domestic borrowing and consumption, throwing the US economy
into recession. [xviii]
Yet this threat is not just to the United States -- according to the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), it is a threat to the global economy. A story about a then-recently issued report by the IMF
begins, "With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running
up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of
the global economy ." The report suggested that net financial obligations of the US to the rest of
the world could equal 40 per cent of its total economy if nothing was done about it in a few years,
"an unprecedented level of external debt for a larger industrial country" according to the report.
What was perhaps even more shocking than what the report said was which institution said it: "The
IMF has often been accused of being an adjunct of the United States , its largest shareholder" (Becker
and Andrews, 2004).
Other analysts go further. After discussing the increasingly risky nature of global investing,
and noting that "The investor managers of private equity funds and major banks have displaced national
banks and international bodies such as the IMF," Gabriel Kolko (2007) quotes Stephen Roach, Morgan
Stanley's chief economist, on April 24, 2007: "a major financial crisis seemed imminent and that
the global institutions that could forestall it, including the IMF, the World Bank and other mechanisms
of the international financial architecture, were utterly inadequate." Kolko recognizes that things
may not collapse immediately, and that analysts could be wrong, but still concludes, "the transformation
of the global financial system will sooner or later lead to dire results" (Kolko, 2007: 5).
What might happen if investors decided to take their money out of US Treasuries and, say, invest
in Euro-based bonds? The US would be in big trouble, would be forced to raise its interest
rates even higher than it wants -- leading to possibly a severe recession -- and if investors really
shifted their money, the US could be observably bankrupt; the curtain hiding the "little man" would
be opened, and he would be observable to all.
Why would investors rather shift their investment money into Euro-bonds instead of US Treasuries?
Well, obviously, one measure is the perceived strength of the US economy. To get a good idea of how
solid a country's economy is, one looks at things such as budget deficits, but perhaps even more
importantly balance of trade: how well is this economy doing in comparison with other countries?
The US international balance of trade is in the red and is worsening: -$717 billion in
2005. In 1991, it was -$31 billion. Since 1998, the US trade balance has set a new record for being
in the hole every year, except during 2001, and then breaking the all time high the very next
year! -$165 B in 1998; -$263 B in 1999; -$378 B in 2000; only -$362 B in 2001; -$421 B in 2002;
-$494 B in 2003; -$617 B in 2004; and - $717 B in 2005 (Economic Report of the President, 2007: Table
B-103). According to the Census Department, the balance of trade in 2006 was -$759 billion (US Census
Bureau, 2007).
And the US current account balance, the broadest measure of a country's international financial
situation -- which includes investment inside and outside the US in addition to balance of trade
-- is even worse: it was -$805 B in 2005, or 6.4 per cent of national income. "The bottom line is
that a current account deficit of this unparalleled magnitude is unsustainable and there is no hope
of it being painlessly resolved through higher exports alone," according to one analyst (quoted in
Swann, 2006). Scott notes that the current account deficit in 2006 was -$857 billion (Scott, 2007a:
8, fn. 1). "In effect, the United States is living beyond its means and selling off national assets
to pay its bills" (Scott, 2007b: 1).
[xix]
In addition, during mid-2007, there was a bursting of a domestic "housing bubble," which has threatened
domestic economic well-being but that ultimately threatens the well-being of global financial markets.
There had been a tremendous run-up in US housing values since 1995 -- with an increase of more than
70 per cent after adjusting for the rate of inflation -- and this had created "more than $8 trillion
in housing wealth compared with a scenario in which house prices had continued to rise at the same
rate of inflation," which they had done for over 100 years, between 1890 and 1995 (Baker, 2007: 8).
This led to a massive oversupply of housing, accompanied with falling house prices: according
to Dean Baker, "the peak inventory of unsold new homes of 573,000 in July 2006 was more than 50 per
cent higher than the previous peak of 377,000 in May of 1989" (Baker, 2007: 12-13). This caused massive
problems in the sub-prime housing market -- estimates are that almost $2 trillion in sub-prime loans
were made during 2005-06, and that about $325 billion of these loans will default, with more than
1 million people losing their homes (Liedtke, 2007) -- but these problems are not confined to the
sub-prime loan category: because sub-prime and "Alt-A" mortgages (the category immediately above
sub-prime) financed 40 per cent of the housing market in 2006, "it is almost inevitable that the
problems will spill over into the rest of the market" (Baker, 2007: 15). And Business Week
agrees: "Subprime woes have moved far beyond the mortgage industry." It notes that at least five
hedge funds have gone out of business, corporate loans and junk bonds have been hurt, and the leveraged
buyout market has been hurt (Goldstein and Henry, 2007).
David Leonhardt (2007) agrees with the continuing threat to the financial industry. Discussing
"adjustable rate mortgages" -- where interest rates start out low, but reset to higher rates, resulting
in higher mortgage payments to the borrower -- he points out that about $50 billion of mortgages
will reset during October 2007, and that this amount of resetting will remain over $30 billion monthly
through September 2008. "In all," he writes," the interest rates on about $1 trillion worth of mortgages
or 12 per cent of the nation's total, will reset for the first time this year or next."
Why all of this is so important is because bankers have gotten incredibly "creative" in creating
new mortgages, which they sell to home buyers. Then they bundle these obligations and sell to other
financial institutions and which, in turn, create new securities (called derivatives) based on these
questionable new mortgages. Yes, it is basically a legal ponzi scheme, but it requires the continuous
selling and buying of these derivatives to keep working: in early August 2007, however, liquidity
-- especially "financial instruments backed by home mortgages" -- dried up, as no one wanted to buy
these instruments (Krugman, 2007). The US Federal Research and the European Central Bank felt it
necessary to pump over $100 billion into the financial markets in mid-August 2007 to keep the international
economy solvent (Norris, 2007).
So, economically, this country is in terrible shape -- with no solution in sight.
On top of this -- as if all of this is not bad enough -- the Bush Administration is asking for
another $481.4 billion for the Pentagon's base budget, which it notes is "a 62 per cent increase
over 2001." Further, the Administration seeks an additional $93.4 billion in supplemental funds for
2007 and another $141.7 billion for 2008 to help fund the "Global War on Terror" and US operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan (US Government, 2007). According to Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute (SIPRI), in 2006, the US "defense" spending was equivalent to 46 per cent of all military
spending in the world, meaning that almost more money is provided for the US military in one year
than is spent by the militaries of all the other countries in the world combined (SIPRI, 2007).
And SIPRI's accounting doesn't include the $500 billion spent so far, approximately, on wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq .
In short, not only have things gotten worse for American working people since 1973 -- and especially
after 1982, with the imposition of neoliberal economic policies by institutions of the US Government
-- but on-going Federal budget deficits, the escalating National Debt, the need to attract foreign
money into US Treasuries, the financial market "meltdown" as well as the massive amounts of money
being channeled to continue the Empire, all suggest that not only will intensifying social problems
not be addressed, but will get worse for the foreseeable future.
4) Synopsis
This analysis provides an extensive look at the impact of neoliberal economic policies enacted
in the United States on American working people. These neoliberal economic policies have been enacted
as a conscious strategy by US corporate leaders and their governmental allies in both major political
parties as a way to address intensifying globalization while seeking to maintain US dominance over
the global political economy.
While it will be a while before anyone can determine success or failure overall of this elite
strategy but, because of is global-historical perspective, sufficient evidence is already available
to evaluate the affects of these policies on American working people. For the non-elites of this
country, these policies have had a deleterious impact and they are getting worse. Employment data
in manufacturing, worsening since 1979 but especially since 2000 (see Aronowitz, 2005), has been
horrific -- and since this has been the traditional path for non-college educated workers to be able
to support themselves and their families, and provide for their children, this data suggests social
catastrophe for many -- see Rubin (1995), Barnes (2005), and Bageant (2007), and accounts in Finnegan
(1998) and Lipper (2004) that support this -- because comparable jobs available to these workers
are not being created. Thus, the problem is not just that people are losing previously stable, good-paying
jobs -- as bad as that is -- but that there is nothing being created to replace these lost jobs,
and there is not even a social safety net in many cases that can generally cushion the blow (see
Wilson, 1996; Appelbaum, Bernhardt, and Murnane, eds., 2003).
Yet the impact of these social changes has not been limited to only blue-collar workers, although
the impact has been arguably greatest upon them. The overall economic growth of the society has been
so limited since 1973, and the results increasingly being unequally distributed since then, that
the entire society is becoming more and more unequal: each of the four bottom quintiles -- the bottom
80 per cent of families -- has seen a decrease in the amount of family income available to each quintile
between 2001-05. This not only increases inequality and resulting resentments -- including criminal
behaviors -- but it also produces deleterious affects on individual and social health (Kawachi, Kennedy
and Wilkinson, eds., 1999; Eitzen and Eitzen Smith, 2003). And, as shown above, this level of inequality
is much more comparable internationally to "developing" countries rather than "developed" ones.
When this material is joined with material on the US budget, and especially the US National Debt,
it is clear that these "problems" are not the product of individual failure, but of a social order
that is increasingly unsustainable. While we have no idea of what it will take before the US economy
will implode, all indications are that US elites are speeding up a run-away train of debt combined
with job-destroying technology and off-shoring production, creating a worsening balance of trade
with the rest of the world and a worsening current account, with an unstable housing market and intensifying
militarism and an increasingly antagonistic foreign policy: it is like they are building a bridge
over an abyss, with a train increasingly speeding up as it travels toward the bridge, and crucial
indicators suggest that the bridge cannot be completed in time.
Whether the American public will notice and demand a radical change in time is not certain --
it will not be enough to simply slow the train down, but it must turn down an alternative track (see
Albert, 2003; Woodin and Lucas, 2004; Starr, 2005) -- but it is almost certain that foreign investors
will. Should they not be able to get the interest rates here available elsewhere in the "developed"
parts of the world, investors will shift their investments, causing more damage to working people
in the United States .
And when this economic-focused analysis is joined with an environmental one -- George Monbiot
(2007) reports that the best science available argues that industrialized countries have to reduce
their carbon dioxide emissions by 90 per cent by the year 2030 if we are to have a chance to stop
global warming -- then it is clear that US society is facing a period of serious social instability.
5) Conclusion
This article has argued that the situation for working people in the United States, propelled
by the general governmental adoption of neoliberal economic policies, is getting worse -- and there
is no end in sight. The current situation and historical change have been presented and discussed.
Further, an examination and analysis of directly relevant US economic policies have been presented,
and there has been nothing in this analysis that suggests a radical, but necessary, change by US
elected officials is in sight. In other words, working people in this country are in bad shape generally
-- and it is worse for workers of color than for white workers -- and there is nothing within the
established social order that suggests needed changes will be effected.
The neoliberal economic policies enacted by US corporate and government leaders has been a social
disaster for increasing numbers of families in the United States .
Globalization for profit -- or what could be better claimed to be "globalization from above" --
and its resulting neoliberal economic policies have long-been recognized as being a disaster for
most countries in the Global South. This study argues that this top-down globalization and the accompanying
neoliberal economic policies has been a disaster for working people in northern countries as well,
and most particularly in the United States .
The political implications from these findings remains to be seen. Surely, one argument is not
only that another world is possible, but that it is essential.
[Kim Scipes is assistant professor of sociology , Purdue University, North Central, Westville
, IN 46391. The author's web site is at
http://faculty.pnc.edu/kscipes .This paper was given at the 2009 Annual Conference of the United
Association for Labor Education at the National Labor College in Silver Spring , MD. It has been
posted at Links International Journal of Socialist
Renewal with Kim Scipes' permission.]
* * *
Note to labor educators: This is a very different approach than you usually take. While
presenting a "big picture," this does not suggest what you are doing is "wrong" or "bad." What it
suggests, however, is that the traditional labor education approach is too limited: this suggests
that your work is valuable but that you need to put it into a much larger context than is generally
done, and that it is in the interaction between your work and this that we each can think out the
ways to go forward. This is presented in the spirit of respect for the important work that each of
you do on a daily basis.
"... The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation of a disintegrating neoliberal order – a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness. ..."
"... This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future. ..."
"... In this sense, Trump's election was enabled by the neoliberal policies of the Clintons and Obama that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. The progressive populism of Bernie Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat Trump to avert this neofascist outcome! ..."
"... The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang ..."
"... The white house and congress are now dominated by tea party politicians who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand.....read Breitbart news to see how Thatcher and Reagan are idolised. ..."
"... if you think the era of "neo liberalism" is over, you are in deep denial! ..."
"... The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad. ..."
"... Didn't Obama say to Wall Street ''I'm the only one standing between you and the lynch mob? Give me money and I'll make it all go away''. Then came into office and went we won't prosecute the Banks not Bush for a false war because we don't look back. ..."
"... He did not ignore, he actively, willingly, knowingly protected them. At the end of the day Obama is wolf in sheep's clothing. Exactly like HRC he has a public and a private position. He is a gifted speaker who knows how to say all the right, progressive liberal things to get people to go along much better than HRC ever did. ..."
"... Even when he had the Presidency, House and Senate, he never once introduced any progressive liberal policy. He didn't need Republican support to do it, yet he never even tried. ..."
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of
Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded
to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians.
The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist
billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election
of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation
of a disintegrating neoliberal order – a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness.
White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic
neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens
also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated
Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process.
This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism
to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility
and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that
threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive
fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic
and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future.
What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering
to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering
of poor and working people and obsessed with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness
to justice. We must ground our truth-telling in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist
domination. Third we must remember courageous exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral
and spiritual inspiration as we build multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall
Street crimes and war crimes, global warming and police abuse – and to protect precious rights and
liberties.
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic
gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing
inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad.
Rightwing attacks on Obama – and Trump-inspired racist hatred of him – have made it nearly impossible
to hear the progressive critiques of Obama. The president has been reluctant to target black suffering
– be it in overcrowded prisons, decrepit schools or declining workplaces. Yet, despite that, we get
celebrations of the neoliberal status quo couched in racial symbolism and personal legacy. Meanwhile,
poor and working class citizens of all colors have continued to suffer in relative silence.
In this sense, Trump's election was enabled by the neoliberal policies of the Clintons and
Obama that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. The progressive populism of Bernie
Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the
rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat Trump to avert this neofascist
outcome!
In this bleak moment, we must inspire each other driven by a democratic soulcraft of integrity,
courage, empathy and a mature sense of history – even as it seems our democracy is slipping away.
We must not turn away from the forgotten people of US foreign policy – such as Palestinians under
Israeli occupation, Yemen's civilians killed by US-sponsored Saudi troops or Africans subject to
expanding US military presence.
As one whose great family and people survived and thrived through slavery, Jim Crow and lynching,
Trump's neofascist rhetoric and predictable authoritarian reign is just another ugly moment that
calls forth the best of who we are and what we can do.
For us in these times, to even have hope is too abstract, too detached, too spectatorial. Instead
we must be a hope, a participant and a force for good as we face this catastrophe.
theomatica -> MSP1984 17 Nov 2016 6:40
To be replaced by a form of capitalism that is constrained by national interests. An ideology
that wishes to uses the forces of capitalism within a market limited only by national boundaries
which aims for more self sufficiency only importing goods the nation can not itself source.
farga 17 Nov 2016 6:35
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang.
Really? The white house and congress are now dominated by tea party politicians who worship
at the altar of Ayn Rand.....read Breitbart news to see how Thatcher and Reagan are idolised.
That in recent decades middle ground politicians have strayed from the true faith....and now
its time to go back - popular capitalism, small government, low taxes.
if you think the era of "neo liberalism" is over, you are in deep denial!
Social36 -> farga 17 Nov 2016 8:33
Maybe, West should have written that we're now in neoliberal, neofascist era!
ForSparta -> farga 17 Nov 2016 14:24
Well in all fairness, Donald Trump (horse's ass) did say he'd 'pump' money into the middle
classes thus abandoning 'trickle down'. His plan/ideology is also to increase corporate tax revenues
overall by reducing the level of corporation tax -- the aim being to entice corporations to repatriate
wealth currently held overseas. Plus he has proposed an infrastructure spending spree, a fiscal
stimulus not a monetary one. When you add in tax cuts the middle classes will feel flushed and
it is within that demographic that most businesses and hence jobs are created. I think his short
game has every chance of doing what he said it would.
SeeNOevilHearNOevil 17 Nov 2016 6:36
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words
and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners,
oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians
abroad.
Didn't Obama say to Wall Street ''I'm the only one standing between you and the lynch mob?
Give me money and I'll make it all go away''. Then came into office and went we won't prosecute
the Banks not Bush for a false war because we don't look back.
He did not ignore, he actively, willingly, knowingly protected them. At the end of the
day Obama is wolf in sheep's clothing. Exactly like HRC he has a public and a private position.
He is a gifted speaker who knows how to say all the right, progressive liberal things to get people
to go along much better than HRC ever did.
But that lip service is where his progressive views begin and stop. It's the very reason none
of his promises never translated into actions and I will argue that he was the biggest and smoothest
scam artist to enter the white house who got even though that wholly opposed centre-right policies,
to flip and support them vehemently. Even when he had the Presidency, House and Senate, he
never once introduced any progressive liberal policy. He didn't need Republican support to do
it, yet he never even tried.
ProbablyOnTopic 17 Nov 2016 6:37
I agree with some of this, but do we really have to throw around hysterical terms like 'fascist'
at every opportunity? It's as bad as when people call the left 'cultural Marxists'.
LithophaneFurcifera -> ProbablyOnTopic 17 Nov 2016 7:05
True, it's sloganeering that drowns out any nuance, whoever does it. Whenever a political term
is coined, you can be assured that its use and meaning will eventually be extended to the point
that it becomes less effective at characterising the very groups that it was coined to characterise.
Keep "fascist" for Mussolini and "cultural Marxist" for Adorno, unless and until others show
such strong resemblances that the link can't seriously be denied.
I agree about the importance of recognising the suffering of the poor and building alliances
beyond, and not primarily defined by, race though.
l0Ho5LG4wWcFJsKg 17 Nov 2016 6:40
Hang about Trump is the embodiment of neo-liberalism. It's neo-liberalism with republican tea
party in control. He's not going to smash the system that served him so well, the years he manipulated
and cheated, why would he want to change it.
garrylee -> l0Ho5LG4wWcFJsKg 17 Nov 2016 9:38
West's point is that it's beyond Trump's control. The scales have fallen from peoples eyes. They
now see the deceit of neo-liberalism. And once they see through the charlatan Trump and the rest
of the fascists, they will, hopefully, come to realize the only antidote to neo-liberalism is
a planned economy.
Nash25 17 Nov 2016 6:40
This excellent analysis by professor West places the current political situation in a proper
historical context.
However, I fear that neo-liberalism may not be quite "dead" as he argues.
Most of the Democratic party's "establishment" politicians, who conspired to sabotage the populist
Sanders's campaign, still dominate the party, and they, in turn, are controlled by the giant corporations
who fund their campaigns.
Democrat Chuck Schumer is now the Senate minority leader, and he is the loyal servant of the
big Wall Street investment banks.
Sanders and Warren are the only two Democratic leaders who are not neo-liberals, and I fear
that they will once again be marginalized.
Rank and file Democrats must organize at the local and state level to remove these corrupt
neo-liberals from all party leadership positions. This will take many years, and it will be very
difficult.
VenetianBlind 17 Nov 2016 6:42
Not sure Neo-Liberalism has ended. All they have done is get rid of the middle man.
macfeegal 17 Nov 2016 6:46
It would seem that there is a great deal of over simplifying going on; some of the articles
represent an hysteric response and the vision of sack cloth and ashes prevails among those who
could not see that the wheels were coming off the bus. The use of the term 'liberal' has become
another buzz word - there are many different forms of liberalism and creating yet another sound
byte does little to illuminate anything.
Making appeals to restore what has been lost reflects badly upon the central political parties,
with their 30 year long rightward drift and their legacy of sucking up to corporate lobbyists,
systems managers, box tickers and consultants. You can't give away sovereign political power to
a bunch of right wing quangos who worship private wealth and its accumulation without suffering
the consequences. The article makes no contribution (and neither have many of the others of late)
to any kind of alternative to either neo-liberalism or the vacuum that has become a question mark
with the dark face of the devil behind it.
We are in uncharted waters. The conventional Left was totally discredited by1982 and all we've
had since are various forms of modifications of Thatcher's imported American vision. There has
been no opposition to this system for over 40 years - so where do we get the idea that democracy
has any real meaning? Yes, we can vote for the Greens, or one of the lesser known minority parties,
but of course people don't; they tend to go with what is portrayed as the orthodoxy and they've
been badly let down by it.
It would be a real breath of fresh air to see articles which offer some kind of analysis that
demonstrates tangible options to deal with the multiple crises we are suffering. Perhaps we might
start with a consideration that if our political institutions are prone to being haunted by the
ghost of the 1930's, the state itself could be seen as part of the problem rather than any solution.
Why is it that every other institution is considered to be past its sell by date and we still
believe in a phantom of democracy? Discuss.
VenetianBlind -> macfeegal 17 Nov 2016 7:00
I have spent hours trying to see solutions around Neo-Liberalism and find that governments
have basically signed away any control over the economy so nothing they can do. There are no solutions.
Maybe that is the starting point. The solution for workers left behind in Neo-Liberal language
is they must move. It demands labor mobility. It is not possible to dictate where jobs are created.
I see too much fiddly around the edges, the best start is to say they cannot fix the problem.
If they keep making false promises then things will just get dire as.
As living standards continue to fall for the majority of their populations, tariff barriers will
start to go up to protect their societies from cheap imports or from the "offshoring" of jobs. The freewheeling
capitalism post 1979 is over. The crash of 2008 saw to that. Look at oil prices and global economic
growth.
Notable quotes:
"... First. You assume that neo-Liberal "Free Trade" globalisation is going to continue. It will
not. Trade blocs already exist e.g. the EU. As living standards continue to fall for the majority of
their populations, tariff barriers will start to go up to protect their societies from cheap imports
or from the "offshoring" of jobs. The freewheeling capitalism post 1979 is over. The crash of 2008 saw
to that. Look at oil prices and global economic growth. ..."
"... Cheap labour costs are irrelevant if the skills are low grade and you have low productivity.
Look at Germany. High quality skills, high quality manufacturing , high productivity and high wages.
..."
"... Manufacturers are already relocating closer to their markets where there is long term stability.
China has already become far less attractive because of rising wages and no added value. The level of
wealth inequity in China is also rising and China is heading for a demographic time bomb in the next
10 years which has already hit Japan. China will have its own serious problems in the next 10 years.
..."
The premise of your argument is on very shaky ground for several reasons.
First. You assume that neo-Liberal "Free Trade" globalisation is going to continue. It
will not. Trade blocs already exist e.g. the EU. As living standards continue to fall for the
majority of their populations, tariff barriers will start to go up to protect their societies
from cheap imports or from the "offshoring" of jobs. The freewheeling capitalism post 1979 is
over. The crash of 2008 saw to that. Look at oil prices and global economic growth.
The present levels of wealth inequality in European countries and even in the U.S.A. will not
be tolerated for much longer. The days of Gordon Gekko are numbered. Expect to see more State
intervention in the economy together with more international cooperation over tax evasion and
the systematic closing down of offshore, international tax havens.
Second. Education/Skills and Technology. Cheap labour costs are irrelevant if the skills
are low grade and you have low productivity. Look at Germany. High quality skills, high quality
manufacturing , high productivity and high wages.
Manufacturers are already relocating closer to their markets where there is long term stability.
China has already become far less attractive because of rising wages and no added value. The level
of wealth inequity in China is also rising and China is heading for a demographic time bomb in
the next 10 years which has already hit Japan. China will have its own serious problems in the
next 10 years.
The robots are already here and the investment is not in third world countries but in Europe
and the U.S.A. These robots will make most of the working populations redundant in the next 20
years especially in manufacturing. This, together with the needs of an ever ageing population
are going to be the real issues for the majority of us.
Third. The real elephant in the room which everyone is trying to ignore is climate change.
The tipping point has now passed. We are going to see radical and dramatic global climate change
in the next 10 years, not 20 or 30 years and with ever rising temperatures humanity is facing
extinction and no amount of human technology is going to save the majority of us.
I think we're seeing a regionalization of global power structures within the state system --
regional
hegemons like Germany in Europe, Brazil in Latin America, China in East Asia.
Obviously, the United States still has a global position, but times have changed. Obama can
go to the G20 and say, "We should do this," and Angela Merkel can say, "We're not doing that."
That would not have happened in the 1970s.
So the geopolitical situation has become more regionalized, there's more autonomy. I think
that's partly a result of the end of the Cold War. Countries like Germany no longer rely on the
United States for protection.
Furthermore, what has been called the "new capitalist class" of
Bill Gates , Amazon , and
Silicon
Valley has a different politics than traditional oil and energy.
As a result they tend to go their own particular ways, so there's a lot of sectional rivalry
between, say, energy and finance, and energy and the Silicon Valley crowd, and so on. There are
serious divisions that are evident on something like climate change, for example.
The other thing I think is crucial is that the neoliberal push of the 1970s didn't pass
without strong resistance. There was massive resistance from labor, from communist parties in
Europe, and so on.
But I would say that by the end of the 1980s the battle was lost. So to the degree that
resistance has disappeared, labor doesn't have the power it once had, solidarity among the
ruling class is no longer necessary for it to work. It doesn't have to get together and do
something about struggle from below because there is no threat anymore. The ruling class is
doing extremely well so it doesn't really have to change anything.
Yet while the capitalist class is doing very well, capitalism is doing rather badly. Profit
rates have recovered but reinvestment
rates are appallingly low, so a lot of money is not circulating back into production and is
flowing into land-grabs and asset-procurement instead.
Collapse is indeed very slow as in 2017, or 13 years after the article was written
neoliberalism remains dominant social system on the globe. Brexit and Trump victory were the
only two major "confidence diminishing" events after the crisis of 2008.
Notable quotes:
"... A neoliberal regime typically includes monetarist policies to lower inflation and maintain fiscal balance (often achieved by reducing public expenditures and raising the interest rate), "flexible" labor markets (meaning removing labor market regulations and cutting social welfare), trade and financial liberalization, and privatization. These policies are an attack by the global ruling elites (primarily finance capital of the leading capitalist states) on the working people of the world. Under neoliberal capitalism, decades of social progress and developmental efforts have been reversed. Global inequality in income and wealth has reached unprecedented levels. In much of the world, working people have suffered pauperization. Entire countries have been reduced to misery. ..."
"... Human Development Report ..."
"... In many countries, working people have suffered an absolute decline in living standards. In the United States, the real weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers (in 1992 dollars) fell from $315 in 1973 to $264 in 1989. After a decade of economic expansion, it reached $271 in 1999, which remained lower than the average real wage in 1962. In Latin America, a continent that has suffered from neoliberal restructuring since the 1970s, about 200 million people, or 46 percent of the population, live in poverty. Between 1980 and the early 1990s (1991–1994), real wages fell by 14 percent in Argentina, 21 percent in Uruguay, 53 percent in Venezuela, 68 percent in Ecuador, and 73 percent in Bolivia. 2 ..."
"... Under neoliberalism, governments have mostly pursued tight fiscal and monetary policies, restraining public spending. With liberalized financial markets, governments that run fiscal deficits are likely to be "punished" by private investors who may respond with capital flight and attacks on the currency. Therefore, governments (especially the governments of peripheral and semiperipheral countries) are under strong pressures to maintain fiscal balance by cutting expenditures. All neoliberal regimes seek to limit government expenditure. To summarize, in the neoliberal era, all three components of global effective demand are subject to strong downward pressures and have tended to either contract or stagnate. ..."
"... If the U.S. dollar is not going to depreciate against any other currency, why does the current account deficit have to be corrected? If the rest of the world's central banks keep intervening, flooding the world with their own currencies (euros, Japanese yens, and the Chinese renminbi) to prevent dollar depreciation, why cannot the United States run an ever-larger current account deficit for an indefinite period of time? It cannot go on indefinitely because the rising U.S. current account deficits absorb a growing proportion of the global saving. A theoretical limit will be reached when the entire world's saving is exhausted to finance the U.S. current account deficit. But the practical limit will be reached long before the theoretical limit. This course would raise U.S. and Japanese government debt to astronomical levels. These gigantic government debts would exist along with enormous household and corporate debts in the United States and Europe. ..."
"... To contain the explosion in the U.S. current account deficit, imports need to be reduced. One way is to reduce such key imports as motor vehicles and electronic goods by increasing their cost in U.S. dollars through a revaluation of the yen and the renminbi. This can only be achieved by political pressure, and it is being applied. Other substantial imports, such as clothing and footwear, cannot be reduced in quantity since U.S. producers no longer exist to supply the amount needed. Here costs can be contained by the relentless imposition of a "race to the bottom" -- the continual transfer of production to ever poorer and more desperate countries. Here some military force works wonders in enforcing neoliberal immiseration; consider the results of U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and Africa. But the key import is mineral fuels, and here the long-term cost can only be contained by U.S. control of the physical resources. The hand on the spigot that regulates production (and therefore price) must be controlled by the United States. This is one aspect of the economic benefits of U.S. global political power sought through military strength. ..."
"... But how can this imperialist project be financed? The costs of U.S. military expansion are likely to aggravate rather than alleviate the U.S. economic crisis. Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley asks the question: "Can a saving-short US economy continue to finance an ever-widening expansion of its military superiority?" His answer is: "The confluence of history, geopolitics, and economics leaves me more convinced than ever that a US-centric world is on an unsustainable path." 12 ..."
"... Whatever the economic "costs" or "benefits," U.S. imperialism is losing the political and ideological battle. According to the latest survey of the Pew Global Attitudes Project (based in Washington), "America's image around the world has taken a sharp turn for the worse." 14 The project of a U.S. global neoliberal empire based on force has ..."
The author has benefited from discussions with David Kotz, Robert Pollin, James Crotty,
Gerald Epstein, Leo Panitch, Gregory Albo, Samuel Gindin, and Patrick Bond.
Since the early 1980s, the leading capitalist states in North America and Western Europe
have pursued neoliberal policies and institutional changes. The peripheral and semiperipheral
states in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, under the pressure of the leading
capitalist states (primarily the United States) and international monetary institutions (IMF
and the World Bank), have adopted "structural adjustments," "shock therapies," or "economic
reforms," to restructure their economies in accordance with the requirements of neoliberal
economics.
A neoliberal regime typically includes monetarist policies to lower inflation and maintain
fiscal balance (often achieved by reducing public expenditures and raising the interest rate),
"flexible" labor markets (meaning removing labor market regulations and cutting social
welfare), trade and financial liberalization, and privatization. These policies are an attack
by the global ruling elites (primarily finance capital of the leading capitalist states) on the
working people of the world. Under neoliberal capitalism, decades of social progress and
developmental efforts have been reversed. Global inequality in income and wealth has reached
unprecedented levels. In much of the world, working people have suffered pauperization. Entire
countries have been reduced to misery.
According to United Nations' Human Development Report , the world's richest 1
percent receive as much income as the poorest 57 percent. The income gap between the richest 20
percent and the poorest 20 percent in the world rose from 30:1 in 1960, to 60:1 in 1990, and to
74:1 in 1999, and is projected to reach 100:1 in 2015. In 1999–2000, 2.8 billion people
lived on less than $2 a day, 840 million were undernourished, 2.4 billion did not have access
to any form of improved sanitation services, and one in every six children in the world of
primary school age were not in school. About 50 percent of the global nonagricultural labor
force is estimated to be either unemployed or underemployed.
1
In many countries, working people have suffered an absolute decline in living standards. In
the United States, the real weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers (in 1992
dollars) fell from $315 in 1973 to $264 in 1989. After a decade of economic expansion, it
reached $271 in 1999, which remained lower than the average real wage in 1962. In Latin
America, a continent that has suffered from neoliberal restructuring since the 1970s, about 200
million people, or 46 percent of the population, live in poverty. Between 1980 and the early
1990s (1991–1994), real wages fell by 14 percent in Argentina, 21 percent in Uruguay, 53
percent in Venezuela, 68 percent in Ecuador, and 73 percent in Bolivia.
2
The advocates of neoliberalism promised that the neoliberal "reforms" or "structural
adjustments" would usher in an era of unprecedented economic growth, technological progress,
rising living standards, and material prosperity. In fact, the world economy has slowed towards
stagnation in the neoliberal era. The average annual growth rate of world GDP declined from 4.9
percent between 1950 and 1973, to 3.0 percent between 1973 and 1992, and to 2.7 percent between
1990 and 2001. Between 1980 and 1998, half of all the "developing countries" (including the
so-called "transition economies") suffered from falling real per capita GDP.
3
The global economy has been kept afloat by the debt-financed U.S. economy. Between 1995 and
2002, the U.S. economy accounted for 96 percent of the cumulative growth in world GDP.
4 The U.S. expansion has been financed by reducing domestic savings, raising the private
sector debts to historically unprecedented levels, and running large and ever-rising current
account deficits. The process is unsustainable. The enormous imbalances have to be corrected
one way or the other. If the United States cannot continue to generate ever-rising current
account deficits and none of the other large economies are capable of functioning effectively
as the autonomous driving force, the neoliberal global economy will be under powerful downward
pressures and exposed to the threat of increasingly frequent and violent financial crises.
The social and economic disasters brought about by neoliberalism have already led to
pervasive and growing popular resistance. The further deterioration of global economic
conditions might well push hundreds of millions of people beyond the threshold of tolerance. A
global rebellion against neoliberalism and capitalism cannot be ruled out. Those who consider
themselves to be on the left, progressives or revolutionaries, should be ready, first of all
intellectually, for such a development.
Neoliberalism and Global Stagnation
Neoliberalism is not able to provide an institutional framework for sustained global capital
accumulation. Neoliberalism undermines and dismantles the institutions set up to stabilize the
capitalist economy and alleviate capitalist social contradictions. The capitalist global
economy is therefore left exposed to increasingly frequent and violent financial crises. As the
editors of Monthly Review put it: "Globalization under neoliberal regimes has meant in
many ways the globalization of stagnation tendencies and financial crisis."
5
Global effective demand is the sum of global private consumption, global private investment,
and global government expenditures. Under neoliberalism, global inequality has reached
unprecedented levels and working people in many parts of the world have suffered from absolute
pauperization. It follows that the purchasing power of the great majority of the world
population has fallen or grown more slowly than world output.
Private investment in the face of global overcapacity stagnates, and private capital turns
to speculation in financial instruments. As a result of financial liberalization, cross-border
speculative capital flows have greatly increased, raising the danger of capital flight and
financial crisis. Against such dangers, some central banks are forced to maintain high interest
rates, in effect paying a risk premium to global finance capital. The average ratio of real
interest rate to GDP growth rate in the seven leading capitalist economies was 0.97 between
1881 and 1913, 2.40 between 1919 and 1939, 0.36 between 1946 and 1958, 0.55 between 1959 and
1971, 0.47 between 1972 and 1984, and 2.34 between 1985 and 1997. It is worth noting that the
real interest rate has been higher than the economic growth rate only in two periods, the
interwar depression years and the neoliberal era. A ratio greater than one implies an inversion
of the roles of productive and speculative investment, and is a signal of systemic crisis.
6
Under neoliberalism, governments have mostly pursued tight fiscal and monetary policies,
restraining public spending. With liberalized financial markets, governments that run fiscal
deficits are likely to be "punished" by private investors who may respond with capital flight
and attacks on the currency. Therefore, governments (especially the governments of peripheral
and semiperipheral countries) are under strong pressures to maintain fiscal balance by cutting
expenditures. All neoliberal regimes seek to limit government expenditure. To summarize, in the
neoliberal era, all three components of global effective demand are subject to strong downward
pressures and have tended to either contract or stagnate.
The nineteenth century Marxists regarded the contradiction between socialized production and
the capitalist system of private appropriation as the basic contradiction of capitalism. One
may argue that the increasing socialization of production has found its expressions in the
rising importance of fixed capital and the increasingly complex and interrelated financial
structures. Since Keynes, many economists have understood that investment in fixed capital is
subject to fundamental uncertainty and is often beyond the reach of rational calculation. The
growing complexity of financial structures has greatly increased the chance that sudden
movements in investors' confidence and psychological conditions may lead to drastic and
substantial fluctuations of investment and through investment, the economy. To prevent
capitalist economies from falling into deep recessions or depressions, it is necessary to have
a "big government" that can function effectively as the macroeconomic stabilizer.
7
Neoliberalism, by pursuing financial liberalization and attacking the public sector, has
significantly undermined and in some cases totally dismantled its stabilizing functions. The
neoliberal era has seen increasingly frequent and violent financial crises. The Mexican crisis
in 1995 was followed by the Asian Crisis in 1997, the Russian and the Brazilian crises in 1998,
and the Argentine crisis in 2001. The role of the global macroeconomic stabilizer has been
played throughout by the U.S. Treasury and by U.S. imports of goods and services increasingly
in excess of U.S. exports; can this continue?
The U.S Financial Bubble and Imbalances
Without a large economy capable of generating some autonomous demand, the global economy
might have already entered into a downward spiral. The U.S. economic boom in the second half of
the 1990s and its large and growing trade deficit have functioned as counteracting forces
against the generally contractionary tendencies of neoliberalism.
The U.S. economic boom was led by debt-financed private sector consumption and by a burst of
corporate investment in "high tech." The private sector financial balance (incomes less
expenditures) moved from the historically normal range of 3–4 percent of GDP to
unprecedented negative territory, reaching negative 5.5 percent by the third quarter of 2000.
Household and corporate sector debts as a percentage of GDP were at historical peaks.
Households were willing and able to borrow at such a rate because of the great asset price
bubble. Measured by indicators such as Tobin's "Q" (the ratio of market value of assets to
replacement cost of capital) or by reference to price-earning ratios, the U.S. stock market
bubble that reached its greatest expansion in 2000 is the most extreme in U.S. economic
history.
8
When the stock market bubble burst, corporate sector spending slowed significantly
(particularly in "high tech"). To avoid a deep recession, the U.S. general government fiscal
balance has moved from a surplus of 1.4 percent of GDP to a deficit of 4.6 percent of GDP
between 2000 and 2003, or a swing of 6 percent of GDP, and the U.S. Federal Reserve has lowered
the short-term interest rate from 6.5 percent to 1.25 percent. Despite the dramatic loosening
of fiscal and monetary policy, U.S. growth has been sluggish and employment stagnant. These
policies have in effect helped to sustain the bubble. Household sector debt expansion has been
sustained, the stock market bubble has not been fully deflated, and a housing market bubble is
in turn approaching its peak.
The U.S. current account deficit, largely the result of a steadily increasing deficit in its
international trade in goods and services, reached 5 percent of GDP in late 2002. For the
capitalist world's hegemonic power to run a current account deficit on such a large scale is
without historical precedent. By contrast, on the eve of the First World War, Britain ran
current account surpluses close to 4 percent of GDP.
The U.S. current account deficits are matched by reciprocal capital inflows from the rest of
the world. For the ever-rising U.S. current account deficits to continue, the rest of the world
must be willing to hold an increasingly bigger proportion of their financial reserves in
dollar-denominated assets. Stephen Roach, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley, points
out:
Currently, about 75 percent of the world's total foreign exchange reserves are held in the
form of dollar-denominated assets -- more than twice America's 32 percent share of world GDP
(at market exchange rates). At the same time, foreign investors hold about 45 percent of the
outstanding volume of US Treasury indebtedness, 35 percent of US corporate debt, and 12 percent
of US equities. All of these ratios are at or near record highs. Never before has the world put
more stock in America -- both as an engine of growth and as a store of financial value. The
problem is that the math gets exceedingly tenuous if it is projected into the future.
9
Projections of current account deficits at current rates need not go far into the future to
become "tenuous." According to one study by the Levy Economics Institute, under plausible
assumptions, and supposing the U.S. economy to grow at a rate sufficient to lower the
unemployment rate, the U.S. net foreign liability would reach more than 60 percent of GDP and
the current account deficits could reach 8.5–9.5 percent of GDP before
2010.
Alternative Scenarios of Global Economic Crisis
There are four possible ways for the unsustainable growth in the U.S. current account
deficit to be reversed. First, if the rest of the world grows more rapidly, indeed far more
rapidly, than the current growth rate of the U.S. economy, there will be increased demand for
U.S. goods and services, allowing U.S. exports to grow more rapidly to close the gap with the
imports. Second, the U.S. current account deficit could be corrected by contracting U.S.
domestic demand. Third, the explosive growth in the current account deficit may be corrected
through adjustments in "relative prices" -- i.e., devaluation of the U.S. dollar. Finally, the
exercise of political and military power might affect the components of the growth in the
current account deficit in a manner favorable for the United States.
There is no prospect in the next several years of the first possibility, i.e., growth in the
rest of the world at a significantly faster pace than current growth in the United States. The
burden shall fall on the second and third options which, while achievable, pose immense
risks.
Limiting domestic U.S. growth, and therefore imports and the trade deficit, by raising
domestic interest rates is certainly within the theoretical ability of U.S. policy makers.
Indeed this would be the "orthodox" IMF medicine administered to any other state on the planet
were it to find itself in anything like the U.S. current account difficulties. But the United
States is not like any other state on the planet, it is the hegemon. No institution exists to
force such medicine upon it. And for the U.S. ruling elite, this course is not politically
possible, at least at this stage of the electoral cycle. But of even greater concern are the
dangers posed by the vast unprecedented accumulation of U.S. consumer and mortgage debt. Absent
a surge in domestic growth, which would itself aggravate the current account difficulty, rising
interest rates risk a wave of personal bankruptcies of Great Depression proportions.
The remaining option is dollar devaluation, and it is clear that a gradual and controlled
devaluation is the policy preferred by the U.S. Treasury, and already being put into effect.
The depreciation of the dollar makes U.S. goods cheaper and foreign goods more expensive for
U.S. households and corporations. It helps to stimulate exports and dampen imports. However,
dollar depreciation reduces U.S. demand for foreign goods and exports deflationary pressures to
the rest of the world.
The Asian economies (Japan, China, and Southeast Asia) together run current account
surpluses of $230–240 billion a year, or nearly half of the U.S. current account
deficits. But the Asian economies have either pegged their currencies to the U.S. dollar or
have intervened heavily to prevent currency appreciation. This leaves the burden of adjustment
almost entirely on Europe.
The European economy has not been able to generate any expansion in domestic demand, and its
growth has relied exclusively on exports. Europe's largest economy, the German economy, is in
recession and such signs of growth as exist elsewhere are weak. Dollar depreciation therefore
is particularly threatening for the European economies. Further, the Euro-area governments are
constrained by the so-called "Stability and Growth Pact" which requires fiscal deficits no
greater than 3 percent of GDP.
Financial circles have urged the European governments to pursue "structural reforms,"
bringing labor and product market policies to U.S. standards. "Structural reforms" will
supposedly unleash productivity growth that "in the long run," will create conditions for
vigorous demand expansion. From the point of view of financial capitalists, for vigorous
accumulation to take place there has to be a dramatic improvement in profitability and
capitalist confidence. For the capitalists to be confident, "structural reforms" have to take
place to break the resistance of the working class. At this moment, it is not at all clear that
the European capitalist class can decisively defeat the resistance of the working class. But if
the so-called "structural reforms" are indeed carried out, their negative effects on domestic
demand (through further attacks on working people's living standards) may very well overwhelm
whatever "positive" effects they may have on the "long run" accumulation.
With the European economy stagnating, it is inconceivable that it can absorb enough U.S.
exports to correct the U.S. current account deficit. A correction that depends entirely on
dollar depreciation would require a catastrophic decline in the dollar's value. By some
estimates, the dollar may need to fall by 30–50 percent. Such a decline would be
politically, economically, and psychologically unacceptable.
10
If the U.S. dollar is not going to depreciate against any other currency, why does the
current account deficit have to be corrected? If the rest of the world's central banks keep
intervening, flooding the world with their own currencies (euros, Japanese yens, and the
Chinese renminbi) to prevent dollar depreciation, why cannot the United States run an
ever-larger current account deficit for an indefinite period of time? It cannot go on
indefinitely because the rising U.S. current account deficits absorb a growing proportion of
the global saving. A theoretical limit will be reached when the entire world's saving is
exhausted to finance the U.S. current account deficit. But the practical limit will be reached
long before the theoretical limit. This course would raise U.S. and Japanese government debt to
astronomical levels. These gigantic government debts would exist along with enormous household
and corporate debts in the United States and Europe. 11
How can these debts be financed? There are two possibilities. First, a global depression and
widespread household and corporate bankruptcies may destroy much of the private debts. This is
the historical solution that has obtained in all prior systemic crises of capitalism. In
theory, as debt is devalued the conditions for a new cycle of capitalist accumulation on an
even higher level gradually come to exist. But in the last such global depression such
spontaneous recovery was inadequate, for reasons inherent in monopoly capital that are even
stronger today. This option therefore supposes an extended period of depression. Whatever the
outcome on this hypothesis one thing is certain, neoliberalism would be dead for a very long
time, if not forever.
Secondly, the enormous private and public sector debts could be inflated away, that is,
financed by printing money. Given the magnitude of the enormous debts to be inflated away, the
inflation strategy may send the global economy into vicious cycles of hyperinflation and
skyrocketing interest rates. If there is any one option ruled out by all of the various global
ruling classes, it is this.
Towards an Imperial Solution?
Is there a solution to the crisis within the existing exploitative, oppressive framework?
The U.S. economy is in deep crisis, and given the role it plays in the world economy much
depends upon it. But U.S. imperialism continues to control the world's most powerful,
unchallenged military forces. Can the U.S. ruling elite use its forces to build an exploitative
empire, establish unprecedented political and military dominance over the world, and in the
process manage its economic crisis? In fact, current U.S. policy is an attempt to do just
that.
To contain the explosion in the U.S. current account deficit, imports need to be reduced.
One way is to reduce such key imports as motor vehicles and electronic goods by increasing
their cost in U.S. dollars through a revaluation of the yen and the renminbi. This can only be
achieved by political pressure, and it is being applied. Other substantial imports, such as
clothing and footwear, cannot be reduced in quantity since U.S. producers no longer exist to
supply the amount needed. Here costs can be contained by the relentless imposition of a "race
to the bottom" -- the continual transfer of production to ever poorer and more desperate
countries. Here some military force works wonders in enforcing neoliberal immiseration;
consider the results of U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and Africa. But the key import is
mineral fuels, and here the long-term cost can only be contained by U.S. control of the
physical resources. The hand on the spigot that regulates production (and therefore price) must
be controlled by the United States. This is one aspect of the economic benefits of U.S. global
political power sought through military strength.
The other aspect of any strategy to contain the unsustainable growth in the current account
deficit needs to be an expansion of U.S. exports. Yet with the U.S. manufacturing base in
terminal decline, only the prospect of monopoly prices for "intellectual property" offers hope.
Here too the imposition of monopoly prices for the licenses, genetically modified seeds,
pharmaceuticals, songs and movies, is a matter purely of political power based on military
strength.
But how can this imperialist project be financed? The costs of U.S. military expansion are
likely to aggravate rather than alleviate the U.S. economic crisis. Stephen Roach of Morgan
Stanley asks the question: "Can a saving-short US economy continue to finance an ever-widening
expansion of its military superiority?" His answer is: "The confluence of history, geopolitics,
and economics leaves me more convinced than ever that a US-centric world is on an unsustainable
path."
12
Could the U.S. military expansion be financed by the expansion itself? Andy Xie of Morgan
Stanley estimated that the direct and indirect effects of the U.S. occupation of Iraq could
save the United States $40 billion a year in expenditures on oil imports.
13 Assuming these "benefits" are fully realized, that is only a fraction of the U.S.
current account deficits.
But faced with the increasingly pervasive popular resistance in Iraq, the United States has
not yet been able to realize any of these projected "benefits." Months after the so-called
"major combat operations" ended and despite the fact that the United States has committed half
of its entire regular army in Iraq, the United States is losing its grip on Iraq, unable to
control the roads and borders, the water, and the electricity supply.
Out of the U.S. Army's thirty-three combat brigades, sixteen are now in Iraq, two are in
Afghanistan, two are in South Korea, and one is in Kosovo. Of the twelve brigades in the United
States, three are in modernization training, three are in reserve for possible war in Korea,
and two are going to relieve the troops in Afghanistan. There are only four brigades left to
relieve the sixteen brigades in Iraq. In effect, the United States has exhausted its entire
regular army just to occupy such totally impoverished third world countries as Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Whatever the economic "costs" or "benefits," U.S. imperialism is losing the political and
ideological battle. According to the latest survey of the Pew Global Attitudes Project (based
in Washington), "America's image around the world has taken a sharp turn for the worse."
14 The project of a U.S. global neoliberal empire based on force has already
failed. Not because of internal limits in the working of capitalism alone, but because the
attempt to avoid the economic crisis that neoliberal policies produce through global military
dominance has already come up against its limits in popular resistance in Iraq. The crisis of
neoliberalism shall follow.
... ... ...
Minqi Li Minqi Li was a political prisoner in China during 1990–1992. He teaches
political economy at the Department of Political Science of York University, Toronto,
Canada.
I think the key to collapse of Soviet society and its satellites was the victory of
neoliberal ideology over communism. It was pure luck for neoliberalism was that its triumphal
march over the globe coincide with deep crisis of both communist ideology and the Soviet elite
(nomenklatura) in the USSR. Hapless, mediocre Gorbachov, a third rate politician who became the
leader of the USSR is a telling example here. Propaganda, especially "big troika" (BBC,
Deutsche Welle and
Voice of America), also played a very important role in this. Especially in Baltic countries and
Ukraine.
Domestic fake new industry always has huge advantage over foreign one in the USA and other
Western countries, because of general cultural dominance of the West.
The loss of effectiveness of neoliberal propaganda now is the same as the reason for loss of
effectiveness of communist propaganda since 60th. In the first case it was the crisis of
communist ideology, in the second is the crisis of neoliberal ideology. Everybody now understands
that the neoliberal promises were fake, and "bait and switch" manuver that enriched the tiny
percentage of population (top 1% and even more 0.01%).
When the society experience the crisis of ideology it became inoculated toward official
propaganda -- it simply loses its bite.
Notable quotes:
"... As the The Economist notes, a 2015 survey of the top 94 cable channels in America by the research firm Nielsen found that RT did not even make it into the rankings, capturing only 0.04 percent of viewers, according to the Broadcast Audience Research Board. ..."
"... RT has claimed dominance on YouTube, an assertion that apparently caught the attention of the U.S. intelligence community, which noted that RT videos get 1 million views a day, far surpassing other outlets. ..."
"... Or as media-effects theorists explain the communication process, the intentions of the producer (Soviet Union) and the conventions of the content (communist propaganda) were interwoven in a strategy aimed at influencing the receiver (the American audience). But the majority of Americans, with the exception of a few hard-core ideologues, interpreted the content of the message as pitiful Soviet propaganda, assuming they even paid attention to it. ..."
"... There is no doubt that Moscow, which regarded President Harry Truman as its leading American political nemesis, was hoping that Progressive presidential candidate Henry Wallace would win the 1948 election -- and had tailored its propaganda effort in accordance with that goal. That pro-Wallace campaign took place at a time when the American Communist Party still maintained some influence in the United States, where many Americans still sympathized with the former World War II ally and a large number of Soviet spies were operating in the country. But then Wallace's Progressives ended up winning 2.5 percent of the vote, less than Strom Thurmond's Southern segregationist ticket. ..."
"... Yet we are supposed to believe that by employing RT, Sputnik, Facebook, Twitter, and a bunch of hackers, the Russians could help their American candidate "steal" the 2016 presidential election. Is there any evidence that those white blue-collar workers and rural voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan -- the people who provided Trump with his margin of victory -- were even exposed to the reports distributed by RT and Sputnik, or by the memes constructed by Russian trolls or their posts on Facebook? ("Hey, did you watch RT last night?") ..."
"... Yet the assertion that a "silver bullet shot from a media gun" in the form of Russian propaganda was able "to penetrate a hapless audience" in the United States has been gaining more adherents in Washington and elsewhere. This conspiracy seems to correlate the intent of the Russian government and the content of their messages with the voting behavior of Americans. ..."
"... In a strange irony, those who are promoting this fallacious assertion may -- unlike their Russian scapegoat -- actually succeed in penetrating a hapless American audience. ..."
The Russians can dish it out, but don't expect Americans to swallow everything.
During the Cold War, it became an article of faith among Western policymakers and
journalists: One of the most effective ways to discredit the leaders of Communist countries
would be to provide their citizens with information from the West. It was a view that was
shared by Soviet Bloc regimes who were worried that listening to the Voice of America (VOA) or
watching Western television shows would induce their people to take political action against
the rulers.
So it was not surprising that government officials in East Germany, anxious that many TV
stations from West Germany could be viewed by their citizens, employed numerous means!such as
jamming the airwaves and even damaging TV antennas that were pointing west!in order to prevent
the so-called "subversive" western broadcasts from reaching audiences over the wall.
After the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, communication researchers studying public attitudes
in former East German areas assumed that they would discover that those who had access to West
German television!and were therefore exposed to the West's political freedom and economic
prosperity!were more politically energized and willing to challenge the communist regime than
those who couldn't watch Western television.
But as Evgeny Morozov recalled in his Net Delusion: The
Dark Side of Internet Freedom , a study conducted between 1966 and 1990 about incipient
protests in the so-called "Valley of the Clueless"!an area in East Germany where the government
successfully blocked Western television signals!raised questions about this conventional
wisdom.
As it turns out, having access to West German television actually made life in East Germany
more endurable. Far from radicalizing its citizens, it seemed to have made them more
politically compliant. As one East German dissident quoted by Morozov lamented, "The whole
people could leave the country and move to the West as a man at 8pm, via television."
Meanwhile, East German citizens who did not have access to Western German television were
actually more critical of their regime, and more politically restless.
The study concluded that "in an ironic twist for Marxism, capitalist television seems to
have performed the same narcotizing function in communist East Germany that Karl Marx had
attributed to religious beliefs in capitalist society when he condemned religion as the 'opium
of the people.'"
Morozov refers to the results of these and other studies to raise an interesting idea:
Western politicians and pundits have predicted that the rise of the Internet, which provides
free access to information to residents of the global village, would galvanize citizens in
Russia and other countries to challenge their authoritarian regimes. In reality, Morozov
contends that exposure to the Internet may have distracted Russian users from their political
problems. The young men who should be leading the revolution are instead staying at home and
watching online pornography. Trotsky, as we know, didn't tweet.
Yet the assumption that the content of the message is a "silver bullet shot from a media gun
to penetrate a hapless audience," as communication theorists James Arthur Anderson and Timothy
P. Meyer put it, remains popular among politicians and pundits today, despite ample evidence to
the contrary.
Hence the common assertion that a presidential candidate who has raised a lots of money and
can spend it on buying a lots of television commercials, has a clear advantage over rivals who
cannot afford to dominate the media environment. But the loser in the 2016 presidential race
spent about $141.7 million on ads, compared with $58.8 million for winner's campaign, according
to NBC News . Candidate Trump also spent a fraction of what his Republican rivals had
during the Republican primaries that he won.
Communication researchers like Anderson and Meyers are not suggesting that media messages
don't have any effect on target audiences, but that it is quite difficult to sell ice to
Eskimos. To put it in simple terms, media audiences are not hapless and passive. Although you
can flood them with messages that are in line with your views and interests, audiences actively
participate in the communication process. They will construct their own meaning from the
content they consume, and in some cases they might actually disregard your message.
Imagine a multi-billionaire who decides to produce thousands of commercials celebrating the
legacy of ISIS, runs them on primetime American television, and floods social media with
messages praising the murderous terrorist group. If that happened, would Americans be rallying
behind the flag of ISIS? One can imagine that the response from audiences would range from
anger to dismissal to laughter.
In 2013 Al Jazeera Media Network
purchased Current
TV , which was once partially owned by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, and launched
an American news channel. Critics expressed concerns that the network, which is owned by the
government of Qatar and has been critical of U.S. policies in the Middle East, would try to
manipulate American audiences with their anti-Washington message.
Three years later, after hiring many star journalists and producing mostly straight news
shows, Al Jazeera America CEO Al Anstey announced that the network would cease
operations. Anstey cited the "economic landscape" which was another way of saying that its
ratings were distressingly low. The relatively small number of viewers who watched Al
Jazeera America 's programs considered them not anti-American but just, well, boring.
You don't have to be a marketing genius to figure out that in the age of the 24/7 media
environment, foreign networks face prohibitive competition from American cable news networks
like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, social media, not to mention Netflix and yes, those online porno
sites. Thus the chances that a foreign news organization would be able to attract large
American audiences, and have any serious impact on their political views, remain very low.
That, indeed, has been the experience of not only the defunct Al Jazeera America ,
but also of other foreign news outlets that have tried to imitate the Qatar-based network by
launching operations targeting American audiences. These networks have included CGTN (China
Global Television Network), the English-language news channel run by Chinese state broadcaster
China Central
Television ; PressTV, a 24-hour English language news and documentary network affiliated
with Islamic Republic of Iran
Broadcasting ; or RT (formerly Russia Today), a Russian international television network funded by the
Russian
government that operates cable and satellitetelevision channels directed to
audiences outside of Russia.
After all, unless you are getting to paid to watch CTGN, PressTV, or RT -- or you are a news
junkie with a lot of time on your hands -- why in the world would you be spending even one hour of
the day watching these foreign networks?
Yet if you have been following the coverage and public debate over the alleged Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election, you get the impression that RT and another
Russian media outlet, Sputnik (a news agency and radio broadcast service established by the
Russian
government-controlled news agency Rossiya Segodnya ), were central players
in a conspiracy between the Trump presidential campaign and the Kremlin to deny the presidency
to Hillary Clinton.
In fact, more than half of the much-cited January report on the Russian electoral
interference released by U.S. intelligence agencies was devoted to warning of RT's growing
influence in the United States and across the world, referring to the "rapid expansion" of the
network's operations and budget to about $300 million a year, and citing the supposedly
impressive audience numbers listed on the RT website.
According to America's spooks, the coordinated activities of RT and the online-media
properties and social-media accounts that made up "Russia's state-run propaganda machine" have
been employed by the Russian government to "undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic
order."
And in a long cover story in TheNew York Times Magazine this month, with the
headline, "
RT, Sputnik and Russia's New Theory of War, " Jim Rutenberg suggested that the Kremlin has
"built one of the most powerful information weapons of the 21st century" and that it "may be
impossible to stop."
But as the British Economist magazine reported early this year, while RT claims to
reach 550 million people worldwide, with America and Britain supposedly being its most
successful markets, its "audience" of 550 million refers to "the number of people who can
access its channel, not those who actually watch it."
As the The Economist notes, a 2015 survey of the top 94 cable channels in America by
the research firm Nielsen found that RT did not even make it into the rankings, capturing only
0.04 percent of viewers, according to the Broadcast Audience Research Board.
The Times' s Rutenberg argues that the RT's ratings "are almost beside the point." RT
might not have amassed an audience that remotely rivals CNN's in conventional terms, "but in
the new, 'democratized' media landscape, it doesn't need to" since "the network has come to
form the hub of a new kind of state media operation: one that travels through the same diffuse
online channels, chasing the same viral hits and memes, as the rest of the
Twitter-and-Facebook-age media."
Traveling "through the same diffuse online channels" and "chasing the same viral hits and
memes" sounds quite impressive. Indeed, RT has claimed dominance on YouTube, an assertion that
apparently caught the attention of the U.S. intelligence community, which noted that RT videos
get 1 million views a day, far surpassing other outlets.
But as The Economist points out, when it comes to Twitter and Facebook, RT's reach is
narrower than that of other news networks. Its claim of YouTube success is mostly down to the
network's practice of buying the rights to sensational footage -- for instance, Japan's 2011
tsunami -- and repackaging it with the company logo. It's not clear, however, how the
dissemination of a footage of a natural disaster or of a dog playing the piano helps efforts to
"undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order."
It is obvious that the Russian leaders have been investing a lot of resources in RT,
Sputnik, and other media outlets, and that they employ them as propaganda tools aimed at
promoting their government's viewpoints and interests around the world. From that perspective,
these Russian media executives are heirs to the communist officials who had been in charge of
the propaganda empire of the Soviet Union and its satellites during much of the 20th
Century.
The worldwide communist propaganda machine did prove to be quite effective during the Great
Depression and World War II, when it succeeded in tapping into the economic and social
anxieties and anti-Nazi sentiments in the West and helped strengthen the power of the communist
parties in Europe and, to some extent, in the United States.
But in the same way that Western German television programs failed to politically energize
East Germans during the Cold War, much of the Soviet propaganda distributed by the Soviet Union
at that time had very little impact on the American public and its political attitudes, as
symbolized by the shrinking membership of the American Communist Party.
Or as media-effects theorists explain the communication process, the intentions of the
producer (Soviet Union) and the conventions of the content (communist propaganda) were
interwoven in a strategy aimed at influencing the receiver (the American audience). But the
majority of Americans, with the exception of a few hard-core ideologues, interpreted the
content of the message as pitiful Soviet propaganda, assuming they even paid attention to
it.
Soviet propaganda may have scored limited success during the Cold War when it came to
members of the large communist parties in France, Italy, and Japan, as well as exploited
anti-American sentiments in some third-world countries. In these cases, the intentions of the
producer and the convention of the message seemed to be in line with the interpretations of the
receivers.
There is no doubt that Moscow, which regarded President Harry Truman as its leading American
political nemesis, was hoping that Progressive presidential candidate Henry Wallace would win
the 1948 election -- and had tailored its propaganda effort in accordance with that goal. That
pro-Wallace campaign took place at a time when the American Communist Party still maintained
some influence in the United States, where many Americans still sympathized with the former
World War II ally and a large number of Soviet spies were operating in the country. But then
Wallace's Progressives ended up winning 2.5 percent of the vote, less than Strom Thurmond's
Southern segregationist ticket.
Yet we are supposed to believe that by employing RT, Sputnik, Facebook, Twitter, and a bunch
of hackers, the Russians could help their American candidate "steal" the 2016 presidential
election. Is there any evidence that those white blue-collar workers and rural voters in
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan -- the people who provided Trump with his margin of victory -- were
even exposed to the reports distributed by RT and Sputnik, or by the memes constructed by
Russian trolls or their posts on Facebook? ("Hey, did you watch RT last night?")
Yet the assertion that a "silver bullet shot from a media gun" in the form of Russian
propaganda was able "to penetrate a hapless audience" in the United States has been gaining
more adherents in Washington and elsewhere. This conspiracy seems to correlate the intent of
the Russian government and the content of their messages with the voting behavior of
Americans.
In a strange irony, those who are promoting this fallacious assertion may -- unlike their
Russian scapegoat -- actually succeed in penetrating a hapless American audience.
Leon Hadar is a writer and author of the books Quagmire: America in the Middle East and
Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East. His articles have appeared in the New York Times,
The Washington Post, Washington Times, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy,
and the National Interest.
For an example of the success of propaganda, look at Breitbart. The messages online during
the 2016 election were pervasive and insidious. I think this post underestimates the threat
by focusing on traditional media instead of social interaction.
RT covered Assange during the election better than other outlets.
It's easy to see everything from a personal perspective and forget that we are very
diverse. We don't live in an ABC, CBS, and NBC world anymore, with information controlled.
Changes in thought and belief happen online now, in many, many different venues.
A government that has confidence in its own support doesn't need to fight foreign
information. In the '30s and '40s the US government encouraged shortwave listening, and
manufacturers made money by adding SW bands to their radios. We were going through a
depression and then a war, but our government was CONFIDENT enough to encourage us to
understand the world.
Since 1950 the government has been narrowing the focus of external input because it knows
that it no longer has the natural consent of the governed. TV and the Web are intentional
forms of jamming, filling our eyes and ears with internally produced nonsense to crowd out
the external info.
The ones you have to worry about are those much closer to home – "inside the tent".
Friends in the UK, Canada, and Europe are appalled at the distorting effect Israeli
propaganda has on American news sources, and how unaware of it typical Americans seem to
be.
Indeed, it is odd and more than a little worrying that all the concern about "foreign
meddling" has so far failed to engage with Israel, which is hands down the best funded, most
sophisticated and successful foreign meddler.
The FBI annually reports that Israel spies on us at the same level as Russia and China.
But we have yet to fully register that Israeli spying includes systematic efforts to
influence American elections and policies, efforts that dwarf those of Putin's Russia both in
scale and impact.
I think that the corporate masters of propaganda media and politics in these United States,
have, in the words of Edward G. Robinson's Rico in Little Caesar, "gotten to where you can
dish it out, but you can't take it anymore."
It's counterfactual to conflate Soviet propaganda with the perspective of Russians today,
unless Communism never really was the real point. In fact, it's our own leaders in media and
politics who now increasingly issue dogmatic and insulting derogatory language, sounding more
and more like late Soviet propagandists themselves.
So what? What's wrong with people being exposed to a broad array of points of view, trying
to better understand the world and constantly challenging, refining, and reshaping their
worldview in the process?
You're coming perilously close to suggesting that Americans who are critical of their
government are dupes of hostile foreign powers ! an unfair, unhelpful, and undemocratic
assertion.
The problem with Russian trolls is that people don't know they are Russian trolls. They think
they are their fellow Americans and neighbors on Facebook. The influence of foreign
propaganda on Americans is not due to transparent media like Al Jazeera. It's due to
propaganda disguised as your neighbor's opinion.
this conversation cant be taken serious without a serious discussion on Israel, who by the
way provides the perfect case and point of how effective foreign propaganda can be. They work
through our media, school systems and even our churches. Just look at what happened to McGraw
Hill for daring to show before and after maps of the Palestine over the years.
Garrett 's book
The People's Pottage The Revolution Was-Ex America-Rise of Empire i ncludes a timeless quote on U.S. foreign policy. "You are imperialistic
all the same, whether you realize it or not... You are trying to make the kind of world you want. You are trying to impose the American
way of life on other people, whether they want it or not." The "Rise of Empire" opens with the sentence "We have crossed the boundary
between Republic and Empire." It contains a critical view of President Truman's usurpation of Congress' power to declare war. Some of
the "distinguishing marks" of an empire taken from history were "Domestic policy becomes subordinate to foreign policy" and " A system
of satellite nations". I think most of us are would be familiar with those two in modern context. His labeling of this policy as the
"Empire of the Bottomless Purse" was historically accurate.
The book was printed in 1953. What's amazing is how little some political ideology has changed since then. Take this quote; "And
the mere thought of 'America First', associated as that term is with 'isolationism', has become a liability so extreme that politicians
feel obliged to deny ever having entertained it." Think back to Ron Paul's 2008 campaign and how he was labeled an "isolationist" for
similar views of nationalism.
Notable quotes:
"... These are not sequential stages of Empire but occur in conjunction with one another and reinforce each other. That means that an attempt to reverse Empire in the direction of a Republic can begin with weakening any of the five characteristics in any order. ..."
"... Deconstructing these executive props, one by one, weakens the Empire. When all five components are deconstructing, the process presents a possible path to dissolving Empire itself. ..."
"... That was why Garrett does not deal with how to reverse the process of Empire. Once an empire is established, he argues, it becomes a "prisoner of history" in a trap of its own making. He writes, "A Republic may change its course, or reverse it, and that will be its own business. But the history of Empire is a world history and belongs to many people. A Republic is not obliged to act upon the world, either to change it or instruct it. Empire, on the other hand, must put forth its power." ..."
"... Collective security and fear are intimately connected concepts. It is no coincidence that the sixth component of Empire -- imprisonment -- comes directly after the two components of "a system of satellite nations" and, "a complex of vaunting and fear." ..."
"... An empire thinks that satellites are necessary for its collective security. Satellites think the empire is necessary for territorial and economic survival; but they are willing to defect if an empire with a better deal beckons. America knows this and scrambles to satisfy satellites that could become fickle. Garrett quotes Harry Truman, who created America's modern system of satellites. "We must make sure that our friends and allies overseas continue to get the help they need to make their full contribution to security and progress for the whole free world. This means not only military aid -- though that is vital -- it also means real programs of economic and technical assistance." ..."
"... Garrett also emphasizes how domestic pressure imprisons Empire. One of the most powerful domestic pressures is fear. An atmosphere of fear -- real or created -- drives public support of foreign policy and makes it more difficult for Empire to retreat from those policies. ..."
"... Empire has "'less control over its own fate than a republic,' he [Garrett] commented because it was a 'prisoner of history', ruled by fear. Fear of what? 'Fear of the barbarian.'" ..."
"... It does not matter whether the enemy is actually a barbarian. What matters is that citizens of Empire believe in the enemy's savagery and support a military posture toward him. Domestic fear drives the constant politics of satellite nations, protective treaties, police actions, and war. Foreign entanglements lead to increased global involvement and deeper commitments. The two reinforce each other. ..."
"... The fifth characteristic of Empire is not merely fear but also "vaunting." Vaunting means boasting about or praising something excessively -- for example, to laud and exaggerate America's role in the world. Fear provides the emotional impetus for conquest; vaunting provides the moral justification for acting upon the fear. The moral duty is variously phrased: leadership, a balance of power, peace, democracy, the preservation of civilization, humanitarianism. From this point, it is a small leap to conclude that the ends sanctify the means. Garrett observes that "there is soon a point from which there is no turning back .The argument for going on is well known. As Woodrow Wilson once asked, 'Shall we break the heart of the world?' So now many are saying, 'We cannot let the free world down'. Moral leadership of the world is not a role you step into and out of as you like." ..."
The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization. Its good intentions were peace, law and order. The Spanish
Empire added salvation. The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man's burden. We have added freedom and democracy.
-- Garet Garrett, Rise of Empire
The first step in creating Empire is to morally justify the invasion and occupation of another nation even if it poses no credible
or substantial threat. But if that's the entering strategy, what is the exit one?
One approach to answering is to explore how Empire has arisen through history and whether the process can be reversed. Another
is to conclude that no exit is possible; an Empire inevitably self-destructs under the increasing weight of what it is -- a nation
exercising ultimate authority over an array of satellite states. Empires are vulnerable to overreach, rebellion, war, domestic turmoil,
financial exhaustion, and competition for dominance.
In his monograph Rise of Empire, the libertarian journalist Garet Garrett (1878–1954), lays out a blueprint for how Empire could
possibly be reversed as well as the reason he believes reversal would not occur. Garrett was in a unique position to comment insightfully
on the American empire because he'd had a front-row seat to events that cemented its status: World War II and the Cold War. World
War II America already had a history of conquest and occupation, of course, but, during the mid to late 20th century, the nation
became a self-consciously and unapologetic empire with a self-granted mandate to spread its ideology around the world.
A path to reversing Empire
Garrett identifies the first five components of Empire:
The dominance of executive power: the White House reigns over Congress and the judiciary.
The subordination of domestic concerns to foreign policy: civil and economic liberties give way to military needs.
The rise of a military mentality: aggressive patriotism and obedience are exalted.
A system of satellite nations (vassals) in the name of collective security ;
A zeitgeist of both zealous patriotism and fear : bellicosity is mixed with and sustained by panic.
These are not sequential stages of Empire but occur in conjunction with one another and reinforce each other. That means that
an attempt to reverse Empire in the direction of a Republic can begin with weakening any of the five characteristics in any order.
Garrett did not directly address the strategy of undoing Empire, but his description of its creation can be used to good advantage.
The first step is to break down each component of Empire into more manageable chunks. For example, the executive branch accumulates
power in various ways. They include:
By delegation -- Congress transfers its constitutional powers to the president.
By reinterpretation of the Constitution by a sympathetic Supreme Court.
Through innovation by which the president assumes powers that are not constitutionally forbidden because the Framers never
considered them.
By administrative agencies that issue regulations with the force of law.
Through usurpation -- the president confronts Congress with a fait accompli that cannot easily be repudiated.Entanglement
in foreign affairs makes presidential power swell because, both by tradition and the Constitution, foreign affairs are his
authority.
Deconstructing these executive props, one by one, weakens the Empire. When all five components are deconstructing, the process
presents a possible path to dissolving Empire itself.
A sixth component of Empire
But in Rise of Empire, Garet Garrett offers a chilling assessment based on his sixth component of Empire. There is no path out.
A judgment that renders prevention all the more essential.
That was why Garrett does not deal with how to reverse the process of Empire. Once an empire is established, he argues, it
becomes a "prisoner of history" in a trap of its own making. He writes, "A Republic may change its course, or reverse it, and that
will be its own business. But the history of Empire is a world history and belongs to many people. A Republic is not obliged to act
upon the world, either to change it or instruct it. Empire, on the other hand, must put forth its power."
In his book For A New Liberty, Murray Rothbard expands on Garrett's point: "[The] United States, like previous empires, feel[s]
itself to be 'a prisoner of history.' For beyond fear lies 'collective security,' and the playing of the supposedly destined American
role upon the world stage."
Collective security and fear are intimately connected concepts. It is no coincidence that the sixth component of Empire --
imprisonment -- comes directly after the two components of "a system of satellite nations" and, "a complex of vaunting and fear."
Satellite nations
"We speak of our own satellites as allies and friends or as freedom loving nations," Garrett wrote. "Nevertheless, satellite is
the right word. The meaning of it is the hired guard." Why hired? Although men of Empire speak of losing China [or] Europe [how]
could we lose China or Europe, since they never belonged to us? What they mean is that we may lose a following of dependent people
who act as an outer guard."
An empire thinks that satellites are necessary for its collective security. Satellites think the empire is necessary for territorial
and economic survival; but they are willing to defect if an empire with a better deal beckons. America knows this and scrambles to
satisfy satellites that could become fickle. Garrett quotes Harry Truman, who created America's modern system of satellites. "We
must make sure that our friends and allies overseas continue to get the help they need to make their full contribution to security
and progress for the whole free world. This means not only military aid -- though that is vital -- it also means real programs of
economic and technical assistance."
In contrast to a Republic, Empire is both a master and a servant because foreign pressure cements it into the military and economic
support of satellite nations around the globe, all of which have their own agendas.
Garrett also emphasizes how domestic pressure imprisons Empire. One of the most powerful domestic pressures is fear. An atmosphere
of fear -- real or created -- drives public support of foreign policy and makes it more difficult for Empire to retreat from those
policies. In his introduction to Garrett's book Ex America, Bruce Ramsey addresses Garrett's point. Ramsey writes, Empire
has "'less control over its own fate than a republic,' he [Garrett] commented because it was a 'prisoner of history', ruled by fear.
Fear of what? 'Fear of the barbarian.'"
It does not matter whether the enemy is actually a barbarian. What matters is that citizens of Empire believe in the enemy's
savagery and support a military posture toward him. Domestic fear drives the constant politics of satellite nations, protective treaties,
police actions, and war. Foreign entanglements lead to increased global involvement and deeper commitments. The two reinforce each
other.
The fifth characteristic of Empire is not merely fear but also "vaunting." Vaunting means boasting about or praising something
excessively -- for example, to laud and exaggerate America's role in the world. Fear provides the emotional impetus for conquest;
vaunting provides the moral justification for acting upon the fear. The moral duty is variously phrased: leadership, a balance of
power, peace, democracy, the preservation of civilization, humanitarianism. From this point, it is a small leap to conclude that
the ends sanctify the means. Garrett observes that "there is soon a point from which there is no turning back .The argument for going
on is well known. As Woodrow Wilson once asked, 'Shall we break the heart of the world?' So now many are saying, 'We cannot let the
free world down'. Moral leadership of the world is not a role you step into and out of as you like."
Conclusion
In this manner, Garrett believed, Empire imprisons itself in the trap of a perpetual war for peace and stability, which are always
stated goals. Yet, as Garrett concluded, the reality is war and instability.
It is not clear whether he was correct that Empire could not be reversed. Whether or not he was, it is at its creation that Empire
is best opposed.
"... But this is one of the good things about having a Deep State, the existence of which has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt since the intelligence community declared war on Trump last November. While it prevents Trump from reaching a reasonable modus vivendi ..."
"... If the U.S. says that Moscow's activities in the eastern Ukraine are illegitimate, then, as the world's sole remaining "hyperpower," it will see to it that Russia suffers accordingly. If China demands more of a say in Central Asia or the western Pacific, then right-thinking folks the world over will shake their heads sadly and accuse it of undermining international democracy, which is always synonymous with U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... There is no one – no institution – that Russia or China can appeal to in such circumstances because the U.S. is also in charge of the appellate division. It is the "indispensable nation" in the immortal words of Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, because "we stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future." Given such amazing brilliance, how can any other country possibly object? ..."
"... Next to go was Mullah Omar of Afghanistan, sent packing in October 2001, followed by Slobodan Milosevic, hauled before an international tribunal in 2002; Saddam Hussein, executed in 2006, and Muammar Gaddafi, killed by a mob in 2011. For a while, the world really did seem like " Gunsmoke ," and the U.S. really did seem like Sheriff Matt Dillon. ..."
"... Although The New York Times wrote that U.S. pressure to cut off North Korean oil supplies has put China "in a tight spot," this was nothing more than whistling past the graveyard. There is no reason to think that Xi is the least bit uncomfortable. To the contrary, he is no doubt enjoying himself immensely as he watches America paint itself into yet another corner. ..."
"... Unipolarity will slink off to the sidelines while multilateralism takes center stage. Given that U.S. share of global GDP has fallen by better than 20 percent since 1989, a retreat is inevitable. America has tried to compensate by making maximum use of its military and political advantages. That would be a losing proposition even if it had the most brilliant leadership in the world. Yet it doesn't. Instead, it has a President who is an international laughingstock, a dysfunctional Congress, and a foreign-policy establishment lost in a neocon dream world. As a consequence, retreat is turning into a disorderly rout. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
The bigger picture behind Official Washington's hysteria over Russia, Syria and North
Korea is the image of a decaying but dangerous American hegemon resisting the start of a new
multipolar order, explains Daniel Lazare.
By Daniel Lazare
September 9, 2017
The showdown with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a seminal event that can only
end in one of two ways: a nuclear exchange or a reconfiguration of the international order.
While complacency is always unwarranted, the first seems increasingly unlikely. As no less a
global strategist than Steven Bannon observed about the possibility of a
pre-emptive U.S. strike: "There's no military solution. Forget it. Until somebody solves the
part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30
minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about. There's no military
solution here. They got us."
This doesn't mean that Donald Trump, Bannon's ex-boss, couldn't still do something rash.
After all, this is a man who prides himself on being unpredictable in business negotiations, as
historian William R. Polk, who worked for the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile
Crisis, points out . So maybe
Trump thinks it would be a swell idea to go a bit nuts on the DPRK.
But this is one of the good things about having a Deep State, the existence of which has
been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt since the intelligence community declared war on Trump
last November. While it prevents Trump from reaching a reasonable modus vivendi with
Russia, it also means that the President is continually surrounded by generals, spooks, and
other professionals who know the difference between real estate and nuclear war.
As ideologically fogbound as they may be, they can presumably be counted on to make sure
that Trump does not plunge the world into Armageddon (named, by the way, for a Bronze Age city about 20 miles southeast of
Haifa, Israel).
That leaves option number two: reconfiguration. The two people who know best about the
subject are Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both have been
chafing for years under a new world order in which one nation gets to serve as judge, jury, and
high executioner. This, of course, is the United States.
If the U.S. says that Moscow's activities in the eastern Ukraine are illegitimate, then, as
the world's sole remaining "hyperpower," it will see to it that Russia suffers accordingly. If
China demands more of a say in Central Asia or the western Pacific, then right-thinking folks
the world over will shake their heads sadly and accuse it of undermining international
democracy, which is always synonymous with U.S. foreign policy.
There is no one – no institution – that Russia or China can appeal to in such
circumstances because the U.S. is also in charge of the appellate division. It is the
"indispensable nation" in the immortal words of Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under
Bill Clinton, because "we stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future."
Given such amazing brilliance, how can any other country possibly object?
Challenging the Rule-Maker
But now that a small and beleaguered state on the Korean peninsula is outmaneuvering the
United States and forcing it to back off, the U.S. no longer seems so far-sighted. If North
Korea really has checkmated the U.S., as Bannon says, then other states will want to do the
same. The American hegemon will be revealed as an overweight 71-year-old man naked except for
his bouffant hairdo.
Not that the U.S. hasn't suffered setbacks before. To the contrary, it was forced to accept
the Castro regime following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and it suffered a massive defeat
in Vietnam in 1975. But this time is different. Where both East and West were expected to parry
and thrust during the Cold War, giving as good as they got, the U.S., as the global hegemon,
must now do everything in its power to preserve its aura of invincibility.
Since 1989, this has meant knocking over a string of "bad guys" who had the bad luck to get
in its way. First to go was Manuel Noriega, toppled six weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall
in an invasion that cost the lives of as many as 500 Panamanian soldiers and
possibly thousands of civilians as well.
Next to go was Mullah Omar of Afghanistan, sent packing in October 2001, followed by
Slobodan Milosevic, hauled before an international tribunal in 2002; Saddam Hussein, executed
in 2006, and Muammar Gaddafi, killed by a mob in 2011. For a while, the world really did seem
like " Gunsmoke ," and the U.S. really did
seem like Sheriff Matt Dillon.
But then came a few bumps in the road. The Obama administration cheered on a
Nazi-spearheaded coup d'état in Kiev in early 2014 only to watch helplessly as Putin,
under intense popular pressure, responded by detaching Crimea, which historically had been part
of Russia and was home to the strategic Russian naval base at Sevastopol, and bringing it back
into Russia.
Backed by Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dealt Washington another blow by driving
U.S.-backed, pro-Al Qaeda forces out of East Aleppo in December 2016. Predictably, the
Huffington Post compared the Syrian offensive to the fascist
bombing of Guernica .
Fire and Fury
Finally, beginning in March, North Korea's Kim Jong Un entered into a game of one-upmanship
with Trump, firing ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan,
test-firing an ICBM that might be capable
of hitting California , and then exploding a hydrogen warhead roughly
eight times as powerful as the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima in 1945. When Trump vowed
to respond "with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which the world has never seen
before," Kim upped the ante by firing a missile over the northern Japanese island of
Hokkaido.
As bizarre as Kim's behavior can be at times, there is method to his madness. As Putin
explained during the BRICS summit with Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, the DPRK's
"supreme leader" has seen how America destroyed Libya and Iraq and has therefore concluded that
a nuclear delivery system is the only surefire guarantee against U.S. invasion.
"We all remember what happened with Iraq and Saddam Hussein," he
said . "His children were killed, I think his grandson was shot, the whole country was
destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged . We all know how this happened and people in North
Korea remember well what happened in Iraq . They will eat grass but will not stop their nuclear
program as long as they do not feel safe."
Since Kim's actions are ultimately defensive in nature, the logical solution would be for
the U.S. to pull back and enter into negotiations. But Trump, desperate to save face, quickly
ruled it out. "Talking is not the answer!" he tweeted . Yet the
result of such bluster is only to make America seem more helpless than ever.
Although The New York Times wrote
that U.S. pressure to cut off North Korean oil supplies has put China "in a tight spot," this
was nothing more than whistling past the graveyard. There is no reason to think that Xi is the
least bit uncomfortable. To the contrary, he is no doubt enjoying himself immensely as he
watches America paint itself into yet another corner.
The U.S. Corner
If Trump backs down at this point, the U.S. standing in the region will suffer while China's
will be correspondingly enhanced. On the other hand, if Trump does something rash, it will be a
golden opportunity for Beijing, Moscow, or both to step in as peacemakers. Japan and South
Korea will have no choice but to recognize that there are now three arbiters in the region
instead of just one while other countries – the Philippines, Indonesia, and maybe even
Australia and New Zealand – will have to follow suit.
Unipolarity will slink off to the sidelines while multilateralism takes center stage. Given
that U.S. share of global GDP has fallen
by better than 20 percent since 1989, a retreat is inevitable. America has tried to
compensate by making maximum use of its military and political advantages. That would be a
losing proposition even if it had the most brilliant leadership in the world. Yet it doesn't.
Instead, it has a President who is an international laughingstock, a dysfunctional Congress,
and a foreign-policy establishment lost in a neocon dream world. As a consequence, retreat is
turning into a disorderly rout.
Assuming a mushroom cloud doesn't go up over Los Angeles, the world is going to be a very
different place coming out of the Korean crisis than when it went in. Of course, if a mushroom
cloud does go up, it will be even more so.
* Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the
Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
As the forces of globalism retreat after numerous defeats in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Turkey, and other nations, there is a resurgent popularity in national, historical,
and cultural symbols. These include flags, statues of forbearers, place names, language, and,
in fact, anything that distinguishes one national or sub-national group from others. The
negative reactions to cultural and religious threats brought about by the manifestations of
globalism – mass movement of refugees, dictates from supranational organizations like the
European Union and the United Nations, and the loss of financial independence – should
have been expected by the globalists. Caught up in their own self-importance and hubris, the
globalists are now debasing the forces of national, religious, and cultural identity as threats
to the "world order."
The most egregious examples of globalist pushback against aspirant nationhood and the
symbols of national identity are Catalonia and Kurdistan. Two plebiscites on independence, a
September 25, 2017 referendum on the Kurdistan Regional Government declaring independence from
Iraq and an October 1 referendum on Catalonia beginning the process of breaking away from the
Kingdom of Spain, are expected to achieve "yes" votes. Neither plebiscite in binding, a fact
that will result in both votes being ignored by the mother countries.
Iraq, the United States, Turkey, and Iran have warned Kurdish Iraq against holding the
independence referendum. The United States is prepared to double-cross its erstwhile Kurdish
allies for a fourth time. President Woodrow Wilson, who has been cited as the "first
neoconservative or neocon, reneged on Kurdish independence during the post-World War I
Versailles peace conference. Henry Kissinger double-crossed Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani in
1975 with the Algiers Accord between Iraq and Iran, a perfidious act that forced 100,000 of
Barzani's Kurdish forces into exile in Iran. George H. W. Bush promised the Kurds help after
Operation Desert Storm in 1991 if they revolted against Saddam Hussein's government. US
military aid was not forthcoming and the Kurds were forced into a small sliver of northern
Iraq, over which a US "no-fly zone" was imposed. Now, Donald Trump's administration has warned
the Kurds not to even think about independence, even though the Kurdish peshmerga forces helped
the US and its allies to drive the Islamic State out of Kirkuk and the rest of northern
Iraq.
In Spain, the conservative prime minister is trying to emulate the Spanish fascist dictator
Generalissimo Francisco Franco in making threats against Catalonia's independence wishes.
In response to the Catalan Parliament's vote to hold an October 1 referendum on Catalonia's
independence from Spain, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his People's Party government have
promised to round up the pro-independence members of the Catalan government, as well as
pro-independence legislators of the parliament and mayors, and criminally charge them with
sedition.
Rajoy's stance should be no surprise since his party, the Popular Party, is the political
heir of Franco's Falangist party. Franco's version of the Nazi Gestapo, the Guardia Civil,
brutally suppressed Catalan and Basque identity. Particular targets for suppression, according
to Falangist doctrine, were "anti-Spanish activists," "Reds," "separatists," "liberals,"
"Jews," "Freemasons," and "judeomarxistas."
The Falange was eventually replaced by the National Movement, which continued many of
Franco's policies, including repression of the Catalan and Basque culture, autonomy, and
language.
The Francoist People's Alliance, founded in 1989 by Franco's Interior Minister, Manuel Fraga
Iribarne, eventually morphed into the People's Party of Rajoy. The People's Party considers
itself "Christian Democratic," but it receives support from Franco's fascist Roman Catholic
order, the Opus Dei.
Rajoy is using a decision by Spain's Constitutional Court, suspending the independence
referendum in Catalonia, as justification for his threats against the region. Apparently, the
neo-fascist government of Spain has been trawling Twitter to collect the names of Catalan
mayors who have posted photographs of themselves and messages of support for the "Junts pel Si"
(Together for Yes) pro-independence coalition. The mayors, along with members of parliament and
the government in Barcelona, are being placed on a Guardia Civil list targeting them with
arrest and incarceration if the referendum is carried out.
Rajoy has also warned officials of local municipal councils that their cooperation in
holding a referendum vote will be considered an act of sedition and that they, too, face arrest
and detention.
Rajoy's channeling of Franco will only solidify anti-Spanish feelings in Catalonia, even
among those not keen on independence. The iron boot of Rajoy and the People's Party in
Catalonia will only boost support for Catalan independence from those mildly opposed to it or
neutral. If Catalonia's regional and local government leaders are paraded off to prisons, the
peaceful independence movement in the region could easily turn violent. There is also
widespread support for Catalan independence in the separatist Basque region, where parades have
been held in support of the Catalan cause. In August, 3000 pro-Catalan independence Basques
marched in the Basque city of San Sebastian. If Rajoy carries through with his threat against
Catalonia, the Basque region will also see it as a threat to them and join in a renewed
campaign of violence against the Madrid neo-fascists. The Basque secessionist terrorist group
ETA agreed to disarm in 2011 but it has not turned in all its weapons.
The Basque party EH Bildu has already submitted a bill in the regional Basque parliament
that is a copy of the Catalan independence referendum bill that passed the parliament in
Barcelona.
People around the world are rejecting the notion that states, harboring more than one
nation, ethnic group, or tribal entity, should be recognized by globalist institutions like the
EU and UN as representing all the constituent parts. Currently, the Republic of Macedonia is
negotiating with Greece, the EU, and NATO on membership under a nation-state name that suits
Greece. Greece does not recognize Macedonia by that name because it believes Macedonia harbors
irredentist designs on Greek Macedonia. Greece insists the country use the provisional name of
FYROM, which stands for the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Macedonian nationalists
scoff at such a name, likening it to being forced to use the fictional Klingon language of
"Star Trek."
As a result of the United Kingdom's exit from the EU, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland
are demanding that London grant them the right to maintain their own economic and other links
with the Eurocrats in Brussels. Scotland may hold a second independence referendum with or
without the blessing of London. The Welsh Assembly in Cardiff is sounding more and more like
the Scottish Parliament in demanding a separate deal with the EU for Wales. Even in the heart
of the EU bureaucracy – Belgium – Flanders and Wallonia show no signs of abandoning
their march toward independence, leaving Brussels as its own independent city-state hosting the
headquarters of the EU, NATO, and Godiva Chocolatier. Rather than the Belgian flag, one is more
likely to find Flemish flags flying from poles in Antwerp and Walloon flags adorning buildings
in Liège.
Around the world, statues of historical figures are being defaced and removed by contrarian
groups who bear ethnic or political grudges. They include Confederate General Robert E. Lee
throughout the United States, Captain James Cook in Australia, Father Junipero Serra in
California, Christopher Columbus in New York, King Kamehameha in Hawaii, Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela, and Marthinus Pretorius and Paul Kruger in South Africa. This all represents the
trend toward dissolution of the nation-state. Nation-state flags, monuments of past political
and religious figures, and other nation-state symbols are not only being questioned but, in
some cases, ignored or cast aside completely. The world is "going tribal" and there is little
the governing globalists and elites can do about it. They brought this situation upon
themselves with their aloofness and ignorance. The UN General Assembly will soon welcome
193-member state leaders to its plenary session in New York. The UN may do well to plan for
future sessions at which 300 or more member-state leaders, from Åland to Zanzibar and
Baltistan to Mthwakazi, converge on New York.
This article sounds pretty true almost a year after its initial publication with the
exception of Trump, who easily betrayed his election platform.
The point of the article is that what you call the left ceased to be social democrats when
they embraced neo-liberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... Subsequent economic policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied overwhelmingly on monetary policy, especially quantitative easing. It has failed. The western economy has stagnated and is now approaching its lost decade, with no end in sight. ..."
"... But how did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? Although it failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic disaster for seven decades, politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties of the right, centre and left had all bought into its philosophy, New Labour a classic in point. They knew no other way of thinking or doing: it had become the common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci put it, hegemonic. But that hegemony cannot and will not survive the test of the real world. ..."
"... The effect of the financial crisis was to undermine faith and trust in the competence of the governing elites. It marked the beginnings of a wider political crisis. ..."
"... But by far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth in inequality. ..."
"... As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable. ..."
"... Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt. Hitherto, on both sides of the Atlantic, the agency of class has been in retreat in the face of the emergence of a new range of identities and issues from gender and race to sexual orientation and the environment. The return of class, because of its sheer reach, has the potential, like no other issue, to redefine the political landscape. ..."
"... The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labour movement. They are not synonymous: this is obvious in the US and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over the last half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain. The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement. ..."
"... The neoliberal era is being undermined from two directions. First, if its record of economic growth has never been particularly strong, it is now dismal. Europe is barely larger than it was on the eve of the financial crisis in 2007; the United States has done better but even its growth has been anaemic. Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation ..."
"... A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual voices raised against it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly dominated by monetarists and free marketeers. But since the western financial crisis, the centre of gravity of the intellectual debate has shifted profoundly. This is most obvious in the United States, with economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs becoming increasingly influential. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century ..."
"... He proposes that US corporations should be required to invest their cash reserves in the US. He believes that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has had the effect of exporting American jobs to Mexico. On similar grounds, he is opposed to the TPP and the TTIP. And he also accuses China of stealing American jobs, threatening to impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports. ..."
"... To globalisation Trump counterposes economic nationalism: "Put America first". His appeal, above all, is to the white working class who, until Trump's (and Bernie Sander's) arrival on the political scene, had been ignored and largely unrepresented since the 1980s. Given that their wages have been falling for most of the last 40 years, it is extraordinary how their interests have been neglected by the political class. Increasingly, they have voted Republican, but the Republicans have long been captured by the super-rich and Wall Street, whose interests, as hyper-globalisers, have run directly counter to those of the white working class. With the arrival of Trump they finally found a representative: they won Trump the Republican nomination. ..."
"... Another plank of Trump's nationalist appeal – "Make America great again" – is his position on foreign policy. He believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources. He argues that the country's alliance system is unfair, with America bearing most of the cost and its allies contributing far too little. He points to Japan and South Korea, and Nato's European members as prime examples. He seeks to rebalance these relationships and, failing that, to exit from them. ..."
he western financial crisis of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate
repercussions were surprisingly modest. The crisis challenged the foundation stones of the
long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed. The banks were
bailed out; hardly any bankers on either side of the Atlantic were prosecuted for their
crimes; and the price of their behaviour was duly paid by the taxpayer. Subsequent
economic policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied overwhelmingly on monetary
policy, especially quantitative easing. It has failed. The western economy has stagnated and
is now approaching its lost decade, with no end in sight.
After almost nine years, we are finally beginning to reap the political whirlwind of the
financial crisis. But how did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so
long? Although it failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic disaster
for seven decades, politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties
of the right, centre and left had all bought into its philosophy, New Labour a classic in point. They knew
no other way of thinking or doing: it had become the common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci
put it, hegemonic. But that hegemony cannot and will not survive the test of the real
world.
The first inkling of the wider political consequences was evident in the turn in public
opinion against the banks, bankers and business leaders. For decades, they could do no wrong:
they were feted as the role models of our age, the default troubleshooters of choice in
education, health and seemingly everything else. Now, though, their star was in steep
descent, along with that of the political class. The effect of the financial crisis was
to undermine faith and trust in the competence of the governing elites. It marked the
beginnings of a wider political crisis.
But the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic,
are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the
last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and
the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free
market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was
dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions
for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded,
government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged,
regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion.
It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a
particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that
between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism,
when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.
But by far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge
growth in inequality. Until very recently, this had been virtually ignored. With
extraordinary speed, however, it has emerged as one of, if not the most important political
issue on both sides of the Atlantic, most dramatically in the US. It is, bar none, the issue
that is driving the political discontent that is now engulfing the west. Given the
statistical evidence, it is puzzling, shocking even, that it has been disregarded for so
long; the explanation can only lie in the sheer extent of the hegemony of neoliberalism and
its values.
But now reality has upset the doctrinal apple cart. In the period 1948-1972, every section
of the American population experienced very similar and sizable increases in their standard
of living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income while the top
10% did far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male
workers is now lower than it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the
population has
stagnated for over 30 years .
A not so dissimilar picture is true of the UK. And the problem has grown more serious
since the financial crisis. On average, between 65-70% of
households in 25 high-income economies experienced stagnant or falling real incomes
between 2005 and 2014.
Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against
their lot
The reasons are not difficult to explain. The hyper-globalisation era has been
systematically stacked in favour of capital against labour: international trading agreements,
drawn up in great secrecy, with business on the inside and the unions and citizens excluded,
the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) and the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being but the latest examples; the
politico-legal attack on the unions; the encouragement of
large-scale immigration in both the US and Europe that helped to undermine the bargaining
power of the domestic workforce; and the failure to retrain displaced workers in any
meaningful way.
As Thomas
Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally
gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold
War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible,
however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable.
Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their
lot, as graphically illustrated by the support for Trump and Sanders in the US and the Brexit
vote in the UK. This popular revolt is often described, in a somewhat denigratory and
dismissive fashion, as populism. Or, as Francis Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent
essay in Foreign Affairs : "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach
to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don't like." Populism is a movement
against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally
much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or
reactionary, but more usually both.
Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental cornerstone
of UK policy since the early 1970s. Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in fact about much
more: a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left behind, whose
living standards have stagnated or worse since the 1980s, who feel dislocated by large-scale
immigration over which they have no control and who face an increasingly insecure and
casualised labour market. Their revolt has paralysed the governing elite, already claimed one
prime minister, and left the latest one fumbling around in the dark looking for divine
inspiration.
The wave of populism marks the return of class as a central agency in politics, both in
the UK and the US. This is particularly remarkable in the US. For many decades, the idea of
the "working class" was marginal to American political discourse. Most Americans described
themselves as middle class, a reflection of the aspirational pulse at the heart of American
society. According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working
class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population.
Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt. Hitherto, on both sides of the
Atlantic, the agency of class has been in retreat in the face of the emergence of a new range
of identities and issues from gender and race to sexual orientation and the environment. The
return of class, because of its sheer reach, has the potential, like no other issue, to
redefine the political landscape.
The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, is a
function of politics
The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labour movement. They are
not synonymous: this is obvious in the US and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over
the last half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain. The
re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit
vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a
very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement.
Indeed, Ukip has been as important – in the form of immigration and Europe –
in shaping its current attitudes as the Labour party. In the United States, both Trump and
Sanders have given expression to the working-class revolt, the latter almost as much as the
former. The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, as the
left liked to think, is a function of politics.
The neoliberal era is being undermined from two directions. First, if its record of
economic growth has never been particularly strong, it is now dismal. Europe is barely larger
than it was on the eve of the financial crisis in 2007; the United States has done better but
even its growth has been anaemic. Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect
for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation .
Worse, because the recovery has been so weak and fragile, there is a widespread belief
that another financial crisis may well beckon. In other words, the neoliberal era has
delivered the west back into the kind of crisis-ridden world that we last experienced in the
1930s. With this background, it is hardly surprising that a majority in the west now believe
their children will be worse off than they were. Second, those who have lost out in the
neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they are
increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead,
but it is in its early death throes, just as the social-democratic era was during the
1970s.
A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of
intellectual voices raised against it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate
was increasingly dominated by monetarists and free marketeers. But since the western
financial crisis, the centre of gravity of the intellectual debate has shifted profoundly.
This is most obvious in the United States, with economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul
Krugman, Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs becoming increasingly influential. Thomas Piketty's
Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been a massive seller. His work and that of
Tony
Atkinson and Angus Deaton have pushed the question of the inequality to the top of the
political agenda. In the UK, Ha-Joon Chang , for long isolated
within the economics profession, has gained a following far greater than those who think
economics is a branch of mathematics.
Meanwhile, some of those who were previously strong advocates of a neoliberal approach,
such as Larry Summers and the Financial Times 's Martin Wolf, have become extremely
critical. The wind is in the sails of the critics of neoliberalism; the neoliberals and
monetarists are in retreat. In the UK, the media and political worlds are well behind the
curve. Few recognise that we are at the end of an era. Old attitudes and assumptions still
predominate, whether on the BBC's Today programme, in the rightwing press or the
parliamentary Labour party.
Following Ed Miliband's resignation as Labour leader, virtually no one foresaw the triumph
of Jeremy
Corbyn in the subsequent leadership election. The assumption had been more of the same, a
Blairite or a halfway house like Miliband, certainly not anyone like Corbyn. But the
zeitgeist had changed. The membership, especially the young who had joined the party on an
unprecedented scale, wanted a complete break with New Labour. One of the reasons why the left
has failed to emerge as the leader of the new mood of working-class disillusionment is that
most social democratic parties became, in varying degrees, disciples of neoliberalism and
uber-globalisation. The most extreme forms of this phenomenon were New Labour and the
Democrats, who in the late 90s and 00s became its advance guard, personified by Tony Blair
and Bill Clinton, triangulation and the third way.
But as David Marquand observed in a review for the New Statesman , what is the
point of a social democratic party if it doesn't represent the less fortunate, the
underprivileged and the losers? New Labour deserted those who needed them, who historically
they were supposed to represent. Is it surprising that large sections have now deserted the
party who deserted them? Blair, in his reincarnation as a money-obsessed consultant to a
shady bunch of presidents and dictators, is a fitting testament to the demise of New
Labour.
The rival contenders – Burnham, Cooper and Kendall – represented continuity.
They were swept away by Corbyn, who won nearly 60% of the votes. New Labour was over, as dead
as Monty Python's parrot. Few grasped the meaning of what had happened. A Guardian
leader welcomed the surge in membership and then, lo and behold, urged support for Yvette
Cooper, the very antithesis of the reason for the enthusiasm. The PLP refused to accept the
result and ever since has tried with might and main to remove Corbyn.
Just as the Labour party took far too long to come to terms with the rise of Thatcherism
and the birth of a new era at the end of the 70s, now it could not grasp that the Thatcherite
paradigm, which they eventually came to embrace in the form of New Labour, had finally run
its course. Labour, like everyone else, is obliged to think anew. The membership in their
antipathy to New Labour turned to someone who had never accepted the latter, who was the
polar opposite in almost every respect of Blair, and embodying an authenticity and decency
which Blair patently did not.
Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great
deal better
Corbyn is not a product of the new times, he is a throwback to the late 70s and early 80s.
That is both his strength and also his weakness. He is uncontaminated by the New Labour
legacy because he has never accepted it. But nor, it would seem, does he understand the
nature of the new era. The danger is that he is possessed of feet of clay in what is a highly
fluid and unpredictable political environment, devoid of any certainties of almost any kind,
in which Labour finds itself dangerously divided and weakened.
Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great
deal better. David Cameron was guilty of a huge and irresponsible miscalculation over Brexit.
He was forced to resign in the most ignominious of circumstances. The party is hopelessly
divided. It has no idea in which direction to move after Brexit. The Brexiters painted an
optimistic picture of turning away from the declining European market and embracing the
expanding markets of the world, albeit barely mentioning by name which countries it had in
mind. It looks as if the new prime minister may have an anachronistic hostility towards China
and a willingness to undo the good work of George Osborne. If the government turns its back
on China, by far the fastest growing market in the world, where are they going to turn?
Brexit has left the country fragmented and deeply divided, with the very real prospect
that Scotland might choose independence. Meanwhile, the Conservatives seem to have little
understanding that the neoliberal era is in its death throes.
Dramatic as events have been in the UK, they cannot compare with those in the United
States. Almost from nowhere, -> Donald Trump rose to capture the
Republican nomination and confound virtually all the pundits and not least his own party. His
message was straightforwardly anti-globalisation. He believes that the interests of the
working class have been sacrificed in favour of the big corporations that have been
encouraged to invest around the world and thereby deprive American workers of their jobs.
Further, he argues that large-scale immigration has weakened the bargaining power of American
workers and served to lower their wages.
He proposes that US corporations should be required to invest their cash reserves in
the US. He believes that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has had the effect
of exporting American jobs to Mexico. On similar grounds, he is opposed to the TPP and the
TTIP. And he also accuses China of stealing American jobs, threatening to impose a 45% tariff
on Chinese imports.
To globalisation Trump counterposes economic nationalism: "Put America first". His
appeal, above all, is to the white working class who, until Trump's (and Bernie Sander's)
arrival on the political scene, had been ignored and largely unrepresented since the 1980s.
Given that their wages have been falling for most of the last 40 years, it is extraordinary
how their interests have been neglected by the political class. Increasingly, they have voted
Republican, but the Republicans have long been captured by the super-rich and Wall Street,
whose interests, as hyper-globalisers, have run directly counter to those of the white
working class. With the arrival of Trump they finally found a representative: they won Trump
the Republican nomination.
The economic nationalist argument has also been vigorously pursued by -> Bernie Sanders , who
ran Hillary Clinton extremely close for the Democratic nomination and would probably have won
but for more than 700 so-called super-delegates, who were effectively chosen by the
Democratic machine and overwhelmingly supported Clinton. As in the case of the Republicans,
the Democrats have long supported a neoliberal, pro-globalisation strategy, notwithstanding
the concerns of its trade union base. Both the Republicans and the Democrats now find
themselves deeply polarised between the pro- and anti-globalisers, an entirely new
development not witnessed since the shift towards neoliberalism under Reagan almost 40 years
ago.
Another plank of Trump's nationalist appeal – "Make America great again" –
is his position on foreign policy. He believes that America's pursuit of great power status
has squandered the nation's resources. He argues that the country's alliance system is
unfair, with America bearing most of the cost and its allies contributing far too little. He
points to Japan and South Korea, and Nato's European members as prime examples. He seeks to
rebalance these relationships and, failing that, to exit from them.
As a country in decline, he argues that America can no longer afford to carry this kind of
financial burden. Rather than putting the world to rights, he believes the money should be
invested at home, pointing to the dilapidated state of America's infrastructure. Trump's
position represents a major critique of America as the world's hegemon. His arguments
mark a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology that has reigned since
the early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period. These
arguments must be taken seriously. They should not be lightly dismissed just because of their
authorship. But Trump is no man of the left. He is a populist of the right. He has launched a
racist and xenophobic attack on Muslims and on Mexicans. Trump's appeal is to a white working
class that feels it has been cheated by the big corporations, undermined by Hispanic
immigration, and often resentful towards African-Americans who for long too many have viewed
as their inferior.
A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse,
scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness and violence; America would become a
deeply polarised and divided society. His threat to impose
45% tariffs on China , if implemented, would certainly provoke retaliation by the Chinese
and herald the beginnings of a new era of protectionism.
Trump may well lose the presidential election just as Sanders failed in his bid for the
Democrat nomination. But this does not mean that the forces opposed to hyper-globalisation
– unrestricted immigration, TPP and TTIP, the free movement of capital and much else
– will have lost the argument and are set to decline. In little more than 12 months,
Trump and Sanders have transformed the nature and terms of the argument. Far from being on
the wane, the arguments of the critics of hyper-globalisation are steadily gaining ground.
Roughly two-thirds of Americans agree that "we should not think so much in international
terms but concentrate more on our own national problems". And, above all else, what will
continue to drive opposition to the hyper-globalisers is inequality.
In the 1970s attacks on social democracy, at least in the UK, were treated with the same
disdain by the political and media establishments as attacks on monetarism are today.
Thatcher, as it happens, was widely pilloried within her own party for articulating a
departure from contemporary economic orthodoxy, and the Tory establishment used their
lackeys in the press to continue their assault on her after she became Party Leader.
The lesson, dare I say it, is twofold. Firstly, whether they are wedded to one economic
system or another, the ruling classes are inherently conservative, reluctant to sanction
change and fearful of anything that chips away at their privilege. Secondly, the press, far
from playing a watchdog role on the state and its corporate masters, actually helps to
sustain them. This should be clear to anyone who has witnessed the Guardian's reporting of
Jeremy Corbyn, but it goes far beyond this newspaper to every title in the country. The
same process can be witnessed in the US, and throughout the Eurozone.
You might think this settles the matter, but there is a limit to media propaganda that
journalists simply cannot see, which is why so many have scratched their heads at the
ascendance of Sanders and Corbyn. I don't think either of these men will ever lead their
respective countries, but as you say at the end of this piece the overridding reasons that
put them there - an inefficient, corrupt and backwards economic system - are not going away
any time soon. They are actually going to get worse, because the establishments in Europe,
the UK and the US have cornered their respective electoral 'markets', sponsoring obedient
politicians who will gladly do their bidding. These people have no courage and no
foresight, and will drag the West further into decline precisely as they claim to advance
it.
Precisely. Jonathan Cook's uses Kuhn's paradigm shift thesis to describe exactly that
which you adumbrate:
Importantly, a shift, or revolution, was not related to the moment when the previous
scientific theory was discredited by the mounting evidence against it. There was a lag,
usually a long delay, between the evidence showing the new theory was a better "fit" and
the old theory being discarded.
The reason, Kuhn concluded, was because of an emotional and intellectual inertia in the
scientific community. Too many people – academics, research institutions, funding
bodies, pundits – were invested in the established theory. As students, it was what
they had grown up "knowing". Leading professors in the field had made their reputations
advancing and "proving" the theory. Vast sums had been expended in trying to confirm the
theory. University departments were set up on the basis that the theory was correct. Too
many people had too much to lose to admit they were wrong.
A paradigm shift typically ocurred, Kuhn argued, when a new generation of scholars and
researchers exposed to the rival theory felt sufficiently frustrated by this inertia and
had reached sufficiently senior posts that they could launch an assault on the old
theory. At that point, the proponents of the traditional theory faced a crisis. The
scientific establishment would resist, often aggressively, but at some point the
fortifications protecting the old theory would crumble and collapse. Then suddenly almost
everyone would switch to the new theory, treating the old theory as if it were some relic
of the dark ages.
Brilliant. A comment which engaged with the article and says a lot which is sensible.
But I disagree with your final conclusion.
I agree that neither Corbyn nor Sanders (nor Trump) will lead their countries but I
don't believe their parties will remain stranded on electoral territory which is
increasingly infertile. They will move and better, stronger candidates will emerge.
That's not optimism though, or at least not unbridled optimism. I'd welcome a better
representation of the left wing's alternative to economic liberalism but a more determined,
organised and coherent successor to Trump? That's obviously frightening.
I often like Jacques's writing but its Anglocentrism needs to be challenged.
Neo-liberalism has earlier origins than Reagan and Thatcher - East Asia in the late 1950s
and Latin America in the late-60s and 70s. This matters because it is in Asia especially
that the new ideas for a post-neo-liberal era will be found.
And the Sanders-Trump-Brexit trinity of insurgency against neo-liberalism needs to had
Xi Jinping added to it. For what it Xi other than China's Donald Trump? A different
political persona - avuncular Xi Dada etc. - but his China Dream, making China great again,
his Maoist revival, and more all speak of someone overturning China's own post-Mao
translation of global neo-liberalism (Socialism with Chinese characteristics).
As for the economics, the problem with the current economic model is really very simple.
Too much money is going to the top 10% in Western societies, and most of this money is not
being invested back into the economies in which it is generated or redistributed to the
populace through taxation. Great chunks, indeed, get siphoned out of the West and end up in
tax havens, where its owners languish like the bloated feudal overlords they are.
This system cannot sustain itself, and is ripe for another global meltdown. Every major
recession in capitalist history has come about in the wake of an accumulation of wealth at
the top end of society and a corollary decline in earnings and disposable income at the
bottom and middle rungs. If you give a minority of people too much money, or at least
access to too much money (as was the case in the banks in 2007-8), expect to count the cost
soon enough. The system of social democracy allows policymakers to mitigate this problem by
redistributing wealth through taxation, and that is precisely what governments should be
doing now. However, to expect them to do so when they are in hock to corporations is
roughly equivalent to expecting the Pope to talk authoritatively on evolutionary biology.
It won't happen, not with the cowards and shysters who dominate our political systems, and
it will probably take another major world war to bring about the change we need.
The problem is TPTB aka the 1% are in charge and they think that
Reagan/Thatcher/Friedman economics has been a huge success. So it doesn't matter who or
what the 99% vote for - they can even vote for no more austerity (as in Greece) or even no
more EU - the 1% are not going to give up, because most of them don't appear on any ballot
paper.
So, as Tony Benn famously asked, "How do we get rid of you?"
Nevertheless change is coming, not to debate it or plan for its arrival would be
irresponsible and ultimately disastrous for us all. Inequality in any system cannot be
sustained indefinitely and that rule will apply to the internal politics and economies of
nations as well as between nation states.
One way or another there will be a rebalancing of economies, it's inevitable, we can either
take advantage of the necessary changes or it will lead to anarchy.
Head in the sand is an option but not the clever one - history will judge us poorly if we
do not at least attempt to take proper control of our resources now and at least try to
correct the imbalances in our economies.
Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental
cornerstone of UK policy since the early 1970s. Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in
fact about much more: a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left
behind
Quit with the patronising assumption that we voted Brexit because we felt 'left behind',
and didn't have the brain power to understand what we were voting for. Everyone in my work,
neighbourhood, flat share and extended family were discussing nothing but the EU, it's pros
and cons, and arguing their positions right up until the referendum.
Totally agree. Many on the left still think of Brexiters as knuckle dragging idiots who
have destroyed a liberal utopia called the EU. They still think of the working class as
something to be pitied that needs guidance because of their own ignorance.
Well BREXIT was a real boot up the arse for them.
I found this a very well written and interesting article, but curiously parochial given
that it's about globalisation. If you just consider Europe and the United States it seems
irrefutable that globalisation has grossly enriched a fortunate few and left many more to
struggle with stagnating and insecure incomes. The problem, in that context, is clearly
inequality. But was inequality, on a global scale, not the problem before globalisation was
conceived, and has globalisation not done much to reduce global inequality? It is not
surprising if the reduction has been at the expense of the world's relatively rich, the
middle and working classes of the western world. But the winners are not just the rich
western elite, but also the millions who have benefitted from free migration and the
transfer of capital and jobs to what used to be the third world. If the remedy for western
economic ills is, effectively, deglobalisation, there will be losers there too as well as,
we hope, winners at home.
Sovereignty is oppose of neoliberal globalization, so in a way this is an some kind of
affirmation of Trump election position. How serious it is is not clear. Probably not much as
Imperial faction now controls Trump, making him more of a marionette that a political leader of
the USA.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump labeled the Syrian government "the criminal regime of Bashar al Assad." The "problem in Venezuela", he said, is "that socialism has been faithfully implemented." He called Iran "an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violent, bloodshed and chaos." He forgot to mention pistachios . The aim of such language and threats is usually to goad the other party into some overt act that can than be used as justification for "retaliation". But none of the countries Trump mentioned is prone to such behavior. They will react calmly - if at all. ..."
"... The stressing of sovereignty and the nation state in part one was the point where Trump indeed differed from his interventionist predecessors. But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in. ..."
"... There is no emphasis on sovereignty b. Trump says that Russia's and China' threat to the sovereignty of countries is bad but the sovereignty of small countries the US does not like is somehow threatened by these countries themselves. Which I interpret as a threat - "you endanger yourself if you don't do as told". ..."
"... "The stressing of sovereignty and the nation state in part one was the point where Trump indeed differed from his interventionist predecessors. But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in" ..."
"... The word sovereignty has taken on different and sinister implications with the UN Responsibility to Protect Act in 2005. The US pushed for this and it squeaked by and they used it to justify the invasion of Libya in 2011. I think Libya was a major turning point. I don't think Russia and Iran are going to back off easily. (I originally posted this in 2015 at another site) The US also seems to have pretty much lost what humanitarian clout they may have had. ..."
"... He talks about the period from 1989 when we had the Panama invasion and collapse of the Soviet Union as leading to an unleashing of US military power leading to the Iraq War in 2003. This war serious dented the image of the US as being a humanitarian actor and the US pushed for the UN Responsibility to Protect Act in 2005 which was used to justify the Libya invasion. ..."
"... Prashad sees the results of that invasion and what is going on now in Syria as reflecting that the period 2011-2015 is seeing the end of this US unipolarism that lasted from 1989 to 2011. ..."
"... How can Trump believe in defending Westphalia Treaty principles, sovereignty and the nation state, when US policy in the Arab world consists in destroying all these? This is rather like Warren Buffett lamenting that American billionaires are so rich, and pay less taxes than their secretaries. They are just laughing at us in our faces. ..."
"... Sound more or less like Hussein Obomo address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 24, 2013 - America is exceptional ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT5BjNDg5W0 No wonder Putin and Xi did not care to attend. Anyway Putin winning in Syria and Xi gaining in economic, science and technology ..."
"... I agree with other commenters about the Orwellian nature of the speech. Sovereignty is an interesting word to abuse and I expect we will see more abuse of it. How can the US ever be a sovereign nation when it does not own its own financial system? But in the interim all other aspects of sovereignty will be examined but not global private finance.....unless the China/Russia axis hand is forced into the open. ..."
"... Trump - the Republican Obama ..."
"... "The sanction game is over. It's only the dying empire of the Federal Reserve, ECB, Wall Street, City of London and their military strong arm operating in the Pentagon that have yet to accept this new reality. ..."
"... The days of bullying nations and simply bombing them into submission is over as well. Russia and China have made it very clear this is no longer acceptable and Russia has all but shut down the operations in Syria. The "ISIS" boogeyman is surrounded and fleeing into Asia and recently showed up in the Philippines. The fact that a group of desert dwellers acquired an ocean going vessel should be enough evidence to even the most brain-dead these desert dwellers are supported by outside forces – like the CIA Otherwise, from where did the ship(s) materialize?" ..."
"... it seems to me with Trump an era of so-called globalization has come to its end. ..."
"... Of course countries subjected to senseless US sanctions, like Russia, are concerned with sovereignty. They are ..."
"... baseless economic attacks by the country that controls world banking. ..."
"... In conclusion, what I take away from this speech is a sense of relief for the rest of the planet and a sense of real worry for the USA. Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. ..."
Today the President of the United States Donald Trump
spoke (rush transcript) to the United Nations General Assembly. The speech's main the me was sovereignty. The word occurs 18(!) times. It emphasized
Westphalian
principles .
[W]e do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties, to respect the
interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation
All leaders of countries should always put their countries first, he said, and "the nation
state remains the best vehicle for elevating the human condition ."
The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 15 May 1648 - bigger
Sovereignty was the core message of his speech. It rhymed well with his somewhat
isolationist emphasis of "America first" during his campaign. The second part of the speech the first by threatened the sovereignty of several countries
the U.S. ruling class traditionally dislikes. This year's "axis of evil"
included North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and Cuba:
The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or
its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket man is on a
suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able,
but hopefully this will not be necessary."
Many people will criticize that as an outrageous and irresponsible use of words. It is. But there is nothing new to it. In fact the U.S., acting on behalf of the UN, totally
destroyed Korea in the 1950s. The last U.S. president
made the same threat Trump made today:
President Barack Obama delivered a stern warning to North Korea on Tuesday, reminding its
"erratic" and "irresponsible" leader that America's nuclear arsenal could "destroy" his
country.
The South Korean military sounds equally belligerent :
A military source told the Yonhap news agency every part of Pyongyang "will be completely
destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosives shells". ... The city, the source said,
"will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map".
Trump labeled the Syrian government "the criminal regime of Bashar al Assad." The "problem
in Venezuela", he said, is "that socialism has been faithfully implemented." He called Iran "an
economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violent, bloodshed and chaos." He
forgot to mention
pistachios . The aim of such language and threats is usually to goad the other party into some overt act
that can than be used as justification for "retaliation". But none of the countries Trump
mentioned is prone to such behavior. They will react calmly - if at all. There was essentially nothing in Trump's threats than the claptrap the last two U.S.
presidents also delivered. Trump
may be crazy, but the speech today is not a sign of that.
The stressing of sovereignty and the nation state in part one was the point where Trump
indeed differed from his interventionist predecessors. But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in.
Posted by b on September 19, 2017 at 01:05 PM | Permalink
There is no emphasis on sovereignty b. Trump says that Russia's and China' threat to the
sovereignty of countries is bad but the sovereignty of small countries the US does not like
is somehow threatened by these countries themselves. Which I interpret as a threat - "you
endanger yourself if you don't do as told".
If we desire to lift up our citizens, if we aspire to the approval of history, then we must
fulfill our sovereign duties to the people we faithfully represent. We must protect our
nations, their interests and their futures. We must reject threats to sovereignty from the
Ukraine to the South China Sea. We must uphold respect for law, respect for borders, and
respect for culture, and the peaceful engagement these allow.
And just as the founders of this body intended, we must work together and confront
together those who threatens us with chaos, turmoil, and terror. The score of our planet
today is small regimes that violate every principle that the United Nations is based. They
respect neither their own citizens nor the sovereign rights of their countries. If the
righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people
and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and
strength.
@2 somebody - yes, unaimed hostile prose from the speechwriter. Such is in the speech of
every U.S. president. But it is not the general theme of the Trump speech when one reads it
as one piece. The weight is put in the other direction (though the media will likely point to
the threats instead of reading the more extraordinary parts where Trump pushes national
sovereignty.)
"The stressing of sovereignty and the nation state in part one was the point where Trump
indeed differed from his interventionist predecessors. But its still difficult to judge if
that it is something he genuinely believes in"
It appears that his generals are instructing him what to "believe in". At least, he
certainly doesn't seem to "believe in" most of his campaign promises, not unlike his recent
predecessors. The whole "democracy and freedom" thing in the US is just a charade, as far as
I am concerned.
The word sovereignty has taken on different and sinister implications with the UN
Responsibility to Protect Act in 2005.
The US pushed for this and it squeaked by and they used it to justify the invasion of
Libya in 2011. I think Libya was a major turning point. I don't think Russia and Iran are going to back
off easily. (I originally posted this in 2015 at another site) The US also seems to have pretty much lost what humanitarian clout they may have had.
I think this was a very good interview of Vijay Prashadby
by Chris Hedges
He talks about the period from 1989 when we had the Panama invasion and collapse of
the Soviet Union as leading to an unleashing of US military power leading to the Iraq War
in 2003. This war serious dented the image of the US as being a humanitarian actor and the
US pushed for the UN Responsibility to Protect Act in 2005 which was used to justify the
Libya invasion.
Prashad sees the results of that invasion and what is going on now in Syria as reflecting
that the period 2011-2015 is seeing the end of this US unipolarism that lasted from 1989 to
2011.
--------
The good news is that Syria is turning out much different than Libya. Would be great to see the US cooperate with the China/Russia etc economic goals rather
than stirring up trouble in the Phillippines, Myanmar etc. The first test will be to see if Trump can deliver single payer health care to the US. :)
ie start to back off on the anti socialism rhetoric
The "nation state" brought us the millions slaughtered in World War 1. The nation states
threatened by the internationalist communist ideology of the USSR (in its early days)
ultimately brought us World War 2. The hypertrophied nation state that is the United States
of America will bring us World War 3 in its drive to secure its total supremacy. Luckily for
us, there will be no World War 4.
How can a country A be "forced to defend itself" by a country B so weak comparatively to
country A it can actually be "totally destroyed" by country A?
How can Trump believe in defending Westphalia Treaty principles, sovereignty and the
nation state, when US policy in the Arab world consists in destroying all these? This is
rather like Warren Buffett lamenting that American billionaires are so rich, and pay less
taxes than their secretaries. They are just laughing at us in our faces.
Sound more or less like Hussein Obomo address at the United Nations General Assembly in New
York on Sept. 24, 2013 - America is exceptional ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT5BjNDg5W0 No wonder Putin and Xi did not care to attend. Anyway Putin winning in Syria and Xi
gaining in economic, science and technology
The United Nations is based upon the equal sovereignty of nations.
--from the UN Charter --
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act
in accordance with the following Principles.
1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its
Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from
membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with
the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner
that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of
force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any
other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations
Trump's speech seemed to represent an ignorant mouthy bully with a big stick who is
threatening any nation he is told to hate. I have to agree with Paveway IV that Trump is just
the announcer. The "national sovereignty" comments were just for internal consumption for his
base of supporters.
To a major extent Trump's focus on the "great leader" of countries opposed to the US helps
simplify the hate for the "little people" in the US. They have not noticed that the US (as in
most other Western countries) has many mini "great leaders" who work toward the same goals
while distracting the "little people" with political theatre.
I really don't know what the purpose of this rambling threat to the rest of the world was
supposed to accomplish.
Yes, it really was nothing new. The fundamental material of the speech was the very same
garbage written by the same Washington establishment of previous administrations -
essentially the nuclear armed US regime is 'special' and reserves the right to attack and
destroy any country it chooses to.
While the Trump speech is rightly being both ridiculed around the world, what is very
scary is the humiliated Trump base is seizing on it.
The Trump base is begging for their failed 'God Emperor' to attack someone to feel better
about their own humiliation.
Sovereignty is also an excuse for US intervention, get it? . . .Trump does....
America stands with every person living under a brutal regime. Our respect for sovereignty
is also a call for action. All people deserve a government that cares for their safety,
their interests, and their well-being, including their prosperity.
His speechwriters deserve to be fired and the text size on both teleprompters should have
been increased. Alternatively, he should wear glasses (along with a more suitably fitted
toupee). Sarah Palin would seem like Einstein at the side of this clown.
Trump's speech is Orwellian!
Not just generally-- it is arguably an elaboration of a close paraphase of an Orwell
quote, to wit: "All nations are sovereign, but some nations are more sovereign than others."
I have a strongly ambivalent reaction to Trump's UN appearance-- although I confess that I
can only stand to watch and listen to him for brief time periods. It's appalling and embarrassing to watch any of the US's seemingly inexhaustible supply of
lizard-brained degenerates at the UN. But part of me thinks it's better to have the quintessential Ugly Amerikan beating his
chest and engaging in rhetorical feces-flinging. At least the rest of the world won't be bamboozled, the way they might be by a smooth,
silver-tongued liar.
This is on the heels of Trump's threatening to exclude China from use of SWIFT (the USD)
and China's gold yuan oil futures contract coming mid October as opposed to USD. The
petro-yuan is a game changer; hitting the petro-dollar hegemony that keeps the dollar in
worldwide demand.
The toothless dog has only his bark. Are Americans prepared for hyper-inflation?
I agree with other commenters about the Orwellian nature of the speech. Sovereignty is an interesting word to abuse and I expect we will see more abuse of it. How can the US ever be a sovereign nation when it does not own its own financial
system? But in the interim all other aspects of sovereignty will be examined but not global
private finance.....unless the China/Russia axis hand is forced into the open.
The abuse of the term sovereignty by Trump is part of a crafted Big Lie message. Just like
Trump linking to the poster of him, with a rope over his shoulder, dragging a barge of
companies back to America......the internationalism genie will never go completely back into
the bottle and is counterproductive to all.
John Bolton and the moron, Sean Hannity, love the speech. That should be all anyone needs to
know. It was Orwellian, super-villain, double-speak.
If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.
Madman. How has Iran violated the U.N. charter? They were invited into Iraq and Syria by the UN
recognized govts. Okay, they make veiled threats against Israel, they get a demerit for that. Even if you
argue that they are 'predicting' rather can 'threatening to cause' Israel's demise, I'd take
that as a veiled threat. But Israel makes equally hostile comments towards Iran albeit, in a
passive / aggressive manner. Netanyahu, 'We recognize Iran's right to exist but truth be told
the planet, no wait, the entire universe itself would be better off if they disappeared'.
Well, it has finally arrived at the U.N. speech. Trump is showing his real colors, whether
they are forced or were originally his own. It doesn't matter. He is spouting the same
nonsenze as the neocons and the rest of them. He has crossed over - he maybe never knew the
way through, but was only parroting other's views. He is clearly a chameleon, willing to
change his stripes on a dime. The man is darkly lost in the woods, or is it the swamp?
While there have been hints that the Rohingya "rebels" are receiving funds from
expatriates in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, is there anything concrete that connects the CIA to
the rebels?
Frankly Trump is a big mouth, but there's no evidence that he's more than that. If he wanted
war, we'd already be there. It's different from Saddam in the old days, who went to war
within a year of becoming leader, or the Saudi crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, who
launched the war against Yemen.
59 Tomahawks, that's the style. I haven't seen different from then.
The advantage of having Trump around is that he seems to diffuse energy. He is not building a
case against N. Korea like Bush did with Iraq, but instead he is big on bluster. There is no
appeal to the emotions of people and their fears and as such he is not marketing it,
something he knows a lot about. In his own way I believe he is defusing the situation by
talking big but remebering Bannon's comments when he left. And as a consummate player at the
table of power (unlike the novice Obama) he has his status.
What interests me is Tillerson and the State Department and its attitude to Israel. Syria
is where Israel met its match and was soundly thrashed. The world will never be the same
again, And the State Department is recognizing this reality. I think there is a recognition
in certain powerful quarters that whole neocon-Zionist shit has got America nowhere. As
Talking Heads said, "We're on the road to nowhere."
The speech (it reminds me on movie The Kings Speech https://youtu.be/PPLIw64rLJc TERRIBLE MOVIE) is for
internal the US purpose, for Amerikkaans. Majority of them, according to the Gov. media
outlets, support military action against DPRK and mostly likely against Iran (the most hatred
nation by far) as well. Amerikkaans will support any crime anywhere and probably destruction
of whole planet Earth.
In the same time his words and deeds are the most irrelevant of any US presidents. I bet
he never heard of that word "sovereignty" before nor for "nation state". This morning when
Trump woke up some member of National Security Council put sheet of paper with the speech on
his desk and tell him "Read this!". Just as they did to Obama in many occasions, one of
example is this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/may/04/obama-drinks-flint-water-video
There some people in the US who knows what is going on:
For all the very considerable expense, however, the American military does not have a very
impressive record of achieving victory. It has won no wars since 1945!especially if victory
is defined as achieving an objective at acceptable cost!except against enemy forces that
essentially didn't exist.
@7 financial matters.. good comment and relevant.. i agree with you.. unipolar no more..
however, not quite multipolar yet either... we are still in a transitional place.. syria is
no libya fortunately.. but causing this kind of shit around the globe is what the usa is
known for.. they will continue to make war projects, especially if you believe as b notes a
couple of threads ago - trump is no longer calling the shots.. it is military guys full on..
I rather liked the film "The King's Speech because it was about speech. Your English is
fucking awful Chancey, not good enough for this forum. Get some lessons and come back.
"The sanction game is over. It's only the dying empire of the Federal Reserve, ECB, Wall
Street, City of London and their military strong arm operating in the Pentagon that have yet
to accept this new reality.
The days of bullying nations and simply bombing them into submission is over as well.
Russia and China have made it very clear this is no longer acceptable and Russia has all but
shut down the operations in Syria. The "ISIS" boogeyman is surrounded and fleeing into Asia
and recently showed up in the Philippines. The fact that a group of desert dwellers acquired
an ocean going vessel should be enough evidence to even the most brain-dead these desert
dwellers are supported by outside forces – like the CIA Otherwise, from where did the
ship(s) materialize?"
For a Nazi.
A question, do you believe in science? Here is one. But does one need to be scientist to
figure this out?"The Rise of Incivility and Bullying in America"
Violating the sovereign sanctity of nations is what the Outlaw US Empire has done without
parallel since the United Nation's formation. One of those nations was Vietnam, and a
somewhat respected documentary film maker looks like he's going to try--again--to pull wool
over the eyes of his intended audience by trying to legitimate the Big Lie that provided the
rationale for the Outlaw US Empire's illegal war against Vietnam. The detailed argument
regarding Ken Burns's effort to "correct" the actual historical record can be read here,
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/getting-the-gulf-of-tonkin-wrong-are-ken-burns-and-lynn-novick-telling-stories-about-the-central-events-used-to-legitimize-the-us-attack-against-vietnam/
and it is probably the sort of history Trump would enjoy since he doesn't seem to know any
better.
How many nick/names do you have? You may hide under this and that stupid but your
associations are still here. You stay stupid. I know, I know the truth hurts. You Amerikkaans are not used to it. Go and watch a porn,
before de-dollarization is in full swing. Than you are going to stave to death, no more
credit cards and quantitative easing. That's is Trump's speech for.
Posted by: financial matters | Sep 19, 2017 2:22:58 PM | 7
Nice interview from a couple of years back. Prashad's worldview is worthy of reposting.
Enjoyable. Cheers.
US Americans might have proved themselves very adept at destroying both nation states and
the English language, though it will be Syria who restores true meaning to the word
'sovereign' - with some collective help of course.
The almost failed state will emerge from this steeled with a sense of identity, pride and
purpose. The minnow that refused to buckle.
The Don putting together some performances that finally warrant the unified, rabid
reaction from the press....
"But its still difficult to judge if that it is something he genuinely believes in."
Are you serious? Everything coming out of DC is still the same - sanctions against other
sovereign countries who do not tow the line the US demands, cruise missiles for the little
guys, disavowing and de-legitimizing the JCPOA, unrelenting 'freedom of navigation' patrols,
threats to cut nations off from the SWIFT system, every word out of Nikki Haleys' mouth...
It's really easy to go on and on, and his first year isn't even done.
The amount of disrespect for other sovereign nations by the USA is mind boggling, and that
is only the official stuff. Throw in CIA ops and NGO ops and there you have an entire other
level of the failure to recognize sovereignty.
Can you send me some of what you are smoking? Because it obviously makes you oblivious to
the obvious, and that may help my mood...
Obviously, the UN has became an arena of the one country show and that country puppets.
Zionist PM, the West most "faithful ally" on Middle East, and his speech. Mix of infantilism,
rhetoric and implicit racism of "God Chosen People". And sea of self-congratulating lies.
Great comment re: Vietnam. The Ken Burns documentary is just one more fairy tale of the
U.S. involvement/war in Vietnam.
Among the many myths, foremost is that Ho Chi Minh was a communist; he most assuredly was
not. Yes, he was a member of the party in France, but it is irrelevent to history (Ho was a
nationalist).
Did you know he tried to engage FDR?
Below is a remarkable interview with John Pilger on the real history of the U.S. and Vietnam;
it ain't pretty. Even Mao tried to engage the U.S., which the U.S. duly ignored.
Why is everyone hating on Trump? Be realistic: sometimes you have to genocide 25 million
people to save them. We're the God damn hero here - you bastards should be thanking
the USA.
Well, I guess we're really not trying to save the North Koreans at all. But they refuse to
leave the buffer zone (all of North Korea) that is protecting the world from red Chinese
expansion south. Worse than that, the North Koreans insist on protecting themselves BY FORCE
from the US. How evil is that?
Reminds me of those evil Syrians and Iraqis who refuse to vacate the buffer zone
protecting Israel from Iran. The nerve!
Only US lapdog nations have the right to defend themselves - as long as its with US-made
weapons and they're protecting themselves from anybody except the US. And we get to
build US bases on their soil. Who wouldn't want that? Because the US is... what did Trump
say... RIGHTEOUS. You know:
Tell me which one of those synonyms DOES NOT apply to the US? I prefer 'angelic'.
The first thing psychopaths do when they attain any measure of power and control is to
redefine evil as anything that threatens their power and control. Then constantly
hammer that threat into the minds of the little people so the little people don't think too
hard about stringing them up from the lamp posts.
Everything the US has done in my lifetime has been about preserving and protecting the
US government no matter how corrupt, evil or immoral it acts. Protecting the people is
only given lip service when it can be used to justify further protections for the state.
Creation of the Department of Homeland Security Stazi is probably the end stage for
full-spectrum dominance over the little people - it is slowly morphing (as planned) into a
federal armed force to protect the US government FROM the little people. I guess the
FBI wasn't up to the task.
"The government you elect is the government you deserve" Thomas Jefferson, Founding
Terrorist.
Do you agree that to point of National Interest article seem to be that the US is not
capable of invading and controlling non-European countries?
I did find the Cato Institute author to be very poorly informed about the US invasions of
Granada and Panama, the Balkan wars, the Kosovo invasion and the Syrian war.
As for ISIS, the author does not know anything about the incubation of ISIS by the US
administrations and the Libyan war (Hillary/Obama/Sarkozy) connection . He also does not
discuss the billions in military hardware that the US allowed ISIS to capture in Iraq.
As for the US efforts they are more about preventing the formation of an integrated
economic sphere between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanese Republic. The war efforts by the US in
fighting ISIS are minimal compared to the Syrian and Russian efforts, yet he lies by omission
to pump up the US efforts. At least he didn't attempt to praise Turkey (sic) for their
efforts in cutting off aid to ISIS and Al Qaeda (under all its names).
Remember that the Cato Institute is another flavor of the NGO spider supporting the deep
state!
Please understand that this is not a personal attack as I am here to learn and share.
Canada's Trudeau will follow Trump at the UN on Thursday. Today he received an award from the
Atlantic Council: 'Worldwide the long established international order is being tested..' And
obviously the sexy northern selfie-king knows his place in it... https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kp49TFRMR8g
@ 49
Yes, to save the 25 million North Koreans the US must destroy them!
"No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the wellbeing of their own people
than the depraved regime in North Korea. It is responsible for the starvation deaths of
millions of North Koreans, and for the imprisonment, torture, killing, and oppression of
countless more."
. ..but there are limits. . .
"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or
its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."
So give me that "no more contempt" line again, Donald?
(Personally, I can't imagine Hillary doing any less. So much for elections.)
"Why is everyone hating on Trump?"
Preposterous. You give him too much importance. He is rather the object of ridicule.
"The word occurs 18(!) times."
While the word Sovereignty
Sovereignty is actually main subject of the Russian president Putin and he never miss
opportunity to emphasize that. He put it so forcefully in this speech. https://youtu.be/Yumaa4pkxMU
Maybe by accident maybe not just conspicuous coincidence. But it seems to me with Trump an
era of so-called globalization has come to its end. With self-inflicted wounds ($20T Gov.
debt) and new president who is (initially) inward looking, it is time to talk about old
stuff. As if the US statehood has been in question for a moment. Old trick of capitalist
class.
Targeting Iran was never about nuclear weapons (the U.S. let Pakistan expand its nuclear
weapons program without interfering, despite knowing all about the AQ Khan network, because
Pakistan was cooperating with the U.S. agenda in Afghanistan and elsewhere), it was about the
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline (during the GW Bush era) and the expansion of economic ties with
Syria (during the Obama era).
Now, with the easing of sanctions, Iran's pipeline deals have been revived, such as
Iran-Pakistan,
or Iran-India (undersea) , Iran-Europe, with China and Russia and Turkey as potential
partners. Meanwhile, the proposed TAPI pipeline backed by the Clinton, Bush & Obama State
Departments, as well as Chevron and Exxon, from Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean, is still
held up due to instability in Afghanistan (i.e. the Taliban would immediately blow it up).
Obama's 30,000 troop surge to 100,000 couldn't solve that, and the recent Trump troop surge
(much smaller) will have little effect on that either. TAPI pipe dreams
continue, Sep 17 2017
There's no way Trump or Tillerson would ever be honest about this in an international
forum, any more than Obama and Clinton would, or Bush and Condi Rice, but it's the same old
"great game" for Central Asian oil and gas that's dominated U.S. regional foreign policy
since the end of the Cold War.
@ 54/55 Of course countries subjected to senseless US sanctions, like Russia, are concerned with
sovereignty. They are subject to baseless economic attacks by the country that controls world banking.
It is foolish to consider the trumpet's lunatic ravings in isolation, according to that organ
of empire
foreign policy dot com , the amerikan airforce is ready and rearing to go and blast the
bejeezuz outta North Korea.
Sure it may be bluster when they come out with seeming tosh like:
""We're ready to fight tonight," Gen. Robin Rand, commander of the Air Force's Global
Strike Command, told reporters at an Air Force conference in Washington on Monday. "We
don't have to spin up, we're ready.""
Because everyone knows that a manned tactical airforce is on the way out, that bombing a
population has only ever served to strengthen resolve within that population, but the first
point that the airforce of jocks n fighters is verging on obsolescence, might just drive the
generals of middle management, concerned that their career is about to hit a brick wall, to
go for one last roll of the dice. Blow some shit up, create a few heroes and maybe the
inevitable can be staved off for long enough for their scum to rise to the surface, jag a
great gig with a contractor, then retire in luxury. I mean to say it's gotta be worth a shot
right? The alternative of layoffs and all the sexy fighting stuff being done by unsexy
drones, is just too awful to consider.
So what if Guam gets wasted, a good memorial at Arlington will balance that shit and when
it is all said and done, most of the people who will get nuked by DPRK aren't amerikans - but
here's the best bit, we can sell them to the idjits just like they were, while we build the
anger and bloodlust, then backpedal on that when it comes down to lawsuits, compensation or
whatever it is those whale-fuckers whine about - right?
A pre-emptive attack based on the possibility that DPRK hasn't yet developed nuke tech
sufficiently, but will do so "if we continue to sit on our asses" would be an easy sell to an
orange derp whose access to alternative points of view has been cut off.
The only real question is whether the rest of the military (the non-airforce parts) go for
it.
The navy likely will because they are in the same boat (pun intended) as the airforce when it
comes down to usefulness as a front line conflict agent and they too will
likely get a role to play in the destruction of North Korea - at the very least as a weapons
platform (just like with the mindless Syria aggression) and may even get to be the forward
C&C base since South Korea isn't mobile and may cop a fair amount of DPRK reaction.
Only the army for whom a pre emptive attack on the people of North Korea has little
upside, but lots of downside, may oppose this insane butchery. The army will be tasked with
neutralising a population whose innate loathing of all things amerikan has just been raised
by about ten notches. So soon after the Iraq debacle, they may see an attack as all negative
in that once again they will cop the blame and even worse the old enemies - the airforce and
navy - will come out smelling like roses. It is true that the bulk of the yellow monkey's
'advisors' are army types, so under normal circumstances they would obstruct any such
bullshit grabs for the brass ring by the navy & airforce upstarts - but there is a high
probability that the army leadership will do no such thing.
The reason for that is as old as humanity itself and I was sad to see that it copped little
mention in the last thread about the 'soft' coup at the whitehouse.
Many people were cheering the takeover by the military doubtless the same people who
imagine that "amerika could be great again - if only we go back to the way it was in the
1950's and 60's". What they miss is that everything is fluid; nothing is held in stasis as a
proof that perfection has been reached. The 'eisenhower/johnson years were merely steps on
the path, the world was never gonna stay in white bourgeois contentment no matter whether
unwhites kicked up or not. There are diverse reasons for that from ambitious careerism
forcing change so a lucky few can ascend one more rung on the ladder, to the reality that it
is impossible for all humans to be content all the time -some groups will be disadvantaged,
advertise that then be 'adopted' by careerists as an excuse for forcing change. That is
inevitable - as inevitable as the reality that once the military gained power, their next
move would be to consolidate it and to try ensure that they kept it for ever.
In other words the initial coup may have been largely bloodless (altho several million
dead mid easterners would strongly disagree if they could) but any study of human behavior
reveals that it is the need to hold on to power which is what really incites oppression
violence and mass murder.
The Pennsylvania Avenue generals understand that the simplest way of retaining control is
gonna be if the orange 'whipped* gains re-election. If the orange chunder is gonna win the
next one he needs to hit some home runs and have a lot less ties or outright defeats.
At this stage it doesn't matter what turkey kicked up the Korea bizzo, or even it it has
any moral dimension at all, what matters is that the trumpet has made it a major issue and if
he doesn't 'prevail' in the short-term, the odds of him retaining support much less gaining
more support, are gone - very likely for the duration of the tangerine prezdency. It's not as
if the ME situation offers the slightest chink of light at the end of the tunnel. Syria is
history now and that Iran thing has a good chance of dividing europe from amerika, just as
climate change has. I reckon that the junta who, individually & institutionally have a
big investment in Nato, will be looking to steer the orange nit away from inciting a
confrontation over the nuke deal. Korea could be the alternate shiny thing the junta draws
trumpet's attention to in order to distract the dingbat.
So even though it is a total cleft stick that the junta is in, I reckon it is extremely
probable that the army branch of the amerikan government will allow the airforce and possibly
the navy as well, their moment in the sun.
The way this fuckwittery is shaping up, people of Korea are more likely to be enduring
Predators up their jacksies than not, before the end of "the
summer of '18'
*anyone who doesn't see that the trumpet displays all the signs (boasting of alleged
performance, number of 'conquests' size of penis etc) of a man who is unable to have his
voice heard above the demands of the women around him, doesn't comprehend the nature of
inter-gender relationships (doncha love 'inter-gender' it sounds exactly like the type of
pallid word the identity-ists would use heheh).
The main problem I have with your post is China. You do not say anything about China.
The Chinese made it clear that if the U.S. pre-emptively attacks the DPRK; China will get
involved; and I should think Russia will be somehow involved as well.
Moon Jae-In has told the U.S. it (SK) will be the one to decide on an attack, as it
should.
But, I do get your drift; I just hope the U.S. will not act...for once.
That said; I do think the U.S. lost its tether decades ago...
There's one little factor about getting it on with DPRK, besides the ones mentioned, and that
is that SecDef Gates several years ago declared that Korea was safe enough to allow it to be
an accompanied tour, i.e. soldiers could have their families join them in the Land of the
Morning Calm. This coincided with the consolidation of US bases, with a ten billion dollar
expansion of Camp Humphreys about seventy miles south of the DMZ. So now we have high-rise
apartments with wives, kids, pets, etc. in this "safe" place, now 35,000 strong including
all. They practice evacuation. From a recent report --
The noncombatant evacuation operations, or NEO, are aimed at making sure everybody knows
their roles in the event of a noncombatant evacuation, which may be ordered in the event of
war, political or civil unrest, or a natural or man-made disaster. "I liken the NEO operation
to being a scaffolding. It's not a fully fleshed out plan because it's preparing for a
million different worst-case scenarios," 1st Lt. Katelyn Radack, a spokeswoman for the 2nd
Combat Aviation Brigade, told Stars and Stripes. ... Brandy Madrigal, 32, was participating
in her third NEO -- so she knew exactly what to pack when she got the call to report to the
Assembly Point at the main gym at Camp Humphreys on June 5. She ticked off the list -- clothes, food for the kids, documents, phone, toiletries
-- before driving with her two
children from their first-floor apartment to the base to be processed.
Imagine that -- all those people assembling in one place for "processing." They'd get
processed, all right. So the US Army won't be red-hot for the mighty US Air Force to (again)
conduct its aerial murder in North Korea, with their loved ones being in rocket range of a
counter-attack. That's in addition to any feelings people have for the ten million plus South
Koreans in Seoul, close to the border.
re: Ken Burns Viet Nam -- one only has to look at the sponsors. Burns will cleave to the
line only more so. Darling of the aristocratic charities. Somehow reaching the glory 50 years
later. Now that Agent Orange has nearly completed the harvest.
Action against Iran and NK, could it really be termed "war", anymore?
I deliberately left China outta the equation because the conflict with DPRK will be
engineered to be kicked off with a provocation allegedly committed by DRPK, amerika will
'respond' andthe war will quickly escalate. Yes PRC may become involved, but getting into a
war with amerika right now is not great for the PRC either, if the most vital concern is the
proximity of amerikan troops to the China border, amerika can give an agreement signed in
blood that amerikan military will pull back behind the 38th parallel once the 'regime has
been changed' and that only Korean men and equipment will remain.
Of course China would be smart to distrust that but sold correctly with incentives and maybe
even the use of some mutually trusted referee, China might decide that is a superior option
to kicking off ww3.
As for the enlisted mens families somehow I doubt that the military cares any more about them
than it does the men and women they have in their forces - so not very much - smart officer
class types will be considering the need to 'further their children's education back home'
right now, whether or not the trump decides to go for broke. As I pointed out before, the
plan will require that DRPK feels trapped into committing some type of really egregious
provocation, or false flagging such a provocation.
Imagine Guam got nuked and all initial evidence pointed to DRPK, China is in a tough spot
plus most amerikans will be of the opinion that protecting the families in South Korean
barracks comes second to vengeance. That would be an easy sell on fox and msnbc.
Amerika seemingly being attacked is also gonna end msnbc & the rest's potshots at the
orange derp, just as 911 halted just about all reference to the view shrub stole the election
from Gore in the MSM.
What scares me the most about the US regime's threats to attack and destroy North Korea is
I had naively assumed that all the talk was just the standard game theory back and forth.
There never was any real threat beyond the occasional minor incident like there have been in
the past few decades.
And I didn't understand why China would so openly and absolutely support North Korea with
any sort of attack by the US regime.
But then I read some of the neocon online postings or writings about North Korea and it
was a sickening shock to realize that I had been so foolish to believe the Korean crisis was
not about Korea, but China.
Getting the US regime's military directly on the Chinese border is something the
neocons are perfectly willing, and most likely gleefully happy, to trade millions to tens of
millions of North and South Korean lives for.
I can't imagine the revulsion and horror the rest of the world must be feeling towards the
United States right now.
The German philosopher and sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855 – 1936)
distinguished between two types of social groupings. Gemeinschaft (often translated as
community or left untranslated) and Gesellschaft (often translated as society). Gemeinschaft
and Gesellschaft describe the crucial distinction between community and "Civil Society";
community being characterized by a dispensationalist consensus or a sacred communal consensus
on a dispensation sent down from on high, and the latter being characterized as a consensus
to "agree to disagree" and to agree that a consensus in any meaningful form can no longer be
reached, paving the way to a "conventional" polity (agreed to by secular-humanist
convention). This "agreement to disagree" which crystalized between the Peace of Augsburg
(1555) and the Peace of Westphalia (1644 – 1648) was, in effect, the West's long and
excruciating decision to throw out the baby of Community with the bathwater of the Church's
malfeasance in the revolutionary fervor of the Reformation and the "Enlightenment" that
followed in its wake. But whereas the integrality of church and state was lost with the Peace
of Westphalia circa 1648 whereat pre-Westphalian communities gave way to the Westphalian
order of "Civil Societies", the Islamic Revolution of 1979 restored community to the Moslem
nation of Iran.
I posted this comment over in the latest Syria summary thread but then thought that it
belongs here as an example of the craven duplicity of empire about Syria sovereignty.
The following is a link and article quote from China news that says Russia is accusing the
US of chickenshit (my term) tactics in Syria
"He said the advancing Syrian government troops supported by the Russian Air Force managed to
break the fierce resistance and liberate more than 60 square km of territory on the left bank of the Euphrates River in the last 24
hours.
But their advance was hampered by a sudden rise of the water level in the Euphrates and a
two-fold increase of the speed of its current after the government troops started crossing the river, Konashenkov said.
In the absence of precipitation, the only source of such changes in the water level could be
a man-made discharge of water at the dams north of the Euphrates, which are held by the opposition formations controlled by the
international coalition led by the United States, he said. "
What's worries me the most in Trumps speech, sounds actually ominously, is the phrases
"dead Poles, fighting [???!!!] French, strong[!] English" ... Is this what's planned
for the near future? I'm not liking it a bit.
Situation in the US is getting worse, seems that this Fall big changes are coming, and no
lies can hide the truth: LIES, LIES & OMG
MORE LIES Who is the enemy? Some names can be found here (and in a recent Eric Zuesse piece):
The Borg, the AngloZio pedo-satanic cabal of the City of London Crown Corporation, the web
of merchants of death and corporate oligarchy have been doing whatever possible to help her
stay relevant and expand information war, blame Russia:
Nice summary but I disagree with the dedollarization part. To me, ending the US dollar as
reserve Currency is just a part of the issue. If that occurs American paper money becomes
worthless as the article states. While this bankrupts the US, what will it do to the global
world of private finance, BIS, SWIFT, IMF, etc.? Does private finance, private property and
inheritance all get dealt with in this adjustment? How long will the adjustment period
take?
What is clear though now is that there are two factions that are moving in "opposite"
directions and the implications will lock up global commerce at some point....fairly soon
(weeks/months)......and hopefully adults from all sides will work things out peacefully.
these 16 years of bin laden wars constitute the most concerted assault on sovereignty
since time out of mind. conspicuously in the cradle of civilization...cultural harmonies
undermined and religious sects set at each others throats, tribes ripped from their roots,
their facilities and systems desecrated, their families ravaged by rack and ruin and
displacement, an alien scourge unleashed on their landscape.
but as someone upstream suggested, the window on these destructive incursions might be
closing, what with Russia and China being unconquerable and all.
of course there are other dark forces gnawing at sovereignty , possibly even more
stealthily treacherous ones...
On the one hand, Trump defended sovereignty as a universal ideal. On the other, he demanded
that America's enemies stop mistreating their people. The result was gobbledygook.
...
to make his incoherence even more explicit, Trump declared that "our respect for
sovereignty is also a call for action. All people deserve a government that cares for their
safety, their interests and their well-being." That's like saying that my respect for your
right to do whatever you want in your garden should be a call to action for you to stop
growing weed.
...
For Trump, by contrast, sovereignty means both that no one can tell the United States what
to do inside its borders and that the United States can do exactly that to the countries it
doesn't like. That's not the liberal internationalism that Obama espoused. Nor is it the
realism of some of Obama's most trenchant critics. It is imperialism. General Pershing, in
the Philippines, would have approved.
In conclusion, what I take away from this speech is a sense of relief for the rest of the
planet and a sense of real worry for the USA. Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and
made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come
to a virtual standstill. Sure, the Americans talk a lot, but at least they are doing
nothing. That paralysis, which is a direct consequence of the internal infighting, is a
blessing for the rest of the planet because it allows everybody else to get things done.
Pressure will be intense on U S business in east coast China to refrain from converting their
'yuan' profits into gold .
What a contradictory set of pressures much
Christine Lagarde,
head of the IMF. Her claims that the IMF helped avoid another great depression in 2008 are challenged
Your editorial on the French elections (
11 April ), with its encouraging mention of the rise of the higher tax and spend candidate Jean-Luc
Mélenchon, failed to mention possibly his biggest electoral draw:
the fact that he is a leftwing protectionist . Prior to the 2012 election, polls showed that
over 80% of French across the political spectrum thought that free trade had a negative impact on
employment. So it's not just immigration that is fuelling ever-broadening support for Marine Le Pen,
it is also the fact that she too is an overt protectionist.
These trends have obviously not been lost on the unholy trinity of free trade pushers the IMF,
WTO, and the World Bank (
Report , 11 April). Having forced nations across the world to accept their open-borders, export-led
growth mantra they are now busy crying crocodile tears for the "left behind", the inevitable result
of their policies. They still rail against protectionism, despite the fact that if it has a progressive
end goal, it could enhance the economic and social conditions of the globally disadvantaged.
In terms of the relevance of all this to the UK, and at the risk of intruding on public grief,
what are the Labour party's
views on these under-publicised protectionist trends? The likes of Trump and Le Pen have been able
to turn it into a politically potent and successful issue, so why are so many progressives over here
absent from this pivotal debate?
Colin Hines East Twickenham, Middlesex
The attempt by the World
Bank , IMF and WTO to defend the role of "free" trade merely serves to underline their role as
advocates of a neoliberal order that impoverishes the many and benefits the few. The call for a "robust
global trading system based on the WTO" is aimed at locking in countries to a system that removes
decision-making from sovereign states and places it instead in the boardrooms of transnational corporations.
When their report states that trade is good for growth, what they really mean is that it is good
for corporate balance sheets. And when they refer to helping those "left behind", they are inviting
us to believe in discredited theories of trickle-down economics which holds that what is good for
the rich is good for the poor.
As we move into the uncertainties of a new post-Brexit trading regime, it is incumbent upon us
to develop alternative models to outdated concepts that automatically equate GDP growth with increased
wellbeing. And it's also time to not only challenge the WTO's direction of travel but also to recognise
it for what it is and campaign for its abolition, replacing it instead with a consensual model of
economic integration based on the needs and aspirations of independent states and their regional
priorities. As Donald Trump
preaches protectionism, he would do well to heed his far wiser predecessor, Thomas Jefferson,
when he said: "Peace commerce and honest friendship with all nations entangling alliances with none."
Bert Schouwenburg International officer, GMB
We must not lose sight of the downsides to globalisation and world trade. The rampant consumerism
which is driving economic growth is certainly lifting incomes for some while also lining the pockets
of global corporations. But only recently (
Pollutionwatch , 10 April) you reported that our consumption of Chinese products causes about
55,000 early deaths from air pollution across China every year. While the three organisations say
that they want to pay attention to disadvantaged individuals and communities, they will not be able
to "lift up those who have been left behind" if they are dead.
Fiona Carnie Bath
"We worked together to ensure that the great recession did not become another great depression",
says Christine Lagarde
of the IMF. The truth is quite the opposite – they and their supporters in the US, the World
Bank and the WTO, brought about the crash in 2008 with their insistence on deregulation of the finance
business. The aftermath of 2008 is still penalising the poor and what used to be the better-off,
both in the rich and poor worlds.
Michael McLoughlin Wallington, Surrey
Doughnut economics is very compelling, but George Monbiot (
Opinion , 12 April) and, presumably, Kate Raworth, seem not to have encountered A Blueprint for
Survival. This remarkable document was published by the Club of Rome, with spadework by MIT, in 1969.
It postulated that pollution would end matters if the world proceeded on its continual pursuit of
economic growth. That hasn't happened, but not for our want of trying. But the important message
was how to create a no-growth, vibrant successful economy by pouring all the world's efforts into
recycling, making things that lasted as long as possible and general encouragement of invention centred
on conservation of resources and environment.
I and my colleagues teaching general studies in FE spent some enlightening weeks with our students
exploring the validity of the proposals. I also wrote to my MP asking what the government's attitude
was; I got a nondescript reply. And that's where matters shuddered to a permanent halt. I do hope
Kate Raworth has better luck for all our sakes.
Ted Clark Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
Tim Jackson
Free-market economics has undermined the fabric of society and left millions behind – and
manifestos across the political spectrum recognise it
'Privatised gain and socialised loss is the defining story of capitalism over the last
decades.'
When all parties want 'an economy that works', you know neoliberalism is kaputTim Jackson
Free-market economics has undermined the fabric of society and left millions behind – and
manifestos across the political spectrum recognise it
Something strange is happening in British politics. I'm not talking about the divisive
quagmire of Brexit or the frightening rise of xenophobia. I'm talking about a broad cross-party
agreement that the economic model of the last half a century has failed. I'm referring to an
(almost) ubiquitous call across the multi-coloured manifestos of the 2017 election to start
building "an economy that works" – for everyone.
Isn't it a bit odd to find this exact same turn of phrase across the political spectrum:
blue , red , orange , green ?
(Only Ukip has no truck with an economy that works.) It looks a little bit like someone has
been copying someone else's homework; and it isn't entirely clear who. When Theresa May first
used the phrase, on the steps of
Downing Street back in July 2016 , she made it sound like her own idea. But in fact she
lifted the language – lock, stock and barrel – from a
speech Jeremy Corbyn gave at the launch of Labour's inaugural
state of the economy conference . He promised to "create an economy that works for all, not
just the few".
A careful archivist could uncover a longer pedigree. The phrase appeared on the Green
party's website long before Corbyn and May borrowed it. Interesting. The Greens picked it up
from a campaign launched by the Aldersgate Group – an alliance of leaders
driving action for a sustainable economy. Curiouser and Curiouser. Ultimately, we can trace it
to the worldwide chorus of disapproval against the "
age of irresponsibility " that created the financial crisis.
Almost a decade on, it seems kind of obvious that
something different is needed . An economy that works has to be a good thing, right?
Meaningful work, decent incomes, good life chances, reliable access to healthcare and
education, affordable housing, resilient communities, inclusive societies, living in a world
that doesn't trash the climate or the rivers or the soils. What's not to like about this vision
– a tantalising promise to create a "good society"?
Of course it rather depends who you are. And what your life chances happen to be at the time
of asking. There's a minority who have done rather well from an economy that doesn't work at
all. The much reviled
1% . A financial (and political) elite who've managed to benefit massively from the
machinery of growth: globalisation, financial deregulation, asset price speculation,
collateralised debt obligations, credit default swaps. An impenetrable language hiding a tale
of human misery. Not just to benefit, indeed, but to use their considerable power in persuading
a captive state to stack the odds in their favour and sweep the risks under the public carpet.
Privatised gain and socialised loss is the defining story of capitalism over the last
decades.
But it also depends how you set about translating vision into practice. How, for instance,
does an economy that works, actually work? What does work itself look like in the economy of
tomorrow? Work is more than just the means to a livelihood. It's a vital ingredient in our
connection to each other – part of the "glue" of society. Good work offers respect,
motivation, fulfilment, involvement in community and in the best cases a sense of meaning and
purpose in life.
The reality, of course, is often different. Too many people are trapped in
low-quality jobs with insecure wages . If they're lucky. Two-thirds of European countries
now have youth unemployment rates higher than 20%. In
Greece and Spain
, youth unemployment in 2015 was close to 50%. This enormous waste of human energy and talent
is also a recipe for civil and social unrest. It undermines the creativity of the workforce and
threatens social stability. The long-term implications are nothing short of disastrous.
Some of this is on the radar.
Matthew Taylor's review of employment practices will be one of the first things to arrive
on the next prime minister's desk. The chances are it will be an immensely useful document,
particularly if it goes beyond the vaguely puritanical promises to crack down on tax evasion in
the gig economy that currently pepper the blue manifesto. Even more so, if it dares to talk
about the quality of work. Or if it begins to question the prevailing assumption that a hi-tech
digitalised world of robots and AI is going to save us.
Let's be clear. Technical innovation can deliver us a better quality of life, freedom from
drudgery, the ability to be more productive. But there are also places where it makes no sense.
Certain kinds of tasks rely inherently on people. The care and concern of one human being for
another is a case in point. Its quality rests primarily on the attention paid by one person to
another. And yet compassion fatigue is a rising
scourge in a health sector hounded by meaningless productivity targets.
Craft is another example. It is the accuracy and detail inherent in
crafted goods that endows them with lasting value. It is the attention paid by the
carpenter, the tailor and the designer that makes this detail possible. Likewise it is the time
spent practising, rehearsing and performing that gives creative art its enduring appeal. What
– aside from meaningless noise – is to be gained by asking the London Philharmonic
to reduce their rehearsal time and play Beethoven's 9th Symphony faster and faster each
year?
An economy that works must have something to do with investing in work itself. Care, craft,
culture, creativity: these sectors offer a new vision of enterprise: not as a speculative,
profit-maximising, resource-intensive division of labour, but as a form of social organisation
embedded in the community, working in harmony with nature to deliver the capabilities that
allow us to prosper.
Much of this exists in the rainbow manifestos of the 2017 election, but there are
differences of course. Labour, remarkably, has fully costed the vision. The Tories appear
somewhat arrogant in failing completely to do so. The Lib Dems have understood that the vision
needs to be personal. The Greens have gone furthest in offering innovative policy to deliver
it. Their proposals to trial a land tax, to challenge executive remuneration and to introduce a
universal
basic income are radical, pragmatic and extremely timely in dealing with the challenges
ahead.
Manifestos will come and go but one startling realisation persists. The failed experiment of
free-market, neoliberal economics that has haunted modern politics, undermined the fabric of
society, disempowered government and left millions behind, may just be coming to an end.
Building an economy that works for everyone has become a precise, definable and meaningful
task.
Tim Jackson is the author of Prosperity without Growth (Routledge)
We give our power to corporations and governments. This can be given through consumerism or a
vote. Indeed we need to stop believing this is the only way we give or take back power. But
to ignore that both of these very important actions is irresponsible and delusional.
Indeed we need collective action and what biggest collective action do we take part in
every day then the energy & stuff we consume.
In a neo-liberal world view 'the market' wins every time, and if we keep driving, eating
meat, flying 'the market' will provide this for us with as much profit for shareholders. This
in turn will give corporations & shareholders more resources to lobby for less
regulations and more data to argue that this is what people want, so we should ensure they
get what they want. In turn ensuring governments have no option but to continue as as they
are.
We can make personal choices to earn a living in a responsible manor, to not partake in
excessive consumption, to live a life based on real needs not fickle ego wants. We can do all
this while also taking part in collective action. In fact I believe choosing a life of less
will free us up to do more. I feel much more energised reducing my consumption than the
depression I was in when living a life I knew made others suffer through the job I had, the
stuff I bought etc.
The idea that we cannot do individual and collective action is insulting to every human.
We all have a responsibility in the actions we take, we are not afforded the same privilege
of ignorance that previous generations had, our material wealth comes at a cost, a cost we in
privileged countries do not pay.
Yes left out of the general conversation , sad and obvious, once stated; Inseparable from the
lifeblood of our long supply lines (including political donations and wages for enslaved
debtors) being corporate. These are new cancerous multi-organismal organisms
rampaging......not an idle metaphor, but actually sharing many specific properties, no limits
on reproduction of the pattern, no attachment to place and likely to wipe out the larger host
planet...is there any better hope than collapse sooner than later? Unfortunately, amongst
individuals more information than ever available but little experiential preparation, sense
of connection and belonging necessary to spark a material revolution rather than just more
information sharing.
Everything in the world today revolves around ownership and ownership rights. Is it not
strange therefore that there are many people who would like us to believe that there is no
such thing as ownership of human life.
Yet these people would like us to believe that all life is based on evolutionary principles
of survival of the fittest and of course the fittest are those who set themselves no limit to
their exploitation of human life and the human environment.
And these are the same people who tell us that they are the only ones who can be trusted to
manage our lives and our environment.
Neoliberalism has conned us. Fullstop.
By fragmenting society (do you remember "There is no such a thing as a society"? I'm sure you
all do) into millions of individual atoms, power is left in the hand of the very few.
And we are conned into believing we can better our work situation by individually bargaining,
or that we can fend for ourselves individually in every important aspect of life (say
education or health just to name two) where, in fact, we are confronting a concentration of
power never seen in human history.
Personally, I think the point at which the corporate world will wake up & listen is when
living costs rise so much that us plebs won't have any free cash to buy their products any
longer and their diminished profit margins will start to tell the story. The world is raped
& poisoned almost beyond repair while these corporate pigs have only one thing on their
minds - increased growth & profits. This is happening now with many of us surviving by
only buying food and necessities and forced to forego luxuries such as holidays & dining
out etc. This is the stark reality of living in this corporate greed driven world. I am now
in my late 50s, grew up with Thatcher and am still hearing this neoliberalism garbage and
wondering why my fellow citizens continue to vote these idiots in to run our country (I live
in Australia now which has similar issues). There is a tipping point that many of us are fast
approaching. This whole neoliberalism crap has got to stop before we self-destruct and
destroy our planet! The corporate world must accept responsibility for this situation and
must be held accountable, as many have made fortunes from their irresponsible attitudes
towards the planet's resources. I agree with the author of this piece, but lets start with
voting in governments who govern for their people and NOT the greedy corporations. The
younger generations, who have been politically ambivalent so far, are slowly waking up to
what is happening and will only act when they realise what the corporations have done to our
world and the limited opportunities that await them. Where is Monsieur Guillotine when you
need him?
The self centred greed merchants will fight to the last breath for their right to destroy the
planet for personal gain. Those who are not already rich and powerful who push denialist
lines are the right wing equivalent of Stalin's 'Useful Idiots'.
It is time the farmers and the small business owners realise that right wing parties only
funnel more and more money into the unquenchable maw of big business. What is good for big
business is bad for everyone and everything else on the planet.
If you, as a comfy middle class First World urban individual, can't even be bothered to
switch off all unused appliances at the wall because it is inconvenient, then you lose all
entitlement to complain about the cost of energy - both monetary and climatically. You also
lose your entitlement to complain that "corporate" energy providers aren't being forced to do
more to reduce their carbon footprint.
A Choice report in 2016 estimated that one act alone could reduce your personal GHG
emissions by 1000kg/yr as well as at least $100 off your electricity bill. Not a big
difference on its own, but if there are 10 million households in Oz doing that, then that's
10Mt less GHG emissions every year, and you can claim the moral high ground when demanding
the onus for action be put back on government and private industry.
Of course, the reality is that virtually no-one in the First World (me included) does this
because when it comes down to it, we choose convenience over cost, and would rather sheet
home all responsibility and obligation for "doing something about it" to someone else.
Preferably those "big evil faceless capitalists" who provide all those things that we poor
powerless disenfranchised individuals want and demand.
I'm sorry - but if you want change you have to take responsibility for your own individual
contribution to the problem. We're like drug addicts claiming its not our problem or our
fault that we're hooked on the shit of every day consumption ...
BTW - I accept I'm a glass house dweller with a handful of stones - I can't be arsed
turning stuff off or choosing inconvenience over moral superiority, but then I don't complain
when I get my electricity bill, or get stuck in traffic.
Cheating is the game. Sooner or later the cheats outweigh wealth producers, a crash ensues
until enough 'aspirationals' are shaken out of the elite, and it starts over. The devil is in
the details, and we all need to know them:
Resources for seekers of economic truth, the pre-requisite for justice:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
How land barons, industrialists and bankers corrupted economics - Review and outline of
"Progress and Poverty" & "Corruption of Economics", links below.
Neo-Liberalism aka Neo Colonialism is empowered by the Vatican/Crown-Bar/Banker/Global
Militia-Police States and THEIR governments, IMF/World Bank to DRIVE the masses to naively
wrongly believe via their small collective efforts we can cut emissions sufficiently to stop
Climate Change. As the articles published New York Times...The Uninhabitable
Earth...correctly assesses C/C changes thus far and their projected amplification going
forwards, that we are passing the point of no return to save ourselves and planet. In the
mean time, the public, politicians, bankers, wealthy, poor, slaves and owners of oil and gas
industry care not for any change to current systems. They do this while well knowing to
continue as is to destroy the planet. yet each one individually may we be terrified of the
consequences for their children and generations and know they are powerless to stop the rot.
Others in turn who have spent millions of their own as well as others money to invent develop
the required emissions reduction tech & renewable energy system, have wisely after
finding out there is no Public/Private/Government/Banks money available for such noble
pursuits, long given up with their efforts. Be these people individuals of small teams they
resign themselves to giving up such effort to save the planet with a new understanding that
no matter what they seek to do, be it disruptive or paradigm changing they now KNOW those in
power via governments, banks, military, police state are under orders to STOP them. It is
curious that Guardian Journo's, Writers, Reporters, Invites appear to be afraid of
confronting the reality that we humans are in a full blown war with very ancient evil actors
and off-worlders in league with equally corrupt evil humans who have little compunction to
sell humanity down the road for a price. It is only when closeted 'fraidy cat' news men and
women grow some courage will we see publication about real matters few want to appear in
media, they having spent centuries using the vast wealth and influence and arms covering up,
the mankind would remain in the dark. Do if able fellow Man/Women...do if able awaken from
the subtle spell cast over your mind, via global electronic transmissions systems which is
preventing you from seeing past the veil of deception hard at work killing your species and
world.
What is needed is recognition of the truth in regard to human life and the position it holds
in the world in which we live.
At present there are two rather extreme positions:
1. the liberal democracy position that sees human life as no different to any other form of
life and insists that all forms of life have equal value and therefore all life should be
treated equally.
2. The neo-liberal position that see human life as no different to any other form of life but
due its position on the evolutionary table it must insist on complete dominance of not only
all other forms of life but also over the weaker or more docile individuals of the human
species.
But there is a third position based on the Christian position where human life is entitled by
its nature to dominate all other forms of life but because human life has a value and a
destiny that nothing in this world can confer it has a responsibility for sustaining and
nourishing all future generations of human life through nourishing and cherishing what is
available in all other forms of life.
My, non-economist, understanding of the consequence of Hayek/Rand/Friedman et al thinking -
essentially selfishness, individuality and greed - is Commons Tragedy. E are now experiencing
many such Tragedies - atmospheric and ocean pollution (CO2, plastics etc), species
extinctions, ever greater failure of antibiotics, bonus culture....
This is the ghastly consequence of 'There is no alternative' religious ideological mantra.
It has to be denounced but few are doing so. When has a senior politician, elder statesman or
mainstream journalist ever denounced the dogma? Those who try, are lampooned, ridiculed and
rubbished.
"Thinking is difficult; that's why most people judge," said Carl Jung. I'm trying to think
about what's going on - as above - but what judgement is given?
This has to be one of the best articles ever published in the Guardian.
Articulated within it is a core truth about human affairs.
When those who wield power make everyone responsible for everything, we end up with no one
responsible for anything.
Look at the lie the powerful tell our children: You can be anything you want. Yeah right.
Code for: Your life is crap because you are a loser .
The media is soaked with the lesson that only rule breakers succeed, that co-operation is
antisocial and will crush an individuals opportunity. Lies.
This is a disease that is rampant in an America that got rich fighting two world wars and
never left victorian era capitalism behind.
Even middle of the road media and political parties like the lib-dems etc. hold to this myth,
when the truth is that economic fundamentalism (and its hand maiden religion) crush
individual opportunity through economic inequality.
Democracy is the enemy of unfettered power, and democracy is collective behaviour.
Martin Lukacs is correct.
We will all do our part, (and I will do my bit) but the battle to save the planet will only
be achieved through political means.
Excellent points. By the same token, the established trade unions were also cleverly absorbed
in to the system such that they have become, in many instances, agents of neo-liberalism.
Same for New Labour. But there is now an appetite for a pull back and hopefully the momentum
can continue.
Globalisation intensifies transport of material and goods, polluting air, sea, ground.
Growing population increases demand for cheap goods produces regardless of the consequences
on the environment. Pressure on natural ressources leads to destruction of biodiversity, e.g.
cutting down forest to grow palm trees. Electrification is supported bu nuclear lobbies,
leading to other Fukushima accidents. Large scale investments are urgently need to complete
Inga hydroelectric dawn, to produce electricity for central Africa. This can only be done by
rich governments, able to tax multinational companies. But, these escape to taxes by hiding
their profits in fiscal paradises. Individuals need to unite to force government to act in
the common and public interests, not for private interests.
The author makes some refreshing observations about the way that we have been 'trained' to
not think systemically. One might go even further and propose that if we did think
systemically, we may not be in the mess we are currently in because we would have recognised
that - as Barry Commoner put it way back in 1971 - "there's no such thing as a free lunch in
nature" (I paraphrase).
Gregory Bateson, again back in the late 60s and early 70s, was adamant that a species that
destroys its environment destroys itself, because the unit of survival is the organism plus
its environment, not one without the other.
Even Darwin understood this, and his claim that evolution was the survival of the fit does
not mean the ascendancy of alpha individuals, but rather the continuous process of species
adapting (i.e., fitting) their environmental niches.
In other words, everything is interconnected, and when we lose sight of those webs of
connectivity we begin to die out, in one way or another. We see this in habitat fragmentation
- when habitats become fragmented, the species that are connected within those habitats are
impacted and begin to die out - the percolation theory, in effect.
The point being is that thinking systemically is not news ... or rather, it shouldn't be.
So when this author (correctly) points to the neoliberal agenda as divide and conquer he is
quite right to do so, because that division separates us from each other and us all from the
planetary systems on which we quite literally depend. Chief Seattle is alleged to have
observed that once the last tree has been cut down and the last fish fished, we will realise
that one cannot eat money. We seem to have forgotten this basic and fundamental wisdom of who
we are, and more critically, our ontological status as a species .
The emphasis in the modern day on individual action is all well and good, and should be
continued. But we should not overlook the elephant in the room, and I think that this is the
author's main point: we are almost all participants in an exploitive economic model that
recasts the world as a vast resource base that belongs to no-one so therefore is free for the
taking. But these commons are by definition, held in common for all of us, and for those who
have yet to be born.
There are plenty of examples from around the world compiled by Elinor Ostrom and
colleagues, of communities who have banded together in self-organising groups to care for
these common pool resources (e.g. irrigation, plantation, and other resource systems) in
novel ways that undermine Hardin's so-called 'tragedy' of the commons that could only be
resolved via government intervention or private ownership, and these groups deal effectively
with the free-rider problem and violators of the group normative agreements.
I'm pleased to note that ecological economics has begun the process of recalibrating the
linear models of classical economic theory, and while the notion of valuing ecosystem
services is very anthropocentric, it is still at least a start for those who only think in
terms of profit and loss to begin to attribute inherent value to the complex and interwoven
systems that have, for so long, been taken for granted and abused. Kate Raworth's "Doughnut
economics" is an excellent starter to begin thinking about these issues.
By reconnecting the different nodes in the network, by looking at the ripple effect of
actions at a local scale traveling out towards wider, more spatially and temporally remote
areas, and holding those who treat the planet as their corporate profit enhancing vehicle to
account, calling upon our politicians to be clear about what they are going to do to address
this rot, perhaps these may prove to be the more effective measures in the long run.
But, of course, we don't have that much time according to the rapidly accumulating
evidence. Therein lies the rub. Moreover, those who stand to lose out through changes in the
dominant economic paradigm are not going to surrender without a fight, and unfortunately,
they have the capacity to call on politicians and the police and military forces to do their
bidding and to defend their interests.
Nevertheless, all credit to this author for naming the elephant in the room: working in
groups and communities, making the inter-connections explicit between what happens to my
patch and what happens elsewhere, physically and socially, economically and culturally, these
seem to offer the best hope in trying to preserve something for those who have yet to follow
and who will inherit whatever we bequeath them.
"Neoliberalism has not merely ensured this agenda is politically unrealistic: it has also
tried to make it culturally unthinkable. Its celebration of competitive self-interest and
hyper-individualism, its stigmatization of compassion and solidarity, has frayed our
collective bonds. It has spread, like an insidious anti-social toxin, what Margaret Thatcher
preached: "there is no such thing as society."
There's another word for this and it's called 'cancer' the metaphoric kind in addition to
the physical and emotional kinds.
Unfortunately, that's not true. Brexit was organised by ultra-neoliberals who see the EU
as a barrier to tearing down the state. Their goal is to inflict a form a Shock Doctrine on
the country which pushes us into the arms of a right-wing Anglosphere and the same sort of
anti-environmental policies pursued by Trump, Abott and Harper. It's a delusion to think
that Brexit represents anything else: no country is an island, even though we literally are
surrounded by sea.
You're basing your statements on what you would like to believe, driven by the romanticism
of family, rather than the facts.
You could start by recognising that the EU is a protectionist trading area. Set up from
the very beginning to protect both French farming and German manufacturing, in a time when
world tariffs were relatively high.
Whilst world tariffs have have since reduced drastically to typically 3 to 5%, those EU
tariffs are still unrealistically very high, at typically 20% on EU agricultural imports and
10% on EU manufacturing imports, which the UK has to pay as party to the customs union. The
beneficiaries of those EU tariffs are not the citizens and consumers of the EU, who as a
result have to pay a lot more for non-EU products, but the organisations that the high
tariffs protect.
Due to their protectionism, that harms EU citizens, the EU tariffs are now way out of step
with typical low and reducing world tariffs.
Consequently, when we leave the EU, and are outside the high EU tariff walls of the
customs union, many products will be far cheaper, and UK consumers will benefit greatly.
Those benefits will increase even further, when we leave the customs union, as we are able to
progressively agree unilateral low tariff trade deals with multiple nations that are outside
the EU.
Fine words, intelligent ideas, excellent analysis of the neoliberal mad house we live in.
Consumerism and greed, narcissistic megalomania and political apathy all mixed into a pot of
poison that is infecting the entire planet and, through solution and abuse, all its life
forms. Each generation, each civilisation faces its nemesis and ours is well understood; but
like all those who went before us, we will face our extinction unable to do much about it. In
pursuit of happiness, it behoves us all to reflect in philosophical and spiritual ways; to
understand the wounds and suffering we each bear and to find compassion for ourselves and
each other. Even though we must try, all our political and material attempts to solve our
problems fall into the same bottomless hole. So little we can do out there; so much we can do
within.
Excellent article. Big business corporations are becoming the effective governments of
nations and will soon be able to enforce their interests without government
restraints--unless people take committed, collective action against their encroaching powers.
Many governments have sunk alarmingly into isolation, incompetence and ineffectiveness, not
to mention dependence on corporate donations. They must now be disregarded as guardians and
promoters of their peoples' interests.
Holy Guacamole you're so oblivious to your own neoliberal tendency to absolve your first
world capitalist consumption from blame for the ills of the world, I actually had to create a
Guardian account to express my incredulous disgust that you'd actually attempt to use
socialism as an excuse for individuals to weasel out of responsibility for their consumer
choices.
Anarchist, vegan and far left groups have known for decades in a capitalist market economy
like ours YOU MUST OPT OUT. It's as simple as not joining a murderous street gang.. You also
don't buy the products or from companies killing the earth.
Buy local food, and ethical small business. Recycle, trade, buy used goods, use less fuel,
stop eating meat, drink coffee at home or at a local cafe instead of in a disposable
Starbucks cup. Its the only way to build a new healthy culture. You can't keep blaming
corporations if you keep lining their pockets.
It is both. I find this article dangerously simplistic and as some one who is really far
left, disgusted that you'd use socialism as an excuse to passively keep participating in
corporate capitalism. Nothing could be more neoliberal than that!
That's exactly why some people get so incandescently angry at Green Parties
How about we drop the psycho babble and cut to the chase. Some environmentalists are angry
at green parties because of their stupid anti-science polices on very important questions
inclusing nuclear power and GMOs.
And a great deal more people are angry at Green Parties because a large percentage of
people on the planet consume too little rather than too much. They live in an unacceptable
state of poverty. There is only one fix for that - economic development. All this talk of
consumption presupposes that there is some plausible reduction of consumption in developed
countries that could compensate for the economic development in the rest of the world.
Manifestly there cannot be. In the end western green ideology cannot end up with any other
logical conclusion than keeping vast swathes of the worlds population poor - for the sake of
the environment. Despite all protestations and rationalizations the conclusion is inevitable.
They cannot combine humanism and environmentalism and if you can't do that you will fail.
And an inevitable conclusion entirely missed by greens - the climate problem is just as
much (or even more) a problem of production rather than consumption. France does not have a
lower per person carbon emissions footprint because they are frugal, or more ethical or any
of the rest of the nonsense. It's because of nuclear power.
Green consumerism clearly invites comparisons to religion, as described by Marx: "..the sigh
of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions..."
It's a way of achieving a sense of wholeness and purity in a corrupt world, and a sense of
having taken substantive action in a world that has rendered us powerless. It's an excuse for
believing that we aren't - collectively, passively - dooming our grandchildren to a world in
which the living, to quote Merkin Muffley, will envy the dead. Individual green piety is the
opiate of the people.
Of course for that matter: individualism and consumerism themselves, pursued within the
atomising conditions of any modern society, are for most people not fields of dumb,
solipsistic egoism. They're means of negotiating and establishing some sense of being a moral
creature. They're ways of conforming, of touching some sort of (wholly imaginary) shared
consciousness. They're forms of pious religious conformity in their own right.
That's exactly why some people get so incandescently angry at Green Parties, or at
exhortations to consume less: it isn't that their self-indulgence or their selfishness is
being called out. It's that their habitual sense of being a moral person is being
undermined.
The anger is almost inevitable given how rudimentary and self-contradictory a sense of
one's own goodness that's rooted wholly in conformity is bound to be (see: "only following
orders...")
...it is time to stop obsessing with how personally green we live...
Martin, this is dangerously off base.
As the
Laudato Si encyclical reminds us, personal responsibility is the root of all moral
action. Indeed, we have barely begun to obsess.
Yes, neoliberalism is killing us, and we have a moral duty to fight corporate desecration
in all its forms. But this alone won't let us personally off the hook.
This is a great article, although it is wishful thinking to imagine that it would be anything
but difficult to counter the attacks that corporations, many governments and the conservative
media would use to stifle attempts to at organizing opposition to the oligarchies, their
cronies in power and nationalizing power grids, water supply and public transport, to name a
few.
Population growth is not given enough attention, given that in western societies that has
generally been on the decline. Not so in other parts of the world, particularly South and
Central America, parts of Africa and the Indian sub-continent.
Therein lies the difficulty, because to effect the changes mentioned in the article would be
difficult enough in western nations. To enable them in countries where the rule of law and
natural justice is transient and either flexible or non-existent depending on who is in power
would be well nigh impossible, although use of resources per capita in those countries can be
much less than the so-called "affluent" west. Most importantly, female rights in those
countries (as they still are to a degree in western countries) are often ignored and they are
paramount to solving environmental problems.
In no way can a habitable biosphere be achieved or maintained without the empowerment of
women, without women occupying positions of power across the board on their own terms and
absolutely having control over their own persons and reproductive rights
GabrielM -> bobkolker 17 Jul 2017 21:13
But most scientific and technological innovation is government funded, because it's far too
risky for hedge funds or the like to take any interest until there are proven results. Then
the corporate world cashes in: on a much safer developmental basis. Read Mariana Mazzucato of
Sussex University about this. Conventional wisdom flogs the lie that entrepreneurs take all
the risk -- they don't: governments do.
GabrielM -> biggshoson 17 Jul 2017 20:20
Maybe it was his intention to say that individual effort is "not enough" but my impression
was that his anger at the divide-and-rule, atomising effects on us as consumers of products of
large corporations, made him overstate his case: that neoliberalism exemplified by
corporations was blinding us to the pointlessness of individual action as a "feel-good" factor
only, with no real relevance to the scope of the problem.
I think this is misguided on two counts: first that this so-called "individual" action
might accurately reflect a solitary situation e.g. sorting stuff for recycling, but it's
essentially undertaken with a collective understanding that resources are limited, that the
way we dispose of what we regard as "waste" which could also be regarded as a resource, has
consequences in terms of eg pollution.
Second, that such individual-but-also-collective actions do in aggregate make a tangible
difference to available resources and pollution; it's not just an inconsequential ritual. And
the dividing lines between personal and political are often far from clear, in a context where
local government often sets the parameters of what is or is not possible: e.g. provision or
not of recycling facilities, of allotments for flat dwellers, etc for growing the carrots. It
doesn't necessarily take a delegation to raise issues with a local Council or MP: a few
concerned and persistent individuals can make sure something gets attended to.
The individual can be very political just by writing well-informed letters and refusing to
take silence or no for an answer. We have more power than we think we do, and organising is
even better.
It looks like Trump initially has a four point platform that was anti-neoliberal in its essence:
Non-interventionism. End the wars for the expansion of American neoliberal empire.
Détente was Russia. Abolishing NATO and saving money on this. Let European defend themselves.
Etc.
No to neoliberal globalization. Abolishing of transnational treaties that favor large
multinationals such as TPP, NAFTA, etc. Tariffs and other means of punishing corporations who
move production overseas. Repatriation of foreign profits to the USA and closing of tax holes
which allow to keep profits in tax heavens without paying a dime to the US government.
No to neoliberal "transnational job market" -- free movement of labor. Criminal prosecution
and deportation of illegal immigrants. Cutting intake of refugees. Curtailing legal immigration,
especially fake and abused programs like H1B. Making it more difficult for people from countries
with substantial terrorist risk to enter the USA including temporary prohibition of issuing visas
from certain (pretty populous) Muslim countries.
No to the multiculturalism. Stress on "Christian past" and "white heritage" of American
society and the role of whites in building the country. Rejection of advertising "special rights"
of minorities such as black population, LGBT, etc. Promotion them as "identity wedges" in elections
was the trick so dear to DemoRats and, especially Hillary and Obama.
That means that Trump election platform on an intuitive level has caught several important problem
that were created in the US society by dismantling of the "New Deal" and rampant neoliberalism practiced
since Reagan ("Greed is good" mantra).
Of cause, after election he decided to practice the same "bait and switch" maneuver as Obama.
Generally he folded in less then 100 days. Not without help from DemoRats (Neoliberal Democrats)
which created a witch hunt over "Russian ties" with their dreams of the second Watergate.
But in any case, this platform still provides a path to election victory in any forthcoming election,
as problems listed are real , are not solved, and are extremely important for lower 90% of Americans.
Tulsi Gabbard so far is that only democratic politician that IMHO qualifies. Sanders is way too old
and somewhat inconsistent on No.1.
Frank was the first to note this "revolutionary" part of Tramp platform:
Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble
and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in
which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years.
But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good
part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called left-wing.
Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about
it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build
a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame.
He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by
Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about trade.
It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the many companies
that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make to those
companies' CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US.
"... Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a theater as well but for a different audience. ..."
"... What about Viktor Orbán? What about the whole Visegrad Group? What about Marine Le Pen? Do you side with them, or against them, in their struggle against the wholesale cultural transformation of Europe through mass immigration? ..."
"... The Empire "lowerarchy" only needs entertain the voter masses during the theatric event popularly known as POTUS elections. They know that the People never get a candidate choice which is not pre-approved. ..."
"... In fact, I intuit that The Empire appreciates having even major "idiot" donors to their uni-Party campaign theater. ..."
Good points, Priss Factor, and I will add one for your consideration.
At Davos 2017, Anthony Scaramucci assured the congregation that "President Trump is
the last hope of the globalists."
I am mindful how powerful forces of Deception can cunningly co-opt populism /
nationalism to their N.W.O. advantage.
A question.
Do you believe international banksters gave the Brits an opportunity to decide whether
"in or out" of the EUROPEAN UNION?
I think the Brexit outcome was theater, a globalist "invasion" & occupation of
planet-scale perception.
Thanks and I trust you will reply!
===
I think the Brexit outcome was theater
Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people
who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under
German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey
to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU
plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a
theater as well but for a different audience.
@Vinteuil If The Powers That
Be (TPTB) in Europe constantly attacked Islam & demanded the repatriation of Muslims to
their homelands, the Dinh/Revusky thesis would at least *make sense.* The hatred of Muslims
by TPTB would explain why they go to such trouble to fake all these attacks.
But, in fact, said powers endlessly insist that Not All Muslims Are Like That, and do
everything they can to import more of them.
Angela Merkel, anybody? Jean-Claude Juncker? The entire European MSM? I mean, hello?
And they stigmatize anybody who doubts the wisdom of this policy - like, say, Marine Le
Pen or Viktor Orbán - as "far right" extremists! Serious question, VD/JR:
What about Viktor Orbán? What about the whole Visegrad Group? What about Marine
Le Pen? Do you side with them, or against them, in their struggle against the wholesale
cultural transformation of Europe through mass immigration?
Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people
who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under
German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey
to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU
plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a
theater as well but for a different audience. Utu,
For me, the title of this article alone is a learning experience.
The Empire "lowerarchy" only needs entertain the voter masses during the theatric event
popularly known as POTUS elections. They know that the People never get a candidate choice
which is not pre-approved.
In fact, I intuit that The Empire appreciates having even major "idiot" donors to their
uni-Party campaign theater.
IMO, Trump can't be successful and deliver relief to his working class supporters unless he
takes on the fattened hogs. That means ensuring real competition in the marketplace and
breaking up the cartels that have used the power of big government to fatten themselves at the
expense of the Deplorables.
This means the FTC, FCC and other agencies created to ensure real competition have to change
their recent DNA which has been to be an arm of big business. They will have to regenerate and
take to heart once again the ethos of Wright Patman and enforce the Robinson-Patman Act with
the intensity of a wounded water buffalo.
This will be vigorously opposed by both parties and all the K Street lobbies and the
powerful financial interests. The same interests that opposed his candidacy and pulled out all
the stops to manufacture the election result. He will have to run a permanent campaign to rally
the Deplorables and the Sanderistas to fight the vested interests of the Borg who will oppose
the loss of their gravy train with all the power they have.
Obamacare is the disaster it is because it did nothing to lower health care costs. We spend
twice per capita on health care compared to other western nations and our health care costs
have been rising at a CAGR of 9%, which means costs double every 8 years. So cosmetic changes
like health savings accounts is not going to do anything. It will require busting all the
monopoly practices, which means allowing the importation of pharmaceuticals and requiring
Medicare and other plans to negotiate the lowest prices for drugs by purchasing them anywhere
in the world. It will require legislation that requires complete transparency by health
providers. It means getting to the bottom of the costs and knocking it down. IMO, he should
appoint a presidential commission to do a study and recommend a new health care delivery
architecture that reduces cost by at least half. That may mean a system like Germany or
Canada.
Similarly, he should instruct the FTC and FCC and the DOJ to break up the media, banking and
Wall St cartels. Draining the Swamp must be his first priority or else the Borg hydra will
stymie any reform.
You are right Sir that if the ziocons like Bolton and Woolsey and all the others burrow into
his national security decision making team it would be an unmitigated disaster.
Trump is in an unique position. The Borg opposed him with all they got. He owes them
nothing. He can fight a lonely fight with the Deplorables to drain the swamp. We know it can be
done as it has been done in our history. He'll need a few allies in Congress. We need the
Wright Patman of this generation to work with President Trump. He'll need a guy like David
Stockman to be the point man to simplify, rationalize and slim down our bloated government.
This will be an uphill battle but he ran an improbable campaign and defeated the Borg. Will he
run another hard fought campaign to truly Drain the Swamp and reduce the size and scope of the
federal government?
Hear, hear. In terms of the opportunities and risks, Trump is in position to be either the
greatest president since, or even including, FDR, or be the greatest disaster since James
Buchanan. I think we have the duty as citizens to set aside silly embitterment of the past and
to help him become the former.
"... Now however that very same technological advancement is hollowing out blue collar jobs and even white collar jobs. ..."
"... I suspect the rich will depend more and more on robots plus a few servants to serve their needs, hence the masses of workers and consumers will no longer be needed. ..."
"... The coup that transformed the relationship between British politics and journalism began at a quiet Sunday lunch at Chequers, the official country retreat of the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. She was trailing in the polls, caught in a recession she had inherited, eager for an assured cheerleader at a difficult time. Her guest had an agenda too. He was Rupert Murdoch, eager to secure her help in acquiring control of nearly 40% of the British press. ..."
"... the unregulated nature of neo liberalism and unrestrained greed bordering on psychopathy that rules the corporate world inexorably led to a system that is rigged and corrupt to the core. ..."
"... Politicians and the media are owned by the same corporations that set the narrative and bend the rules. How else would it be possible, in the era of ultimate access to information, in two of the most advanced countries in the world, to have election results that favor the exact parties who had no arguments and no facts on their side? ..."
"... There is no center left in the US and the UK, as far as I can tell. There hasn't been for decades. You cannot give all the tools of power (politicians that make the legislation, and media to promote the narrative) to a very tiny minority and be anything other than center right at least. Take Obama, for example, which is painted as center left, or liberal, by the US mainstream media, which is just laughable. Even if he promoted his "socialist" Obamacare (which is way less progressive than what Nixon had in mind), he's been actively promoting the same rigged system where lobbyists and corporations for big pharma can force the politicians, through the legal bribery that is the current electoral process, to ignore the will of the majority of people and abolish the ACA, as if it were never in place. Same with gun control - 90% of Americans are in favour of some sort of background checks? Eff them, the NRA lobbyists, their money and propaganda tools are easily making sure that whatever the will of the majority is, it will never get into any piece of legislation. ..."
"... Hayek was woefully ignorant to human nature. He didn't account for inherited wealth or class systems. Until these things are dismantled, it's impossible to have a genuinely free market with a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is the ideology of children who didn't get their needs met or suffered abuse or neglect. The more adverse child experiences one suffers, the greater the danger they pose to everyone else, and they seem to gravitate to warped belief systems where compassion or relying on others is deemed deeply shameful ..."
"... For a long time, people on the (real?) left who were denouncing the effects of ultra liberalism were seen as dangerous idealists, plain commies or immature kids. The tide seems to be slowly shifting but it will probably get worse before it gets better. ..."
"... An interesting point of view but probably too late. Trump will never dismantle neoliberalism. His rhetoric is hot air and he has no answers to the complex problems of the 21st century. ..."
"... No Trump does not have the answers that are needed to address neoliberalism. A sharp short economic collapse will not change the pathway we are all on. If we look back to the Great Depression, Hoover followed by Roosevelt shows us what is likely to transpire, there would have to be something else in the mix to bring about real change. ..."
"... In anycase Hayek's philosophies are really just an extension of what was going on during the Great Depression, the pathway to neoliberalism had it's seeds going back before this period. ..."
"... neoliberal innovation generally its also about disempowerment and ultimately rent capitalism based neo-feudal enslavement. ..."
"... Those of is who've been warning of the failure of neoliberalism in both economic and civic terms don't need convincing, and it's increasingly obvious that by defensively ignoring dissenting voices the political consensus was sowing the seeds of its own demise. Now, instead of having to work with social democrats to reinvest, to responsibly regulate, to strengthen social bonds, they have to pander to a brew breed of fascists, who they have created. ..."
"... It's not one or the other. Both globalisation and automation have taken jobs away. We exported a large amount of our manufacturing to where labour was cheaper ( far east , china etc). ..."
"... To describe Clinton as liberal, in the American tradition, is realistic, but to describe her as 'left', apart from as an opposite to far-right, makes as much sense as calling John Major or Ted Heath Marxists. ..."
Neo-liberalism has had the advantage that technological advancements have lifted the standard
of living for all up to this point. They can claim that as their win since capitalism and competition
have driven at least the retail products, distribution and take up.
Now however that very same technological advancement is hollowing out blue collar jobs
and even white collar jobs.
What to do with all those people who aren't PhD material and don't have employment and a resulting
claim of the wealth? What will be the result if there is no social democratic solution to the
dilemma?
I suspect the rich will depend more and more on robots plus a few servants to serve their
needs, hence the masses of workers and consumers will no longer be needed. Wars and famines
will be useful in reducing the population but the ruling class may have to resort to death camps
to eliminate the surplus. Violent revolution could be a response.
"We found out last Tuesday." A result more like chopping off one's collective nose to spite your
face? The difference is between looking into a sewer and out of rage jumping into it.
The coup that transformed the relationship between British politics and journalism began
at a quiet Sunday lunch at Chequers, the official country retreat of the prime minister, Margaret
Thatcher. She was trailing in the polls, caught in a recession she had inherited, eager for an
assured cheerleader at a difficult time. Her guest had an agenda too. He was Rupert Murdoch, eager
to secure her help in acquiring control of nearly 40% of the British press.
The usual tiresome drivel where anyone you disagree with is a neoliberal. Just with monbiot it's
dressed up better because he's a good writer. Just a couple of the obvious flaws:
Hayek is summarised briefly and painted as bad, so clearly everything he believed in must be
bad. There's no attempt to justify why say, free trade is bad. It's just taken as a given
Despite this, the us election was the most protectionist since the war. Clinton is owing to
populism when she knows trade is good, but trump was just a straightforward appeal to populist
anger. What this has to do with neoliberalism is anyone's guess
The climate change bit is just hilarious. Having painted the entire Clinton and Blair legacy
as neo liberal, he then claims it is neo liberals who will assault all that is decent starting
with climate change. The fact that they have constantly accepted climate change and supported
all the efforts to curb it (including Paris) is just ignored
In summary, this is the same kind of boring assault on anyone who disagrees with the article
self appointed progressive left that led to 'red tories' and other lazy labels. Trump and brexit
are populist in nature, propelled by ignorance. It doesn't make the centre left neo liberal just
because they accept the basic premise of a free market
"Hayek is summarised briefly and painted as bad, so clearly everything he believed in must
be bad. "
Must've missed that in the article. Anyway, I agree with Monbiot in what I think is the core
of the article: the unregulated nature of neo liberalism and unrestrained greed bordering
on psychopathy that rules the corporate world inexorably led to a system that is rigged and corrupt
to the core.
Politicians and the media are owned by the same corporations that set the narrative and
bend the rules. How else would it be possible, in the era of ultimate access to information, in
two of the most advanced countries in the world, to have election results that favor the exact
parties who had no arguments and no facts on their side?
How is it possible that a lot, if not a majority of Americans, think that universal healthcare
and education are bad things? How on Earth can people living in countries where the system is
so skewed that the people responsible for the 2008 depression never spent a day in jail, think
that the root of all their ills are a Mexican and a Polish chaps? How can one complain about poor
people or immigrants taking advantage of the public funding, their "hard earned money", and being
proud to support someone who admits publicly of not paying taxes for years?
How can so many people be capable of this type of mental gymnastics if the winners of this
greed contest wouldn't have twisted the system and imposed the narrative for many years?
"It doesn't make the centre left neo liberal just because they accept the basic premise of
a free market"
There is no center left in the US and the UK, as far as I can tell. There hasn't been for
decades. You cannot give all the tools of power (politicians that make the legislation, and media
to promote the narrative) to a very tiny minority and be anything other than center right at least.
Take Obama, for example, which is painted as center left, or liberal, by the US mainstream media,
which is just laughable. Even if he promoted his "socialist" Obamacare (which is way less progressive
than what Nixon had in mind), he's been actively promoting the same rigged system where lobbyists
and corporations for big pharma can force the politicians, through the legal bribery that is the
current electoral process, to ignore the will of the majority of people and abolish the ACA, as
if it were never in place. Same with gun control - 90% of Americans are in favour of some sort
of background checks? Eff them, the NRA lobbyists, their money and propaganda tools are easily
making sure that whatever the will of the majority is, it will never get into any piece of legislation.
In a summary of my own: yes, if you put in place the tools that allow a bunch of plutocrats
to corrupt a system so it always works in their favour, and most of the times against the popular
will, you ARE a red tory or a DINO.
George, Margaret Thatcher was one of your lot, wasn't she? She was one of the world's first national
leaders to stress the need for action on climate change and fight the war on coal. Here are some
extracts from her speech to the UN delivered in November 1989. It reads a lot like some of your
articles. You didn't ghost write it, did you? If not, clearly, you and Maggie drew your inspiration
from some of the same sources.
We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere.
The annual increase is three billion tonnes: and half the carbon emitted since the Industrial
Revolution still remains in the atmosphere.
At the same time as this is happening, we are seeing the destruction on a vast scale
of tropical forests which are uniquely able to remove carbon dioxide from the air.
Every year an area of forest equal to the whole surface of the United Kingdom is destroyed.
At present rates of clearance we shall, by the year 2000, have removed 65 per cent of forests
in the humid tropical zones.[fo 3]
The consequences of this become clearer when one remembers that tropical forests fix
more than ten times as much carbon as do forests in the temperate zones.
We now know, too, that great damage is being done to the Ozone Layer by the production
of halons and chlorofluorocarbons. But at least we have recognised that reducing and eventually
stopping the emission of CFCs is one positive thing we can do about the menacing accumulation
of greenhouse gases.
It is of course true that none of us would be here but for the greenhouse effect. It
gives us the moist atmosphere which sustains life on earth. We need the greenhouse effect!but
only in the right proportions.
More than anything, our environment is threatened by the sheer numbers of people and
the plants and animals which go with them. When I was born the world's population was some
2 billion people. My [ Michael Thatcher] grandson will grow up in a world of more than 6 billion
people.
Put in its bluntest form: the main threat to our environment is more and more people,
and their activities: The land they cultivate ever more intensively; The forests they cut down
and burn; The mountain sides they lay bare; The fossil fuels they burn; The rivers and the
seas they pollute.....
Let me quote from a letter I received only two weeks ago, from a British scientist on
board a ship in the Antarctic Ocean: he wrote, "In the Polar Regions today, we are seeing what
may be early signs of man-induced climatic change. Data coming in from Halley Bay and from
instruments aboard the ship on which I am sailing show that we are entering a Spring Ozone
depletion which is as deep as, if not deeper, than the depletion in the worst year to date.
It completely reverses the recovery observed in 1988. The lowest recording aboard this ship
is only 150 Dobson units for Ozone total content during September, compared with 300 for the
same season in a normal year." That of course is a very severe depletion.
He also reports on a significant thinning of the sea ice, and he writes that, in the
Antarctic, "Our data confirm that the first-year ice, which forms the bulk of sea ice cover,
is remarkably thin and so is probably unable to sustain significant atmospheric warming without
melting. Sea ice, separates the ocean from the atmosphere over an area of more than 30 million
square kilometres. It reflects most of the solar radiation falling on it, helping to cool the
earth's surface. If this area were reduced, the warming of earth would be accelerated due to
the extra absorption of radiation by the ocean."
"The lesson of these Polar processes," he goes on, "is that an environmental or climatic
change produced by man may take on a self-sustaining or 'runaway' quality ... and may be irreversible."
That is from the scientists who are doing work on the ship that is presently considering these
matters.
These are sobering indications of what may happen and they led my correspondent to put
forward the interesting idea of a World Polar Watch, amongst other initiatives, which will
observe the world's climate system and allow us to understand how it works.
Brilliant comment Tamlin thanks for posting. I didn't realise the 'blonde beast' had such solid
environmental insights. You only have to peep over the channel to France to see Hayek and Thatcher
were on the mark, whilst Mitterrand and other statist socialists were so horribly wrong. If only
there were more politicians today that were as committed, hard working and wise as Thatcher.
Current ideas put human self-interest at dead centre but neglected to take into account how all
systems are rigged to benefit those that put them in place.
Loading the dice:
1) Capitalism. The Aristocracy were there during the transition from Feudalism
to Capitalism and barely noticed the difference as their life of luxury and leisure continued
as before. Capitalism contains a welfare state for the idle rich.
2) The monetary system. Banks create money out of nothing for loans and collect interest
on this money they magic out of thin air. Governments borrow money off private banks and taxation
has to be used to pay back the interest. The monetary system is a levy on all taxpayers.
3) The legal system. Expensive barristers provide the mechanism for the rich to increase
their chance of winning the case.
4) The education system. A two tier, private and state, education system ensures the
wealthy can give their children a better start in life.
The system is fully loaded. If we tell them it's a meritocracy and it is the best that get
to the top hopefully they will believe it. What would a meritocracy really look like?
1) In a meritocracy everyone succeeds on their own merit. This is obvious, but to succeed
on your own merit, we need to do away the traditional mechanisms that socially stratify society
due to wealth flowing down the generations. Anything that comes from your parents has nothing
to do with your own effort.
2) There is no un-earned wealth or power, e.g inheritance, trust funds, hereditary titles
In a meritocracy we need equal opportunity for all. We can't have the current two tier education
system with its fast track of private schools for people with wealthy parents.
3) There is a uniform schools system for everyone with no private schools. As
the children of the wealthy wouldn't be able to succeed on a level playing field we can't have
one.
Even when the system was fully loaded already the wealthy work tirelessly and relentlessly
to bias the system even more, they couldn't believe their luck when the ideas of neoliberalism
appeared.
The system is now so biased the IMF is worried about global aggregate demand as the global
consumer has been impoverished. The debt that papered over the cracks is maxing out and the system
is collapsing.
Any system will be biased by those that put it in place.
Left to their own devices they will carry on biasing the system until it eventually fails.
"The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters
pertaining to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues
wilfully and reliably down the path to his own destruction"
Seconded as a good post But I don't like the, "in a meritocracy we need equal opportunity for
all" as it too strongly suggests direct assistance and so implies idleness or entitlement. I would
prefer that: in a meritocracy no one is actively suppressed, that is everyone is given the opportunity
to try to succeed without discrimination, prejudice, funny handshakes, unmerited (not means tested)
backhanders/benefits.
Hayek was woefully ignorant to human nature. He didn't account for inherited wealth or class
systems. Until these things are dismantled, it's impossible to have a genuinely free market with
a natural hierarchy of winners and losers.
"The key task now is to tell a new story of what it is to be a human in the 21st century."
People's despair has been hijacked by demagogues and they elected the gravedigger to get them
out of a pit. As it happened so often in history. Both here and in the US, and the picture of
the unelected, private, political non-entity Farage to stage a grin-fest with Trump is unbearable.
We need to learn that we are part of something bigger which is worth preserving and we have
to come together to do this. We have to establish a circular economy where ideologies such as
captalism have no place. This goes past politics and left-right. Otherwise we have to learn this
the hard way. Our planet will force us. When the last drop of oil is pumped out of the ground,
when all the water has been polluted, when the number of wild species is reduced to rats, cockroaches,
ants and humans, when the heat is unbearable and the oceans are full of acid: Then we will learn
how to work together to preserve our species.
If we haven't blown each other up in the meantime in a fight for resources .
I worry for our children.
My sister is a generous donor to the Catholic Church. She prays for me constantly, not least because
of my libertarian leanings -- and because I am as gay as a goose, queer as an ... um, er ... Canadian
goose. Now my sister is very defensive about the Jesuit pope, who shuns Trump but embraces Castro
and Maduro. Because of culture, the words of the Ave Maria and the Credo come to me in Latin.
Hayek makes sense, but mostly because of his interplay with Keynes.
Hayek obviously made sense to Margaret Thatcher too, daughter of a shop keeper and raised a Methodist.
She was once interviewed for a job as a chemist with the company I used to work for but was rejected,
rumour had it for not being assertive enough. A talented girl with a good upbringing who became
a prisoner and ultimately victim of the establishment.
Simple dichotomies never make sense.. The oversimplification of complex issues is typical of the
self-interested media manipulation resulting from a neoliberal and uncontrolled gutter press.
Hence "Brexonomics" - a creed fueled by irrationality.
Really sorry but disagree that humans are remarkably unselfish. There are many decent , caring,
striving to help individuals. But they are vastly out numbered by those who are otherwise. Every
time somebody buys a motor vehicle they are being selfish. Almost nowhere do they need it. They
want for convenience, laziness, self- grandisemnet, something to spend their money on. But they
do not need and yet its existence and use despoils and degrades.
Every time they buy cheap fashion with clothers made essentially to be thrown away they are
selfish. Every time they copulate, without using contraception and without wanting the resulting
baby they are selfsih. Even if they want the baby, after the first two, why? They are being selfish.
Every time they invade somewhere, for oil or to impose an ideology whether capitalism or religion,
they are selfish.
That is not to say that Hayek, and acolytes Reagan, Thatcher and the endlessly greedy "people"
who propagate variations of their ideas should not have been burned at the stake. The problem
is those who are greedy and selfish are almost always more ruthless than those who are not.
I see your point and agree with it. Why should one person drastically reduce their enjoyment of
life to try to reduce global warming when their actions will have, essentially, no impact on total
CO2 emissions. But here's what can be done. Collective action where everyone agrees to limit
fossil fuel emissions. That's what national governments are for and that is what the UN was created
for - to find solutions for world wide problems.
Neoliberalism is the ideology of children who didn't get their needs met or suffered abuse
or neglect. The more adverse child experiences one suffers, the greater the danger they pose to
everyone else, and they seem to gravitate to warped belief systems where compassion or relying
on others is deemed deeply shameful
I am no psychologist, but it must be evident to most that, at the micro level, childhood trauma
and mental, physical and sexual abuse experienced at a young age within the family unit can lead
to the child intending to rebalance and repay the power imbalance in adult life, with invariably
adverse consequences for their environment and those around them.
Looking at the world today it is not hard to see the culmination of the sins of the father
over the centuries in the form of decent, hard-working people with no power struggles to redress
being subjected to endless and downright cruel, even vindictive actions and policies enshrined
into law and played out across the world stage by those who have abused power to make it to the
top.
And it is the socially disadvantaged and most vulnerable in society who have invariably suffered
the most, hence the vast inequality in wealth distribution which has gathered momentum in recent
years.
Brexit and Trump are a symptom, a reaction and a backlash to the traumatized child reclaiming
and abusing their power on a macro level.
Dogs are very social animals........and there are examples of unselfish behaviour in the dog world
with the likes of Greyfriars Bobby, Lassie etc etc....my little dog would defend me to the death
!.....rats of course are very different !!...
Kind of counter to sort of arguments I'd want to make on the subject but Grey Friars Bobby kept
visiting that graveyard because they didn't bury the paupers all that deep and the hungry wee
dog could get hold of a lot of juicy bones. Which I suppose is neo-liberalism summed up: the poorest
left so hungry they'll end up competing over the bones of the dead. Hopefully that last sentence
is metaphorical.
For a long time, people on the (real?) left who were denouncing the effects of ultra liberalism
were seen as dangerous idealists, plain commies or immature kids. The tide seems to be slowly
shifting but it will probably get worse before it gets better.
An interesting point of view but probably too late. Trump will never dismantle neoliberalism.
His rhetoric is hot air and he has no answers to the complex problems of the 21st century.
The only thing that will save us will be a short sharp economic collapse. It was narrowly
avoided in 2008 but all the seeds for another are there. If it happens on Trump or Mays watch
new voices can be heard and social democracy can regain the ascendency it had after 1945. There
needs to be pain before that and it wont be long before it arrives.
I suspect you're right. People are talking about Trump as thought this is endgame, we've hit the
bottom of the barrel and it can't get much worse. I think there's still a ways to go though before
people stop accepting that a change of management isn't enough anymore, and an economic crisis
worse than anything in living memory will most likely be the catalyst for change.
Sadly history tells us that as the political class gets more desperate, they'll start pointing
fingers of blame at just about everyone before they accept any responsibility, which means a lot
of unhappiness misdirected at a handful of tiny groups of people who are totally unconnected to
anything that they're being accused of.
No Trump does not have the answers that are needed to address neoliberalism. A sharp short
economic collapse will not change the pathway we are all on. If we look back to the Great Depression,
Hoover followed by Roosevelt shows us what is likely to transpire, there would have to be something
else in the mix to bring about real change.
In anycase Hayek's philosophies are really just an extension of what was going on during
the Great Depression, the pathway to neoliberalism had it's seeds going back before this period.
The most likely game changer at present is more than likely global warming, I see nothing else
on the horizon.
If you want to see a nefarious extension of neoliberal rentier debt economics George can I suggest
you have a close look at a new emerging threat in sheets clothing - the Circular Economy. This
isnt just about cuddly saving the planet. Like neoliberal innovation generally its also about
disempowerment and ultimately rent capitalism based neo-feudal enslavement.
The issue is how the political class which is currently being unseated can respond to this new
reality, how they are able to change or if they are able to. And subsequent to that, whether the
public will allow them to play any part. This is a non trivial issue: most politicians have grown
up with a dogmatic belief in this failed system, and our electorate are not in a forgiving mood.
Those of is who've been warning of the failure of neoliberalism in both economic and civic
terms don't need convincing, and it's increasingly obvious that by defensively ignoring dissenting
voices the political consensus was sowing the seeds of its own demise. Now, instead of having
to work with social democrats to reinvest, to responsibly regulate, to strengthen social bonds,
they have to pander to a brew breed of fascists, who they have created.
The political class is not being unseated though, is it? Its becoming more entrenched and with
a lot more power. There will be no checks and balances on "the God Emperor" Trump (as the American
Nazis are calling him).
Trump is not from the political class. He is from something much worse - the class of extreme
narcissist, hugely wealthy populists - but has minimal connections with the machinery of government.
For me the core problem, as ever, is that the messengers (the corporate owned media) tell the
majority that neoliberalism is just fine and the problem is with anyone who challenges this narrative.
This is why the anger gets twisted around with the masses voting for Brexit or Trump.
Globalisation resulted in the loss of jobs for many of the 99% and today May promises that
as a result of Brexit we will be going even more for globilisation. Things can only get worse
as the minority who understand the issue will be too few to overturn a Tory majority in a FPTP
system with opposition divided.
It is not globalisation that takes away the jobs but automation. Many of the jobs lost from America's
rust belt moved to other more highly automated factories in other States.
It's not one or the other. Both globalisation and automation have taken jobs away. We exported
a large amount of our manufacturing to where labour was cheaper ( far east , china etc).
Honestly, we are a few more elections away before the punters realize that no peaceful political
solutions are possible; expect armed insurrection in the USA by 2030 at most......
Trump insulted his opponents into defeat and humiliation. This is him from day one and his TV
series. At 70 dont expect this dog to learn new tricks. In fact he's proved time and again his
inability to learn.
No, fancy theories about neo-liberalism will not help us understand or predict his behaviour...
all we need to know is the pattern of the psychology of bullying and intimidation. One can only
hope he will drown in his own virulence
I think you are focusing on the wrong candidate. Clinton lost because we are fed up with the patronising
liberal left, who do not actually care about the people they purport to represent.
Granted, but the alternative we got is not the solution... its only a wild gamble with the Tarot
cards of Armageddon. Oh well, ours is not to reason why.. etc
To describe Clinton as liberal, in the American tradition, is realistic, but to describe her
as 'left', apart from as an opposite to far-right, makes as much sense as calling John Major or
Ted Heath Marxists.
Good article, and goes some way to explaining the economics but it doesn't quite explain the huge
ideological shift of the traditional working classes away from the political Left. I'm afraid
Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens as well as mainstream media, particularly Ch 4 and the BBC, suppressed
any criticism of multi-culturalism and immigration while blatantly ignoring, disregarding and,
far worse, actually disparaging the "white working classes." If you went into any school in this
country, the walls were/ are covered with positive images of black, Asian and ethnic minorities
and lessons encourage "sharing" and positive imagery of those cultures' faiths, food, celebrations,
all good stuff!!
Except that white working class culture has been too often excluded or portrayed
super negatively and stereotypically as fish and chip eating, white van driving, boxing, football,
racist epsilons... is it a surprise that white working class kids are now performing worse than
any other? And look at any Ch 4 programme about this cohort of society: "Benefits Street"... or
news items about Brexit supporters full of imagery of toothless people, many with obvious addiction
problems and/ or special needs and mobility scooters... I remember black people used to be horrifically
subjected to the same stereotypes. So here we have the root of the problem, which is a complete
imbalance in terms of who is officially approved and encouraged in this country and who is excluded
and degraded. The "divisiveness" is owned by the Left. The lid is now off the pot but the Left
can only blame themselves!!
The thing is that the so called "white working class" is as diverse, if not more diverse ethnically
and culturally, than any other!!
It is however, portrayed as an homogenous lump (my mum is white
working class and my dad Punjabi Muslim and most where I come from highly diverse and mixed communities)
by the political class and media to feed and agenda, which is about blaming. The "white working
class" is blamed for every perceived threat ideologically and economically - they are branded
on the one hand as inherently racist, intolerant and blaming immigrants for everything; on the
other, for being inherently lazy, uneducated and low skilled and so this narrative justifies importing
300, 000 annually from overseas... people held up against the latter "highly educated and skilled"
and "hardworking"!!
Both perspectives are in fact highly propagandist and play to stereotypes- the heroic immigrant
labourer upholding our NHS and economy vs. the lazy, stupid Brit (always white and working class)
who would prevent our country and economy progressing.
"... The Clinton and Remain campaigns shared an approach of trying to convince people ahead of time that what they need is not necessarily what they want. Both campaigns lost ..."
"... Ryan now leads the neoliberal cause in the party and a lot of what Trump wants to do (borrow and spend on public projects or limit free trade for example) will not sit well with them. ..."
"... George has highlighted the key battle - can the 'swarm that is now surrounding Trump, fill this empty vessel' and bend him to their ideology or will he prove true to his campaign promises. As each of his promises is one by one 'modified' the danger increases that those who voted for him realise that they have been shafted once again. I suspect though, that they may never come to realise who is doing this to them. ..."
"... This is the most enlightening article I have read in the Guardian. It goes a long way to explaining the root of Thatcherism, and why she behaved as she did, towards so many organisations, she saw as the enemy of her chosen path! I have wondered why she is remembered with such fondness by many, and her legacy revered, when it left so many problems for the future. Sure, the rich got richer, our manufacturing base was decimated, and those unholy bankers, stockbrokers, arms dealers and the like, revelled in her folly! ..."
"... Trump offered change, Hillary Clinton was the status quo. The establishment couldn't accept their neoliberal ideas had failed and the people had to push them out. The status quo has failed – wake up – this is the new reality. ..."
"... We need to recognise that we have been through many versions of Capitalism and they all fail as this version is failing now. ..."
"... Unfettered Capitalism has a catastrophic failure mode and dressing it up in the Emperor's New Clothes of supply side economics didn't make a blind bit of difference. We've done Neo-Keynesian stimulus. After eight years of pumping trillions into the top of the economic pyramid, banks, and waiting for it to trickle down. It didn't work, hardly anything trickled down. ..."
"... Your examples of "failures" actually demonstrate exactly the opposite: that capitalism is resilient. It survived 2 world wars, the 1930's depression, withdrawal of the gold standard (which had far-reaching effects on the "establishment"), the 2008 crash, the oil crises of the 1970s (that caused your "stagflation") and pretty much everything else that has been thrown at the financial world in the past 100 years. ..."
I don't necessarily disagree with much of this piece but I can't help feeling that the hints given by Monbiot about some
new thinking to combat neoliberalism being developed is more about hope than expectation.
I am rather more cynical. The Clinton and Remain campaigns shared an approach of trying to convince people ahead of
time that what they need is not necessarily what they want. Both campaigns lost and the fall-out has included lots of
cries that people are fed up with being told what to think and do by the "liberal elite". Fine, so now they believe they
can think and do more themselves.
It may be better to sit back for a while to let people rejoice in getting what they want in order that they can self-educate
through grim reality that what they thought they wanted was a fiction. Sometimes people have to find out for themselves
that they have made a terrible mistake.
Given that on both sides of the Atlantic, the majority of people oppose the shift to the right, surely all that is needed
is some decent organization against them and leadership capable of galvanizing the repulsion of this year's events. My
fingers are firmly crossed, but I cannot see anything on the horizon at the moment.
"Sometimes people have to find out for themselves that they have made a terrible mistake" - shame that in the meantime,
that "terrible mistake" is pounced upon as democratic justification for the entry of economic elites waiting in the wings.
Do you really think people's "mistakes" (a) are random, and/or (b) will be allowed to lead to the general good without
being hijacked?
It is not clear how Trump's election is going to be handled by the GOP. Ryan now leads the neoliberal cause in the party
and a lot of what Trump wants to do (borrow and spend on public projects or limit free trade for example) will not sit
well with them.
George has highlighted the key battle - can the 'swarm that is now surrounding Trump, fill this empty vessel' and
bend him to their ideology or will he prove true to his campaign promises. As each of his promises is one by one 'modified'
the danger increases that those who voted for him realise that they have been shafted once again. I suspect though, that
they may never come to realise who is doing this to them.
Trump has said that he wants to continue holding rallies, something political pundits put down to his overwhelming ego.
He might want an army of the dedicated behind him to convince the power structure that it would be in their own best
interests to give him what he wants. It's telling that he chose Priebus, a member of the power structure, to be chief
of staff and Bannon to be his chief strategist.
This is the most enlightening article I have read in the Guardian.
It goes a long way to explaining the root of Thatcherism, and why she behaved as she did, towards so many organisations,
she saw as the enemy of her chosen path!
I have wondered why she is remembered with such fondness by many, and her legacy revered, when it left so many problems
for the future.
Sure, the rich got richer, our manufacturing base was decimated, and those unholy bankers, stockbrokers, arms dealers
and the like, revelled in her folly!
Multi National companies thrived, setting up bases all over the World to avoid tax, whilst the ordinary folk were hounded
by Inland Revenue, for all that was due.
I trust Mrs May will not exemplify her, and make sure the Country is a fairer place for all, as she said in her statement
in front of No 10!
I have to say, Trump has not looked to me like any kind of very happy bunny since he got elected. He looks pretty
worried and overwhelmed. I wonder whether he can stay the course?
I noticed this too. He looked very subdued - miserable, even - in that meeting with Obama. His conciliatory victory speech
sounded nothing like his rallies.
Perhaps this is why every supposed saviour turns out to be a complete fraud. They're all being taken out the back,
shot, and replaced with doubles by the Illuminati as soon as they win. I think it's more likely Trump simply has no appetite for the job and no real convictions, yet lots of people to please.
Trump offered change, Hillary Clinton was the status quo. The establishment couldn't accept their neoliberal ideas had failed and the people had to push them out. The status quo has failed – wake up – this is the new reality.
Capitalism gets itself into dead ends - 1930s, 1970s, today's secular stagnation and new normal. Let's keep lowering interest rates and adding more QE forever, it hasn't worked for eight years maybe in a hundred
years time it will start to work or perhaps it won't. Show me a version of Capitalism that hasn't failed.
We need to recognise that we have been through many versions of Capitalism and they all fail as this version is failing
now.
As John Kenneth Galbraith points out in "The Affluent Society" there is always a desperate attempt to hold onto the
"conventional wisdom" that those at the top have invested so much time and effort in. The death throes of each system are maintained for as long as feasible until it is almost impossible for anyone to
believe that the current system can work. A new system comes along with promises that everything will be much better, and it is, for a decade or two.
Capitalism mark 1 – Unfettered Capitalism. Crashed and burned in 1929 with a global recession in the 1930s. The New Deal and Keynesian ideas promised a bright new world.
Capitalism mark 2 – Keynesian Capitalism. Ended with stagflation in the 1970s. Market led Capitalism ideas promised a bright new world.
Capitalism mark 3 - Unfettered Capitalism (Part 2 – Market led Capitalism) Crashed and burned in 2008 with a global recession in the 2010s. It has followed the same path as Unfettered Capitalism (Mark 1).
[Some analogies]
1920s/2000s - high inequality, high banker pay, low regulation, low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons (CEOs), reckless
bankers, globalisation phase
1929/2008 - Wall Street crash
1930s/2010s - Global recession, currency wars, rising nationalism and extremism
Unfettered Capitalism has a catastrophic failure mode and dressing it up in the Emperor's New Clothes of supply side
economics didn't make a blind bit of difference. We've done Neo-Keynesian stimulus. After eight years of pumping trillions into the top of the economic pyramid, banks, and waiting for it to trickle
down. It didn't work, hardly anything trickled down.
The powers that be are now for Keynesian stimulus. Carry out infrastructure projects that create jobs and wages which will be spent into the economy and trickle up (pumping
money into the bottom of the economic pyramid). A new brush sweeps clean, the old ideologues stuck in their old failed ways must go. The Left is still full of neoliberal ideologues; it's time to move on.
Show me a version of Capitalism that hasn't failed
Your examples of "failures" actually demonstrate exactly the opposite: that capitalism is resilient.
It survived 2 world wars, the 1930's depression, withdrawal of the gold standard (which had far-reaching effects on the
"establishment"), the 2008 crash, the oil crises of the 1970s (that caused your "stagflation") and pretty much everything
else that has been thrown at the financial world in the past 100 years.
After eight years of pumping trillions into the top of the economic pyramid, banks, and waiting for it to trickle
down. It didn't work, hardly anything trickled down.
"... The Macron administration is facing the collapse of American imperialist hegemony that has shaped world politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Stalinist bureaucracy's dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. ..."
"... He said, "We are passing through a period of most intense questioning of the diplomatic certainties and of confusion about developments in 25 or 50 years. Today, the post-1989 order, one based on a form of globalisation that became totally unfettered and the hyper-power of one state, is shattered." ..."
Speaking Tuesday to a conference of French ambassadors for his inaugural foreign policy speech,
President Emmanuel Macron laid out plans for a military build-up and an aggressive global policy.
He made clear that the counterpart to the assertion of French imperialist interests overseas would
be an escalation of police-state measures, such as the state of emergency, at home.
The Macron administration is facing the collapse of American imperialist hegemony that has
shaped world politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Stalinist bureaucracy's dissolution
of the Soviet Union in 1991. The quarter-century of Middle East wars and ebbing US influence
have undermined the geo-strategic order on which French capitalism worked out its world policy. Macron
himself all but acknowledged that, after Trump's election to the White House, the political foundations
of Europe are collapsing.
He said, "We are passing through a period of most intense questioning of the diplomatic certainties
and of confusion about developments in 25 or 50 years. Today, the post-1989 order, one based on a
form of globalisation that became totally unfettered and the hyper-power of one state, is shattered."
Without naming the United States or the Trump administration, Macron presented Europe as a democratic
counterweight to a collapse of the world capitalist order, declaring: "Europe is one of the last
refuges where the Enlightenment ideals of electoral and representative democracy, the respect for
human personality, religious tolerance and freedom of expression and the belief in progress are still
largely shared."
Only a few paragraphs later, however, he acknowledged that Europe is threatened with war, as well.
Pointing to potential conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 NATO-backed
coup in Kiev, he said, "We have forgotten that the last 70 years of peace on the European continent
were an aberration of our collective history. That is however what the building of European institutions
allowed us to create. But the threat is on our doorstep, and war is on our continent."
The inescapable conclusion from Macron's remark that the last 70 years since World War II were
an "aberration" is that world war is again a possibility, including in Europe. The "End of History"
triumphalism of bourgeois commentators, who declared that the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet
Union spelled the definitive triumph of capitalism, has collapsed. The same objective contradictions
of capitalism that drove the Russian working class to socialist revolution a century ago are erupting
today.
Under Macron, moreover, the French bourgeoisie is embarking on policies of militarism, politicised
racism, and attacks on social and democratic rights that twice in the last century led Europe to
war. Macron called for a major military build-up, including an increase in defence spending to 2
percent of Gross Domestic Product, and called for making "the struggle against Islamist terrorism
the main priority of our foreign policy." He called for making the French army "one of the very best
in the world, the best in Europe, to protect France and also our continent."
... ... ...
Macron called for careful engagement with China and its New Silk Road infrastructure project,
which Washington strongly opposes, and which he saw as a challenge for French and European diplomacy:
"I say with great gravity, if we are not able to use multilateral strategies, other great powers
will seize these tools. The New Silk Road is a classic example of a major geopolitical project carried
out by China, which we must take into account from the standpoint of our European interests."
Ecomonist is a propaganda venue not so much about globalism as about
neoliberalism. This is one of the leading neoliberal publications.
Notable quotes:
"... Mr Derbyshire is wrong to say that the Antifa and their like are funded by the "Billionaire Left". They do fund them, but to call them the Billionaire Left is incorrect. These people are best described as Corporatist Oligarchs, aided and created by Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is not liberal, it is thoroughly illiberal and unconcerned about free markets or free societies. As an example, SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch are merging. They will have 45% of the US beer market, when merged. 30 years, when the US still had competition laws, this would not be permitted. Indeed, it would not even be attempted. ..."
Given that
The Economist
is a major journalistic voice for the globalist,
nation-hating, open-borders, anti-Trump club of
the Billionaire
Left
; and given that
AntiFa
is the "
muscle
" of that club; it's not very surprising that when our President attacks AntiFa,
The Economist
pulls out all the stops.
The cover
of the current
(August 19th-25th) issue tells you all you need to know. Trump is bellowing into a megaphone
drawn as a sideways-lying KKK hood.
The accompanying editorial is what you'd expect.
His unsteady response [i.e. to the riot engineered by state and city authorities in
Charlottesville last week] contains a terrible message for Americans. Far from being the
savior of the Republic, their President is politically inept, morally barren and
temperamentally unfit for office.
It comes of course with a doctored version of history to conform to current CultMarx
dogmas.
White supremacists and neo-Nazis yearn for a society based on race, which America fought a
world war to prevent.
If you had asked 1,000 Americans in 1945 what they had been fighting for, then ranked their
responses by common themes, I venture to suggest that "to prevent a society based on race"
would not have been anywhere near the top of the rankings. I wonder if it would even have
figured at all.
And what a great many white Americans today yearn for is a society
not
based on
race: one in which their own race is
not
constantly belittled and insulted by talk of
"white privilege," one
not
riddled with preferences and favoritism on behalf of other
races, one in which
multicultural
triumphalists
do
not
crow over whites' impending replacement, and elites do
not
seem hell-bent on
bringing about that
replacement
.
The Economist
tells us that defending Confederate statues!a cause which, for 150
years, was not even
present
in the collective American consciousness because those
statues were not threatened!is a rearguard action by the evil, bitter past against
the Radiant
Future
.
Mr Trump's seemingly heartfelt defence of those marching to defend Confederate statues
spoke to the degree to which white grievance and angry, sour nostalgia is part of his world
view.
Perhaps one man's "angry, sour nostalgia" is another man's natural reaction to great but
unnecessary social changes undertaken to the advantage of people who hate him.
What do you have to drink to get through
Economist
drivel/propaganda? I'm spending
some time in a hotel where we have CNN. I can't watch more than two to three
minutes–nothing but Trump criticism. The Russian news channels are more informative
even though my Russian is very rudimentary
Mr Derbyshire is wrong to say that the Antifa and their like are funded by the
"Billionaire Left". They do fund them, but to call them the Billionaire Left is
incorrect.
These people are best described as Corporatist Oligarchs, aided and created by Neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism is not liberal, it is thoroughly illiberal and unconcerned about free markets
or free societies. As an example, SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch are merging. They will have
45% of the US beer market, when merged. 30 years, when the US still had competition laws,
this would not be permitted. Indeed, it would not even be attempted.
Effective competition laws are one of the cornerstones of a Capitalist society, or even
one with a more Mixed Economy. Large areas of the US economy are now dominated by
oligopolies: individual companies are often largely owned or controlled by one person,
sometimes a few. These oligopolists seek cheap labour, open borders, free trade and exemption
from the laws of the state. Indeed, as the TPTA made explicit, they wanted to be subject to
rules made by themselves, not any state.
Their aims cannot be said to be left wing. These policies benefit a small number of oligarchs
and their associates, whose income has risen enormously. Most of the rest of us suffer as a
result.
These oligarchs not only fund dim-witted left wing groups to do their bidding, they
control most of the media and the political parties. They constitute a very serious threat to
the State, Society and ordinary people.
These oligopolies must be broken up and sold in parts to a wide range of new owners.
Effective Competition Laws must be reinstated and anti-completion laws ( e.g.
Telecommunications Act 1996 ) rescinded. The holdings of individual oligarchs should be
confiscated without compensation and the worst offenders (Soros, Bezos, Zuckerberg et al )
sent to Work Camps in Northern Alaska, along with all the staff of $PLC. The money so
confiscated should be donated to charitable funds, e.g. VDARE, The John Derbyshire Retirement
Fund.
As a previous 20 year subscriber to the Economist magazine, this article touches a raw
nerve in me. There was a time when I had a fascination with the world of globalism and the
Economist was a source of great wisdom to be cherished on a Sunday morning. But as the real
world of globalism started showing its ugly head, I started getting tired of this mouthpiece
of the Illuminati and their mega sophisticated propaganda news of which I will expose some of
the important myths they have acclaimed during the 90′s and in the first decade of the
21st century. Unfortunately, I don't have the references for these articles as I am drawing
from my long memory:
-In one of their articles about the falling crime rate in America, they credited Roe vs Wade
for legalizing abortion " which led to a marked decline in undesired children and therefore a
reduced crime rate". Indicting innocent unborn children as potential criminals is the
Economist way. It escaped them, that had abortion been legal when Steven Jobs saw the light
of day, chances are the man would have not lived as a child born out of wedlock.
-The Economist called for Arab oil producers to reduce the price of a barrel of oil to USD
5.00 to drive all potential non OPEC competitors out of the market in order to survive the
coming drop in the price of oil. What happened after this article is that oil prices kept
creeping up until it reached the price of USD 147.
-The Economist was a supporter of the abrogation of the Glass Steegal Act that separated
commercial banking from investment banking calling it an outdated law. Needless to remind the
reader that the cancellation of the law by the Clinton Administration at the behest of Robert
Rubin who had been appointed as Citi Chair while still working for the U S government was a
case of conflict of interest and the reason for the 2008 financial crisis and the phony
legacy of " too big to fail" and " too big to jail".
- The Economist was as big of a supporter of the war on Iraq just as its ilk The New York
Slimes, a war that has killed millions and cost the American tax payer trillions of
Dollars.
I will limit my critique of the Economist to the above points while hoping that other new
doubters in the authenticity of this propaganda machine will contribute theirs.
The New Yorker used a similar Trump/KKK cover. These people have such original minds. My
guess is there's a new Journolist site somewhere that hasn't been smoked out yet, because the
coordination is clear as day.
@Diversity Heretic
What do you have to drink to get through
Economist
drivel/propaganda? I'm spending some time in a hotel where we have CNN. I can't watch more
than two to three minutes--nothing but Trump criticism. The Russian news channels are more
informative even though my Russian is very rudimentary A life-long friend visiting from Italy
this past December, while staying in a Manhattan hotel, noted that the CNN programming was
all anti-Trump, all the time. He wondered if they reported any news.
Yes some percentage are probably racist. But majority of people who are voted again globalism in the USA in the recent election,
sending Hillary packing, are not.
The death of Heather Heyer allow media to paint alt-right as 'domestic terrorists.' Hysteria wipe out by the media, the political
establishment, and the technocracy in Silicon Valley moved into over-drive and rached the proportion of an entirely artificial moral
panic.
M edia attention to the non-event in Charlottesville lasted an astonishing three full days. It completely displaced coverage devoted
to instances of Islamic terror and eclipses Western coverage devoted to serious terrorist incidents in the Middle East. Charlottesville
has been packaged for mass consumption as even that proved that anti-globalization forces are illegitimate and need to be procecuted.
Media has been attempting to spin this incident as some kind of defining historical moment -- a litmus test for the tolerance of
contemporary society.
Notable quotes:
"... The anti-globalization movement is a loose coalition of many, very diverse groups that are fighting the government/corporate
alliance and their corporate globalization agenda. They have different end goals and different tactics, but all have the purpose to
stop the course of corporate globalization. The diverse nature of the anti-globalization movement has resulted in some unique strengths
and weaknesses of the movement. An understanding of the nature of these groups is necessary to try to understand the movement and to
understand what the movement is doing. ..."
Original title: The Protests of the Anti-Globalization Movement
A new social movement is gaining strength. This movement is commonly referred to as the anti-globalization movement, although
it might more correctly be referred to as the anti-corporate globalization movement. This movement gained notoriety at the WTO protests
in Seattle on November 30 th , 1999. On this day approximately 60,000 people took to the streets of Seattle and used peaceful
protest and civil disobedience to shut down the WTO negotiations. Since then similar protests have occurred across North America
and Europe. With each protest the movement gains support from the public and solidarity among its members. And with each protest
the police state oppression grows as well.
The anti-globalization movement is a loose coalition of many, very diverse groups that are fighting the government/corporate
alliance and their corporate globalization agenda. They have different end goals and different tactics, but all have the purpose
to stop the course of corporate globalization. The diverse nature of the anti-globalization movement has resulted in some unique
strengths and weaknesses of the movement. An understanding of the nature of these groups is necessary to try to understand the movement
and to understand what the movement is doing.
The groups that make up the anti-globalization movement can be split into six categories. There are the environmental and social
justice movements, the third world groups, the organized labour groups, the indigenous rights movement, the nationalist groups, and
the moral majority movement. These categories are not strict divisions. Some groups may have ideologies common to two different categories,
and individuals may be sympathetic to the ideologies of one category while actively working with a group from another. But these
simple divisions serve to help understand this diverse group.
The visible groups in the anti-globalization movement that get identified by the public as the trouble causing protestors are
the environmental and social justice groups. These groups can be grouped together as they have a common complaint about corporate
globalization -- it destroys the environment and social justice. Concerns that these groups are fighting against include species
and habitat loss, pollution, unsustainable resource use, loss of democracy, loss of human rights, gender and race inequality, and
restriction of sexuality. Individual groups may be more specific in their concerns and deal with only one aspect of the environment
or social justice or more general and include the entire gambit. But these groups would agree on all of the issues presented above,
they merely have different focuses.
These groups are predominantly white middle-class activists that have the resource base to mobilize against the system. A common
criticism of these groups is the lack of participation of people from other ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds in a movement that
claims to represent the people. However, this is a strong and well organized part of the anti-globalization movement that has had
some success in bringing about change. The environmental and social justice groups can be divided into two broad sub-categories based
on their proposed solution: there are the anarchist groups and the neo-liberal reform groups.
The anarchist segment is different from other activist segments because they are not striving for reform. The anarchists, more
than any other group, includes a very diverse number of autonomous groups but some generalizations can be made. These groups think
that the hierarchical consumerist driven system is the problem. The solution is not to get some political change, but rather to change
the entire framework that the system works in. This philosophy incorporates Thoreau and his anti-growth, small is beautiful ideas,
Gandhi's ideas of Swadeshi, and ecofeminist antipatriarchical and antihierarchical ideas.
... ... ...
The anarchist groups are fundamentally against hierarchy.
... ... ...
All of these anarchist groups are non-violent, but there is some disagreement in what that means. Some groups say that property
damage is not violence, while others say that violence is violence whether directed against people or property. Proponents of property
damage say that the only way to stop corporations is to hurt them financially and property damage hurts them financially. The most
well publicized of these groups are the militant anarchists of Eugene, but there are many such groups across North America and Europe.
These groups are usually referred to as the Black Bloc. The Black Bloc refers to a commonality in ideology, not a formal organization.
Any one group within the Black Bloc may consist of 10 to 20 individuals and there is no formal organization between groups (Warcry
(4) , on
Breaking the Spell ).
... ... ...
The anarchist subcategory of the environmental and social justice movement is visible and intriguing, but at least as powerful
are the neo-liberal reformist environmental and social justice movements. These groups want to reform of the capitalist system to
include protections for the environment and to ensure social justice. These groups are traditional, hierarchical, top-down organizations.
They are the publically known activist groups with the majority of the public finding, but not the strength behind the anti-globalization
protests.
Some neo-liberal reform groups can be very radical. They can propose radical political change (such as the cessation of all logging).
What differentiates neo-liberal reform groups is that they propose to achieve their goals through regulations imposed within the
existing system. They are in support of the neo-liberal economic agenda, they just want to be able to add in certain regulations
to protect those things that they value. It is important to note that these groups may not consider themselves to be in favor of
neo-liberalism. But they are in support of it in that they wish to use its existing framework and build on it to make it more palatable.
Also, many individuals within some of the more radical neo-liberal reform groups (i.e. Greenpeace, Sierra Club) may actually have
personal anarchist philosophies but are working within a neo-liberal reform organization.
Neo-liberal reform groups do use traditional political channels to try to effect traditional political change. They will attempt
to influence elections and they will use lobbying. Some neo-liberal reform groups will also support civil disobedience or diversity
of tactics (Loretta Gerlach
(9) , personal
communication). Those that do use them hope to cause political change through the same three mechanisms that the anarchist groups
were using to create cultural change.
Another broad category of anti-globalization movements are the third world groups. Groups of people who are directly and immediately
harmed by globalization organize against imperialism in other countries. They have much less strength on the international level.
They have dedicated people but not the resources to mobilize. Other groups (especially the neo-liberal reform groups mentioned above)
may sponsor individuals from these third world groups to come to Canada to speak. Both Berta Caceras of the Lenca people in Honduras
(sponsored by Rights Action) and Alberto Achito of the Embera Katio of Colombia (sponsored by the Inter Church Committee on Human
Rights) have came to the U of L this semester. Some first world activist groups send aid to these third world groups as well. And
some groups have worked to sponsor third world representatives to the protests at Seattle and Quebec City.
The third world groups are involved in a very different scale of protest against globalization. People in these groups are manufacturing
discontent at a considerable risk to their own life. These groups are striving for very immediate practical solutions to specific
problems (i.e. getting killed by US funded paramilitary forces). There has been some work to try to use these dedicated third world
groups to create lasting political change. There has been student activist education of FARC (Force of Armed Revolutionaries of Colombia)
in political theory (Oscar Guzman
(10) , personal
communication).
A third category of anti-globalization movements are the labour movements. The labour movement is a very strong movement with
a large vested interest in the process of globalization. These groups range from groups with Marxist end goals (conventional organized
unions) to anarcho-syndicate end goals (Industrial Workers of the World). The tactics employed by labour movements range from very
conventional to civil disobedience. The Steelworkers Union was a civil disobedience force in the November 30 th protests
in Seattle, and CUPE National is organizing for the Summit of the Americas protests in Quebec City.
Many of the groups within the environmental and social justice movements are attempting to forge alliances with groups within
the labour movement. This has been actively hindered by both government and corporate forces, especially in the labour industry.
Both government and corporate forces work hard to manufacture hatred towards environmentalists within the logging community and encourage
and aid vigilante behaviour amoung the loggers (Bryce Gilroy-Scott
(11) , personal
communication).
The indigenous rights movement is another category of activists groups within the anti-globalization movement. The goal of this
movement is indigenous sovereignty. The indigenous rights movement is also against the corporate/government alliance and shares many
common values with anarchist groups (such as community empowerment and social justice). Indigenous rights groups have yet to become
very active in the anti-globalization movement but they have made some notable contributions and interest in the movement is growing.
... ... ...
A very different category of anti-globalization groups are the nationalist groups. These are movements to protect the sovereignty
of nations that is eroded by international trade agreements. This is a strong movement that generally comes from the right end of
the political spectrum. It generally has very little in common with the internationalist focused movements of the other groups. Many
of the nationalist groups are strong supporters of democracy and do connect with the other anti-globalization movements in this respect.
The main unifying force between the nationalist groups and the previously mentioned groups is that they have the common goal of fighting
corporate power. The tactics of this group can include property damage in some of the more militant groups.
The moral majority is another category of anti-globalization groups that has even less in common with the above mentioned groups
than the nationalist groups. These are ultra-right wing groups that are generally Christian. These groups had a presence in Seattle
(Stu Crawford, personal experience). These groups may feel that the corporatization of the planet results in an erosion of their
strong family values. Generally the only commonality that they have with the other anti-globalization groups is that they have a
common enemy.
This wide diversity of groups reviewed above creates a very unique movement.
Rejection of globalization by alt-right is very important. that's why make them economic nationalists.
And that's why they are hated neocon and those forces of neoliberalism which are behind Neocon/Neolib
Cultural Revolution -- promotion of LGBT, uni-gender bathrooms, transsexuals, etc, identity wedge in
politics demonstrated by Hillary, etc. (modeled on Mao's cultural revolution, which also what launched
when Mao started to lose his grip on political power).
In my experience with the alt-right, I encountered a surprisingly common narrative: Alt-right supporters
did not, for the most part, come from overtly racist families. Alt-right media platforms have actually
been pushing this meme aggressively in recent months. Far from defending the ideas and institutions
they inherited, the alt-right!which is overwhelmingly a movement of white millennials!forcefully
condemns their parents' generation. They do so because they do not believe their parents are racist
enough
In an inverse of the left-wing protest movements of the 1960s, the youthful alt-right bitterly
lambast the "boomers" for their lack of explicit ethnocentrism, their rejection of patriarchy, and
their failure to maintain America's old demographic characteristics and racial hierarchy. In the
alt-right's vision, even older conservatives are useless "cucks" who focus on tax policies and forcefully
deny that they are driven by racial animus.
... ... ...
To complicate matters further, many people in the alt-right were radicalized while in college. Not
only that, but the efforts to inoculate the next generation of America's social and economic leaders
against racism were, in some cases, a catalyst for racist radicalization. Although academic seminars
that explain the reality of white privilege may reduce feelings of prejudice among most young whites
exposed to them, they have the opposite effect on other young whites. At this point we do not know
what percentage of white college students react in such a way, but the number is high enough to warrant
additional study.
A final problem with contemporary discussions about racism is that they often remain rooted in
outdated stereotypes. Our popular culture tends to define the racist as a toothless illiterate Klansman
in rural Appalachia, or a bitter, angry urban skinhead reacting to limited social prospects. Thus,
when a white nationalist movement arises that exhibits neither of these characteristics, people are
taken by surprise.
It boggles my mind that the left, who were so effective at dominating the culture wars basically
from the late 60s, cannot see the type of counter-culture they are creating. Your point about
alt-righters opposing their parents drives this home.
People have been left to drift in a sea of postmodernism without an anchor for far too long
now, and they are grasping onto whatever seems sturdy. The alt-right, for its many faults, provides
something compelling and firm to grab.
The left's big failure when all the dust settles will be seen as its inability to provide a
coherent view of human nature and a positive, constructive, unifying message. They are now the
side against everything – against reason, against tradition, against truth, against shared institutions
and heritage and nationalism It's no wonder people are looking to be for something these days.
People are sick of being atomized into smaller and smaller units, fostered by the left's new and
now permanent quest to find new victim groups.
I'm disappointed to read an article at The American Conservative that fails to address the reality
behind these numbers. Liberal identity politics creates an inherently adversarial arena, wherein
white people are depicted as the enemy. That young whites should respond by gravitating toward
identity politics themselves in not surprising, and it's a bit offensive to attribute this trend
to the eternal mysteries of inexplicable "racist" hate.
The young can see through the fake dynamic being depicted in the mainstream media, and unless
The American Conservative wants to completely lose relevance, a light should be shone on the elephant
in the room. For young white kids, The Culture Wars often present an existential threat, as Colin
Flaherty shows in Don't Make the Black Kids Angry–endorsed and heralded as a troubling and important
work by Thomas Sowell.
From the 16 Points of the Alt-Right:
5. The Alt Right is openly and avowedly nationalist. It supports all nationalisms and the right
of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and immigration.
6. The Alt Right is anti-globalist. It opposes all groups who work for globalist ideals or globalist
objectives.
It is important to remember that nations are people, not geography. The current American Union,
enforced by imperial conquest, is a Multi-National empire. It has been held together by force
and more recently by common, though not equal, material prosperity.
With the imposition of Globalism's exotic perversions and eroding economic prospects the American
Union is heading for the same fate as all Multi-National empires before it.
Mysteriously absent from the scholarly discussion seems to be the pioneer of sociology, Ludwig
Gumplowicz. Incredibly so, as the same factors that led to the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire abound in contemporary America.
I have two teenage sons – we live in Canada – and they tell that, no matter what they say, who
they hang out with, what music they listen to, no matter how many times they demonstrate they
are not racist, they are repeatedly called racist. They are automatically guilty because they
are white. They are beaten over the head with this message in school and in the press and are
sick and tired of it.
What might also be considered is the cultural effect upon a generation which has now matured through
what the government calls "perpetual war," with the concomitant constant celebration of "warriors,"
hyper-patriotism as demanded of all public events such as shown in the fanaticism of baseball
players engaged in "National Anthem standouts," such as were popular a couple years ago in MLB,
the constant references in political campaigns to the "enemy," to include Russia as well now,
and the "stab in the back" legend created to accuse anyone opposed to more war and occupation
of "treason." We've "radicalized" our own youth, with Trump coming along with his links to Israel's
ultra militarist, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli "Right," and created a cultural condition
much like this:
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/04/conservative-revolutionaries-fascism/
Odd, you write "How did the youngest white Americans respond to the most racially polarizing election
in recent memory?" In reality it was less racially polarized than 2012, when 93 % of African Americans
and 71% of Hispanics voted for Obama while in 2016 88% of Blacks and 65% of Hispanics voted from
Hillary. So Trump won a higher percentage of African American votes and Hispanic votes than Mitt
Romney. In 2008 Obama won 95% of Blacks and 67% of Hispanics, in 2004 the numbers were 88 and
53 for Kerry so the three elections between 2004 and and 2016 were all more polarizing than the
2016 race.
Yes, you make many important points, Mr. Hawley, but that you feel the need to join the chorus
of those who see our president's reaction to Charlottesville as somehow inappropriate or even
itself racist–that is sad. I don't see what else you may be implying in your opening paragraphs,
since you move directly from the number of "likes" Obama's bromide received to this: "[Obama's
reaction] also offered a stark contrast to that of President Trump."
In spite of many liberals' frantic desire to read whatever they want into President Trump's
words, he very clearly condemned the neo-Nazis and the evil of Heather Heyer's murderer. That
he also condemned the violence coming from Antifa ranks does not lessen his condemnation
of that coming from the alt right side. Rather, condemning the rising illiberalism on both sides
of this growing conflict was both commendable and necessary.
Many Americans see these recent events in a context stretching back years. Myself, at fifty,
having watched especially the steady empowerment of a demagogic left on our campuses, I'm not
much surprised that a racist "white nationalist" movement should burst into flame at just this
point. The kindling is right there in the anti-white, misandrous virulence of our SJW left.
Sane conservatives have strongly condemned the new alt-right racism. The problem is that we
are not seeing anything similar from the left. Our left seems incapable of condemning, let alone
even seeing , its own racist excesses. Which are everywhere in its discourse, especially
in our humanities departments.
I would say that in the recent decades the American left has grown much more deeply invested
in identity politics than the right has ever been during my lifetime. In my view, our left has
grown more enamored of identity issues precisely because it has abandoned the bread and butter
issues that really matter to most Americans.
I have many left-liberal friends and regularly read the left press. Surveying the reactions
to Charlottesville and the rising conflict between alt-right extremists and a radicalized Antifa
left, I see nowhere a step toward acknowledging the obvious: our rabid identity politics is by
no means just a problem of the right.
Racial identity politics is a curse. Sadly, it seems we've been cursed by it well and and good.
The poison's reaching down to the bone. Unless both smart moderates and people on the left start
to recognize just how badly poisoned our left has been by this curse, no progress will be made.
Identity politics needs to be condemned on both sides of this growing national street brawl,
and it should start NOW.
But I'm afraid it's not going to happen. I see my friends on the left, and they're nowhere
near acknowledging the problem. And I'm sad to see our president's attempt to call out both sides
has gotten such negative reactions. I'm afraid this isn't going to end well.
Liberal identity politics creates an inherently adversarial arena, wherein white people are
depicted as the enemy. That young whites should respond by gravitating toward identity politics
themselves in not surprising
One of many good reasons for rejecting "identity" politics generally.
A white friend attended a Cal State graduate program for counseling a couple of years ago; he
left very bitter after all his classes told him that white men were the proximate cause of the
world's misery. Then a mutual Latina friend from church invited him to coffee and told him that
he was the white devil, the cause of her oppression. You can conclude how he felt.
The liberal universities' curricula has caused a storm of madness; they have unleashed their
own form of oppressive thought on a significant portion on American society:white men. There is
now an adverse reaction. Of course, even more opprobrium will be heaped upon on men who might
question the illogicality of feminism and the left. How can all of this end well if the humanity
of white men is denied in universities, public schools and universities?
The Alt Right simply believes that Western nations have a right to preserve their culture and
heritage. Every normal man in these United States agreed with that premise prior to the Marxist
takeover of our institutions in the 1960's. And you know it's true.
Maybe at the bottom of it is not racism as in they are the wrong colour, but about cultural traits
and patterns of behaviour that are stirring resentment. Plus maybe the inclusion towards more
social benefits not available before (Obamacare?).
The current rap music, as opposed to the initial one, that emphasized social injustice is such
that one feels emptying his own stomach like sharks do.
The macho culture that black gangs, latin american gangs manifest is a bit antagonistic to
white supremacists gangs and attitudes towards women. After all, vikings going raiding used to
have shield maidens joining, and Celtic culture is full of women warriors. Northern European culture,
harking back to pre-Christian times was more kinder to women than what women from southern Europe
(Greece, Rome) experienced (total ownership by husbands, the veil, etc., all imported from the
Middle East: but one must not judge too harshly, the book "Debt, the first 5000 years" could be
an eye opener of the root causes of such attitudes).
Also, the lack of respect for human life expressed in these cultures is not that palatable,
even for white supremacists (while one can point to Nazi Germany as an outlier – but there it
was the state that promoted such attitudes, while in Japan the foreigner that is persecuted and
ostracized could be the refugee from another village around Fukushima – see the Economist on that).
So I think there are many avenues to explore in identifying the rise in Alt right and white
supremacists in the U.S. But colour is definitely not it.
Come now. There were the same types around me years ago at school, work, society. They just did
not march around like Nazis in public, probably because the Greatest Generation would have kicked
their butts.
Now, with the miracle of modern technology, a few hundred of them can get together and raise
hell in one place. Plus they now get lots of encouraging internet press (and some discouraging).
This article says virtually nothing.
The author fails to define his terms, beginning with Alt-Right.
And he seems to operate from a dislike of Trump underneath it all. This dislike is common among
pundits, left and right, who consider themselves to be refined and cultured. So it was that the
NYT's early condemnation of Trump led with complaints about his bearing and manners – "vulgar"
was the word often used if memory serves.
This gets us nowhere. Many in the US are disturbed by the decline in their prospects with a decrease
in share of wages in the national income ongoing since the 1970's – before Reagan who is blamed
for it all. Add to that the 16 years of wars which have taken the lives of Trump supporters disproportionately
and you have a real basis for grievances.
Racism seems to be a side show as does AntiFa.
"The accusation of being racist because you are white is a misunderstanding of structural racism."
I agree, but I notice that Jews have the same misunderstanding when you mention structural
"Zionist Occupied Government" or "Jewish Privilege".
Perhaps because they are both conspiracy theories rooted in hatred and ignorance, which is
where we descend when the concept of a statistical distribution or empirical data become "controversial",
or "feelings" overtake "facts".
And progressives still refer to KKK when they seek an example of a white supremacist group. Amazing.
They are too lazy even to learn that the Klan lost its relevance long ago, and the most powerful
white supremacist organization of today consists of entirely different people, who are very far
from being illiterate.
***
Todd Pierce,
Israel's ultra militarist, Benjamin Netanyahu
I won't deny that Bibi is a controversial figure, but calling him an ultra militarist is quite
a bit of a stretch.
Elite sports. After reading this article and it's underlying thesis, it occurs to me that the
way sports have evolved in this country is very likely to be the experience that millennial whites
have had that fosters their "out group" belief systems. It is very common, using soccer as my
frame of reference, for wealthy suburban families to spend a fortune getting their children all
the best training and access to all the best clubs. Their children are usually the best players
in their community of origin and usually the top players all the way through the preadolescent
years only to find all of that money and prestige gone to waste once their kids get to around
sixteen at which point their children are invariably replaced on the roster by a recent immigrant -- mainly from Africa or south of our border and usually at a cut rate compared to the one they
are bleeding the suburban families with. I'm assuming this is becoming more common across all
sports as they move toward a pay to play corporate model. In soccer, the white kids are, seriously,
the paying customers who fill out the roster that supports the truly talented kids (from countries
who know how to develop soccer talent.)
The thing is when blacks begin to feel power and a secure place in America then their true colors
show-at least among many. Left unchecked they would become the biggest racists of all. You can
see that now. So what it comes down to are white people going to give away their country? Until
blacks become cooperative and productive things need to stay as they are. Sad maybe but that's
just the way it has to be.
There have always been fringe, rightwing groups in the US. Nothing new there. But the so-called
alt-right, comprised of Nazi wannabes and assorted peckerwoods, is truly the spawn of the looney
left, whose obsession with race has created the toxic environment we find ourselves in.
"... Before his death in May, Roger Ailes had sent word to Bannon that he wanted to start a channel together. Bannon loved the idea: He believes Fox is heading in a squishy, globalist direction as the Murdoch sons assume more power. ..."
"... "That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying." ..."
"... The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over I feel jacked up Now I'm free. I've got my hands back on my weapons ..."
Axios:
that part of that war effort might include a brand new cable news network to the right of Fox
News.
Axios' Jonathan Swan hears Bannon has told friends he sees a massive opening to the right of
Fox News , raising the possibility that he's going to start a network. Bannon's friends are speculating about whether it will be a standalone TV network, or online
streaming only.
Before his death in May, Roger Ailes had sent word to Bannon that he wanted to start a
channel together. Bannon loved the idea: He believes Fox is heading in a squishy, globalist
direction as the Murdoch sons assume more power.
Now he has the means, motive and opportunity: His chief financial backer, Long Island hedge
fund billionaire Bob Mercer, is ready to invest big in what's coming next, including a huge
overseas expansion of Breitbart News. Of course, this new speculation comes after Bannon declared last Friday that he was "
going to war" for
Trump ...
" If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up. I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents... on Capitol
Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,
Meanwhile, with regard his internal adversaries , at the departments of State and Defense,
who think the United States can enlist Beijing's aid on the North Korean standoff, and at
Treasury and the National Economic Council who don't want to mess with the trading system,
Bannon was ever harsher...
"Oh, they're wetting themselves," he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which
was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only
temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has
big plans to marginalize their influence.
"That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury
and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying."
Finally, perhaps no one can summarize what Bannon has planned for the future than Bannon
himself:
"The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over I feel jacked up Now I'm free.
I've got my hands back on my weapons.
I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There's no
doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now we're about to rev that machine up."
But mainstream economists and organizations are now starting to say that globalization
increases inequality.
The
National Bureau of
Economic Research
– the largest economics research organization in the United States,
with many Nobel economists and Chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers as members –
published
, a report in May finding:
Recent globalization trends have increased U.S. inequality by disproportionately raising top
incomes.
***
Rising import competition has adversely affected manufacturing employment, led firms to
upgrade their production and caused labor earnings to fall.
NBER
explains
that
globalization allows executives to gain the system to their advantage:
This paper examines the role of globalization in the rapid increase in top incomes. Using a
comprehensive data set of thousands of executives at U.S. firms from 1993-2013, we find that
exports, along with technology and firm size, have contributed to rising executive
compensation. Isolating changes in exports that are unrelated to the executive's talent and
actions, we show that globalization has affected executive pay not only through market channels
but also through non-market channels. Furthermore, exogenous export shocks raise executive
compensation mostly through bonus payments in poor-governance settings, in line with the
hypothesis that globalization has enhanced the executive's rent capture opportunities. Overall,
these results indicate that globalization has played a more central role in the rapid growth of
executive compensation and U.S. inequality than previously thought, and that rent capture is an
important part of this story.
A World Bank document
says
globalization "may have led to rising wage
inequality". It notes:
Recent evidence for the US suggests that adjustment costs for those employed in sectors
exposed to import competition from China are much higher than previously thought.
***
Trade may have contributed to rising inequality in high income economies .
The World Bank also
cites
Nobel prize-winning economist Eric Maskin's view that globalization increases
inequality because it increases the mismatch between the skills of different workers.
A report by the International Monetary Fund
notes
:
High trade and financial flows between countries, partly enabled by technological advances,
are commonly cited as driving income inequality . In advanced economies, the ability of firms
to adopt laborsaving technologies and offshoring has been cited as an important driver of the
decline in manufacturing and rising skill premium (Feenstra and Hanson 1996, 1999, 2003) .
***
Increased financial flows, particularly foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio flows
have been shown to increase income inequality in both advanced and emerging market economies
(Freeman 2010). One potential explanation is the concentration of foreign assets and
liabilities in relatively higher skill- and technology-intensive sectors, which pushes up the
demand for and wages of higher skilled workers. In addition, FDI could induce skill-specific
technological change, be associated with skill-specific wage bargaining, and result in more
training for skilled than unskilled workers (Willem te Velde 2003). Moreover, low-skill,
outward FDI from advanced economies may in effect be relatively high-skilled, inward FDI in
developing economies (Figini and Görg 2011), thus exacerbating the demand for high-skilled
workers in recipient countries. Financial deregulation and globalization have also been cited
as factors underlying the increase in financial wealth, relative skill intensity, and wages in
the finance industry, one of the fastest growing sectors in advanced economies (Phillipon and
Reshef 2012; Furceri and Loungani 2013).
The Bank of International Settlements – the "Central Banks' Central Bank" – also
notes that globalization isn't all
peaches
and
cream
. The Financial Times
explains
:
A trio of recent papers by top officials from the Bank for International Settlements goes
further, however, arguing that financial globalisation itself makes booms and busts far more
frequent and destabilising than they otherwise would be.
Most economists have been blindsided by the backlash [against globalization]. A few saw it
coming. It is worth studying their reasoning .
***
Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York believes such costs perpetuate a cycle
of globalisation. He argues that periods of global integration and technological progress
generate rising inequality .
Supporters of economic integration underestimated the risks that big slices of society would
feel left behind .
Were the experts wrong about the benefits of trade for the American economy?
***
Voters' anger and frustration, driven in part by relentless globalization and technological
change [has made Trump and Sanders popular, and] is already having a big impact on America's
future, shaking a
once-solid consensus
that freer trade is, necessarily, a good thing.
"The economic populism of the presidential campaign has forced the recognition that expanded
trade is a double-edged sword,"
wrote Jared Bernstein
, former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
What seems most striking is that the angry working class -- dismissed so often as myopic,
unable to understand the economic trade-offs
presented by trade -- appears to have
understood what the experts are only belatedly finding to be true: The benefits from trade to
the American economy may not always justify its costs.
I
n
a recent study
, three
economists -- David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn at the
University of Zurich and Gordon Hanson at the University of California, San Diego -- raised a
profound challenge to all of us brought up to believe that economies quickly recover from trade
shocks. In theory, a developed industrial country like the United States adjusts to import
competition by moving workers into more advanced industries that can successfully compete in
global markets.
They examined the experience of American workers after China erupted onto world markets some
two decades ago. The presumed adjustment, they concluded, never happened. Or at least hasn't
happened yet. Wages remain low and unemployment high in the most affected local job markets.
Nationally, there is no sign of offsetting job gains elsewhere in the economy. What's more,
they found that sagging wages in local labor markets exposed to Chinese competition reduced
earnings by $213 per adult per year.
In
another
study
they wrote with Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price from M.I.T., they estimated that
rising Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs.
"These results should cause us to rethink the short- and medium-run gains from trade," they
argued. "Having failed to anticipate how significant the dislocations from trade might be, it
is incumbent on the literature to more convincingly estimate the gains from trade, such that
the case for free trade is not based on the sway of theory alone, but on a foundation of
evidence that illuminates who gains, who loses, by how much, and under what conditions."
***
The case for globalization based on the fact that it helps expand the economic pie by 3
percent becomes much weaker when it also changes the distribution of the slices by 50 percent,
Mr. Autor argued.
And Steve Keen – economics professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and
Politics at Kingston University in London –
notes
:
Plenty of people will try to convince you that globalization and free trade could benefit
everyone, if only the gains were more fairly shared. The only problem with the party, they'll
say, is that the neighbours weren't invited. We'll share the benefits more equally now, we
promise.
Let's keep the party going. Globalization and Free Trade are good.
This belief is shared by almost all politicians in both parties, and it's an article of
faith for the economics profession.
***
It's a fallacy based on a fantasy, and it has been ever since David Ricardo dreamed up the
idea of "Comparative Advantage and the Gains from Trade" two centuries ago.
***
[Globalization's] little shell and pea trick is therefore like most conventional economic
theory: it's neat, plausible, and wrong. It's the product of armchair thinking by people who
never put foot in the factories that their economic theories turned into rust buckets.
So the gains from trade for everyone and for every country that could supposedly be shared
more fairly simply aren't there in the first place. Specialization is a con job!but one that
the Washington elite fell for (to its benefit, of course). Rather than making a country better
off, specialization makes it worse off, with scrapped machinery that's no longer useful for
anything, and with less ways to invent new industries from which growth actually comes.
Excellent real-world research by Harvard University's "
Atlas of Economic Complexity
" has found diversity, not
specialization, is the "magic ingredient" that actually generates growth. Successful countries
have a diversified set of industries, and they grow more rapidly than more specialized
economies because they can invent new industries by melding existing ones.
***
Of course, specialization, and the trade it necessitates, generates plenty of financial
services and insurance fees, and plenty of international junkets to negotiate trade deals. The
wealthy elite that hangs out in the Washington party benefits, but the country as a whole
loses, especially its working class.
Some Big Companies Losing Interest In
Globalization
Ironically, the Washington Post
noted
in 2015 that the giant multinational corporations themselves are losing interest in
globalization and many are starting to bring the factories back home:
Yet despite all this activity and enthusiasm, hardly any of the promised returns from
globalization have materialized, and what was until recently a taboo topic inside
multinationals -- to wit, should we reconsider, even rein in, our global growth strategy? -- has
become an urgent, if still hushed, discussion.
***
Given the failures of globalization, virtually every major company is struggling to find the
most productive international business model.
***
Reshoring -- or relocating manufacturing operations back to Western factories from emerging
nations -- is one option. As labor costs escalate in places such as China, Thailand, Brazil and
South Africa, companies are finding that making products in, say, the United States that are
destined for North American markets is much more cost-efficient. The gains are even more
significant when productivity of emerging countries is taken into account.
***
Moreover, new disruptive manufacturing technologies -- such as 3-D printing, which allows
on-site production of components and parts at assembly plants -- make the idea of locating
factories where the assembled products will be sold more practicable.
***
GE, Whirlpool, Stanley Black & Decker, Peerless and many others have reopened shuttered
factories or built new ones in the United States.
The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia dissolved the Holy Roman Empire. (H.R.E.) Including all its
institutions. Replacing it with a different model. Replacing parts was solve anything. It's a
systemic problem. Revolution, the process of turning over is required.
Wikipedia: The Holy Roman Empire (Latin: Sacrum Imperium Romanum; German: Heiliges
Römisches Reich) was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that
developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806.
The largest territory of the empire after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany, though it also
came to include the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, and
numerous other territories.
"... Donald Trump and his family have been contained; encircled by retired military and Goldman Sachs associates. However, Globalists and Neocons can't help themselves with their deep-seated contempt of the little people plus the need for war for profit. ..."
"... Tearing down the symbols that reunited the nation after the last Civil War is a sure bet way to start a new one. ..."
Words do matter. The Saker is about the best observer of the emerging multi-polar world.
The USA has been dumped in the trash. We are witness to whether multi-national corporations
and their supra-national institutions will continue to rule or if mankind will survive their
break up.
Donald Trump and his family have been contained; encircled by retired military and Goldman
Sachs associates. However, Globalists and Neocons can't help themselves with their
deep-seated contempt of the little people plus the need for war for profit.
Tearing down the
symbols that reunited the nation after the last Civil War is a sure bet way to start a new
one.
"... the ultimate driving force behind today's international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC ..."
"... The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around the world. ..."
"... The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's super-rich. ..."
"... So, the MIC is the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents . The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand current events. ..."
"... This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately, a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.) Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum, then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them protection as Russian citizens. ..."
"... The latest round of these sanctions was imposed not by Executive Order from a U.S. President, but instead by a new U.S. law, "H.R.3364 -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" , which in July 2017 was passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House , and which not only stated outright lies (endorsed there by virtually everyone in Congress), but which was backed up by lies from the U.S. Intelligence Community that were accepted and endorsed totally uncritically by 98 Senators and 419 Representatives . (One might simply assume that all of those Senators and Representatives were ignorant of the way things work and were not intentionally lying in order to vote for these lies from the Intelligence Community, but these people actually wouldn't have wrangled their ways into Congress and gotten this far at the game if they hadn't already known that the U.S. Intelligence Community is designed not only to inform the President but to help him to deceive the public and therefore can't be trusted by anyone but the President . ..."
"... Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft ..."
"... I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites is a mouthful, and that "plutacrats" doesn't have quite the appropriate sting, but perhaps it's more accurate. ..."
"... They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads skyrocket. It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe, as well as force ministers for economics to resign. After obeisance has been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level. ..."
"... First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors. ..."
The tumultuous events that dominate international news today cannot be accurately
understood outside of their underlying context, which connects them together,
into a broader narrative -- the actual history of our time . History
makes sense, even if news-reports about these events don't. Propagandistic motivations
cause such essential facts to be reported little (if at all) in the news, so
that the most important matters for the public to know, get left out of news-accounts
about those international events.
The purpose here will be to provide that context, for our time.
First, this essential background will be summarized; then, it will be documented
(via the links that will be provided here), up till the present moment -- the
current news: America's aristocracy
controls both the U.S.
federal government and
press , but (as will be documented later here) is facing increasing resistance
from its many vassal (subordinate) aristocracies around the world (popularly
called "America's allied nations"); and this growing international resistance
presents a new challenge to the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC), which
is controlled by that same aristocracy and enforces their will worldwide. The
MIC is responding to the demands of its aristocratic master. This response largely
drives international events today (which countries get invaded, which ones get
overthrown by coups, etc.), but the ultimate driving force behind today's
international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires
behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC.
The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the
American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around
the world.
The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes
a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from
the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those
privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it
protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the
U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's
super-rich.
Furthermore, the MIC is crucial to them in other ways, serving not only directly
as their "policeman to the world," but also indirectly (by that means)
as a global protection-racket that keeps their many subordinate aristocracies
in line, under their control -- and that threatens those foreign aristocrats
with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy
resists the master-aristocracy's will. (International law is never enforced
against the U.S., not even after it invaded Iraq in 2003.) So, the MIC is
the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's
billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based
international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government
actually represents .
The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand
current events.
For the first time ever, a global trend is emerging toward declining control
of the world by America's billionaire-class -- into the direction of ultimately
replacing the U.S. Empire, by increasingly independent trading-blocs: alliances
between aristocracies, replacing this hierarchical control of one aristocracy
over another. Ours is becoming a multi-polar world, and America's aristocracy
is struggling mightily against this trend, desperate to continue remaining
the one global imperial power -- or, as U.S. President Barack Obama often
referred to the U.S. government,
"The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has
been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come."
To America's aristocrats, all other nations than the U.S. are "dispensable."
All American allies have to accept it. This is the imperial mindset, both for
the master, and for the vassal. The uni-polar world can't function otherwise.
Vassals must pay (extract from their nation's public, and then transfer) protection-money,
to the master, in order to be safe -- to retain their existing power, to exploit
their given nation's public.
The recently growing role of economic sanctions (more accurately called
"Weaponization of finance" ) by the United States and its vassals, has been
central to the operation of this hierarchical imperial system, but is now being
increasingly challenged from below, by some of the vassals. Alliances are breaking
up over America's mounting use of sanctions, and new alliances are being formed
and cemented to replace the imperial system -- replace it by a system without
any clear center of global power, in the world that we're moving into.
Economic sanctions have been the U.S. empire's chief weapon to impose its will
against any challengers to U.S. global control, and are thus becoming the chief
locus of the old order's fractures .
This global order cannot be maintained by the MIC alone; the more that the
MIC fails (such as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, ), the more that economic
sanctions rise to become the essential tool of the imperial masters. We are
increasingly in the era of economic sanctions. And, now, we're entering the
backlash-phase of it.
This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately,
a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread
like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from
Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part
of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.)
Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum,
then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them
protection as Russian citizens.
On 6 March 2014, U.S. President Obama issued
"Executive Order -- Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the
Situation in Ukraine" , and ignored the internationally recognized-in-law
right of self-determination of peoples (though he recognized that right in Catalonia
and in Scotland), and he instead simply declared that Ukraine's "sovereignty"
over Crimea was sacrosanct (even though it had been imposed upon Crimeans
by the Soviet dictator -- America's enemy -- in 1954, during the Soviet
era, when America opposed, instead of favored and imposed, dictatorship around
the world, except in Iran and Guatemala, where America imposed dictatorships
even that early). Obama's Executive Order was against unnamed "persons who have
asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization
of the Government of Ukraine." He insisted that the people who had just grabbed
control of Ukraine and massacred Crimeans (his own Administration's paid far-right
Ukrainian thugs, who were
racist anti-Russians ), must be allowed to rule Crimea, regardless of what
Crimeans (traditionally a part of Russia) might -- and did -- want. America's
vassal aristocracies then
imposed their own sanctions against Russia when on 16 March 2014 Crimeans voted
overwhelmingly to rejoin the Russian Federation . Thus started the successive
rounds of economic sanctions against Russia, by the U.S. government
and its vassal-nations . (As is shown by that link, they knew that this
had been a coup and no authentic 'democratic revolution' such as the Western
press was portraying it to have been, and yet they kept quiet about it -- a
secret their public would not be allowed to know.)
It's basic knowledge about the U.S. government, and they know it, though
the public don't.) The great independent columnist Paul Craig Roberts headlined
on August 1st,
"Trump's Choices" and argued that President Donald Trump should veto the
bill despite its overwhelming support in Washington, but instead Trump signed
it into law on August 2nd and thus joined participation in the overt stage --
the Obama stage -- of the U.S. government's continuation of the Cold War that
U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush had
secretly instituted against Russia on 24 February 1990 , and that, under
Obama, finally escalated into a hot war against Russia. The first phase of this
hot war against Russia is via the
"Weaponization of finance" (those sanctions). However, as usual, it's also
backed up by
major increases in physical weaponry , and by
the cooperation of America's vassals in order to surround Russia with nuclear
weapons near and on Russia's borders , in preparation for a possible
blitz first-strike nuclear attack upon Russia -- preparations that the Russian
people know about and greatly fear, but which are largely hidden by the Western
press, and therefore only very few Westerners are aware that their own governments
have become lying aggressors.
Some excellent news-commentaries have been published about this matter, online,
by a few 'alternative news' sites (and that 'alt-news' group includes all of
the reliably honest news-sites, but also includes unfortunately many sites that
are as dishonest as the mainstream ones are -- and that latter type aren't being
referred to here), such as (and only the best sites and articles will be linked-to
on this):
All three of those articles discuss how these new sanctions are driving other
nations to separate themselves, more and more, away from the economic grip of
the U.S. aristocracy, and to form instead their own alliances with one-another,
so as to defend themselves, collectively, from U.S. economic (if not also military)
aggression. Major recent news-developments on this, have included (all here
from rt dot com):
"'US, EU meddle in other countries & kill people under guise of human rights
concerns' – Duterte", and presented Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte explaining
why he rejects the U.S. aristocracy's hypocritical pronouncements and condemnations
regarding its vassals among the world's poorer and struggling nations, such
as his. Of course, none of this information is publishable in the West -- in
the Western 'democracies'. It's 'fake news', as far as The Empire is concerned.
So, if you're in The (now declining) Empire, you're not supposed to be reading
this. That's why the mainstream 'news'media (to all of which this article is
being submitted for publication, without fee, for any of them that want to break
their existing corrupt mold) don't publish
this sort of news -- 'fake news' (that's of the solidly documented type,
such as this). You'll see such news reported only in the few honest newsmedia.
The rule for the aristocracy's 'news'media is: report what happened, only on
the basis of the government's lies as to why it happened -- never
expose such lies (the official lies). What's official is
'true' . That, too, is an essential part of the imperial system.
The front cover of the American aristocracy's TIME magazine's Asian
edition, dated September 25, 2016, had been headlined
"Night Falls on the Philippines: The tragic cost of President Duterte's war
on drugs" . The 'news'-story, which was featured inside not just the Asian
but all editions, was
"Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's War On Drugs" , and it portrayed
Duterte as a far-right demagogue who was giving his nation's police free reign
to murder anyone they wished to, especially the poor. On 17 July 2017, China's
Xinhua News Agency bannered
"Philippines' Duterte enjoys high approval rating at 82 percent: poll" ,
and reported: "A survey by Pulse Asia Inc. conducted from June 24 to June 29
showed that 82 percent of the 1,200 people surveyed nationwide approved the
way Duterte runs the country. Out of all the respondents, the poll said 13 percent
were undecided about Duterte's performance, while 5 percent disapproved Duterte's
performance. Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June last year, ends his
single, six-year term in 2022." Obviously, it's not likely that the TIME
cover story had actually been honest. But, of course, America's billionaires
are even more eager to overthrow Russia's President, Putin.
Western polling firms can freely poll Russians, and
do poll them on lots but not on approval or disapproval of President Putin
, because he always scores above 80%, and America's aristocrats also don't like
finding that confirmed, and certainly don't want to report it. Polling is routinely
done in Russia, by Russian pollsters, on voters' ratings of approval/disapproval
of Putin's performance. Because America's aristocrats don't like the findings,
they say that Russians are in such fear of Putin they don't tell the truth about
this, or else that Russia's newsmedia constantly lie about him to cover up the
ugly reality about him.
However, the Western academic journal Post-Soviet Affairs (which is
a mainstream Western publication) included in their January/February 2017 issue
a study,
"Is Putin's Popularity Real?" and the investigators reported the results
of their own poll of Russians, which was designed to tap into whether such fear
exists and serves as a distorting factor in those Russian polls, but concluded
that the findings in Russia's polls could not be explained by any such factor;
and that, yes, Putin's popularity among Russians is real. The article's closing
words were: "Our results suggest that the main obstacle at present to the emergence
of a widespread opposition movement to Putin is not that Russians are afraid
to voice their disapproval of Putin, but that Putin is in fact quite popular."
The U.S. aristocracy's efforts to get resistant heads-of-state overthrown
by 'democratic revolutions' (which usually is done by the U.S. government to
overthrow democratically elected Presidents -- such as Mossadegh, Arbenz, Allende,
Zelaya, Yanukovych, and attempted against Assad, and wished against Putin, and
against Duterte -- not overthrowing dictators such as the U.S. government always
claims) have almost consistently failed, and therefore coups and invasions have
been used instead, but those techniques demand that certain realities be suppressed
by their 'news'media in order to get the U.S. public to support what the government
has done -- the U.S. government's international crime, which is never prosecuted.
Lying 'news' media in order to 'earn' the American public's support, does not
produce enthusiastic support, but, at best, over the long term, it produces
only tepid support (support that's usually below the level of that of the governments
the U.S. overthrows). U.S. Presidents never score above 80% except when they
order an invasion in response to a violent attack by foreigners, such as happened
when George W. Bush attacked Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11, but those
80%+ approval ratings fade quickly; and,
after the 1960s, U.S. Presidential job-approvals have generally been below 60%
.
President Trump's ratings are currently around 40%. Although Trump is not
as conservative -- not as far-right -- as the U.S. aristocracy wants him to
be, he is fascist ; just
not enough to satisfy them (and their oppostion isn't because he's unpopular
among the public; it's more the case that he's unpopular largely because their
'news'media concentrate on his bads, and distort his goods to appear bad --
e.g., suggesting that he's not sufficiently aggressive against Russia). His
fascism on domestic affairs is honestly reported in the aristocracy's 'news'media,
which appear to be doing all they can to get him replaced by his Vice President,
Mike Pence. What's not reported by their media is the fascism of the U.S. aristocracy
itself, and of their international agenda (global conquest). That's their secret,
of which their public must be (and is) constantly kept ignorant. America's aristocracy
has almost as much trouble contolling its domestic public as it has controlling
its foreign vassals. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most
recently, of
They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of
CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS:
The Event that Created Christianity .
Fascism is defined as a system that combines private monopolies and despotic
government power. It is sometimes racist but not necessarily so. By the
correct definition, every President since at least Herbert Hoover has been
fascist to some degree.
One bit of silver lining in the deep-state propaganda effort to destabilise
the Trump regime is the damage to the legitimacy of the yankee imperium
it confers, making it easier for vassal states to begin to jump ship. The
claims of extraterritorial power used for economic warfare might confer
a similar benefit, since the erstwhile allies will want to escape the dominance
of the yankee dollar to be able to escape the economic extortion practised
by the yankee regime to achieve its control abroad.
" America's aristocracy has almost as much trouble controlling its domestic
public as it has controlling its foreign vassals. "
These foreign vassals had a cozy existence as long as the USA made it
clear it wanted to control the world. Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs
Ben Bot made this quite clear whan the Netherlands did not have a USA ambassador
for three months or so, Ben Bot complained to the USA that there should
be a USA ambassador.
He was not used to take decisions all by himself.
Right now Europe's queen Merkel has the same problem, unlike Obama Trump
does not hold her hand.
Yes, of course. I don't know about before Herbert Hoover, but certainly
during the 50s, business -- monopolistic or oligopolistic (like the old
Detroit auto industry) -- and government (including the MIC) were closely
integrated. Such was, indeed, as aspect of progressivism. It was considered
by most to be a good thing, or at least to be the natural and normal state
of affairs. Certainly, the system back then included what amounted to price-fixing
as a normal business practice.
On the other hand, the "despotic" thing is less clear. Some assert that
since FDR was effectively a dictator during World War II, that therefore
the Democratic Party represented despotism ever since FDR (or maybe ever
since Wilson).
Having lived through that period of time, I have to say that I am not
so sure about that: if it was despotism, it was a heavily democratic and
beneficent despotism. However, it is evident that there was a fascist skein
running through the entirety of USA's political history throughout the 20th
Century.
Fascism originates from Mussolini's Italy. It was anti socialist and
anti communist, it of course was pro Italian, Italy's great deeds in antiquity,
the Roman empire, were celebrated.
One can see this as racist, but as Italy consisted of mostly Italians,
it was not racist in the present meaning of the word at all. Italy was very
hesitant in persecuting jews, for example. Hitler depised Mussolini, Mussolini
was an ally that weakened Germany. Hitler and Mussolini agreed in their
hatred of communism.
Calling Hitler a fascist just creates confusion. All discussions of what
nowadays fascism is, our could mean, end like rivers in the desert.
'Aristocracy' and 'fascist' are all weasel words. (I'm the only true
fascist btw, and it's National Humanism, National Left, or Left-Right.)
US is an ethnogarchy, and that really matters. The Power rules, but the
nature of the Power is shaped by the biases of the ruling ethnic group.
It is essentially ruled by Jewish Supremacists.
Now, if not for Jews, another group might have supreme power, and it
might be problematic in its own way. BUT, the agenda would be different.
Suppose Chinese-Americans controlled much of media, finance, academia,
deep state, and etc. They might be just as corrupt or more so than Jews,
BUT their agenda would be different. They would not be hateful to Iran,
Russia, Syria, or to Palestinians. And they won't care about Israel.
They would have their own biases and agendas, but they would still be
different from Jewish obsessions.
Or suppose the top elites of the US were Poles. Now, US policy may be
very anti-Russian BUT for reasons different from those of Jews.
So, we won't learn much by just throwing words like 'fascist' or 'aristocrat'
around.
We have to be more specific. Hitler was 'fascist' and so was Rohm. But
Hitler had Rohm wiped out.
Surely, a Zionist 'fascist' had different goals than an Iranian 'fascist'.
One might say the Old South African regime was 'fascist'. Well, today's
piggish ANC is also 'fascist', if by 'fascist' we mean power-hungry tyrants.
But black 'fascists' want something different from what white 'fascists'
wanted.
It's like all football players are in football. But to understand what
is going on, we have to know WHICH team they play for.
Jewish Elites don't just play for power. They play for Jewish power.
Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling
goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek
ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never
been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft.
I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites
is a mouthful, and that "plutacrats" doesn't have quite the appropriate
sting, but perhaps it's more accurate.
Or maybe we should get into the habit of calling them the "ruling mafiosi."
I'm open to suggestions.
and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments
against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the
master-aristocracy's will.
They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon
media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads
skyrocket. It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe,
as well as force ministers for economics to resign. After obeisance has
been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial
chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's
economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level.
No doubt about it. That's how thugs rule; there are plenty of quivering
sell outs to do the rulers' bidding. Look at the sickening standing ovations
given to Netanyahoo by supposed "US" congresscreeps.
@Fidelios Automata Abraham Lincoln's economic policy was to combine
private monopolies with the Federal Government under a President like him:
one who ordered the arrests of newspaper editors/publishers who opposed
his policies and more 'despotic' goodies.
While the article favorably informs, and was written so as to engage
the reader, it lacks reasonable solutions to its problems presented. One
solution which I never read or hear about, is mandated MRI's, advanced technology,
and evidence supported psychological testing of sitting and potential political
candidates. The goal would be to publicly reveal traits of psychopathy,
narcissism, insanity, etc. Of course, the most vocal opposition would come
from those who intend to hide these traits. The greatest evidence for the
likelyhood of this process working, is the immense effort those who would
be revealed have historically put into hiding what they are.
Eric Zuesse is a nasty, hardcore leftist in the senses that matter most.
Often, he reveals his Leftism to be based on his hatred of Christianity
and his utter contempt for white Christians. But there is that dead clock
being correct twice per day matter. In this article, Zuesse gets a good
deal right.
First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by
Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst
kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because
if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be
trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the
little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors.
It is the Devil's game nearly perfected by the grand alliance of
WASPs and Jews, with their Saudi hangers-on.
Second, it is fair to label America's Deep State fascist , Elite
Fascist. And we should never forget that while Jews are no more than 3%
of the American population, they now are at least 30% (my guess would be
closer to 59%) of the most powerful Deep Staters. That means that per capita
Jews easily are the fascist-inclined people in America.
The most guilty often bray the loudest at others in hope of getting them
blamed and escaping punishment. And this most guilty group – Deep State
Elites evolved from the original WASP-Jewish alliance against Catholics
– is dead-set on making the majority of whites in the world serfs.
Third, the US 'weaponization of finance' seems to have been used against
the Vatican to force Benedict XVI to resign so that Liberal Jesuit (sorry
for the redundancy) Jorge Bergolgio could be made Pope. The Jesuits are
far and away the most Leftist and gay part of the Catholic Church, and the
American Deep State wanted a gay-loving, strongly pro-Jewish, strongly pro-Moslem
'immigrant' as Pope.
Fourth, that America's Leftists of every stripe, America's Neocons, and
America's 'compassionate conservatives' all hate Putin is all you should
need to know that Putin is far, far better for Russia's working class, Russia's
non-Elites, than our Elites are for us.
Charlottesville, Occupy Wall St And The Neoliberal Police State. Charlottesville
was a Neoliberal ambush designed to crush the Alt Right once and for all.
This story must be told.
No way. How about Jewish terrorists ? Very few Italians in the ruling
"aristocracy." Lots of Jews.
Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy."
Another common misconception is to associate the mafia with Italians
mostly. The Italian mafiosi are pikers compared to the American ones of
Eastern European descent. The real bosses are not the Italians.
Bugsy Siegel, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz, Meyer
Lansky and many many others.
Even the Jewish Virtual Library admits to some of it.
"... Individuals who were close to Donald Trump during his successful election campaign and who largely framed its terms – people like Bannon and Flynn – have been picked off one by one. ..."
"... Taking their place is a strange coalition of former generals and former businessmen of essentially conventional Republican conservative views, which is cemented around three former generals who between them now have the levers of powers in their hands: General Kelly, the President's new Chief of Staff, General H.R. McMaster, his National Security Adviser, and General Mattis, the Secretary of Defense. ..."
"... Bannon's removal does not just remove from the White House a cunning political strategist. It also removes the one senior official in the Trump administration who had any pretensions to be an ideologist and an intellectual. ..."
"... n saying I should say that I for one do not rate Bannon as an ideologist and intellectual too highly. Whilst there can be no doubt of Bannon's media and campaigning skills, his ideological positions seem to me a mishmash of ideas – some more leftist than rightist – rather than a coherent platform. I also happen to think that his actual influence on the President has been hugely exaggerated. Since the inauguration I have not seen much evidence either of Bannon's supposed influence on the President or of his famed political skills. ..."
"... The only occasion where it did seem to me that Bannon exercised real influence was in shaping the text of the speech the President delivered during his recent trip to Poland. ..."
"... I have already made known my views of this speech . I think it was badly judged – managing to annoy both the Germans and the Russians at the same time – mistaken in many of its points, and the President has derived no political benefit from it. ..."
"... As for Bannon's alleged political skills, he has completely failed to shield the President from the Russiagate scandal and appears to me to have done little or nothing to hold the President's electoral base together, with Bannon having been almost invisible since the inauguration. ..."
"... In view of Bannon's ineffectiveness since the inauguration I doubt that his removal will make any difference to the Trump administration's policies or to the support the President still has from his electoral base, most of whose members are unlikely to know much about Bannon anyway. ..."
"... The US's core electorate is becoming increasingly alienated from its political class; elements of the security services are openly operating independently of political control, and are working in alliance with sections of the Congress and the media – both now also widely despised – to bring down a constitutionally elected President, who they in turn despise. ..."
"... The only institution of the US state that still seems to be functioning as normal, and which appears to have retained a measure of public respect and support, is the military, which politically speaking seems increasingly to be calling the shots. ..."
The announcement of the
'resignation' of White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon represents the culmination of a process which began with the equally
forced 'resignation' of President Trump's first National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn.
Individuals who were close to Donald Trump during his successful election campaign and who largely framed its terms – people
like Bannon and Flynn – have been picked off one by one.
Taking their place is a strange coalition of former generals and former businessmen of essentially conventional Republican
conservative views, which is cemented around three former generals who between them now have the levers of powers in their hands:
General Kelly, the President's new Chief of Staff, General H.R. McMaster, his National Security Adviser, and General Mattis, the
Secretary of Defense.
In the case of Bannon, it is his clear that his ousting was insisted on by General Kelly, who is
continuing to tighten
his control of the White House.
Bannon's removal – not coincidentally – has come at the same time that General H.R. McMaster is
completing his purge of
the remaining Flynn holdovers on the staff of the National Security Council.
Bannon's removal does not just remove from the White House a cunning political strategist. It also removes the one senior
official in the Trump administration who had any pretensions to be an ideologist and an intellectual.
I n saying I should say that I for one do not rate Bannon as an ideologist and intellectual too highly. Whilst there can be
no doubt of Bannon's media and campaigning skills, his ideological positions seem to me a mishmash of ideas – some more leftist than
rightist – rather than a coherent platform. I also happen to think that his actual influence on the President has been hugely exaggerated.
Since the inauguration I have not seen much evidence either of Bannon's supposed influence on the President or of his famed political
skills.
Bannon is sometimes credited as being the author of the President's two travel ban Executive Orders. I am sure this wrong. The
Executive Orders clearly originate with the wishes of the President himself. If Bannon did have any role in them – which is possible
– it would have been secondary to the President's own. I would add that in that case Bannon must take some of the blame for the disastrously
incompetent execution of the first of these two Executive Orders, which set the scene for the legal challenges that followed.
The only occasion where it did seem to me that Bannon exercised real influence was in shaping the text of the speech the President
delivered during his recent trip to Poland.
I have already made known my views of this speech
. I think it was badly judged – managing to annoy both the Germans and the Russians at the same time – mistaken in many of its points,
and the President has derived no political benefit from it.
However it is the closest thing to an ideological statement the President has made since he took office, and Bannon is widely
believed – probably rightly – to have written it.
As for Bannon's alleged political skills, he has completely failed to shield the President from the Russiagate scandal and
appears to me to have done little or nothing to hold the President's electoral base together, with Bannon having been almost invisible
since the inauguration.
In view of Bannon's ineffectiveness since the inauguration I doubt that his removal will make any difference to the Trump
administration's policies or to the support the President still has from his electoral base, most of whose members are unlikely to
know much about Bannon anyway.
It is in a completely different respect – one wholly independent of President Trump's success or failure as President – that the
events of the last few weeks give cause for serious concern.
The events of the last year highlight the extent to which the US is in deep political crisis.
The US's core electorate is becoming increasingly alienated from its political class; elements of the security services are
openly operating independently of political control, and are working in alliance with sections of the Congress and the media – both
now also widely despised – to bring down a constitutionally elected President, who they in turn despise.
All this is happening at the same time that there is growing criticism of the economic institutions of the US government, which
since the 2008 financial crisis have seemed to side with a wealthy and unprincipled minority against the interests of the majority.
The only institution of the US state that still seems to be functioning as normal, and which appears to have retained a measure
of public respect and support, is the military, which politically speaking seems increasingly to be calling the shots.
It is striking that the only officials President Trump can nominate to senior positions who do not immediately run into bitter
opposition have been – apart from General Flynn, who was a special case – senior soldiers.
Now the military in the persons of Kelly, McMaster and Mattis find themselves at the heart of the US government to an extent that
has never been true before in US history, even during the Presidencies of former military men like Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant
or Dwight Eisenhower.
The last time that happened in a major Western nation – that the civilian institutions of the state had become so dysfunctional
that the military as the only functioning institution left ended up dominating the nation's government and deciding the nation's
policies – was in Germany in the lead up to the First World War.
Time will show what the results will be this time, but the German example is hardly a reassuring one.
To a certain extent Bannon symbolized backlash against neoliberal globalization, that is mounting in the USA. With him gone Trump
is a really emasculated and become a puppet of generals, who are the only allies left capable to run the show. Some of them are real
neocons. What a betrayal of voters who are sick and tired of wars for expansion and protection of global neoliberal empire.
Notable quotes:
"... What Bannon's exit might mean, however, is the end of even the pretense that Trumpist economic policy is anything different from standard Republicanism -- and I think giving up the pretense matters, at least a bit. ..."
"... The basics of the U.S. economic debate are really very simple. The federal government, as often noted, is an insurance company with an army: aside from defense, its spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (plus some ACA subsidies). ..."
"... Conservatives always claim that they want to make government smaller. But that means cutting these programs -- and what we know now, after the repeal debacle, is that people like all these programs, even the means-tested programs like Medicaid. Obama paid a large temporary price for making Medicaid/ACA bigger, paid for with taxes on the wealthy, but now that it's in place, voters hate the idea of taking it away. ..."
"... So if Bannon is out, what's left? It's just reverse Robin Hood with extra racism. On real policy, in other words, Trump is now bankrupt. ..."
"... with Bannon and economic nationalism gone, he will eventually double down on that part even more. If anything, Trump_vs_deep_state is going to get even uglier, and Trump even less presidential (if such a thing is possible) now that he has fewer people pushing for trade wars. ..."
Everyone seems to be reporting that Steve Bannon is out. I have no insights about the palace intrigue; and anyone who thinks
Trump will become "presidential" now is an idiot. In particular, I very much doubt that the influence of white supremacists and
neo-Nazis will wane.
What Bannon's exit might mean, however, is the end of even the pretense that Trumpist economic policy is anything different
from standard Republicanism -- and I think giving up the pretense matters, at least a bit.
The basics of the U.S. economic debate are really very simple. The federal government, as often noted, is an insurance
company with an army: aside from defense, its spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (plus some ACA subsidies).
Conservatives always claim that they want to make government smaller. But that means cutting these programs -- and what
we know now, after the repeal debacle, is that people like all these programs, even the means-tested programs like Medicaid. Obama
paid a large temporary price for making Medicaid/ACA bigger, paid for with taxes on the wealthy, but now that it's in place, voters
hate the idea of taking it away.
So what's a tax-cutter to do? His agenda is fundamentally unpopular; how can it be sold?
One long-standing answer is to muddy the waters, and make elections about white resentment. That's been the strategy since
Nixon, and Trump turned the dial up to 11. And they've won a lot of elections -- but never had the political capital to reverse
the welfare state.
Another strategy is to invoke voodoo: to claim that taxes can be cut without spending cuts, because miracles will happen. That
has sometimes worked as a political strategy, but overall it seems to have lost its punch. Kansas is a cautionary tale; and under
Obama federal taxes on the top 1 percent basically went back up to pre-Reagan levels.
So what did Trump seem to offer that was new? First, during the campaign he combined racist appeals with claims that he wouldn't
cut the safety net. This sounded as if he was offering a kind of herrenvolk welfare state: all the benefits you expect, but only
for your kind of people.
Second, he offered economic nationalism: we were going to beat up on the Chinese, the Mexicans, somebody, make the Europeans
pay tribute for defense, and that would provide the money for so much winning, you'd get tired of winning. Economic nonsense,
but some voters believed it.
Where are we now? The herrenvolk welfare state never materialized, in part because Trump is too lazy to understand policy at
all, and outsourced health care to the usual suspects. So Trumpcare turned out to be the same old Republican thing: slash benefits
for the vulnerable to cut taxes for the rich. And it was desperately unpopular.
Meanwhile, things have moved very slowly on the economic nationalism front -- partly because a bit of reality struck, as export
industries realized what was at stake and retailers and others balked at the notion of new import taxes. But also, there were
very few actual voices for that policy with Trump's ear -- mainly Bannon, as far as I can tell.
So if Bannon is out, what's left? It's just reverse Robin Hood with extra racism. On real policy, in other words, Trump
is now bankrupt.
But he does have the racism thing. And my prediction is that with Bannon and economic nationalism gone, he will eventually
double down on that part even more. If anything, Trump_vs_deep_state is going to get even uglier, and Trump even less presidential (if such
a thing is possible) now that he has fewer people pushing for trade wars.
"... By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Cross posted from Triple Crisis ..."
"... There are several necessary elements of this. Globally, most now recognise the need to reform the international financial system, which has failed to meet two obvious requirements: preventing instability and crises, and transferring resources from richer to poorer economies. Not only have we experienced much greater volatility and propensity to financial meltdown across emerging markets and now even industrial countries, but even the periods of economic expansion were based on the global poor subsidising the rich. ..."
"... Given these problems, there is no alternative but systematic state regulation and control of finance. Since private players will inevitably attempt to circumvent regulation, the core of the financial system – banking – must be protected, and that is only possible through social ownership. Therefore, some degree of socialisation of banking (and not just the risks inherent in finance) is inevitable. In developing countries this is also important because it enables public control over the direction of credit, without which no country has industrialised. ..."
"... Originally published in the Red Pepper , August 6, 2017. ..."
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be
born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic
Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Cross posted from
Triple
Crisis
We may be living through one of those moments in history that future historians will look
back on as a watershed, a period of flux that marked a transition to quite different economic
and social arrangements. Unfortunately, in human history a 'moment' can be a very long time, so
long that it could be decades before the final shape of the new arrangements are even evident;
and in the interim, there could be many 'dead cat bounces' of the current system.
What is clear is that the established order – broadly defined as neoliberal globalised
finance capitalism – is no longer capable of delivering on its promises of either growth
or stability, even as it generates more inequality and insecurity across the world. In Marxist
terms (as befitting the 150th anniversary of Das Kapital), the property relations under which
production is organised have become fetters on the development of productive forces themselves,
and generate more and more alienation. This may explain why, perhaps even more significantly,
the system is also losing legitimacy in most countries, under attack from both right and
left.
Whether we look at straws in the wind or green shoots in the ground, there is no doubt that
there are incipient signs of change. But at this point there are many directions in which such
change could go, and not all of them are progressive or even desirable. That is why it is
important to get social and political traction for alternative trajectories that focus on more
equitable, just, democratic and ecologically viable outcomes for most of humanity.
A Familiar Question
The question 'what is your alternative?' is a familiar one for most progressives, and too
often we are overly defensive or self-critical about our supposed lack of alternatives. In
truth, there are many economically-viable, socially-desirable alternative proposals in
different contexts. The problem is not their lack of existence but their lack of political
feasibility, and perhaps their lack of wider dissemination. But it is certainly true that the
alternative does not consist of one over-arching theory (or even framework) that can subsume
all others, since there are many good reasons for being sceptical of the days of the 'grand
theory' that supposedly could take care of everything.
While rejecting the totalising theory, it is possible to think of a broad framework around
which there could be much agreement, even among people who do not necessarily identify
themselves as of the 'left', but are nevertheless dissatisfied with current economic
arrangements at both national and international levels.
Much current discussion on economic strategies for global capitalism is framed around the
financial crisis of 2007/8 and its continuing repercussions. But it does not really need a
crisis to show us that the past strategy for growth and development has been flawed in most
countries. Even during the previous boom, the pattern of growth had too many limitations,
paradoxes and inherent fragilities. Everyone now knows that the economic boom was
unsustainable, based on speculative practices that were enabled and encouraged by financial
deregulation. It also drew rapaciously and fecklessly on natural resources, and it was deeply
unequal. Contrary to general perception, most people in the developing world, even within the
most successful region of Asia, did not gain.
Global Transfers
The financial bubble in the US attracted savings from across the world, including from the
poorest developing countries, so that for at least five years the global South transferred
financial resources to the North. Developing country governments opened their markets to trade
and finance, gave up on monetary policy and pursued fiscally 'correct' deflationary policies
that reduced public spending. Development projects remained incomplete and citizens were
deprived of the most essential socio-economic rights.
A net transfer of jobs from North to South did not take place. In fact, industrial
employment in the South barely increased in the past decade, even in the 'factory of the
world', China. Instead, technological change in manufacturing and new services meant that fewer
workers could generate more output. Old jobs in the South were lost or became precarious and
the majority of new jobs were fragile, insecure and low-paying, even in fast-growing China and
India. The persistent agrarian crisis in the developing world hurt peasant livelihoods and
generated global food problems. Rising inequality meant that the much-hyped growth in emerging
markets did not benefit most people, as profits soared but wage shares of national income
declined sharply.
Almost all developing countries adopted an export-led growth model, which in turn suppressed
wage costs and domestic consumption in order to remain internationally competitive and achieve
growing shares of world markets. This led to the peculiar situation of rising savings rates and
falling investment rates (especially in several Asian countries) and to the holding of
international reserves that were then placed in 'safe' assets abroad. This is why the boom that
ended in 2007/8 was associated with the South (especially in developing Asia) subsidising the
North: through cheaper exports of goods and services, through net capital flows from developing
countries to the US in particular, through flows of cheap labour in the form of short-term
migration.
Profit-Led Costs
The collapse in Northern export markets that followed the recession brought that process to
a halt, and recent moves towards more protectionist strategies in the US and elsewhere, as well
as the persistent mercantilist approach of surplus-producing countries like Germany, have made
it more difficult since then. In any case, such a strategy is unsustainable beyond a point,
especially when a number of relatively large economies use it at the same time.
In this boom, domestic demand tended to be profit-led, based on high and growing profit
shares in the economy and significant increases in the income and consumption of
newly-globalised middle classes, which led to bullish investment in non-tradeable sectors such
as financial assets and real estate as well as in luxury goods and services. The patterns of
production and consumption that emerged meant that growth also involved rapacious and
ultimately destructive exploitation of nature and the environment. The costs – in terms
of excessive congestion, environmental pollution and ecological degradation – are already
being felt, quite apart from the implications such expansion has on climate change.
There have been other negative impacts. Within developing Asia, for example, it led to an
internal 'brain drain' with adverse implications for the future. The skewed structure of
incentives generated by the explosive growth of finance directed the best young minds towards
careers that promised quick rewards and large material gains rather than painstaking but
socially necessary research and basic science. The impact of relocation of certain industries
and the associated requirement for skilled and semi-skilled labour led to increased
opportunities for educated employment, but it also led bright young people to enter work that
is typically mechanical and does not require much originality or creativity, with little
opportunity to develop their intellectual capacities.
At the same time, crucial activities were inadequately rewarded. Farming in particular
became increasingly fraught with risk and subject to growing volatility and declining financial
viability, while non-farm work did not increase rapidly enough to absorb the labour force even
in the fastest growing economies of the region.
Restructuring Economic Relations
The boom was not stable or inclusive, either across or within countries. The subsequent
slump (or 'secular stagnation') has been only too inclusive, forcing those who did not gain
earlier to pay for the sins of irresponsible and unregulated finance. As economies slow down,
more jobs are lost or become more fragile, insecure and vulnerable; and people, especially
those in the developing world who did not gain from the boom, face loss of livelihood and
deteriorating conditions of living. This is why it is so important that we restructure economic
relations in a more democratic and sustainable way.
There are several necessary elements of this. Globally, most now recognise the need to
reform the international financial system, which has failed to meet two obvious requirements:
preventing instability and crises, and transferring resources from richer to poorer economies.
Not only have we experienced much greater volatility and propensity to financial meltdown
across emerging markets and now even industrial countries, but even the periods of economic
expansion were based on the global poor subsidising the rich.
Within national economies, this system has encouraged pro-cyclicality: it has encouraged
bubbles and speculative fervour rather than real productive investment for future growth. It
has rendered national financial systems opaque and impossible to regulate. It has allowed for
the proliferation of parallel transactions through tax havens and loose domestic controls. It
has reduced the crucial developmental role of directed credit.
Given these problems, there is no alternative but systematic state regulation and control of
finance. Since private players will inevitably attempt to circumvent regulation, the core of
the financial system – banking – must be protected, and that is only possible
through social ownership. Therefore, some degree of socialisation of banking (and not just the
risks inherent in finance) is inevitable. In developing countries this is also important
because it enables public control over the direction of credit, without which no country has
industrialised.
Desirable – and Necessary
The obsessively export-oriented model that has dominated the growth strategy for the past
few decades must be reconsidered. This is not a just a desirable shift – it has become a
necessity given the obvious fact that the US and the EU are no longer engines of world growth
through increasing import demand in the near future. This means that both developed and
developing countries must seek to redirect their exports to other countries and most of all to
redirect their economies towards more domestic demand. This requires a shift towards wage-led
and domestic demand-led growth, particularly in the countries with economies large enough to
sustain this shift. This can happen not only through direct redistributive strategies but also
through public expenditure to provide more basic goods and services.
This means that fiscal policy and public expenditure must be brought back centre stage.
Calls to end austerity are becoming more widespread in the developed world and will soon find
their counterpart in developing countries. Clearly, fiscal stimulus is now essential, to cope
with the adverse real-economy effects of the current crisis/stagnation and to prevent economic
activity and employment from falling, and then to put good, quality employment on a stable
footing. Fiscal expenditure is also required to undertake and promote investment to manage the
effects of climate change and promote greener technologies. Public spending is crucial to
advance the development project in the South and fulfil the promise of achieving minimally
acceptable standards of living for everyone in the developing world.
Social and Economic Rights
Social policy – the public responsibility for meeting social and economic rights of
citizens – contributes positively to both growth and development. This means especially
the provision of universal good quality care services, funded by the state, with care workers
properly recognised, remunerated and provided with decent working conditions. This also helps
to reduce gender and other social inequalities generated by the imposition of unpaid care work,
and has strong multiplier effects that allow for more employment increases over time and
generate a 'bubbling up' of economic activity.
There must be conscious attempts to reduce economic inequalities, both between and within
countries. We have clearly crossed the limits of what is 'acceptable' inequality in most
societies, and policies will have to reverse this trend. Globally and nationally, we must
reduce inequalities in income and wealth, and most significantly in the consumption of natural
resources.
This is even more complicated than might be imagined because unsustainable patterns of
production and consumption are deeply entrenched in richer countries and are aspired to in
developing countries. But many millions of citizens of the developing world still have poor or
inadequate access to the most basic conditions of decent life, such as electricity, transport
and communication links, sanitation, health, nutrition and education. Ensuring universal
provision across the global South will inevitably require greater per capita use of natural
resources and more carbon-emitting production.
Both sustainability and equity therefore require a reduction of the excessive resource use
of the rich, especially in developed countries but also among the elites in the developing
world. This means that redistributive fiscal and other economic policies must be especially
oriented towards reducing inequalities of resource consumption, globally and nationally. Within
countries, for example, essential social and developmental expenditure can be financed by taxes
that penalise resource-wasteful expenditure.
New Demand and Production
This requires new patterns of demand and production. It is why the present focus on
developing new means of measuring genuine progress, well-being and quality of life are so
important. Quantitative GDP growth targets, which still dominate the thinking of policy-makers,
are not simply distracting from these more important goals but can be counterproductive.
For example, a chaotic, polluting and unpleasant system of privatised urban transport
involving many vehicles and over-congested roads generates more GDP than a safe, efficient and
affordable system of public transport that reduces congestion and provides a pleasant living
and working environment. It is not enough to talk about 'cleaner, greener technologies' to
produce goods that are based on the old and now discredited pattern of consumption. Instead, we
must think creatively about consumption itself, and work out which goods and services are more
necessary and desirable for our societies.
This cannot be left to market forces, since the international demonstration effect and the
power of advertising will continue to create undesirable wants and unsustainable consumption
and production. But public intervention in the market cannot be knee-jerk responses to
constantly changing short-term conditions. Instead, planning – not in the sense of the
detailed planning that destroyed the reputation of command regimes, but strategic thinking
about the social requirements and goals for the future – is absolutely essential. Fiscal
and monetary policies, as well as other forms of intervention, will have to be used to redirect
consumption and production towards these social goals, to bring about such shifts in
socially-created aspirations and material wants, and to reorganise economic life to be less
rapacious and more sustainable.
Since state involvement in economic activity is now an imperative, we should be thinking of
ways to make involvement more democratic and accountable within our countries and
internationally. Large amounts of public money will be used for financial bailouts and to
provide fiscal stimuli. How this is done will have huge implications for distribution, access
to resources and living conditions of the ordinary people whose taxes will be paying for this.
So it is essential that we design the global economic architecture to function more
democratically. And it is even more important that states across the world, when formulating
and implementing economic policies, are more open and responsive to the needs of the majority
of their citizens.
International Framework
These are general points and obviously leave much to the specific contexts of individual
countries and societies. But finally, we need an international economic framework that supports
all this, which means more than just that capital flows must be controlled and regulated so
that they do not destabilise these strategies.
The global institutions that form the organising framework for international trade,
investment and production decisions need to change and become not only more democratic in
structure but more genuinely democratic and people-oriented in spirit, intent and functioning.
This is particularly the case with respect to the dissemination of knowledge, now privatised
and concentrated thanks to the privileging of intellectual property rights. Financing for
development and conservation of global resources must become the top priorities of the global
economic institutions.
These proposals may seem like a tall order, but human history is replete with stories of
major reversals of past trajectories and transformations that come when they are not expected
and from directions that are unpredictable. What has been created and implemented by human
agency can also be undone to bring in better alternatives. It may well be that the time is ripe
in terms of greater social acceptance of such ideas and thoughts about how to refine and adapt
them to particular contexts.
Originally published in the
Red Pepper
, August 6,
2017.
"... Trump is attacked. The ACLU is attacked. Peace activists opposed to the CIA's regime change operation in Syria are attacked. Tucker Carlson is attacked. Everyone attacked that the CIA and various other aspects of the Deep State want attacked as if the MSM were all sent the same talking points memo. ..."
In the aftermath of competing protests in Charlottesville a wave of dismantling of
Confederate statues is on the rise. Overnight Baltimore
took
down
four Confederate statues. One of these honored Confederate soldiers and sailors,
another one Confederate women. Elsewhere statues were
toppled or defiled
.
The Charlottesville conflict itself was about the intent to dismantle a statue of General
Robert E. Lee, a commander of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The
activist part of the political right protested against the take down, the activist part of the
political left protested against those protests. According to a number of witnesses
quoted
in the LA Times sub-groups on both sides came prepared for and readily engaged in violence.
In 2003 a U.S. military tank pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein on Firdos Square in
Baghdad. Narrowly shot TV picture made it look as if a group of Iraqis were doing this. But
they were mere actors within
a U.S. propaganda show
.
Pulling down the statue demonstrated a lack of respect towards those who had fought under,
worked for or somewhat supported Saddam Hussein. It helped to incite the resistance against the
U.S. occupation.
The right-wing nutters who, under U.S. direction, forcefully toppled the legitimate
government of Ukraine
pulled
down
hundreds of the remaining Lenin statues in the country. Veterans who fought under the
Soviets in the second world war
took this
as
a sign of disrespect. Others saw this as an attack on their fond memories of better times and
protected them
. The forceful erasement of history further split the country:
"It's not like if you go east they want Lenin but if you go west they want to destroy him,"
Mr. Gobert said. "These differences don't only go through geography, they go through
generations, through social criteria and economic criteria, through the urban and the rural."
Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or group.
They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories:
"One guy said he didn't really care about Lenin, but the statue was at the center of the
village and it was the place he kissed his wife for the first time," Mr. Gobert said. "When
the statue went down it was part of his personal history that went away."
Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery. But there are few historic
figures without fail. Did not George Washington "own" slaves? Did not Lyndon B. Johnson lie
about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and launched an unjust huge war against non-white people
under false pretense? At least some people will think of that when they see their statues.
Should those also be taken down?
As time passes the meaning of a monument changes. While it may have been erected with a
certain ideology or concept
in
mind
, the view on it will change over time:
[The Charlottesville statue] was unveiled by Lee's great-granddaughter at a ceremony in May
1924. As was the custom on these occasions it was accompanied by a parade and speeches. In
the dedication address, Lee was celebrated as a hero, who embodied "the moral greatness of
the Old South", and as a proponent of reconciliation between the two sections. The war itself
was remembered as a conflict between "interpretations of our Constitution" and between
"ideals of democracy."
The white racists who came to "protect" the statue in Charlottesville will hardly have done
so in the name of reconciliation. Nor will those who had come to violently oppose them. Lee was
a racist. Those who came to "defend" the statue were mostly "white supremacy" racists. I am all
for protesting against them.
But the issue here is bigger. We must not forget that statues have multiple meanings and
messages. Lee was also the man who
wrote
:
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest
joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead
of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down. The park in
Charlottesville, in which the statue stands, was recently renamed from Lee Park into
Emancipation Park. It makes sense to keep the statue there to reflect on the contrast between
it and the new park name.
Old monuments and statues must not (only) be seen as glorifications within their time. They
are reminders of history. With a bit of education they can become valuable occasions of
reflection.
George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: "The most effective way to destroy people is to deny
and obliterate their own understanding of their history." People do not want to be destroyed.
They will fight against attempts to do so. Taking down monuments or statues without a very wide
consent will split a society. A large part of the U.S. people voted for Trump. One gets the
impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved "punishment" for
those who voted wrongly - i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump voters will dislike
statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign to take them down even
more.
That may be the intend of some people behind the current quarrel. The radicalization on
opposing sides may have a purpose. The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further
disenfranchise they people. The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to
cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans.
Anyone who wants to stoke the fires with this issue should be careful what they wish
for.
"That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down."
How about the fact that he was a traitor?
"George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: 'The most effective way to destroy people is to
deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.'"
The only reason statues of traitors like Lee exist is because the South likes to engage in
'Lost Cause' revisionism; to pretend these were noble people fighting for something other
than the right to own human beings as pets.
erasing history seems part of the goal.. i feel the usa has never really addressed
racism.. the issue hasn't gone away and remains a deep wound that has yet to heal.. events
like this probably don't help.
The statues of Lee and his ilk should come down because they are TRAITORS who deserve no
honor. Washington and Jefferson may have owned slaves but they were PATRIOTS. Its really that
simple.
I don't want to get derailed into the rights or wrongs of toppling statues. I wonder whose
brilliant idea it was to start this trend
right at this particular tinder box moment.
That said, the USA has never ever truly confronted either: 1) the systemic genocide of the
Native Americans earlier in our history; and b) what slavery really meant and was. NO
reconciliation has ever really been done about either of these barbarous acts. Rather, at
best/most, we're handed platitudes and lip service that purports that we've "moved on" from
said barbarity - well I guess WHITES (I'm one) have. But Native Americans - witness what
happened to them at Standing Rock recently - and minorities, especially African Americans,
are pretty much not permitted to move on. Witness the unending police murders of AA men
across the country, where, routinely, most of the cops get off scott-free.
To quote b:
The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further disenfranchise they people. The
fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to cover for its lack of
political resistance to Trump's plans.
While I dislike to descend into the liturgy of Both Siderism, it's completely true that
both Rs and Ds enjoy and use pitting the rubes in the 99% against one another because it
means that the rapine, plunder & pillaging by the Oligarchs and their pet poodles in
Congress & the White House can continue apace with alacrity. And: That's Exactly What's
Happening.
The Oligarchs could give a flying fig about Heather Heyer's murder, nor could they give a
stuff about US citizens cracking each other's skulls in a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Gives an opening for increasing the Police State and cracking down on our freedumbs and
liberties, etc.
I heard or read somewhere that Nancy Pelosi & Chuck Schumer are absolutely committed
to not impeaching Donald Trump because it means all the Ds have to do is Sweet Eff All and
just "represent" themselves as the Anti-Trump, while, yes, enjoying the "benefits" of the
programs/policies/legislation enacted by the Trump Admin. I have no link and certainly cannot
prove this assertion, but it sure seems likely. Just frickin' great.
Lee was not a racist; I'd say you are addressing your own overblown egos. The U.S. Civil War
was long in coming. During the 1830's during Andrew Jackson's presidency, and John Calhoun's
vice-presidency, at an annual state dinner, the custom of toasts was used to present
political views. Jackson toasted the Union of the states, saying "The Union, it must be
preserved." Calhoun's toast was next, "The Union, next to our liberty, most dear."
Calhoun was a proponent of the Doctrine of Nullification, wherein if a national law
inflicted harm on any state, the state could nullify the law, until such time as a
negotiation of a satisfactory outcome could come about. The absolute Unionists were outraged
by such an idea.
My memory tells me that the invention of the cotton gin made cotton a good crop, but that you
needed the slaves. Slaves represented the major money invested in this operation. Free the
slaves and make slave holders poor. Rich people didn't like that idea. I think maybe the
cotton was made into cloth in the factories up north. Just saying.
How would 'addressing the problem' actually work? Should all native Americans and people of
colour go to Washington to be presented with $1 million each by grovelling white men?
But, the memorials to GW, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
et al
, does
not honor them for owning slaves. Memorials of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis,
et
al
, is because they took up arms against a legitimate government simply to support of a
vile system.
@6
The manufacturing states put export duties on the agricultural states, and tariffs on British
imported cloth. The English mills were undercutting the U.S. mills prices for a number of
reasons, not the least of which was they were more experienced in the industry.
The difference between a statue of Lee vs. a statue of Washington, Jefferson, LBJ, etc., is
that Washington, Jefferson, and LBJ did some good things to earn our respect even though they
did a lot of bad things, too. The Confederacy did no good things. It would be like erecting a
statue to honor Hitler's SS.
If there were statues honoring the SS, would anyone be surprised if Jews objected? Why
then does anyone fail to understand why blacks object to Confederate symbols?
I would, however, support statues that depict a Confederate surrendering. Perhaps the
statue of Lee on a horse could be replaced with a statue of Lee surrendering to Grant?
I am not a fan of the "counter-protests." Martin Luther King never "counter-protested" a
KKK rally. A counter-protest is a good way to start a fight, but a poor way to win hearts and
minds. It bothers me when the 99% fight among themselves. Our real enemy is the 1%.
George Washington "the father of our country" was a slave owner, a rapist and a murderer.
What do we expect from his descendants?
should we remove his face of the dollar bill and destroy his statues?
The civil war was due to economic reasons, free labor is good business.
Now cheap Mexican-labor ( the new type of slavery) is good business to the other side.
when will the new civil war in the US start?
@b
Many years ago, within the leadership of my student organization, I initiated to rename the
University I was attending, which was named after a communist ideological former state acting
figure, with very bloody hands, co-responsible for the death of tenths of thousands and
thousands of people. Today I still think, that educational and cultural institutions (and
many more) should be named either neutral, or by persons with cultural background and with
impeccable moral history, no many to be found. On the other side, I opposed the removal of
the very statue of the same person at a nearby public plaza - and there it stands today - as
a rather painful reminder of the past bloody history of my country, that went through a
conflict, that today seems so bizarre. Wherever I go, I look into black abyss, knowing, that
the very culture I belong to (the so called Christian Liberal Free Western World) has
inflicted so many horrors and crimes against other nations and ethnic groups, its even
difficult to count. Karlheinz Deschner wrote 10 books, titled "The Criminal History of
Christianity (Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums - on YT you can find videos him reading
from it). Yes, this is the very civilization, we Westerners originate from. It was deadly for
centuries - and its about time to change this. And keeping the memory of our so bloody
history, will help us to find the right and hopefully more peaceful solutions in the future.
Don`t tear down monuments or change street names, but give them the so often shameful
meaning, they had in history.
Then southern states have no business being part of United States of America since their
history and customs are not honored. That is good overall I think. Best for the world.
Southern states are very unlikely to attack any other sovereign state thousands of miles
away, but all united as unitary state, we can see how persistent in their aggression on the
rest of the world they are. 222 years out of its 239 years US has been aggressor:
https://www.infowars.com/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/
Time to break US lust for attacking, invading and raiding other countries.
what little of this history i know - which is to say very little - kgw reflects what i have
read.. the problem is way deeper.. if you want to address racism, you are going to have to
pull down most of the statues in the usa today of historical figures..
if - that is why way you think it will matter, lol.. forgot to add that.. otherwise, forget
pulling down statues and see if you can address the real issue - like @4 rukidding and some
others here are addressing..
A little false equivalency anyone? I'm sure Adolph Hitler had some reasonable remarks at some
point in his life, so, I guess we should tolerate a few statues of him also? States rights as
the cause for the U$A's civil war? baloney, it was about the murder and enslavement of
millions of humans.
Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game" still
spells out
unsurpassed the divide and
rule strategy, to my mind. Powers that be are rubbing their hands with satisfaction at this
point, one would think.
I like your observation, b, that statues don't necessarily represent what they did when
they were erected. It's an important point. It meant something at the time, but now it's a
part of today's heritage, and has often taken on some of your own meaning. To destroy your
own heritage is a self-limiting thing, and Orwell's point is well taken. Perhaps people
without history have nowhere in the present to stand.
Have to add, slavery wasn't the cause for the war. It was centralization, rights of the
states. Yankees wanted strong central government with wide array of power, Southerners
didn't. Yankees were supported by London banking families and their banking allies or agents
in the US, Southerners were on their own. I personally think Southerners were much better
soldiers, more honorable and courageous, but we lacked industrial capacity and financial
funds. I could be biased having Southern blood, but my opinion anyway.
therevolutionwas@10 - Have to agree. The events leading up to the US Civil War and the war
itself were for reasons far more numerous and complex then slavery. Emancipation was a
fortunate and desirable outcome and slavery was an issue, but saying the entire war was about
ending slavery is the same as saying WW II was mostly about stopping Nazis from killing jews.
Dumbing down history serves nobody.
Still wondering how specifically the 'real issue' can be addressed. I don't think any amount
of money will compensate plains Indians .actually some are quite well off due to casinos. But
the days of buffalo hunting are gone and white people will not be going back where they came
from. As for blacks in urban ghettos you could build them nice houses in the suburbs but I
doubt if that will fix the drugs/gangs problem.
"That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down."
If the sole criteria for taking down any statues was that a man was a 'racist', meaning
that he hated people of color/hated black people, can we assume then that all those who owned
slaves were also racist?
Then all the statues in the whole country of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Monroe and
perhaps all the Founding Daddies who owned slaves, should be removed. I am playing devil's
advocate here.
Fashions come and go.... and so the vices of yesterday are virtues today; and the virtues
of yesterday are vices today.
Bernard is correct at the end: "The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural
disputes to cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans." The Demos have
nothing, so they tend to fall back on their identity politics.
....In total, twelve presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives, eight of whom
owned slaves while serving as president. George Washington was the first president to own
slaves, including while he was president. Zachary Taylor was the last president to own slaves
during his presidency, and Ulysses S. Grant was the last president to have owned a slave at
some point in his life.
Pitting people against people by inciting and validating fringe groups is a tried and true
social manipulation ploy.....and it seems to be working as intended.
Focus is on this conflict gets folks riled up and myopic about who the real enemies of
society really are.....and then that riled up energy is transferred to bigger conflicts like
war between nations.....with gobs of "our side is more righteous" propaganda
Humanity has been played like this for centuries now and our extinction would probably be
a kinder future for the Cosmos since we don't seem to be evolving beyond power/control based
governance.
And yes, as Dan Lynch wrote just above: "It bothers me when the 99% fight among
themselves. Our real enemy is the 1%"
Robert E. Lee a racist? No, he was a man of his time. B, you blew it with this one. You have
confused what you don't know with what you think you know.
Now, if Lee was a racist, what about this guy?
From Lincoln's Speech, Sept. 18, 1858.
"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I
was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people.
While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the
question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in
regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about
in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not
nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM
HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever
forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch
as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior
and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position
assigned to the white race."
All states who joined the confederation cited the "need" and "right" to uphold slavery in
their individual declarations. To say that the civil war was not about this point is strongly
misleading. Like all wars there were several named and unnamed reasons. Slavery was the most
cited point.
The argument of rather unlimited "state rights" is simply the demand of a minority to
argue for the right to ignore majority decisions. With universal state rights a union can
never be a union. There is no point to it. What is needed (and was done) is to segregate
certain fields wherein the union decides from other policy fields that fall solely within the
rights of member states. The conflict over which fields should belong where hardly ever
ends.
P. S.--If it were up to me, I'd tear down monuments to most of the U$A's
presidents for perpetuating and abetting the rise of an empire who has enslaved and murdered
millions around the globe, simply for profits for the few. Economic slavery has replaced the
iron shackles, but the murder is still murder...
P. S.--If it were up to me, I'd tear down monuments to most of the U$A's presidents for
perpetuating and abetting the rise of an empire who has enslaved and murdered millions around
the globe, simply for profits for the few. Economic slavery has replaced the iron shackles,
but the murder is still murder...
Posted by: ben | Aug 16, 2017 2:45:29 PM |
28
/div
The Northern manufacturers were exploiting the South and wanted to continue doing so. They
didn't much care that the raw materials came from slave labor.
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to encourage slave rebellion
(meaning
fewer white Southern men available for military service)
and to punish the South.
Yet, while slavery ended when the North won, we all know how that turned out. For nearly
100 years
(and some might say, even today)
, many black people were still virtual
slaves due to discrimination and poor education.
B@27: you're missing a couple of very basic points.
First, not all states that seceded issued declarations. Virginia, for example, of which
the 'racist' Robert E. Leehailed, only seceded after Lincoln made his move on fort sumter. In
fact, Virginia had voted against secession just prior but, as with 3 other southern states,
seceded when Lincoln called for them to supply troops for his war.
Speaking of declarations of causes, have a look at the cherokee declaration. Yes, united
indian tribes fought for the confederacy.
Finally, the causes for secession are not the causes for war. Secession is what the
southerners did. War is what Lincoln did. One should not have automatically led to the
other.
Well, just reading the comments here it is obvious that there are several versions of history
taught at different times in the last century. If not, then all of us would "know" the real
reason for the CW - there would be no need for discussion. What is also obvious is that this
delving back into a muddied history, the defacing of formerly meaningful objects, the
thrusting of certain "rights" into the face of anyone even questioning them - all of it is
working. It is working extremely well in distracting us from things like the numerous
economic bubbles, the deep state scratching at war or chaos everywhere, politicians who are
at best prevaricating prostitutes and at worst thieves enriching themselves at our expense as
we struggle to maintain in the face of their idiocy.
It simply doesn't MATTER what started the Civil War - it ought to be enough to look at the
death toll on BOTH sides and know we don't need to go there again.
Who stands to gain from this? Because it surely isn't the historically ignorant antifa
bunch, who are against everything that includes a moral boundary. It isn't the alt-right, who
get nothing but egg on their face and decimation of position by virtue of many being "white".
CUI BONO?
The single answer is threefold: media, the government and the military - who continue to
refuse to address any of our problems - and feed us a diet of revolting pablum and
double-speak.
Honestly, congress passed a law legalizing propaganda - did anyone notice? Did anyone
factor in that they allowed themselves freedom to lie to anyone and everyone? It wasn't done
for show - it was done to deny future accountability.
Don't let this site get bogged down in history that is being constantly rewritten on
Wikipedia. Don't buy into the left/right division process. Don't let your self identify with
either group, as they are being led by provocateurs.
The lies we know of regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya - aren't they enough to force people to
disbelieve our media completely? The HUGE lies in our media about what is going on in
Venezuela should be quite enough (bastante suficiente) to make most people simply disbelieve.
But they cannot because they are only allowed to see and hear what our government approves -
and for our government, lying is quite legal now.
Let the emotions go - they are pushed via media to force you to think in white or black,
right or left, old vs young - any way that is divisive. Getting beaten for a statue would
likely make the guy who posed for it laugh his butt off most likely...
Speaking of Lincoln's quotes, here is a good one to dispel the myth about slavery being the
cause of war.
Pres. Abraham Lincoln: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do
so, and I have no inclination to do so."
I the civil war was for the most part connected with the federal reserve central bank
charter right which unionist Yankees frightful about possible restraints of bankers rights
were keen to give London banking families unrestricted rights to do whatever they please in
the US. Other reasons exclusively included expanding federal government powers. Adding
personal income tax would be unimaginable prior to CW. Creation of all those fed gov agencies
too. It was all made possible by London bankers' servants Yankees.
The civil war in the US was not really started because of slavery. Robert E. Lee did not
join the south and fight the north in order to preserve slavery, in his mind it was state's
rights. Lincoln did not start the civil war to free the slaves.
You're right. The Emancipation Act was an afterthought really because Europe had turned
against the idea of slavery before the Civil War broke out, in fact was repelled by it, and
Lincoln knew that it would hurt commerce.
The southern states felt they had a right to secede, using the tenth amendment as the legal
basis. It states simply " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people.".
Furthermore, the union of states was referred to many times by the founders as a compact.
Under the theory of compacts, when one party doesn't honor said compact, it is rendered
null.
Slavery, regardless of how we may feel today, was a legal and federally protected
institution. With the rise of the republican party, a campaign of agitation towards the south
and slavery had begun. It is this agitation towards a legal institution that rankled
southerners.
The south saw this coming well before the election of Lincoln. William seward, the
favorite to win the election, gave a speech in l858 called "the irrepressible conflict". The
south well knew of this and saw the writing on the wall if a republican was elected
president.
When reading the declarations of causes, this background should be kept in mind if one
wants to understand the southern position. Or, one can just count how many times the word
'slavery' appears like a word cloud.
Probably the best articulated statement on the southern position was south Carolina's
"address to the slaveholding states".
I'm afraid if you go back in time, no US president can be saved from a well-deserved statue
toppling. Including Abraham Lincoln, the hypocrite who DID NOT, and I repeat, DID NOT abolish
slavery. The U.S "elite" has always been rotten through and through, so good luck with those
statues.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/the-clintons-had-slaves
You used Lincoln's inaugural address to show that the war was not over slavery. It's plain
enough coming from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Lincoln, in that same inaugural address, stated what the war would be fought over ......
and it was revenue.
Here's the quote:
The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places
belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be
necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among
the people anywhere.
As a rare book dealer and history buff with thirty-odd years of experience reading and
studying original civil war era periodicals and documents, a fact stands out for me about
these now-controversial statues. None is from the civil war period. Many, like the Lee statue
in this article, date to the 1920's, which was the era of the second Ku Klux Klan. The
infamous movie "Birth of a Nation" inspired the nationwide revival of that faded terrorist
group. The year that statue was dedicated a hundred thousand Klansmen paraded in full regalia
in the streets of Washington.
The children and grandchildren of the men who had taken up arms against the United States
had by then completed a very flattering myth about 1861 - 1865. Consider too that
romanticized lost cause mythology was integral to the regional spirit long before the
rebellion. The Scots Irish who settled the American south carried with them the long memory
their forebears' defeats at the Boyne and Culloden, at the hands of the English – the
very ancestors of the hated Yankees living to the north of their new homeland.
Note also that many more CSA statues and memorials were built in the 1960s, as symbols of
defiance of the civil rights movement of that era. The War for the Union was fought at its
heart because the elite of the old south refused to accept the result of a fair and free
democratic election, but for those who came after, white supremacy became the comforting myth
that rationalized their ancestors' incredibly foolish treason.
"Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery."
Would this have been written in his time? Would it be written today in other countries
(Africa included) where slavery (aka human trafficking) is big business today?
I'm disappointed that Moon of Alabama, usually so astute in its presentations, would print
this article.
That the many statutes of America's founding fathers should be re-evaluated is actually a
great idea. Many of these people were simply oligarchs who wanted to be the top of the
pyramid instead of the British. Many owned slaves and perpetuated slavery. Others, like
Andrew Jackson were legitimate psychopaths. Pretty much all of them cheered the genocide of
Native Americans. So maybe we *should* have different heros.
Using the logic b spells out above, one could argue that statues of Nazis should be
allowed too, after all they did come up with the Autobahn (modern highways), jet engines, and
viable rockets, all technology used all over the world. Some patriotic, well meaning Germans
fought in the Wehrmacht, don't they deserve statues, too? What about the Banderists and
Forest Brothers? The Imperial Japanese? Don't those well-meaning fascists deserve to
celebrate their heritage?
But simply saying that idea out loud is enough to realize what a crock that notion is.
Nazis and fascists don't deserve statues, neither do confederates. Neither do most Americans,
for that matter.
Trying to make some moral equivalence between NeoNazis and the leftists who oppose them is
about as silly as it gets. I don't support violence against these idiots, and they have the
same rights as anyone else in expressing their opinion. But to paint legit NeoNazis and the
leftists opposing them (admittedly in a very juvenile manner) in the same brush ("Both sides
came prepared for violence") is utter hogwash. We don't give Nazis a pass in Ukraine, don't
give them a pass in Palestine, and we sure as hell don't give them a pass in the US. It
doesn't matter what hypocritical liberal snowflake is on the other side of the barricade, the
Nazi is still a f*****g Nazi.
"Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery."
b, you have just displayed your ignorance of the character of Robert E. Lee, why he
fought, and what he fought for. To give you the short n sweet of it, General Lee was a
Christian gentleman respected by those in the North as well as the South. He fought the
Federal leviathan as it had chosen to make war on what he considered to be his home and
country--the State of Virginia. The issue at hand was not racism and slavery but Federal
tyranny. Lincoln himself said he had no quarrel with slavery and as long as the South paid
the Federal leviathan its taxes, the South was free to go. Make a visit to Paul Craig Roberts
site for his latest essay which explains the world of the 1860s American scene much more
eloquently than I can ...
b is completely wrong in thread. The USA has been a highly racist power system historically
where killing non-Whites has been a major historical policy. Lee is not merely a racist, he
epitomizes this policy and is a symbol of it. Attacking racist symbols is essential to
destroying racism.
Historicus@38: that 'fair and free democratic election' was replete with Lincoln supporters
printing counterfeit tickets to the convention in order to shut out seward supporters.
The gambit worked and the rest, as they say, is history.
james @2--You are 1000000000% correct. And given the current state-of-affairs, will
continue to fester for another century if not more thanks to historical ignorance and elite
Machiavellian maneuvering.
Southern Extremist self-proclaimed Fire Eaters were the ones that started the war as they
took the bait Lincoln cunningly offered them. If they'd been kept away from the coastal
artillery at Charlestown, the lanyard they pulled may have remained still and war avoided for
the moment. The advent of the US Civil War can be blamed totally on the Constitution and
those who wrote it, although they had no clue as to the fuse they lit.
Chattel Slavery was introduced in the Western Hemisphere because the enslaved First
Peoples died off and the sugar plantations needed laborers. Rice, tobacco, indigo, "Naval
Stores," and other related cash crops were the next. Cotton only became part of the mix when
the cotton gin made greatly lessened the expense of its processing. But, cotton wore out the
thin Southern soils, so it cotton plantations slowly marched West thus making Mexican lands
attractive for conquest. But slaves were used for so much more--particularly the draining of
swamps and construction of port works. The capital base for modern capitalism was made
possible by slavery--a sentence you will NOT read in any history textbook. There are a great
many books written on the subject; I suggest starting with Marcus Rediker's
The Slave
Ship: A Human History
, followed by Eric Williams's classic
Capitalism and Slavery
, Edward Baptist's
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American
Capitalism
, and John Clarke's
Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery
and the Rise of European Capitalism
.
There are even more books published about the war itself. But as many have pointed out,
it's learning about the reasons for the war that's most important. Vice President Henry
Wilson was the first to write a very detailed 3 volume history of those reasons,
Rise and
Fall of the Slave Power in America
beginning in 1872, and they are rare books indeed;
fortunately, they've been digitized and can be found here,
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Wilson%2C+Henry%2C+1812-1875%22
Perhaps the most complete is Allan Nevins 8 volume
Ordeal of the Union
, although for
me it begins too late in 1847,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_of_the_Union
Finally, no study of the period's complete without examining the unraveling and utter
dysfunction of the political process that occurred between 1856 and 1860 that allowed Lincoln
to win the presidency, Roy Nichols's
The Disruption of American Democracy
illustrates
that best.
The US Civil War can't be boiled down to having just one cause; it's causes were multiple,
although slavery--being an economic and social system--resides at its core. As an historian,
I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical relevance,
although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong; better to
display the Spirit of '76 flag if stars and stripes are to be displayed. (I wonder what will
become of the UK's Union Jack if Scotland votes to leave the UK.) Personal display of the
Stars and Bars for me amounts to a political statement which people within the Outlaw US
Empire still have the right to express despite the animus it directs at myself and other
non-Anglo ethnicities. (I'm Germanic Visigoth with Spanish surname--people are surprised at
my color when they hear my name.)
The current deep dysfunction in the Outlaw US Empire's domestic politics mirrors that of
the latter 1850s somewhat but the reasons are entirely different yet solvable--IF--the
populous can gain a high degree of solidarity.
There's also the school of thought that holds that Honest Abe freed the slaves in order that
northern industrialists could acquire replacements for workers lost in the war.
@37
Aye Woogs. All about expanding fed gov powers, most of which was focused on permanent central
banking charter. Many forget that central banking charter had been in place before CW in the
US and that great statesman Andrew Jackson repelled it. The first central banking charter
caused terrible economic suffering, which is why it was repelled. People had more sense then.
Not so much now.
"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United
States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the
funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided
the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I
take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families.
That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin
fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I
have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal I will rout you out!"
~Andrew Jackson
It saddens me that so many buy into the South fought for slavery. That story line was used in
the same manner that Weapons of Mass Destruction was used to war with Iraq. The difference is
the internet was able to get the truth out. Doesn't do much good to argue as most believe the
Confederate slavery propaganda. The US is done as a nation. A thousand different groups that
hate each other preaching no hate. Yes it will limp along for a while but it's done for.
many thanks for the history, and the books. I read Murray's essay and consider it a good
take....
".... As an historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of
historical relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as
wrong..."
I have to agree.
& there is at least one sane (african american) person in LA, as per below article
"....Los Angeles resident Monique Edwards says historical monuments, like the Confederate
statue removed from Hollywood Forever Cemetery, need to be preserved and used as teachable
moments...."
Yankees wanted strong central government with wide array of power, Southerners didn't.
Yankees were supported by London banking families and their banking allies or agents in the
US, Southerners were on their own.
I recall that it was the slavers that wanted the central government to enforce the
Fugitive Slave Act
even in states that outlawed slavery; it was the slavers that
insisted that slavery be legal in the new territories, regardless of the wishes of the
settlers.
Also, the London industrial and banking interest strongly supported the breakaway slavers
because:
(1) It was the slave produced cotton that fueled the textile industry in England.
(2) Imported British ¨prestige¨ items found a ready market with the nouveau riche
planters grown fat on stolen labor.
(3) A Balkanized NA would be more subject to pressure from the ¨Mother Country.¨
(4) Lincoln refused to borrow from the bankers and printed ¨greenbacks¨ to finance
the war; this infuriated the bankers.
Neo-Confederate revisionism creates mythical history, in a large part, by attempting to
deify vile human beings.
Ben@26: Lincoln stated that he would only use force to collect imposts and duties.
The first battle of the war (actually more a skirmish) was the battle of Phillipi in
western Virginia in early June, l86l.
To the best of my knowledge, there were no customs houses in western Virginia as it was
not a port of entry. This was simply an invasion by the union army at Lincoln's command that
revealed his true colors. The war was Lincoln's war, plain and simple.
@51
Joey, I would like yo offer you fairy dust to buy. Interested? Luckily we should part our
ways soon. Should have happened ages ago if you ask me. Your history is not our own. You were
aggressors fighting for foreign entity. Time for us to part I think. have your own history
and say whatever you want there. We will have ours.
In my view, b is comparing a modern sensibility on race relations with that of a mid 19th
century confederate leader and so with this bad thesis it is quite easy to dismiss this post
entirely. Was the north that much more enlightened on the treatent of blacks? I think not.
Was the emancipation proclamation largely a political gesture to incite ire and violence not
only among southerners but also slaves living in these states towards their owners?
Meanwhile, the effect of such a proclamation was exempt on states where said effect would not
"pinch" the south. The north, if anything, was even more racist using blacks as a means
towards the end to consolidate power even more centrally.
It honestly reads like most neutral apologetic drivel out of the "other" msm which is on
the ropes right now from an all-out wholly political assault. If you truly wanted to educate
people on their history you would stand up for fair and honest discourse. Make no mistake,
this is all about obscuration and historical-revisionism. Globalists gotta eat.
"Slavery as an institution, is a moral &political evil in any Country... I think it
however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race... The blacks are immeasurably
better off." Robert E. Lee
Sounds like a man with opinions, but without the burning fire to see that evil enshrined
in a state-policy towards blacks. Basically, one condemns him for sharing a popular view of
the day. CALL THE THOUGHT POLICE!
From a British point of view, Washington and Jefferson were traitors as well.
As for Lee, he was racist, but doesn't seem to have been more racist than the average Yankee.
No more racist than Sherman or Lincoln, and less racist than many of the Confederate top
guys, for instance.
Then, there's the nutjob idea that forcefully taking down other statues in the South will
make these guys "win". At least, the Lee statue had a more or less legal and democratic
process going on, which is the only way to go if you don't want to look like a Taliban.
Really, did these idiots not understand that bringing down Confederate statues without due
process will massively piss off most of the locals? Do they really want the local hardliners
to come armed and ready to use their guns, one of these days? Is this the plan all along, to
spark another civil war for asshat reasons?
(Like B, toppling Saddam and communist statues was the very first thing I thought of. As
if these poor fools had just been freed from a terrible dictatorship, instead of nothing
having changed or been won at all in the last months)
I agree with Woogs (25). How stoopid are we ? History has been re-written and manipulated
going back a long way. Most of the readers here know that our "masters" , and their versions
of history are not accurate. Yet here we are arguing and such ... " he was good...NO He was
bad...." acting as if we know truth from fiction. Back then, as now, it was all planned.
Divide and conquer. Slavery was the "excuse" for war. The Power Elite" were based in Europe
at that time and saw America as a real threat to their global rule. It was becoming too
strong and so needed to be divided. Thus the people of those times were played....just as we
are today. Manipulated into war. Of course America despite the Civil War , continued to grow
and prosper so the elite devised another plan. Plan "B" has worked better than they could
have ever imagined. They have infected the "soul" of America and the infection is spreading
rapidly.Everyone , please re-read oilman2 comments (31)
Thanks B, precisely my thinking. It has a smell of vendetta. And I believe this sort of old
testament thinking is very common in the u.s. of A. What's currently happening will further
alienate both sides and lead to even more urgent need to externalize an internal problem via
more wars.
In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of
the Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located,
as one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points
out, some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania,
four) and at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil
War.
How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two
key periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil
rights movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.
To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept
of a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed
by the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of
the Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built!USA Today notes
that 35 Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.
But when these statues!be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee
or Stonewall Jackson!were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do
with paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to
black disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension.
I don't know if b. realizes how many German monuments got destroyed because people did not
wish to recall this particular part of history, the bomb raids of the allies helped, of
course, but there are cemeteries of Marx, Engels and Lenin statues, and
only revisionists recall what was destroyed
after WWII
.
Young people need some space to breath. They don't need monuments of war heros.
b wrote "Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or
group. They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories..."
Symbols indeed, traits in cultural landscapes. This piece may add another dimension to the
importance of cultural landscape in the context of this conversation:
"To this day, the question remains: why would the Southerners remember and celebrate a losing
team, and how come the non-Southerners care about it so passionately? A convenient answer
revolves around the issue of slavery; i.e., a commemoration of the era of slavery for the
former, and, for the latter, the feeling that the landscape reminders of that era should be
entirely erased."
and
"In the past two decades, the American(s)' intervention has brought down the statues of
Hussein, Gaddafi, Davis, and Lee respectively. Internationally, the work seems to be
completed. Domestically, the next stage will be removing the names of highways, libraries,
parks, and schools of the men who have not done an illegal act. Eventually, all such traits
in the cultural landscape of Virginia may steadily disappear, because they are symbols of
Confederacy."
http://www.zokpavlovic.com/conflict/the-war-between-the-states-of-mind-in-virginia-and-elsewhere/
It warms my heart that you are not a racist. But who really gives a fuck? And what makes you
think not favoring your own kind like every other racial and ethnic group does makes you a
better than those of your own racial group?? Something is wrong with you.
You are certainly entitled to your attitudes, hatreds, memories, affinities and such. You
are not entitled to your own history. History is what happened. Quit lying about it!
Lee is the past. Obama is the present. The 'Nobel Peace Prize' winner ran more concurrent
wars than any other president. He inaugurated the state execution of US citizens by drone
based on secret evidence presented in secret courts. He was in charge when ISIS was created
by the US Maw machine. What about removing his Nobel Peace Prize?
A long time ago Christians destroyed the old god's statues because they were pagan and didn't
comply with their religion (or is it ideology?). Muslims followed and did the same on what
was left. They even do that now when ISIS blows up ancient monuments.
What is next? Burning books? Lets burn the library of Alexandria once again...
Joeymac 69:
I didn't mean the Charlottesville mess was done without due process. I refer to the cases
that have happened these last few days - a trend that won't stop overnight.
Extremists from both sides aren't making friends on the other ones, and obviously are only
making matters worse.
Somebody 63:
"It is futile to discuss what the confederacy was then, when white supremacy groups consider
them their home today."
That's the whole fucking problem. By this logic, nobody should listen to Wagner or read
Nietzsche anymore. Screw that. Assholes and criminals from now should be judged according to
current values, laws and opinions, based on their very own crimes. People, groups, states,
religions from the past should be judged according to their very own actions as well, and not
based on what some idiot would fantasize they were 1.500 years later.
Looks like the Lee apologetics and claims that the war was about state's rights (go read the
CSA constitution, it tramples the rights of its own member states to *not* be slave holding)
or tariffs are alive and well in these comments. That's what these statues represent: the
utter perversion of the historical record. And as pointed out @38, none of these statues are
from anywhere near the Civil War or Reconstruction era.
I think anyone and everyone who instigates a successful campaign to destroy a memorial which
glorifies war should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace & Sanity and be memorialised in
bronze, nearby, as a permanent reminder that war WAS a racket, until Reason prevailed.
No offense intended.
Arch-propagandist Rove said "[Those] in what we call the reality-based community, [who]
believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not
the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our
own reality [e.g Russia hacked the election]. And while you're studying that
reality!judiciously, as you will!we'll act again, creating other new realities [e.g. Neo-Nazi
White Supremacism], which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're
history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
There is a coup underway to get rid of Trump [who's 'unpardonable crime' seems to be that
he isn't going along with the War Party]. The War Party will try anything, anything, if there
is a hope that it will work to get rid of him. When Trump launched the cruise missiles
against Syria, there was a moment's silence, totally spooky given all the bs that was flying
... Would he start a war with Russia? Would Trump go all the way with that, as Clinton
probably would have done? When the attack fizzled out, the chorus resumed their attacks as
though nothing had happened.
Their tactical attacks change as they are revealed to be fakes. The current attack,
probably using War Party provacateurs operating on both sides, is the next tactical phase -
out with 'Russian Hacking the Election', in with 'Trump White Supremacist Nazi'. If there is
the standard CIA regime change plan behind this (as outlined by John Perkins and seen in
Ukraine, Libya, Syria)] and the relatively passive actions don't work, they will ultimately
resort to hard violence. At that stage, they resort to using snipers to kill people on both
sides.
The anti-fas' are supposedly liberal, anti-gun, but there already have been stories of
them training with weapons, even working with the Kurds in Syria so the ground is laid for
their use of weapons. There are those on the Trump side who would relish the excuse for gun
violence irrespective on consequence so the whole thing could spiral out of control very
rapidly and very dangerously.
Disclosure - I do not support Trump [or any US politico for that matter]. The whole US
political system is totally corrupt and morally bankrupt. Those that rise [or more accurately
those that are allowed to rise] to the top reflect that corruption and bankruptcy. This could
get very very messy.
There's nothing wrong with being racist. Racism is simply preference for one's extended
family. 'b' calls the admittedly rather goony lot at C'ville 'white supremacists'. But do
they want to enslave blacks or rule over non-whites? No. In fact most of the alt-right lament
the slave trade and all its ills, including mixing two groups who, as Lincoln pointed out,
had no future together. What the left wants to do is reduce Confederate American heritage and
culture down to the slavery issue, despite the fact only a few Southerners owned slaves.
Now, within ethnic European countries, should whites be supreme? You're goddamn right they
should. Just as the Japanese should practice 'yellow supremacy', and so on and so forth. Most
of you lot here, being liberals, will be in favour of no fault divorce. You understand there
can be irreconcilable differences which in way suggest either person is objectively bad. The
same applies to disparate ethnicities. If white Slovaks and Czechs can't get one, why would
white and non-white groups?
You lefties need to have a serious moral dialogue over your rejection of
ethno-nationalism! Time to get on the right side of history! Have you noticed the alt-right,
despite being comprised of 'hateful bigots', is favourably disposed toward Iran, Syria, and
Russia? That's because we consistently apply principles which can protect our racially,
culturally, religiously, and ethnically diverse planet, and mitigate conflict. But the woke
woke left (not a typo) meanwhile has to 'resist' imperialism by constantly vilifying America.
ITS NOT THAT I'M IN FAVOUR OF ASSAD OR PUTIN, ITS JUST THAT AMERICA IS SO NAUGHTY! OH, HOW
BASE ARE OUR MOTIVES. OH, WHAT A POX WE ARE. Weak tea. You have no theoretical arguments
against liberal interventionism or neoconservativism.
Newsflash folks. Hillary Clinton doesn't fundamentally differ from you in principle. She
merely differs on what methods should be employed to achieve Kojeve's universal homogeneous
state. Most of you just want to replace global capitalism with global socialism. Seen how
occupy wall street turned out? Didn't make a dent. See how your precious POCs voted for the
neoliberal war monger? Diversity increases the power of capital. The only force which can
beat globalization is primordial tribalism.
Lee actually thought the Civil War an awful tragedy. He was asked to choose between his
state and his country. That's not much different from being asked to choose between your
family and your clan.
Lee was a racist.
That might be true, depending on one's definition of a racist. But then, why should Abraham
Lincoln get a pass? It's well known that he did not start the Civil War to end slavery --
that idea only occurred to him halfway through the conflict. But there's also the fact that,
while he was never a great fan of slavery, he apparently did not believe in the natural
equality of the races, and
he
even once professed to have no intention of granting blacks equality under the law:
"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was
really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While
I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the
question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in
regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about
in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not
nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM
HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will
forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And
inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position
of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the
superior position assigned to the white race."
It turns out that history's a complicated thing! To bad it wasn't all written by Hollywood
with a bunch of cartoon villains and heroes ...
One gets the impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved
"punishment" for those who voted wrongly - i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump
voters will dislike statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign
to take them down even more.
You nailed it, b. The way things are headed, I now wonder if I will someday be arrested
for owning Lynard Skynard albums (the covers of which usually had Confederate battle flags)
or for having watched Dukes of Hazard shows as a child. It's starting to get that crazy.
Anyway, thanks for running a sane blog in a mad world!
Good interview with a Black, female pastor in Charlottsville who was in church when the march
began Friday night. They caught a lot that wasn't on network news.
"Don't let this site get bogged down in history that is being constantly rewritten on
Wikipedia. Don't buy into the left/right division process. Don't let your self identify with
either group, as they are being led by provocateurs.
The lies we know of regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya - aren't they enough to force people to
disbelieve our media completely? The HUGE lies in our media about what is going on in
Venezuela should be quite enough (bastante suficiente) to make most people simply disbelieve.
But they cannot because they are only allowed to see and hear what our government approves -
and for our government, lying is quite legal now.
Let the emotions go - they are pushed via media to force you to think in white or black,
right or left, old vs young - any way that is divisive. Getting beaten for a statue would
likely make the guy who posed for it laugh his butt off most likely..."
Posted by: Oilman2 | Aug 16, 2017 3:09:32 PM | 31
Well said. Hope to see your thoughts in the future.
And as always, Karlof1 you have some insights I rarely get ever else (especially not in a
comment section)
______________________________
"The US Civil War can't be boiled down to having just one cause; it's causes were
multiple, although slavery--being an economic and social system--resides at its core. As an
historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical
relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong;
better to display the Spirit of '76 flag if stars and stripes are to be displayed. (I wonder
what will become of the UK's Union Jack if Scotland votes to leave the UK.) Personal display
of the Stars and Bars for me amounts to a political statement which people within the Outlaw
US Empire still have the right to express despite the animus it directs at myself and other
non-Anglo ethnicities. (I'm Germanic Visigoth with Spanish surname--people are surprised at
my color when they hear my name.)
The current deep dysfunction in the Outlaw US Empire's domestic politics mirrors that of
the latter 1850s somewhat but the reasons are entirely different yet solvable--IF--the
populous can gain a high degree of solidarity."
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 16, 2017 3:51:18 PM | 45
____________________________
Also, somebody @63, very poignant to mention. While I could care less whether about some
statues stand or fall (it helps living outside the empire), to deny that they are (generally)
symbols of racism, or were built with that in mind, is a little off base in my eyes. Going to
repost this quote because I think it had quite a bit of value in this discussion.
"In 2016 the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of
thE Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located, as
one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points out,
some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania, four) and
at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil War.
How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two key
periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil rights
movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.
To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept of
a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed by
the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of the
Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built!USA Today notes that 35
Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.
But when these statues!be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee or
Stonewall Jackson!were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do with
paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to black
disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension."
Racism means zero understanding or tolerance of other people/cultures, an attitude that
ones own culture or skin colour or group is far superior to those 'others'.
Hear, hear. Generally, a resurgence of American nationalism WILL take the form of populist
socialism because it will mark a turning away from the global police state which America is
leading currently and will replace it with nationalistic spending on socialist programs with
an emphasis on decreased military spending. This will continue ideally until a balance of low
taxation and government regulation form a true economy which begins at a local level from the
ground up.
In 1861, the vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, offered this
foundational explanation of the Confederate cause:
"Its corner-stone rests, upon the
great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to
the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
This, our new government, is the
first, in the history of the world,
based upon this great physical, philosophical, and
moral truth.
"
how much public space in the US should be dedicated to monuments honoring these people in
the coming century? and for the children and grandchildren of slaves walking by them every
day? what about their heritage? and the public monuments to the indigenous people of this
land who we genocided? oh right, as a country we have still not even officially recognized
that genocide. monuments should not be solely a reflection of the past, but of the future, of
who we want to be. who we choose to recognize in our public spaces says a lot about us.
It's pretty fair too say several of the "alt-right" leaders who planned this event agent are
provocateurs or Sheep Dipped assets running honeypot "white nationalist" operations.
You can see from the make-up of the phony "Nazis" in the groups and their continued use of
various propaganda that serves only to tie people and movements OPPOSED by the Deep State to
"Nazis" and racist ideology, you can see how on the ground level, this event has psyop
planners' fingerprints all over it.
It's also fair too say the complicit media's near universal take on the event signals a
uniform, ready-made reaction more than likely dictated to them from a single source.
Trump is attacked. The ACLU is attacked. Peace activists opposed to the CIA's regime
change operation in Syria are attacked. Tucker Carlson is attacked. Everyone attacked that
the CIA and various other aspects of the Deep State want attacked as if the MSM were all sent
the same talking points memo.
And keep in mind, this all comes right after the news was starting to pick up on the story
that the Deep State's bullshit narrative about a "Russian hack" was falling apart.
Also keep in mind it comes at a time when 600,000 Syrians returned home after the CIA's
terrorist regime change operation fell apart.
The statues were erected when the KKK was at its peak, to keep the blacks in their place.
They started getting torn down after the 2015 massacre of black churchgoers by a Nazi. For
once, don't blame Clinton.
My only argument with your post is "Chattel Slavery was introduced in the Western
Hemisphere"
Chattel = movable property as opposed to your house. In that day and long before women and
children were chattel.
Thinking about what might have been might help. If the south had won would we have had a
strong enough central government to create and give corporate charters and vast rights of way
to railroads which then cross our nation. Would states have created their own individual
banking systems negating the need for the all controlling Federal reserve? Would states have
their own military units willing to join other states to repel an attack instead of the MIC
which treats the rest of the world like expendable slaves?
Before our constitution there was the Articles of Confederation. Article 1,2+3.....
Article I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America."
Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every
Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the
United States, in Congress assembled.
Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with
each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and
general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or
attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any
other pretense whatever.
This first set of laws in the new world was later undone in a secret convention with
Madison, input from Jefferson and others found on our money and other honorariums. 1868 gave
us the 14th amendment to the constitution that freed all who are born within this nation and
were given equal rights. (Not saying that this worked for all slaves. Within a few years this
was used to create corporate persons with access to the bill of rights.
I am thinking there were many reasons that people who lived in those times had to fight
for what they did. We today are not in a position to judge why individuals fought. Certainly
many poor white southerners who owned no slaves at all fought and died. Was it to keep slaves
they did not own enslaved or did they fight and die for issues around protection of local or
state rights, freedoms and way of life?
Histories are written and paid for by the winners who control that particular present time
for the glorification of those rulers. A vast removal of historical artifacts speaks of a
weak nation fading into the west's need to clean up some points from history of mean and
brutal behaviors which we as a nation support now in the present but try and make it about
others.
A paragragh here from lemur 77 comment...
"Now, within ethnic European countries, should whites be supreme? You're goddamn right they
should. Just as the Japanese should practice 'yellow supremacy', and so on and so forth. Most
of you lot here, being liberals, will be in favour of no fault divorce. You understand there
can be irreconcilable differences which in way suggest either person is objectively bad. The
same applies to disparate ethnicities. If white Slovaks and Czechs can't get one, why would
white and non-white groups?"
What is the United States of America? It is made up of British, French, Spanish and
Russian territories aquired or conquered, the original colonists in turn taking them from the
native inhabitants. The US has had a largley open imigration policy, people of all cultures,
languages and skin colours and religions.
Why should white Europeans be supreme in the US lemur?
The following is the guts of a posting from Raw Story that I see as quite related.
"
White House senior strategist Steve Bannon is rejoicing at the criticism President Donald
Trump is receiving for defending white nationalism.
Bannon phoned The American Prospect progressive writer and editor Robert Kuttner Tuesday,
according to his analysis of the interview.
In the interview, Bannon dismissed ethno-nationalists as irrelevant.
"Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element," Bannon noted.
"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.
Bannon claimed to welcome the intense criticism Trump has received.
"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want
them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go
with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
Kuttner described Bannon as being in "high spirits" during the call
"You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and
therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely
blamed for his boss's continuing indulgence of white supremacists," Kuttner explained. "But
Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of
taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his
rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury."
"They're wetting themselves," Bannon said of opponents he planned to oust at State and
Defense.
"
Curtis 6 isn't me. However, I somewhat agree with the point.
Joe 41
Very true. Lee saw himself as defending Virginia. Slavery was the chief issue used in the
states declarations of secession. But the end goal was a separate govt (that actually banned
the importation of new slaves).
Nemesis 57
Excellent. Racism was bad in the North, too.
Strange how the left are pulling down statues of democrats, and the right are fighting to
have them stand. The confederates were democrats, but nobody seem to remember that now
anymore.
Nothing strange about it. The Democrats dropped the southern racists and the Republicans
picked them up with the Southern Strategy. It's all pretty well documented. The current
Republicans are not heirs to Lincoln in any meaningful way.
...."The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I
want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we
go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.".....
Those who make silly talk about "Patriots and Traitors" (Swallows and Amazons?) are being
obtuse about their history. The whole system was racist through and through, depended upon it
and was built upon it, starting with the very first rapacious sorties inland from the swampy
coast.
Some excellent commentary here, including james's percipient notes, Grieved's point,
RUKidding's and karlof1's, perry's observations and speculations.
Aside, this "99% v.1%" discourse is disempowering and one has to ask whose interests such
talk and attendant disempowerment serve.
This is a meaningful post on a touchy subject. Global Brahmins are looting the developed
world. Color revolutions and ethnic rifts make great fire sales. In a sane world, old
monuments would molder away in obscurity. Instead a faux resistance to divide and conquer the
little people has commenced. But, it is careening out of control due to austerity and job
loss. Deplorable Bushwhackers are fighting for tribalism and supremacy. After the 27 year old
war in Iraq, subjected Sunnis turned to their ethnic myths and traditions to fight back;
obliterating two ancient cities and themselves. The Chaos is coming west.
The problem is that people focus on the effects of history, like slavery and the holocaust,
but if you go into the causes and context of these events, then you get accused of
rationalizing them. Yet being ignorant of the causes is when history gets repeated. By the
time another seriously bad effect rises, it's too late.
As for slavery, it's not as though peoples lives haven't been thoroughly commodified before
and continue to be. Yes, slavery in the early part of this country was horrendous and the
resulting racism arose from the more reptilian parts of people's minds, but that part still
exists and needs to be better understood, not dismissed.
It should also be noted that if it wasn't for slavery, the African American population would
otherwise only be about as large as the Arab American population. It is a bit like being the
offspring of a rape. It might the absolute worst aspect of your life, but you wouldn't be
here otherwise. It's the Native Americans who really got screwed in the deal, but there are
not nearly enough of them left, to get much notice.
PS,
For those who know their legal history, no, I'm not using a pseudonym. There is a lot of
family history in this country, from well before it was a country.
"... Writing in the Financial Times , former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that London's AIIB decision and its aftermath "may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system." ..."
"... Summers was both right and wrong. The U.S. role as the hegemonic power in international politics and economics indeed is being challenged. But this did not start when Britain and the others decided to sign-up with the AIIB. America has been slowly, almost imperceptibly, losing its grip on global leadership for some time, and the Great Recession merely accelerated that process. China's successful launch of the AIIB and its OBOR offspring merely accentuates that process. ..."
"... While President Trump lacks any serious, coherent worldview, there are more than enough Republican members of the foreign policy establishment to ensure that he doesn't break with America's post-1945, bipartisan policy of primacy. And Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again'' certainly puts him in the camp of U.S. global dominance. ..."
"... But Paul Kennedy was correct when he noted in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers that in the history of the modern international system (since around 1500) no state has managed to remain permanently atop the great power pyramid. "American exceptionalism" notwithstanding, the United States will not be an exception. ..."
"... Pax Americana was the product of a unique post-World War II constellation of power. As scholars such as Kennedy and Gilpin have pointed out, when World War II ended the United States accounted for half of the world's manufacturing output and controlled some two-thirds of the world's gold and foreign exchange. Only America could project air and naval power globally. ..."
"... the United States kept the Soviet Union at bay until that artificial regime collapsed of its own weight. ..."
"... today China's AIIB presents a double-barreled challenge to U.S. leadership of the global economy as well as to Pax Americana's institutional (and ideational) foundations. The AIIB aims at enhancing China's role both in managing the international economy and in international development. With AIIB China means to demonstrate its seriousness in demanding a share of decision-making power in the Bretton Woods legacy institutions, the IMF and World Bank, reflecting its current economic and financial clout. The AIIB's impact, however, transcends international economic affairs and reflects the shifting Sino-American balance of power. ..."
"... because of the AIIB, America's "international credibility and influence are being threatened." ..."
"... For their part, the Chinese regarded the U.S. stance as an attempt to counter China's rise and its ambition to become the dominant power in East Asia. As China's former Vice Minister of Finance, Wei Jianguo, put it, "You could think of this as a basketball game in which the U.S. wants to set the duration of the game, size of the court, the height of the basket and everything else to suit itself. In fact, the U.S. just wants to exclude China from the game." ..."
"... China's rise within the post-1945 international order doesn't mean it has any interest in preserving Pax Americana's core. On the contrary, the evidence suggests China wants to reshape the international order to reflect its own interests, norms, and values. As Martin Jacques puts it: ..."
"... The main plan of American soft power is democracy within nation-states; China by way of contrast emphasizes democracy between nation-states!most notably in respect for sovereignty!and democracy in the world system. China's criticism of the Western-dominated international system and its governing institutions strikes a strong chord with the developing world at a time when these institutions are widely recognized to be unrepresentative and seriously flawed. ..."
"... Rules and institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they reflect the distribution of power in the international system. In global politics, the rules are made by those who rule. ..."
"... As E. H. Carr, the renowned English historian of international politics, once observed, a rules-based international order "cannot be understood independently of the political foundation on which it rests and the political interests which it serves." The post-World War II international order is an American order that, while preserving world stability for a long time, primarily privileged U.S. and Western interests. ..."
"... But Beijing, by all the evidence, does not see it that way. And OBOR and the AIIB prove the point. Instead of living within the geopolitical, economic, and institutional confines imposed by Pax Americana, an increasingly powerful China will seek to revise the international order so that it reflects its own political and economic interests. Thus are OBOR and the AIIB straws in the wind. And, as the great Bob Dylan said, you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. ..."
"... Paradoxically the acceleration in the decline began with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Incredible hubris followed, and we are reaping the usual results. ..."
No state stays on top of the great power pyramid forever.
August 8, 2017 In mid-May, leaders of 29 nations, and representatives from some 80 others, descended
on Beijing to discuss China's ambitious "One Belt One Road" (OBOR) development initiative!also known
to some as the "New Silk Road." This plan is the follow-on to China's creation several years ago
of the Asia Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB), a major new international financial institution
to foster economic development in "emerging market" nations.
OBOR, a signature policy of Chinese president Xi Jinping, calls for investing massive amounts
of money ($1 trillion, according to some reports) to promote trade and economic development by constructing
transportation links that will tie together East Asian manufacturing hubs with Southeast Asia, Central
Asia, Africa, and Southwest Asia. These new transportation routes also will connect China with the
participating nations and Europe. China's aim is twofold: to create new markets for the goods and
services it produces, and to extend its geopolitical influence. Some analysts see OBOR as a Chinese
version of the Marshall Plan, the important post-World War II American initiative that helped rebuild
Western Europe and laid the foundation for European economic unity that ultimately culminated in
the European Union.
With OBOR, China is following the example of Great Britain and the United States (as well as pre-World
War I European great powers such as Germany). In the 19th century, the expansion of the British empire,
including what scholars Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher describe as its "informal empire," was
driven by the perceived need to find outlets for the United Kingdom's "surplus" goods and capital!that
is, goods and capital that could not be profitably absorbed by the domestic economy. When the United
States burst onto the world stage as a great power in the late 19th century, acquiring Puerto Rico,
Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines, it imitated Britain's pursuit of both informal and formal empire
for the same reason: the belief that America's continuing economic growth depended on exporting American
capital and goods. China today faces the problem of insufficient demand for its products and limited
prospects for profitable domestic investment. Beijing is responding to these problems pretty much
as Britain and the United States did in the latter part of the 19th century: by seeking new markets
and attractive investment opportunities abroad.
As both Britain and the United States demonstrated, economic expansion begets geopolitical expansion.
Economic clout can buy a lot of political influence. But the lines of communication linking the home
country to its overseas markets must be protected. And political stability must be maintained where
the home country is investing. For Britain and the United States, economic expansion resulted in
the inexorable expansion of their military power and diplomatic sway. We can expect OBOR to have
a similar effect on China. It is a powerful incentive for China to expand its military projection
capabilities. Beijing will be compelled to assume an increasingly active role in managing regional
security in places affected by OBOR!especially in Central Asia and Pakistan, which are plagued by
political instability and terrorism.
OBOR is a milestone on China's path to great power status and is one of several indicators of
receding American power!not just geopolitically, but also in matters involving the international
economy and international institutions. When discussing the Sino-American rivalry, attention is focused
on the military balance between the United States and China and to flashpoints between the two countries
that could spark a conflict!the South China Sea, the East China Sea, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula.
But these more intangible economic and diplomatic developments will be no less important in shaping
relations between Washington and Beijing as in determining the fate of the world order built by the
United States following World War II!that is, Pax Americana, or what is sometimes referred to as
"the liberal rules-based international order."
Since the early 2000s there has been an ongoing conversation among scholars, policymakers, and
members of the broader American foreign policy establishment about whether U.S. power is in decline.
The question actually extends back to the 1980s, with the publication of Yale historian Paul Kennedy's
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and other important books on the subject by scholars
David Calleo and Robert Gilpin. The controversy surrounding decline dissipated, however, when the
Soviet Union imploded and Japan's economic bubble burst. In one fell swoop, America's primary military
and economic competitors fell off the geopolitical chessboard.
The decline issue remained dormant through the "the unipolar moment" of the 1990s but was rekindled
with China's rapid great-power emergence in the early 2000s. China's rise is the flip side of American
decline. The central geopolitical question of the early 21st century is whether Pax Americana can
survive China's rise and the resulting shift of world geopolitical and economic power from west to
east. The U.S. foreign policy establishment is allergic to the word "decline." After all, as Jon
Huntsman declared during his brief presidential run in 2012: "Decline is un-American." Perhaps so,
but that doesn't mean that it's not happening.
Though Huntsman has plenty of company on this issue in the foreign policy establishment, we would
do better to heed the advice of the great Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige. "Don't look back,"
he said, "because something may be gaining on you." A glance at the rear-view mirror shows China
rapidly closing the gaps with the United States in all the dimensions of power upon which the Pax
Americana was built: military, economic, and institutional.
In the last decade, China has displaced the United States as the world's leading manufacturing
power. In 2014, according to the World Bank, China passed America as the world's largest economy
(measured by purchasing power parity). In 1980, the United States accounted for about 25 percent
of gross world product. Today it accounts for around 18 percent. Some analysts have come up with
clever arguments to discount the importance of these economic trends. They are unconvincing. But
the reality of U.S. decline is more than just a matter of numbers; it is also evident in Washington's
diminishing ability to manage the international economy and in the growing challenges to many legacy
institutions of Pax Americana.
A strain of thinking called hegemonic stability theory holds that a liberal, open international
economy requires an overarching power to manage and stabilize the system by creating a political
and security order that permits economic openness. The United States filled this role for half a
century, from 1945 until the Great Recession. The world's economic hegemon must provide public goods
that benefit the international system as a whole, including: making the rules for the international
economic order; opening its domestic market to other states' exports; supplying liquidity to the
global economy; and providing a reserve currency. Having declined to grasp the mantle of leadership
during the 1930s, Washington seized it decisively after World War II. Johns Hopkins professor Michael
Mandelbaum has argued that, following the Cold War, the United States essentially acted as a de facto
government for the international system by providing security and managing the global economy.
The Great Recession impaired the United States' ability to provide leadership for the international
economy. After all, an economic hegemon is supposed to solve global economic crises, not cause them.
But America plunged the world into economic crisis when its financial system seized up with the sub-prime
mortgage crisis. A hegemon is supposed to be the lender of last resort in the international economy,
but the United States became the borrower of first resort!the world's largest debtor. When the global
economy falters, the economic hegemon must assume responsibility for kick-starting recovery by purchasing
other nations' goods. From 1945 to the Great Recession, America's willingness to consume foreign
goods constituted the primary firewall against global economic downturns. During the Great Recession,
however, the U.S. economy proved too infirm to lead the global economy back to health.
At the April 2009 G20 meeting in London, President Barack Obama conceded that, in key respects,
the United States' days as economic hegemon were numbered because America is too deeply in debt to
continue as the world's consumer of last resort. Instead, he said, the world would have to look to
China (and other emerging market states plus Germany) to be the motors of global recovery.
Another example of how the U.S. has lost its grip on global economic leadership is its failure
to prevail over the Europeans (read: Germany) in the transatlantic "austerity versus stimulus" debate
that commenced in late 2009. Reflecting their different historical experiences, the United States
and Europe (more specifically, Germany and the European Central Bank, or ECB) adopted divergent fiscal
policies during the Great Recession. Obama administration economic policymakers were guided by the
Keynesian lessons learned from the 1930s Great Depression: to dig out of a deep economic slump, the
federal government should boost demand by pump-priming the economy through deficit spending, and
the Federal Reserve should add further stimulus through low interest rates and easy money. Obama
administration policymakers and leading American economists were haunted by the "1937 analogy"!FDR's
"recession within the Depression''!demonstrating that if stimulus is withdrawn prematurely, a nascent
recovery may be aborted.
On the other hand, Germany!the EU's economic engine!has long been haunted by the "1923 analogy":
the fear that inflation can become uncontrollable, with disastrous economic, social, and political
consequences. From the founding of post-World War II West Germany until the advent of the European
Monetary Union and eventually the Euro, Germany's central Bundesbank maintained a primary mission
of combatting inflation and preserving the Deutschmark's value. For the German government, assurance
that the new ECB would follow the Bundesbank's sound money policy was a sine qua non for Berlin's
decision to give up the Deutschmark in favor of the Euro.
This U.S.-European divide on austerity versus stimulus was apparent as early as the April 2009
London G20 summit, where the United States wanted to rebalance the international economy by inducing
the Europeans (most particularly, Germany, which, with China, was one of the two large surplus economies)
to lift the Continent out of the Great Recession by emulating Washington's use of deficit spending
to galvanize economic revival. Washington wanted Germany to export less and import more. Berlin flatly
refused. German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued that for states!especially ones already deeply in
debt!to accumulate more debt in an effort to spend themselves out of the Great Recession would only
set the stage for an even greater crisis down the road.
Washington's inability to prevail over Berlin in the stimulus vs. austerity debate highlighted
waning U.S. power in the international economy. Jack Lew, then Treasury secretary, implicitly said
as much at the October 2015 IMF-World Bank annual meeting when he stated that the United States could
not be the "sole engine" of global growth.
But America's inability to get Germany to give up austerity was not the only indicator of America's
decreasing ability to shape the international economic agenda. During the Obama administration's
first term, the United States was unable to persuade China to allow the renminbi to appreciate to
Washington's preferred level (which the United States hoped would reduce China's export surplus to
the United States while simultaneously boosting American exports to China).
U.S. economic and fiscal troubles have contributed significantly to the fraying of Pax Americana's
institutional global framework. The Great Recession spurred calls for a major overhaul of the international
institutional order as evidenced by the emergence of the G20, demands for IMF and World Bank reform,
and a push for expanded membership of the UN Security Council. The past decade or so also has seen
the creation of new international organizations and groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).
As American power wanes, a parallel or "shadow" international order is being constructed as an alternative
to Pax Americana. Perhaps the most dramatic example of his is Beijing's Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank.
As Beijing rolled out its AIIB plans, the Obama administration kicked into high gear diplomatically
in an attempt to squelch it. As the New York Times reported, Washington "lobbied against the
[AIIB] with unexpected determination and engaged in a vigorous campaign to persuade important allies
to shun the project." Washington's attempt to dissuade its allies from joining the AIIB failed. The
dam burst when, in an Ides of March 2015 decision, Britain announced it was going to become a member
of the AIIB ("Et Tu Britain?"). London's decision to join the AIIB set off a stampede as other states
on the fence rushed to sign up for membership. Those joining included U.S. allies such as France,
Germany, Italy, Australia, South Korea, even Israel and Taiwan. Beijing's diplomatic coup in attracting
widespread support for its AIIB initiative from long-standing U.S. allies was viewed as a direct
challenge to America's global geopolitical and economic leadership.
Writing in the Financial Times , former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that
London's AIIB decision and its aftermath "may be remembered as the moment the United States lost
its role as the underwriter of the global economic system."
Summers was both right and wrong. The U.S. role as the hegemonic power in international politics
and economics indeed is being challenged. But this did not start when Britain and the others decided
to sign-up with the AIIB. America has been slowly, almost imperceptibly, losing its grip on global
leadership for some time, and the Great Recession merely accelerated that process. China's successful
launch of the AIIB and its OBOR offspring merely accentuates that process.
Not surprisingly, U.S. policymakers and the wider foreign policy establishment brush off any possibility
of diminishing U.S. power. Recent books by leading foreign policy analysts (including Josef Joffe,
Robert Lieber, and Joseph S. Nye Jr.) assert that U.S. power is robust, and that the 21st century,
like the 20th, will be an "American century." Meanwhile, during the Obama administration U.S. foreign
policy officials never missed a chance to assert America's continuing role as a global hegemon (though
President Obama's own views on U.S. primacy seemed more nuanced). For example, the Obama administration's
2015 National Security Strategy, a twenty-nine page document, invoked the term "American leadership"
more than 100 times.
While President Trump lacks any serious, coherent worldview, there are more than enough Republican
members of the foreign policy establishment to ensure that he doesn't break with America's post-1945,
bipartisan policy of primacy. And Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again'' certainly puts him in
the camp of U.S. global dominance.
But Paul Kennedy was correct when he noted in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
that in the history of the modern international system (since around 1500) no state has managed to
remain permanently atop the great power pyramid. "American exceptionalism" notwithstanding, the United
States will not be an exception.
Pax Americana was the product of a unique post-World War II constellation of power. As scholars
such as Kennedy and Gilpin have pointed out, when World War II ended the United States accounted
for half of the world's manufacturing output and controlled some two-thirds of the world's gold and
foreign exchange. Only America could project air and naval power globally.
And, of course, the United States alone had atomic weapons. America used its commanding economic,
military, and political supremacy to lay the foundations of the post-World War II international order,
reflected in such institutions as the United Nations, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which has morphed into the World Trade
Organization). Additionally, the United States kept the Soviet Union at bay until that artificial
regime collapsed of its own weight.
All this represented a remarkable achievement, ensuring relative peace and prosperity for more
than half a century. But today China's AIIB presents a double-barreled challenge to U.S. leadership
of the global economy as well as to Pax Americana's institutional (and ideational) foundations. The
AIIB aims at enhancing China's role both in managing the international economy and in international
development. With AIIB China means to demonstrate its seriousness in demanding a share of decision-making
power in the Bretton Woods legacy institutions, the IMF and World Bank, reflecting its current economic
and financial clout. The AIIB's impact, however, transcends international economic affairs and reflects
the shifting Sino-American balance of power.
Washington said it opposed AIIB because of doubts that it would adhere to the same environmental,
governance, lending, transparency, labor, and human rights standards practiced by the IMF, World
Bank, and Asian Development Bank. But Treasury's Lew was more candid when he said that, because
of the AIIB, America's "international credibility and influence are being threatened."
For their part, the Chinese regarded the U.S. stance as an attempt to counter China's rise
and its ambition to become the dominant power in East Asia. As China's former Vice Minister of Finance,
Wei Jianguo, put it, "You could think of this as a basketball game in which the U.S. wants to set
the duration of the game, size of the court, the height of the basket and everything else to suit
itself. In fact, the U.S. just wants to exclude China from the game."
The Obama administration's ballyhooed Asian pivot was based on the assumption that, although the
ASEAN nations of Asia, along with Australia and South Korea, are being pulled into China's economic
orbit, they will turn to the United States as a geopolitical counterweight. However, Beijing's ability
to get ASEAN, South Korea, and other neighboring states to jump on the AIIB bandwagon suggests this
assumption may be erroneous. The pull of Beijing's economic power may override security concerns
and draw these states into China's geopolitical orbit. The trajectory of ASEAN's trade flows is revealing.
In 1993, the United States accounted for 18 percent of ASEAN's total trade (imports and exports combined),
and China for only 2 percent. By 2013 the United States' share of ASEAN's total trade had shrunk
to 8.2 percent while China's had jumped to 14 percent. The trend lines indicate that in coming years
China's share of regional trade will continue to rise while that of the U.S. will decline.
Thus while OBOR and the AIIB don't get the same attention from U.S. grand strategists as does
China's military buildup, they are equally important in signaling the ongoing power transition between
the United States and China in East Asia. Among American security studies scholars, even those who
once firmly believed that unipolarity would last far into the future now grudgingly concede that
the era of American hegemony may be drawing to a close. They console themselves, however, with the
thought that the United States can cushion itself against future power declines and the loss of hegemony
by taking advantage of what they see as a still-open window to "lock in" Pax Americana's essential
features!its institutions, rules, and norms!so that they outlive unipolarity. As Princeton's G. John
Ikenberry puts it, the United States should act today to put in place an institutional framework
"that will safeguard our interests in future decades when we will not be a unipolar power."
Ikenberry argues that China, having risen within the post-1945 international system, has no incentive
to overturn it. His argument is superficially attractive because it posits that, even if the material
foundations of U.S. dominance wither, its institutional and ideational essence will live on. This
almost certainly is incorrect. China's rise within the post-1945 international order doesn't
mean it has any interest in preserving Pax Americana's core. On the contrary, the evidence suggests
China wants to reshape the international order to reflect its own interests, norms, and values. As
Martin Jacques puts it:
The main plan of American soft power is democracy within nation-states; China by way of
contrast emphasizes democracy between nation-states!most notably in respect for sovereignty!and
democracy in the world system. China's criticism of the Western-dominated international system
and its governing institutions strikes a strong chord with the developing world at a time when
these institutions are widely recognized to be unrepresentative and seriously flawed.
Thus the "lock-in" concept isn't likely to work because China, along with much of the developing
world, does not accept the foundations upon which the post-World War II liberal international order
rests.
For many American scholars and policy makers the notion of a "liberal, rules-based, international
order" has a talismanic quality. They believe that rules and institutions are politically neutral
and thus ipso facto beneficial for all. Many proponents of "lock-in" have constructed a geopolitically
antiseptic world, one uncontaminated by clashing national interests. In this world, great power competition
and conflict are transcended by rules, norms, and international institutions. The problem is that
this misconstrues how the world works. Great power politics is about power. Rules and institutions
do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they reflect the distribution of power in the international system.
In global politics, the rules are made by those who rule.
As E. H. Carr, the renowned English historian of international politics, once observed, a
rules-based international order "cannot be understood independently of the political foundation on
which it rests and the political interests which it serves." The post-World War II international
order is an American order that, while preserving world stability for a long time, primarily privileged
U.S. and Western interests.
Proponents of "lock-in" are saying that China will!indeed, must!agree to be a "responsible stakeholder"
(with Washington defining the meaning of "responsibility") in an international order that it did
not construct and that exists primarily to advance the interests of the United States. In plain English,
what those who believe in "lock-in" expect is that an increasingly powerful China will continue to
accept playing second fiddle to the United States.
But Beijing, by all the evidence, does not see it that way. And OBOR and the AIIB prove the
point. Instead of living within the geopolitical, economic, and institutional confines imposed by
Pax Americana, an increasingly powerful China will seek to revise the international order so that
it reflects its own political and economic interests. Thus are OBOR and the AIIB straws in the wind.
And, as the great Bob Dylan said, you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is
blowing.
Christopher Layne is University Distinguished Professor of International Affairs, and Robert
M. Gates Chair in National Security, at Texas A&M University.
Thank you for a very interesting article. Still, I think there is a large issue not addressed:
Isn't China on the verge of a now unstoppable demographic catastrophe? How do you see that affecting
China's "rise" long term?
Professor Layne: You left out something very significantly causal re: decline of American power.
It is not mysterious or a deeply historic twist of inevitable fate.
Rather, we have spent TRILLIONS in vain military blood and treasure over the past 17 years,
with NOTHING to show for it – besides a destabilized region raining the most refugees since WW2
onto our allies, the Europeans (destabilizing THEM as well.)
This failure is not even being addressed, let alone changed. Policymakers responsible apparently
have clearance to continue this uselessness indefinitely.
A Chinese sage named Sun Tzu said it best, some 2500 years ago, in The Art of War:
" When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will
grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the
strain.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure
spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however
wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated
with long delays.
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. "
No mystery here. America is proving not to be Exceptional enough to survive elite mismanagement.
No. The rest of the world is merely catching up. The wealth that the US enjoyed relative to the
rest of the world in the decades following WWII was unprecedented, and is probably not a repeatable
phenomenon. If we are declining, it is only because we fail to appreciate the multi-latereral
nature of our world, and stick our nose where it doesn't belong.
We're in decline not because of China but because of the decisions we make (or fail to make).
We devote too many resources towards wars and asset appreciation (financial bubbles) and not enough
into investing in ourselves (education and infrastructure). In the short run, the strong military
made us look strong to the world snd ourselves but we never examined whether that was the most
judicious use of our resources for the long run.
This is not anything new. Eisenhower spoke of this 50 some odd years ago.
If we are in decline and there are signs that is the case. It is by our doing. Over expanded strategic
goals and dismantling the very social structure(s) that maintains, sustains and protects longevity.
The abandonment of national identity by our leadership class. They claim in the national interests,
but upon examining their policy agendas, immigration, bailout, lobbying rules, domestic agendas
and management, there's plenty to be concerned about.
" For Britain and the United States, economic expansion resulted in the inexorable expansion of
their military power and diplomatic sway. We can expect OBOR to have a similar effect on China.
It is a powerful incentive for China to expand its military projection capabilities."
The trick here is managing the relational dynamics so that whatever mechanisms one uses in
maintaining that power don't backlash to the point of disruptive violence or using sufficient
force that such backlash doesn't occur.
The British/European model model of colonial rule was unsustainable. It might be wise to examine
Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, maybe Germany but comparing these socialist smaller states would
be a tricky comparison.
The idea that the US would maintain its world standing has been laughable for decades. A nation
cannot excel when you have a population as narcissistic and willfully ignorant like we have now.
The economic downfall is only a symptom of the ever deepening moral failures we find ourselves
fighting over and even clinging to. I am no fan of socialism or communism, but what we have created
here in America is an out of control monster set to destroy all in its path.
"The Obama administration's ballyhooed Asian pivot was based on the assumption that, although
the ASEAN nations of Asia, along with Australia and South Korea, are being pulled into China's
economic orbit, they will turn to the United States as a geopolitical counterweight. However,
Beijing's ability to get ASEAN, South Korea, and other neighboring states to jump on the AIIB
bandwagon suggests this assumption may be erroneous. The pull of Beijing's economic power may
override security concerns and draw these states into China's geopolitical orbit."
It is in this context -- South Korea, Japan, and other south Asian nations being drawn inexorably
into China's geopolitical orbit, thus overturning US post-WW2 hegemony in the region – that current,
much-exaggerated US concerns about North Korean nuclear weapons can best be understood.
The US is using North Korea's nuclear development – undertaken by North Korea as a defensive
measure against regime change by the US – as one of a series of pretexts aimed at preserving its
ever-diminishing post-WW2 hegemony in Asia.
At some point the US will begin to withdraw the 30,000 US troops stationed in South Korea and
the 30,000 US troops stationed in Japan – and will stop conducting military exercises and shows
of force near the Chinese border – and will sit down with China, North Korea, South Korea, and
Japan and begin the long process of negotiating the gradual, peaceful US acceptance of the new
geopolitical reality in east Asia.
The lesson I took from reading Paul Kennedy was, decline is a choice.
China, India and the Middle East could have competed with early modern Europe if centralized
multi-ethnic empires (Manchu, Mughal and Ottoman Empires) hadn't stifled the energy of those civilizations.
The Spanish could have stayed on top if, beginning in 1559, Philip II, III, and IV hadn't stubbornly
clung to ethnically dissimilar European territories such as the Netherlands, and if they hadn't
wasted their nation's strength in the wars of the Counter Reformation.
Beginning with the 1670 Treaty of Dover, the French under Louis XIV and XV fell into the same
trap, wasting their strength in the service of the Counter Reformation and territorial ambitions
in the Netherlands.
The British could have stayed on top if they hadn't alienated the Americans, wasted their strength
on tropical imperialism and balance of power wars, and then surrendered their industrial lead
to Germany and America via the dogmatic embrace of free trade.
Germany might have replaced Britain as the new leading power if they had maintained the peace
with a simply foreign policy based on a strong alliance with Russia, instead of the Byzantine
complexity of Bismark's diplomacy followed by the belligerent buffoonery of Kaiser Wilhelm.
Prior to the Cold War, Americans did everything right. We grew from a tiny settlement in 1607
to a colossas possessing half (!) the world's GDP in 1947. We maintained the homogeneity, without
stifling the energy, of our people. Most of our wars were fought to obtain sparsely populated
temperate zone land for the colonization of our people – not for tropical imperialism, balance
of power, or international ideological crusades. Pragmatism, not ideology, guided our economic
policy. During the Cold War, we began sacrificing the interests of the American nation to the
newfangled ideology of "Americanism". Tentatively under Truman, and definitively beginning with
Kennedy, we undermined the homogeneity of our people with mass immigration from the whole world,
undermined our traditional morality with liberal social engineering, became the policeman of the
world intent on exporting "Americanism", and assumed an attitude of lofty contempt for our own
trade interests.
The Chinese, on the other hand, chose ascent when they purged The Gang of Four and substituted
Chinese ethno-nationalism for feverish Maoism as their guiding principle.
It is obvious that we are now in the decline phase of the life cycle of empires. See the British
general Sir John Bagot Glubb's book "The Course of Empire" and other writings.
Blue chip stocks yield to blue chopsticks! Human civilisation is a forward-moving perpetual motion
machine. It never stops and it never goes back. There is no "end of history". There is no point
at which human civilisation just stops dead in its tracks and never moves again until the sun
implodes in 10 million years and roasts us all. The world has always had its revisionists and
reactionaries who want to take their countries back to some real or imagined golden age. If we're
lucky, such people eventually disappear into Trotsky's famous "dustbin of history". If we're not
lucky, they start a war, lose it and then disappear into said dustbin, destroying their country
in the process and opening up the way for a new dominant power to emerge. Just as Britain dominated
the world by 1850 and the US by 1950, China will dominate the world by 2050. I don't really see
what disadvantage there is in that for Americans and for us in Europe, it looks very positive.
Machiavelli said that as between two tyrants, always choose the most distant. China is Europe's
distant tyrant. OBOR seems to be very much to Europe's advantage, displacing American hegemony
and undermining US hegemonists' attempts to use Putin's Russia as an instrument to keep Europe
under their control.
Being a confirmed Realist and having researched Realism what is going on today between ourselves,
the Chinese Reds, and Russia is quite understandably. Few share our Democracy model, it is too
messy.
Let's not be obtuse. This order was put in place by individuals in the USA because it was to
their economic benefit to do so. That in no way means that this order benefits all Americans or
even a majority. And to the tens of thousands of American soldiers who have died maintaining this
order it was to their great detriment.
I personally have no allegiance to "the liberal rules-based international order". If the Chinese
can do better, let them have at it.
The important question is not whether America is in decline. It is whether the American people's
living standards are in decline.
Empire is not cost effective or beneficial to the general welfare of a country. It only serves
to enrich a few, while creating domestic corruption and inequality.
The post-WW2 American empire, allegedly to contain Communism, really didn't benefit America.
And the costs have been enormous.
It did benefit bankers, defense contractors, scoundrels, and the Wall Street Washington cabal
centered on the CFR.
We wasted the post Cold War era believing there was an "End to History". Anyone with decent
understanding would have considered that trying for a unipolar moment was a huge mistake and a
world with various Great Powers was a more likely outcome.
Unipolar attempts don't work. Acknowledging the US as the greatest Great Power, among many,
is a much better idea than trying to keep the US as the sole Superpower. That isn't decline but
breaking through illusion.
The Soviet Union sustained 20 Million causalities in the Second World War while it moved its factories
east to keep them out of German hands. Contrast this with the US imperial elite who simply handed
over our industrial base to China. The result is that China's economy is growing a rate three
times that of the United States.
What goes up must come down
Spinnin' wheel got to go 'round
Talkin' 'bout your troubles it's a cryin' sin
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel spin
This thoughtful article is followed by thoughtful comments. One commenter already mentioned demographics.
Due to immigration, America is the only advanced country not facing a population implosion.
Another ace-in-the-whole is geography. We are protected by two oceans with weak friendly neighbors
on our land borders.We are blessed with rich resources. This includes rich agricultural land reachable
by navigable rivers and mineral wealth.
We have rich political and social institutions that hopefully can survive Trump.
While we are doing our best to squander these they give us a cushion.
The U.S. is in an inevitable decline. The only question is the extent of the economic sabotage
and outright wars that the Deep State will instigate to try to forestall the collapse.
Washington will not tolerate a second axis of power arising even if it is strictly economic.
Consider how American Elites used subversion to catalyze the coup in Ukraine. They will stop at
nothing to sustain U.S. hegemony in the larger global sphere.
Should China, Russia and Europe seek to integrate into a huge, contiguous Eurasian economic
marketplace independent of United States hegemonic interference, the Deep State will use all of
its military power to prevent it. (Especially ironic since death and destruction are becoming
America's primary exports.)
The current rumblings of American power projection in the South China Sea and Russian borders
are a set up for future conflicts. The United States regime deluded by arrogance and stupidity
and saturated by the cult of military exceptionalism can't say no to military coercion and war
as its primary foreign policy instrument.
With the Neocon/Neoliberal militarists now running the show, it's only going to get worse
We are in decline because the decisions we made during and after the cold war.
– we tried to buy goodwill ("allies") by using the "most favored nation" clause – outsourcing
manufacturing jobs, starting at the bottom of the sophistication scale (apparel, appliances ).
And all we have left is defense manufacturing jobs. We have no more jobs to give away to buy goodwill.
– while reducing taxes, we kept increasing defense related spending by borrowing money.
With all the senseless wars, we have a huge debt, not exactly something which gives you clout.
– we wasted brainpower on financial gimmicks which have zero contribution to economic strength.
Such gimmicks might mess up the economy – and we did this, too – for the whole world.
China took the market driven part of communist economy which was viciously stamped out by Stalin
– the New Economic Policy (NEP) – and built an economic powerhouse, with money to spend.
The decline of the United States can be directly correlated to the decline in our spiritual fervor
and the absence of the fear of God. Falling morals precipitate the fall of the nation. It's not
a question of if at this point, but when. You can argue whatever other factors you wish, but there
is a direct correlation between strength of a nation and God throughout human civilization.
Lots to chew on as they say, but a couple key points from the article. A US President represents
how the world view's we Americans. From all the so called turmoil, with both political parties
sent packing, Trump may in fact represent real America. The fantasy the left markets, of a social
democratic welfare state is a myth. Next, we have grown up on a diet of our President elect, being
Commander in Chief, of the worlds most powerful military. So I ask, did Bill Clinton or Barack
Obama seem to Americans, like a commander in chief. Bush wasn't capable of responding to 9-11,
he tried and failed. Last Commander in Chief we had in our image was Ronald Reagan. Any wonder
our enemies are making hay while the sunshines. So now we have two very very admirable foes. China
and Russia neither with western values. How we now fit is up in the air. Getting Trump impeached
or forced to resign replaced with whoever won't change millions of Americans.
I would take exception to some of these comments about inevitable decline. The word decline suggests
to some end. That is very different than retraction or change.
When one examines China, Russia, Europe, these nations have been in play as states for 1500
years. And despite periods of retraction have maintained some semblance of their origins, more
than some. Their cores remain intact as to culture and practice despite differing polities What
is key for the US is her youth. We are unable to match the strategic long term strategies as the
states mentions because we have not been around long enough to seal our core existence as a nation.
Mistaking youthful exuberance for wisdom of age is where we are. There is no mistaking that
the US can remain a major player in world events and we should. But that process need not be at
the expense of who we are are becoming or in lieu of it.
I will have to dig out my Zsun Tsu. It is easy to apply those admonitions out of their intended
context. Because so many different environmental war scenarios are addressed. For example, Asia
plays the long game. They are not thinking merely about this century, this decade, this year,
month . . . but the next century. Hence the idea of long war. Consider how long they have been
on the Continent of Africa.
They are in a sense just waiting everyone else out. Iraq, blood in the water. Afghanistan,
blood in the water. They are not the least troubled that we are embroiled in the ME.
The size of our debt is troubling and the size of how much of that debt is owned by other states
is disturbing. China, some ten years ago, indicated that they are seeking a way around the power
of the dollar.
I am fully confident that we can survive the rise of any nation on earth. I believe we are
special unique, and endowed with an energy, ingenuity, vibrancy and psyche today's world. But
we are so inundated with a kind of can't do -- must accept attitude in social polity that undermines
sense of self. and that is where I think the force of a Pres Trump is helpful, reinvigorating.
Conserving a sense of self, identity is mandatory for survival.
And while I have opposed out latest military interventions as unnecessary, if we decide to
make war -- we had better do it to the full and be done with. This is more in line with what I
think Tzun Tzu -- destabilize the opponents psychology.
Here the importation of Doaist, Hindu, and other existentialist philosophies are upending western
thought. The humanities are tearing asunder our social and psychological meaning of self. Whether
it is soulmates, no anchored truth or reality or the notion of that human sexuality is malleable
and no right no wrong save as to individual minding and social circumstance . . . the system of
concreteness is being chiseled to nothingness.
"Such gimmicks might mess up the economy – and we did this, too – for the whole world."
Actually we did something else, we embraced the world's standards – Basel I and Basel II. Which
are major contributors to our economic system. When Pres Nixon pressed to go off the gold standard
. . . huge error.
Last week one of the toughest hurdles was to avoid getting into that ambulance I knew the minute
I did, I would be entering a system bent on bending me to its will.
Before we go about making the world -- we need a clear and clean sense of self and resist change,
regardless of the pressure by friend or foe.
" The United States filled this role for half a century, from 1945 until the Great Recession.
The world's economic hegemon must provide public goods that benefit the international system as
a whole, including: making the rules for the international economic order; opening its domestic
market to other states' exports; supplying liquidity to the global economy; and providing a reserve
currency."
Uhh you are playing fast and loose here with one overarching reality -- there really was no
one else left who could do so. And that lasted a good while. As those regions recovered, we continued
to provide without ever adjusting to the their own ability to provide. Prime example, our presence
in Europe, I would be interested in the ROI of defending the Europeans even as they make war on
others or encourage conflicts they themselves ave no intention of supporting, but are more than
happy that the US do so.
Paradoxically the acceleration in the decline began with the disintegration of the Soviet
Union. Incredible hubris followed, and we are reaping the usual results.
I think just the opposite. OBOR, AIIB and the Shanghai Group show China playing precisely by the
rules of the international, rules-based liberal order set up by the Western powers generally over
the last few centuries and particularly by the USA after WWII. China actually follows the international
rules. It hasn't invaded anyone since 1979. How many wars not authorized by the UNSC, and generally
either dubious or flat out in violation of international law, has the US engaged in since that
date? China does not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. As the article states,
China follows the rules of Westphalian sovereignty. But it also follows the rules of international
law. China does not abuse its veto power in the UNSC, the way the Western powers, particularly
the USA, does. China is not looking to impose its way of life on other countries. And its international
initiatives, including the international organizations it has created and sponsored, are all about
trade, tourism, and co operation and development, as opposed to the USA's, which are all about
domination, ever expanding "defensive" military alliances, military bases everywhere, demeaning
and degrading, not to mention hypocritical, "human rights report cards," endless "sanctions" and
"embargoes" on everyone who does not do its bidding, covering up for the sins of its aggressive,
horrible client states, particularly Israel and the KSA, handing out cookies to coupsters in the
process of overthrowing legitimate, and even democratically elected, governments, and generally
sticking its nose into the elections of other countries, and now, with Trump, threatening to upset
the apple cart when it comes to international trade and tourism and cultural exchange.
The USA is the rogue state, in regard to the very international order that it played a huge
role in establishing. The USA can't even seem to go through an Olympic Games without making a
fuss about something or another.
"Rules and institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they reflect the distribution of
power in the international system. In global politics, the rules are made by those who rule international
politics 'cannot be understood independently of the political foundation on which it rests and
the political interests which it serves.' The post-World War II international order is an American
order that, while preserving world stability for a long time, primarily privileged U.S. and Western
interests. Proponents of 'lock-in' are saying that China will!indeed, must!agree to be a 'responsible
stakeholder' (with Washington defining the meaning of 'responsibility') in an international order
that it did not construct and that exists primarily to advance the interests of the United States.
In plain English, what those who believe in 'lock-in' expect is that an increasingly powerful
China will continue to accept playing second fiddle to the United States. But Beijing, by all
the evidence, does not see it that way. And OBOR and the AIIB prove the point. Instead of living
within the geopolitical, economic, and institutional confines imposed by Pax Americana, an increasingly
powerful China will seek to revise the international order so that it reflects its own political
and economic interests. Thus are OBOR and the AIIB straws in the wind. And, as the great Bob Dylan
said, you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing."
Of course the distribution of power matters. But China is using its power within the liberal,
rules-based framework established by the West. It actually already behaves in a "responsible"
manner. It didn't invade Hong Kong or Macao, rather it made deals with the declining colonial
powers which controlled them. It doesn't invade Taiwan. Rather it uses diplomacy to slowly advance
its cause with respect to "One China." It uses its economic clout to develop trading partners,
not to try to bully them into political submission, a la the USA. It is patient with regard to
North Korea. It is patient with regard to US sabre rattling and blustering right at its borders.
It is patient and rule-abiding in just about everything. Its organization are bypassing the USA.
Not confronting it. If China eventually eclipses the USA, it will be because China has beaten
it at its own game.
Our moral decline leads to the other decline mentioned in the article. There's a statement
that says :"America is great because she is good But, she will cease to be great because she ceased
to be good" We've been in decline since the '60's and are coming to our "bottom" ( and end ) ever
more quickly
One thing not mentioned in the article is how we lost our technological lead. This in large part
due to our H1B program, which is a conveyor belt to transfer tech and organizational knowhow abroad.
Most R&D operations seem to be staffed largely by guest workers from China and India. Yes, there
is a saving on salaries, leading to profits. But in addition to the knowledge transfer, there
is the discouragement to US natives from entering tech fields.
"... The recently-deceased Mr. Rockefeller, whose elders turned to banking seeing in it a source of lucre far greater than what had been available in oil, who resided at the helm of Chase Bank, and chaired the Council on Foreign Relations for many years, had the wealth and contacts necessary to pursue a purposeful agenda beyond the needs of mere international trade. It is said he had a rolodex containing over 10,000 names. ..."
"... But globalism as an ideology long predates today's advanced technology. It has been around for close to 250 years -- at least since the five scions of Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744 – 1812) were directed to found banks in four of the biggest cities in Europe (the fifth remaining in Frankfurt-am-Main ), all remaining in communication with Dad and with each other. ..."
"... "Give me control of a nation's currency," Mayer Amschel is alleged to have said, "and I care not who makes the laws." Kings and other political figures who in one way or another crossed a Rothschild found themselves in one of many (fomented) regional wars of nineteenth century Europe. ..."
"... Globalism piggybacked on the relative success of the mixed economy that grew out of the New Deal, post-war Keynesianism, and the understandable desire to avoid another world war. The idea of a mixed economy (private and public, profit-driven enterprises encircled by and sometimes assisted by politically-created regulations, are what is "mixed," after all) returns us to political economy , which is what Adam Smith and other classical writers considered their subject to be. There was no such thing, in other words, as nontrivial "economic law," comparable to physics, abstracted from political and related considerations particular to time and place. ..."
"... Globalist machinations have empowered a superelite -- whose members move capital across borders and cut deals that affect the lives of millions of people as easily as we cross the room. Their nemeses include the distrustful national footdraggers who loused up the Doha Round and "populists" like Trump who roused the rabble against, e.g., NAFTA and the (now dead) TPP, and who question the wisdom of open borders policies which, arguably, have caused chaos all across Europe -- outside the protected enclaves of EU banking titans and globalists such as Angela Merkel. ..."
"... Globalist political economy has left people behind, because in the globalist worldview, people are as disposable as cheaply made Chinese products. ..."
"... Mishra's key observation (my way of putting it): globalization created expectations around the world that have been thwarted by globalist reality : impoverishment of former middle classes; chronic instability; incompatible cultures thrown into involuntary contact, some of them refugees of wars of choice; and a loss of autonomy for all involved, amidst a massive and growing consolidation of wealth at the top. ..."
"... The real 'clash of civilizations' is thus between incompatible visions of the future of civilization: between that of globalists and those I will call localists . What I have in mind here incorporates nationalists and those who want still smaller forms of governance, because for them the nation-state is too large. ..."
"... Globalists want to dominate the world by dominating its financial systems and, through those, its political economy -- visible politicians being vetted and controlled, and a "mainstream" media owned by their corporations. They want a mass consumption monoculture, cultural differences being cosmetic rather than substantive. Education must be tailored to this, and not toward graduating students with thinking skills apart from the mass. ..."
"... Globalists sing the praises of "democratic capitalism," but there is no reason to believe their vision has anything to do with either democracy, conceived as a political system answering to its people, or free markets. For under the mixed economy it became a given that markets needed regulating if only to improve the health and safety of an often-uninformed public (unless you really believe, e.g., that cigarette manufacturers would put warning labels on their products voluntarily, this being just one example). It was then just one step to global markets needing regulators with global reach, and other global problems (e.g., alleged man-made climate change) requiring coordinated global solutions. "Free trade" has evolved considerably since Ricardo schooled us about comparative advantage. It is now freedom for billionaires to do as they please, often at the expense of the livelihoods of millions! ..."
"... Opposing globalism openly is risky in any event. An academic who defended economic nationalism would likely be forced from his job in the present environment. Independent commentators may have the Internet but can forget about being published in well-paying markets. ..."
"... Trump's campaign was self-funded, and this was one source of his appeal. His present travails are proof of how hard it is to oppose globalism even in one of the world's most powerful offices. ..."
"... The "swamp" is proving deeper, wider, and more venomous than I think he imagined in his worst nightmares! ..."
"... By a long shot, globalist ideology is driven by western nations, especially America. The west needs moral and philosophical reformations, new ways of thinking that respect identity without the paranoid screeching about bigotry. The alt-right, with its pure focus on whiteness, is not going to be able to do this. It takes a broader vision to create and propagate new ideologies that can be applied to society in general. ..."
"... As Socrates observed, many people who claimed to know about some particular thing erred–committed "original sin" in the Greek, not Old Testament sense–when they generalized, on the basis of their limited knowledge, and thinking that they knew a lot about a lot, talked authoritatively about that with which they were not familiar. ..."
The attacks came at once, as if on cue. Consider Eugene Robinson's
op-ed in the ever-reliably Trump-hating Washington Post . Robinson asked snarkily, "Triumph
over whom?"
Let's treat this as a fair question. Over ISIS? North Korea? Russia? Those being the villains
of the moment, they are easy to single out. Trump did not name the real enemy in this speech:
globalism (he did say, in his
acceptance speech
, "Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo!"). Despite struggling with allegations (still with
the flimsiest of evidential support) that Russia interfered with the 2016 election and that his campaign
staff now including his son Don Jr. colluded with them, Trump is still seen as a major threat to
globalist interests.
As I use the term, globalism is not the same thing as globalization . In many respects,
globalization goes back millennia. It emerged with explorers of ancient times wanting to know what
was over the horizon, and who lived there. In modern times it involves advances in technology, especially
communications, that facilitate cross-border trade. None of these need erase national borders or
a people's cultural identity; through consciousness of differences it might even enhance them.
Globalism is a more specific ideology holding that economies should integrate, that borders should
be dissolved, culture is irrelevant, and that peoples can be moved around like chess pieces "reinventing
themselves," merged into a monoculture of mass consumption and disposability. The process needs transnational
regulation and so must culminate in a world state, de facto or de jure , with a single
global currency -- digital rather than physical, so that all transactions can be recorded and monitored
(even those involving cryptos!)
The global system would be ruled by an elite superclass (in my book
Four Cardinal Errors: Reasons for the Decline of the American Republic I call this entity
the superelite to distinguish it from more visible national elites) overseeing a hierarchy
of administrators and technocrats. This superclass already controls most of the world's wealth. The
"developed" world is easily four fifths of the way to this kind of system, referred to as the "liberal
order" or the "international order" or with some similar euphemism. The Brexiteers, Donald Trumps,
Geert Wilders, and Marine Le Pens of the world are dragging their feet. The first two of these succeeded -- at least for the moment. The latter lost major elections, placing their causes on hold.
Does globalism actually exist as I describe it, or is it a "
conspiracy theory "? Let's consult two architects of globalist thought. Zbigniew Brzezinski stated
in his 1970 book Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era (p. 56-62 of 1970
ed.):
The nation-state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal
creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in
terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state .
A global human conscience is for the first time beginning to manifest itself . Today we are
witnessing the emergence of transnational elites composed of international businessmen, scholars,
professional men, and public officials. The ties of these new elites cut across national boundaries,
their perspectives are not confined by national traditions, and their interests are more functional
than national. These global communities are gaining in strength and it is likely that before long
the social elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist
in spirit and outlook
The new global consciousness, however, is only beginning to become an influential force. It
still lacks identity, cohesion, and focus. Much of humanity -- indeed, the majority of humanity -- still neither shares nor is prepared to support it. Science and technology are still used to
buttress ideological claims, to fortify national aspirations, and to reward narrowly national
interests . The new global unity has yet to find its own structure, consensus, and harmony.
David Rockefeller Sr. read the above, contacted the author, and with Henry Kissinger they organized
the Trilateral Commission to address the problem identified in the final paragraph. Rockefeller was
quoted two decades later telling a Bilderberg assembly (June 1991):
"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great
publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion
for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world
if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is
now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational
sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination
practiced in past centuries."
This is probably the most famous David Rockefeller quote. There's no hard proof he actually said
it, though. He might have said it. We don't know. What it says is not foreign to his thinking. He
did assert the following, in his
Memoirs (2002, pp. 404-05), in the context of a riposte against "populists," and this
time there is no doubt:
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have
seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence
they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are
part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing
my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build
a more integrated global political and economic structure -- one world, if you will. If that's
the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
The recently-deceased Mr. Rockefeller, whose elders turned to banking seeing in it a source
of lucre far greater than what had been available in oil, who resided at the helm of Chase Bank,
and chaired the Council on Foreign Relations for many years, had the wealth and contacts necessary
to pursue a purposeful agenda beyond the needs of mere international trade. It is said he had a rolodex
containing over 10,000 names.
We can thus rest our case that globalism is a real phenomenon. Is it a conspiracy? Conspiracies,
by definition, are hidden from you. As two of the above statements indicate, its leaders have hardly
been hiding. Perhaps the reading public can be faulted for preferring glitzy bestsellers to books
about reality.
The question before us: what is the alternative to it? One can almost hear the chorus: There
Is No Alternative . Writers such as Robinson above are very good at invoking "economic theory"
against "populism." He had previously said: "The speech Trump delivered had nothing useful to say
about today's interconnected world in which goods, people and ideas have contempt for borders." He
elaborated: "Industrial supply chains cross borders and span oceans. Words and images flash around
the globe at the speed of light. Global issues, such as nuclear proliferation and climate change,
demand global solutions. Like it or not, we are all in this together."
In this case, who laid down those supply chains, and why must they invite "contempt for borders"?
Are these aspects of a natural, deterministic dynamic that a technologically advancing, creative-destruction
driven civilization is bound to follow? It is easy to argue that there is such a dynamic,
in which case globalists are being carried along with the rest of us and are identifiable only because
they are smarter than we mere mortals and therefore more conscious of the process than we are -- not
to mention better situated to profit from it.
But globalism as an ideology long predates today's advanced technology. It has been around
for close to 250 years -- at least since the five scions of Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744 – 1812)
were directed to found banks in four of the biggest cities in Europe (the fifth remaining in Frankfurt-am-Main
), all remaining in communication with Dad and with each other. The coldly talented Nathan established
himself as a dominant player in the City of London and succeeded his father as family patriarch as
he built up N.M. Rothschild & Sons; his eldest son Lionel would succeed him. What ensued was not
merely amassing wealth but accruing power, the power of private banking, international moneylending,
and investment. "Give me control of a nation's currency," Mayer Amschel is alleged to have said,
"and I care not who makes the laws." Kings and other political figures who in one way or another
crossed a Rothschild found themselves in one of many (fomented) regional wars of nineteenth century
Europe.
There is a longstanding debate over what drives history: material forces (economic ones, blood
ties, etc.) or ideas and worldviews (e.g., Christianity -- or Judaism -- or materialism). I hold out
for the latter, because most material forces of modern times would not exist without men of power
putting them in place guided by an idea or worldview (and
materialism is a worldview,
not a fact established by any science).
Globalism piggybacked on the relative success of the mixed economy that grew out of the New
Deal, post-war Keynesianism, and the understandable desire to avoid another world war. The idea of
a mixed economy (private and public, profit-driven enterprises encircled by and sometimes
assisted by politically-created regulations, are what is "mixed," after all) returns us to political
economy , which is what Adam Smith and other classical writers considered their subject to be.
There was no such thing, in other words, as nontrivial "economic law," comparable to physics, abstracted
from political and related considerations particular to time and place.
But the mixed economy has been a mixed blessing. It created prosperity and the largest middle
class the world had ever seen, but had numerous costs. One was that individuals, including those
in that middle class, became increasingly dependent on its systems. This is a separate article; for
now we will just observe that these systems, which over a period lasting more than a century intertwined
the political economy of the changing workplace with advancing technology, mass media culture, and
family dynamics, diminished real individual freedoms as people were encircled by its effects
and its products -- their lives made less and less convenient if they did not cooperate and consume.
Brzezinski foresaw the culmination of these changes:
Another threat confronts liberal democracy. More directly linked to the impact of technology,
it involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled and directed society. Such a society would
be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific
know-how. Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate
to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior
and keeping society under surveillance and control (pp. 252-53).
There can be no doubt this has happened. Globalist machinations have empowered a superelite -- whose members move capital across borders and cut deals that affect the lives of millions of people
as easily as we cross the room. Their nemeses include the distrustful national footdraggers who loused
up the Doha Round and "populists" like Trump who roused the rabble against, e.g., NAFTA and the (now
dead) TPP, and who question the wisdom of open borders policies which, arguably, have caused chaos
all across Europe -- outside the protected enclaves of EU banking titans and globalists such as Angela
Merkel.
Globalist political economy has left people behind, because in the globalist worldview, people
are as disposable as cheaply made Chinese products. Those left behind now have voices of various
stripes across the ideological spectrum -- people like Trump and Le Pen on the right, Bernie Sanders
on the left, and writers such as Pankaj Mishra who aren't easily classifiable but whose
Age of Anger: A History of the Present is, in my humble opinion, a must read. Mishra's
key observation (my way of putting it): globalization created expectations around the world
that have been thwarted by globalist reality : impoverishment of former middle classes; chronic
instability; incompatible cultures thrown into involuntary contact, some of them refugees of wars
of choice; and a loss of autonomy for all involved, amidst a massive and growing consolidation of
wealth at the top.
The real 'clash of civilizations' is thus between incompatible visions of the future
of civilization: between that of globalists and those I will call localists . What I have
in mind here incorporates nationalists and those who want still smaller forms of governance, because
for them the nation-state is too large.
Globalists want to dominate the world by dominating its financial systems and, through those,
its political economy -- visible politicians being vetted and controlled, and a "mainstream" media
owned by their corporations. They want a mass consumption monoculture, cultural differences being
cosmetic rather than substantive. Education must be tailored to this, and not toward graduating students
with thinking skills apart from the mass.
Localists want autonomy: freedom from encircling forces they had no say in and no control over,
whether created by "free trade" deals or open borders policies they did not sign off on. They want
control over their lives, families, communities, economies, and nations.
Globalists sing the praises of "democratic capitalism," but there is no reason to believe
their vision has anything to do with either democracy, conceived as a political system answering
to its people, or free markets. For under the mixed economy it became a given that markets needed
regulating if only to improve the health and safety of an often-uninformed public (unless you really
believe, e.g., that cigarette manufacturers would put warning labels on their products voluntarily,
this being just one example). It was then just one step to global markets needing regulators with
global reach, and other global problems (e.g., alleged man-made climate change) requiring coordinated
global solutions. "Free trade" has evolved considerably since Ricardo schooled us about comparative
advantage. It is now freedom for billionaires to do as they please, often at the expense of the livelihoods
of millions!
The globalists world state would answer primarily to their corporations because the latter have
the money, having profited from those global supply lines and from having moved operations to where
labor is cheapest -- before, that is, labor is replaced altogether by technology and thrown
to the wolves.
The problem is again, many of these groups want nothing to do with one another. Readers of this
essay may be antiglobalists but want nothing to do with most of them. Some are not even aware of
others. This lack of any semblance of unity does not bode well for any strategy of opposition.
Opposing globalism openly is risky in any event. An academic who defended economic nationalism
would likely be forced from his job in the present environment. Independent commentators may have
the Internet but can forget about being published in well-paying markets. Candidates for public
office who speak openly of globalism being an enemy of freedom in America can forget about being
able to raise the money and gain the visibility necessary to run credible campaigns. Funding sources
tend to be wired into globalist interests. They would not be where they are otherwise. As for visible
figures who don't need the money, e.g., Trump, if his enemies should succeed in taking him down,
whether via substanceless Russia allegations or by some other ploy, we might see how risky! We might
see whether Trump's election was more than a speed bump on the road towards a global state. Things
are getting late, after all! Were this a baseball game, we'd be starting the ninth inning!
Trump's campaign was self-funded, and this was one source of his appeal. His present travails
are proof of how hard it is to oppose globalism even in one of the world's most powerful offices.
The "swamp" is proving deeper, wider, and more venomous than I think he imagined in his worst
nightmares!
... ... ... ...
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Yates is a writer with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He is the author of the books Civil Wrongs:
What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (1994), Four Cardinal Errors: Reasons for the Decline of
the American Republic (2011), approximately two dozen articles and reviews in academic journals and
anthologies, and over a hundred articles of online commentary, especially on
NewsWithViews.com . Dr. Yates taught
philosophy at several colleges and universities in the Southeast. In 2012 he moved from South Carolina
to Santiago, Chile, where he has taught periodically at two universities there, as well as having
involved himself in teaching English and operating a small editing business,
Final Draft Editing Service
. He is married to a Chilean, and at present writes almost full time. He blogs about philosophy and
the foibles of academia at
Lost Generation Philosopher
.
He(Yates) blogs about philosophy and the foibles of academia at Lost Generation Philosopher.
His Patreon donation page is here. Is Patreon reliable? Not to Lauren Southern. Speaking of endangering lives, it is globalist wars and the open borders policy that are leading
to killings, rapes, violence, but never mind. Patreon is just a globalist corporation.
" The real 'clash of civilizations' is thus between incompatible visions of the future of civilization:
between that of globalists and those I will call localists. "
This clash now is quite visible over new Polish legislation.
A new law creates democratic control over the nomination of judges, something the USA has for
high court judges since the USA exists.
But Brussels opposes this, threatens with taking away Poland's voting right in EU decisions, stopping
EU subsidies to Poland.
A similar clash is over Hungary, the country has enough of Soros' propaganda university.
But Soros visited Juncker and Tusk, Hungary was put under pressure, and now I'm not sure if Soros'
institutions will be expelled or not.
Then there is the clash over immigration, the orthodox catholic E European countries refuse
Muslim migrants.
And of course we see this clash over Brexit, the EU is of the opinion that the European High
Court after Brexit still has jurisdiction in GB.
Brussels does not see that the Anglican Church was created to stop the pope interfering in British
affairs.
Excuse me not having taken time to finish reading your article before responding to the stimulus
of your (apprpriately) distinguishing globalisation and globalism. As one who generally supports
the standard argůments for free trade despite also wanting to do a quality check on immigrants
to my proserous and fairly law abiding country I would be pleased to see a study of the problems
of small countries and what ordering of the world could and should mitigate them.
Establlished small countries seem to be OK. But what about the Greeces? Especially, what about
an African small country possibly with only one major mineral deposit as a source of wealth and
inevitable volatity in its commodity's price?
The super-elite are rapidly losing their grip on the hearts & minds of the populace. This will
accelerate as they move to implement more coercive measures (already happening) so it's only a
matter of time before some mass-depopulation program becomes desirable.
By a long shot, globalist ideology is driven by western nations, especially America. The west needs moral and philosophical reformations, new ways of thinking that respect identity
without the paranoid screeching about bigotry. The alt-right, with its pure focus on whiteness,
is not going to be able to do this. It takes a broader vision to create and propagate new ideologies
that can be applied to society in general.
I live in Poland and the story with the legislation is different and a bit
more complex.The problem is that it's basically putting judges under direct political control of the ruling
party with no checks and balances in their choice or dismissal. Lots of people would be in favor of some reform of the judiciary which is fairly terrible but
this is an obvious power grab (the government would also appoint those in charge of verifying
elections).
Scuttlebut is that the purpose is to trump up legal charges against opposition candidates to
keep them out of future elections.
Wandering Jews have long been labeled "rootless cosmopolitans". Their culture is an adaption
to their lifestyle, is this lifestyle. (Largely Jewish) Globalists take a model that works in
the particular case of the Jewish people and try to generalize it to apply to the whole world.
But what works as an exception is made possible by the existence of the base upon which it rests.
The rule that governs the exception cannot in and of itself build or sustain the foundation upon
which the exception rests.
Humans are personal animals who need an intimate connection with their environs and other people.
A mathematic model based on the economic principles of banking cannot be the base upon which human
societies are created.
As Socrates observed, many people who claimed to know about some particular thing erred–committed
"original sin" in the Greek, not Old Testament sense–when they generalized, on the basis of their
limited knowledge, and thinking that they knew a lot about a lot, talked authoritatively about
that with which they were not familiar.
Bankers are ill equipped to construct the Ideal Society.
@Michael Kenny You're wrong. The US (and the EU) is fully controlled by the supranational
globalists. At least it was until Trump but that battle is still to be decided. The EU was not
created to make the member nations stronger – it was designed to remove the sovereignty from the
populace while they're being genocided. Open your eyes.
The idea of globalism is much older. The ottoman empire was an example of globalism. The mongol
empire before that, was globalism. Heck even the roman empire was globalistic in a way. Globalistic
forces have always existed alongside localistic forces. And it was a form of globalism (colonialisation)
that also helped make the west wealthy. It is also globalism that helped make the united states
a super-power by helping its dollar become the global reserve currency.
Thats globalism right there.
But localism is also important because sometimes leaders of countries know whats best for their
people better than some foreign person. Even if the foreign-persons have good intentions, they
may not 'get it right' as native born leaders do. A lot of people in the world might not have
achieved the living standards they have now ..if it was not for the development of 'nation-states'
in the first place.
So i think a 'balance' of globalism and localism is better over one or the other.
@Jason Liu By a long shot, globalist ideology is driven by western nations, especially America.
The west needs moral and philosophical reformations, new ways of thinking that respect identity
without the paranoid screeching about bigotry. The alt-right, with its pure focus on whiteness,
is not going to be able to do this. It takes a broader vision to create and propagate new ideologies
that can be applied to society in general. Every minority pressure group out there is a reliable
source of virulent anti-white hatred.
Diversity did not have to be but those who brought it about were unwise. The idea that America
should be anything other than a white majority nation is absurd. Hosannas issue when hostile minorities
and unassimilable foreigners talk about ethnic and racial interests but whites are just supposed
to fade gracefully to khaki. And shut up about it. Reassert ourselves? The horror.
Economic collapse will flush a lot of stupidity from the system. It will be a giant game of
52 Pick Up but better chaos soon than certain degradation later.
In the early 1980s the author was one of the first to herald the emerging
dominance of neoliberalism in the west. Here he argues that this doctrine is now
faltering. But what happens next?
Trump seeks a return to 1950s America, well before the age of
neoliberalism
The western financial crisis
of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate repercussions were surprisingly modest. The
crisis challenged the foundation stones of the long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to
emerge largely unscathed. The banks were bailed out; hardly any bankers on either side of the
Atlantic were prosecuted for their crimes; and the price of their behaviour was duly paid by the
taxpayer. Subsequent economic policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied
overwhelmingly on monetary policy, especially quantitative easing. It has failed. The western
economy has stagnated and is now approaching its lost decade, with no end in sight.
After
almost nine years, we are finally beginning to reap the political whirlwind of the financial
crisis. But how did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? Although it
failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic disaster for seven decades,
politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties of the right, centre
and left had all bought into its philosophy, New
Labour
a classic in point. They knew no other way of thinking or doing: it had become the
common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci put it, hegemonic. But that hegemony cannot and will not
survive the test of the real world.
The first inkling of the wider political consequences was evident in the turn in public
opinion against the banks, bankers and business leaders. For decades, they could do no wrong:
they were feted as the role models of our age, the default troubleshooters of choice in
education, health and seemingly everything else. Now, though, their star was in steep descent,
along with that of the political class. The effect of the financial crisis was to undermine faith
and trust in the competence of the governing elites. It marked the beginnings of a wider
political crisis.
But the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are
much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last
decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the
political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market
in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in
the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis.
Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter
on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes
reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion.
It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a
particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that
between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism,
when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.
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Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, pictured in 1984, ushered in the era of
neoliberalism. Photograph: Bettmann Archive
But by far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth in
inequality. Until very recently, this had been virtually ignored. With extraordinary speed,
however, it has emerged as one of, if not the most important political issue on both sides of the
Atlantic, most dramatically in the US. It is, bar none, the issue that is driving the political
discontent that is now engulfing the west. Given the statistical evidence, it is puzzling,
shocking even, that it has been disregarded for so long; the explanation can only lie in the
sheer extent of the hegemony of neoliberalism and its values.
But now reality has upset the doctrinal apple cart. In the period 1948-1972, every section of
the American population experienced very similar and sizable increases in their standard of
living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income while the top 10% did
far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male workers is
now lower than it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the population has
stagnated for over 30 years
.
A not so dissimilar picture is true of the UK. And the problem has grown more serious since
the financial crisis. On average, between
65-70% of households in 25
high-income economies
experienced stagnant or falling real incomes between 2005 and 2014.
The reasons are not difficult to explain. The hyper-globalisation era has been systematically
stacked in favour of capital against labour: international trading agreements, drawn up in great
secrecy, with business on the inside and the unions and citizens excluded, the
Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) and the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP) being but the latest examples; the
politico-legal attack on the unions;
the encouragement of
large-scale immigration in both the US and Europe
that helped to undermine the bargaining
power of the domestic workforce; and the failure to retrain displaced workers in any meaningful
way.
As
Thomas Piketty
has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally
gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War
competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a
winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable.
Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their
lot, as graphically illustrated by the support for Trump and Sanders in the US and the Brexit
vote in the UK. This popular revolt is often described, in a somewhat denigratory and dismissive
fashion, as populism. Or, as Francis Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent
essay in
Foreign Affairs
: "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach to
policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don't like." Populism is a movement against the
status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer
about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more
usually both.
Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental cornerstone of
UK policy since the early 1970s. Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in fact about much more:
a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left behind, whose living
standards have stagnated or worse since the 1980s, who feel dislocated by large-scale immigration
over which they have no control and who face an increasingly insecure and casualised labour
market. Their revolt has paralysed the governing elite, already claimed one prime minister, and
left the latest one fumbling around in the dark looking for divine inspiration.
The wave of populism marks the return of class as a central agency in politics, both in the UK
and the US. This is particularly remarkable in the US. For many decades, the idea of the "working
class" was marginal to American political discourse. Most Americans described themselves as
middle class, a reflection of the aspirational pulse at the heart of American society. According
to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the
figure was 48%, almost half the population.
Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt. Hitherto, on both sides of the Atlantic,
the agency of class has been in retreat in the face of the emergence of a new range of identities
and issues from gender and race to sexual orientation and the environment. The return of class,
because of its sheer reach, has the potential, like no other issue, to redefine the political
landscape.
The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labour movement. They are not
synonymous: this is obvious in the US and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over the last
half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain. The re-emergence of
the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be
described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of
belonging to the labour movement.
Indeed, Ukip has been as important – in the form of immigration and Europe – in shaping its
current attitudes as the Labour party. In the United States, both Trump and Sanders have given
expression to the working-class revolt, the latter almost as much as the former. The working
class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, as the left liked to think, is
a function of politics.
The neoliberal era is being undermined from two directions. First, if its record of economic
growth has never been particularly strong, it is now dismal. Europe is barely larger than it was
on the eve of the financial crisis in 2007; the United States has done better but even its growth
has been anaemic. Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is
most likely one of
secular stagnation
.
Worse, because the recovery has been so weak and fragile, there is a widespread belief that
another financial crisis may well beckon. In other words, the neoliberal era has delivered the
west back into the kind of crisis-ridden world that we last experienced in the 1930s. With this
background, it is hardly surprising that a majority in the west now believe their children will
be worse off than they were. Second, those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer
prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the
end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes, just as the
social-democratic era was during the 1970s.
A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual
voices raised against it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly
dominated by monetarists and free marketeers. But since the western financial crisis, the centre
of gravity of the intellectual debate has shifted profoundly. This is most obvious in the United
States, with economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs
becoming increasingly influential. Thomas Piketty's
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
has been a massive seller. His work and that of
Tony Atkinson and Angus Deaton
have pushed the question of the inequality to the top of the
political agenda. In the UK,
Ha-Joon Chang
, for long isolated within the economics profession, has gained a following far
greater than those who think economics is a branch of mathematics.
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'Virtually no one foresaw the triumph of Jeremy Corbyn', pictured at rally in north
London last week. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, some of those who were previously strong advocates of a neoliberal approach, such
as Larry Summers and the
Financial Times
's Martin Wolf, have become extremely critical.
The wind is in the sails of the critics of neoliberalism; the neoliberals and monetarists are in
retreat. In the UK, the media and political worlds are well behind the curve. Few recognise that
we are at the end of an era. Old attitudes and assumptions still predominate, whether on the
BBC's
Today
programme, in the rightwing press or the parliamentary Labour party.
Following Ed Miliband's resignation as Labour leader, virtually no one foresaw the triumph of
Jeremy Corbyn
in the subsequent leadership election. The assumption had been more of the
same, a Blairite or a halfway house like Miliband, certainly not anyone like Corbyn. But the
zeitgeist had changed. The membership, especially the young who had joined the party on an
unprecedented scale, wanted a complete break with New Labour. One of the reasons why the left has
failed to emerge as the leader of the new mood of working-class disillusionment is that most
social democratic parties became, in varying degrees, disciples of neoliberalism and
uber-globalisation. The most extreme forms of this phenomenon were New Labour and the Democrats,
who in the late 90s and 00s became its advance guard, personified by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton,
triangulation and the third way.
But as David Marquand observed in a review for the
New Statesman
, what is the point
of a social democratic party if it doesn't represent the less fortunate, the underprivileged and
the losers? New Labour deserted those who needed them, who historically they were supposed to
represent. Is it surprising that large sections have now deserted the party who deserted them?
Blair, in his reincarnation as a money-obsessed consultant to a shady bunch of presidents and
dictators, is a fitting testament to the demise of New Labour.
The rival contenders – Burnham, Cooper and Kendall – represented continuity. They were swept
away by Corbyn, who won nearly 60% of the votes. New Labour was over, as dead as Monty Python's
parrot. Few grasped the meaning of what had happened. A
Guardian
leader welcomed the
surge in membership and then, lo and behold, urged support for Yvette Cooper, the very antithesis
of the reason for the enthusiasm. The PLP refused to accept the result and ever since has tried
with might and main to remove Corbyn.
Just as the Labour party took far too long to come to terms with the rise of Thatcherism and
the birth of a new era at the end of the 70s, now it could not grasp that the Thatcherite
paradigm, which they eventually came to embrace in the form of New Labour, had finally run its
course. Labour, like everyone else, is obliged to think anew. The membership in their antipathy
to New Labour turned to someone who had never accepted the latter, who was the polar opposite in
almost every respect of Blair, and embodying an authenticity and decency which Blair patently did
not.
Corbyn is not a product of the new times, he is a throwback to the late 70s and early 80s.
That is both his strength and also his weakness. He is uncontaminated by the New Labour legacy
because he has never accepted it. But nor, it would seem, does he understand the nature of the
new era. The danger is that he is possessed of feet of clay in what is a highly fluid and
unpredictable political environment, devoid of any certainties of almost any kind, in which
Labour finds itself dangerously divided and weakened.
Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal
better. David Cameron was guilty of a huge and irresponsible miscalculation over Brexit. He was
forced to resign in the most ignominious of circumstances. The party is hopelessly divided. It
has no idea in which direction to move after Brexit. The Brexiters painted an optimistic picture
of turning away from the declining European market and embracing the expanding markets of the
world, albeit barely mentioning by name which countries it had in mind. It looks as if the new
prime minister may have an anachronistic hostility towards China and a willingness to undo the
good work of George Osborne. If the government turns its back on China, by far the fastest
growing market in the world, where are they going to turn?
Brexit has left the country fragmented and deeply divided, with the very real prospect that
Scotland might choose independence. Meanwhile, the Conservatives seem to have little
understanding that the neoliberal era is in its death throes.
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'Put America first': Donald Trump in Cleveland last month. Photograph: Joe
Raedle/Getty Images
Dramatic as events have been in the UK, they cannot compare with those in the United States.
Almost from nowhere,
->
Donald Trump
rose to capture the Republican nomination and confound virtually all the pundits
and not least his own party. His message was straightforwardly anti-globalisation. He believes
that the interests of the working class have been sacrificed in favour of the big corporations
that have been encouraged to invest around the world and thereby deprive American workers of
their jobs. Further, he argues that large-scale immigration has weakened the bargaining power of
American workers and served to lower their wages.
He proposes that US corporations should be required to invest their cash reserves in the US.
He believes that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has had the effect of exporting
American jobs to Mexico. On similar grounds, he is opposed to the TPP and the TTIP. And he also
accuses China of stealing American jobs, threatening to impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports.
To globalisation Trump counterposes economic nationalism: "Put America first". His appeal,
above all, is to the white working class who, until Trump's (and Bernie Sander's) arrival on the
political scene, had been ignored and largely unrepresented since the 1980s. Given that their
wages have been falling for most of the last 40 years, it is extraordinary how their interests
have been neglected by the political class. Increasingly, they have voted Republican, but the
Republicans have long been captured by the super-rich and Wall Street, whose interests, as
hyper-globalisers, have run directly counter to those of the white working class. With the
arrival of Trump they finally found a representative: they won Trump the Republican nomination.
The economic nationalist argument has also been vigorously pursued by
->
Bernie Sanders
, who ran Hillary Clinton extremely close for the Democratic nomination and
would probably have won but for more than 700 so-called super-delegates, who were effectively
chosen by the Democratic machine and overwhelmingly supported Clinton. As in the case of the
Republicans, the Democrats have long supported a neoliberal, pro-globalisation strategy,
notwithstanding the concerns of its trade union base. Both the Republicans and the Democrats now
find themselves deeply polarised between the pro- and anti-globalisers, an entirely new
development not witnessed since the shift towards neoliberalism under Reagan almost 40 years ago.
Another plank of Trump's nationalist appeal – "Make America great again" – is his position on
foreign policy. He believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the
nation's resources. He argues that the country's alliance system is unfair, with America bearing
most of the cost and its allies contributing far too little. He points to Japan and South Korea,
and Nato's European members as prime examples.He seeks to rebalance these relationships and,
failing that, to exit from them.
As a country in decline, he argues that America can no longer afford to carry this kind of
financial burden. Rather than putting the world to rights, he believes the money should be
invested at home, pointing to the dilapidated state of America's infrastructure.
Trump's position
represents a major critique of America as the world's hegemon. His arguments
mark a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology that has reigned since the
early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period. These arguments
must be taken seriously. They should not be lightly dismissed just because of their authorship.
But Trump is no man of the left. He is a populist of the right. He has launched a racist and
xenophobic attack on Muslims and on Mexicans. Trump's appeal is to a white working class that
feels it has been cheated by the big corporations, undermined by Hispanic immigration, and often
resentful towards African-Americans who for long too many have viewed as their inferior.
A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse,
scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness and violence; America would become a deeply
polarised and divided society. His threat to impose
45% tariffs on China
, if implemented, would certainly provoke retaliation by the Chinese and
herald the beginnings of a new era of protectionism.
Trump may well lose the presidential election just as Sanders failed in his bid for the
Democrat nomination. But this does not mean that the forces opposed to hyper-globalisation –
unrestricted immigration, TPP and TTIP, the free movement of capital and much else – will have
lost the argument and are set to decline. In little more than 12 months, Trump and Sanders have
transformed the nature and terms of the argument. Far from being on the wane, the arguments of
the critics of hyper-globalisation are steadily gaining ground. Roughly two-thirds of Americans
agree that "we should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own
national problems". And, above all else, what will continue to drive opposition to the hyper-globalisers
is inequality.
"
As in the case of the Republicans, the Democrats have long supported a neoliberal, pro-globalisation
strategy, notwithstanding the concerns of its trade union base
" --- and on what
conceivable rational basis does the author believe that Hillary Clinton will change direction?
You know... the Hillary Clinton form whom the Guardian has been running interference?
"A Guardian leader welcomed the surge in membership and then, lo and behold, urged
support for Yvette Cooper, the very antithesis of the reason for the enthusiasm."
I wonder if this could anything to do with that sudden change of heart
"The attempted putsch against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is being mounted by a
right-wing cabal, working in intimate collusion with the security services in Britain and
the United States. Its main propaganda organ is the Guardian newspaper. The aim is to
overturn the result of the June 23 referendum and ensure British membership of the European
Union (EU) through the election of a suitably refashioned Labour Party, or its
incorporation into a coalition government." – World Socialist Website
See also in this light Sadiq Khan's withering attack on Jeremy Corbyn.
Hardly conspiracy theories, the weight of historical evidence suggests that it would be
surprising were the security services
not
working with the media and politicians of the
right to unseat Corbyn. See the plot against Wilson, the Zinoviev Letter, the miners' strike
etc. See also, A Very British Coup.
In the 1970s attacks on social democracy, at least in the UK, were treated with the same
disdain by the political and media establishments as attacks on monetarism are today.
Thatcher, as it happens, was widely pilloried within her own party for articulating a
departure from contemporary economic orthodoxy, and the Tory establishment used their lackeys
in the press to continue their assault on her after she became Party Leader.
The lesson,
dare I say it, is twofold. Firstly, whether they are wedded to one economic system or another,
the ruling classes are inherently conservative, reluctant to sanction change and fearful of
anything that chips away at their privilege. Secondly, the press, far from playing a watchdog
role on the state and its corporate masters, actually helps to sustain them. This should be
clear to anyone who has witnessed the Guardian's reporting of Jeremy Corbyn, but it goes far
beyond this newspaper to every title in the country. The same process can be witnessed in the
US, and throughout the Eurozone.
You might think this settles the matter, but there is a limit to media propaganda that
journalists simply cannot see, which is why so many have scratched their heads at the
ascendance of Sanders and Corbyn. I don't think either of these men will ever lead their
respective countries, but as you say at the end of this piece the overridding reasons that put
them there - an inefficient, corrupt and backwards economic system - are not going away any
time soon. They are actually going to get worse, because the establishments in Europe, the UK
and the US have cornered their respective electoral 'markets', sponsoring obedient politicians
who will gladly do their bidding. These people have no courage and no foresight, and will drag
the West further into decline precisely as they claim to advance it.
Precisely. Jonathan Cook's uses Kuhn's paradigm shift thesis to describe exactly that which
you adumbrate:
Importantly, a shift, or revolution, was not related to the moment when the previous
scientific theory was discredited by the mounting evidence against it. There was a lag,
usually a long delay, between the evidence showing the new theory was a better "fit" and
the old theory being discarded.
The reason, Kuhn concluded, was because of an emotional and intellectual inertia in the
scientific community. Too many people – academics, research institutions, funding bodies,
pundits – were invested in the established theory. As students, it was what they had grown
up "knowing". Leading professors in the field had made their reputations advancing and
"proving" the theory. Vast sums had been expended in trying to confirm the theory.
University departments were set up on the basis that the theory was correct. Too many
people had too much to lose to admit they were wrong.
A paradigm shift typically ocurred, Kuhn argued, when a new generation of scholars and
researchers exposed to the rival theory felt sufficiently frustrated by this inertia and
had reached sufficiently senior posts that they could launch an assault on the old theory.
At that point, the proponents of the traditional theory faced a crisis. The scientific
establishment would resist, often aggressively, but at some point the fortifications
protecting the old theory would crumble and collapse. Then suddenly almost everyone would
switch to the new theory, treating the old theory as if it were some relic of the dark
ages.
"A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse,
scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness and violence; America would become a
deeply polarised and divided society."
We're already there and we didn't need a Trump to achieve it. The culture wars between the
Democrats and Republicans that pitted Americans against one another; added to the failure of
both parties to pass meaningful legislation that addressed issues and problems common to all
Americans led the way.
To understand how low we've sunk. One merely has to look at the major parties top choices
to occupy the White House, two of the most despised humans in the nation. Neither of which are
worthy of CPR if the occasion should arise.
Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against
their lot, as graphically illustrated by the support for Trump and Sanders in the US and
the Brexit vote in the UK.
Well, if you export all the jobs to maximise profits ... isn't this revolt exactly what you
would expect?
But the author makes a powerful point, Corbyn and Trump aren't the end game here, they're
the beginning; differing manifestations of the same underlying cause.
We need to widen the lens a little, and look at the wider picture outside the U.S., UK and
developed world. For decades Europe and America locked the rest of the world out of the
prosperity they enjoyed. Their corporations and multinationals made fortunes by dominating
trade and manufacturing, stripping the wealth out of poorer countries even as walls of tariffs
and subsidies prevented them from selling products in the areas they could compete in.
Now those same corporations have shipped the jobs, but not the profits, to cheaper places
While millions of others have decided to cross the seas and get a slice of what is still,
comparatively, the good life.
This crisis can't be solved by going back to neoliberal economics with its so clearly
failed trickle down approach of the rich pissing on the poor.
Everyone needs a pinch of prosperity, including those in the developing world. And we need
to ensure they get it. Not out of some bleeding-hearted sense of fairness, but because if they
don't get it the problems, our problems, remain.
For working people all over the globe, in this ever more connected world, all our boats
rise together, or we all sink the same.
Well we can start by ceasing stealing the skilled staff
they paid to train. That is little more than colonial exploitation by the back door.
Moving to that strategy means that we have to develop and retain the skills we have in the
country, and importantly limit the size of the country to a level that can be serviced by the
skills we have and the technology we can develop.
Relationships with other countries have to be based upon exchange, not exploitation - in
both directions.
Great article. I haven't read anything that good on here for a while. I'm genuinely surprised
as it undermines much of the identity politics and free market Leftism that is promoted by
many and suggests that Globalisation may not be so wonderful.
Corruption is the natural outcome of neoliberal-capitalism.
Think about it this way: in a system were "greed is good" and maximisation of personal
outcomes is the ultimate objective, how likely is it that lawmakers and lawenforcers - who are
people too and exposed to the same societal pressures for being greedy - will remain impartial
and incorruptible overseers of the Free Market?
Now look at it from the point of view of a company: is there any better way of tilting the
playing field in your favour than buying the referee? Having successfully bought one and made
better returns because of it, will you not use the extra capital to buy even bigger and more
important rules s
I often like Jacques's writing but its Anglocentrism needs to be challenged. Neo-liberalism
has earlier origins than Reagan and Thatcher - East Asia in the late 1950s and Latin America
in the late-60s and 70s. This matters because it is in Asia especially that the new ideas for
a post-neo-liberal era will be found.
And the Sanders-Trump-Brexit trinity of insurgency against neo-liberalism needs to had Xi
Jinping added to it. For what it Xi other than China's Donald Trump? A different political
persona - avuncular Xi Dada etc. - but his China Dream, making China great again, his Maoist
revival, and more all speak of someone overturning China's own post-Mao translation of global
neo-liberalism (Socialism with Chinese characteristics).
As for the economics, the problem with the current economic model is really very simple. Too
much money is going to the top 10% in Western societies, and most of this money is not being
invested back into the economies in which it is generated or redistributed to the populace
through taxation. Great chunks, indeed, get siphoned out of the West and end up in tax havens,
where its owners languish like the bloated feudal overlords they are.
This system cannot sustain itself, and is ripe for another global meltdown. Every major
recession in capitalist history has come about in the wake of an accumulation of wealth at the
top end of society and a corollary decline in earnings and disposable income at the bottom and
middle rungs. If you give a minority of people too much money, or at least access to too much
money (as was the case in the banks in 2007-8), expect to count the cost soon enough. The
system of social democracy allows policymakers to mitigate this problem by redistributing
wealth through taxation, and that is precisely what governments should be doing now. However,
to expect them to do so when they are in hock to corporations is roughly equivalent to
expecting the Pope to talk authoritatively on evolutionary biology. It won't happen, not with
the cowards and shysters who dominate our political systems, and it will probably take another
major world war to bring about the change we need.
Neoliberal economics is a cancerous system. There is growth, but only
increasingly unequal distribution of wealth and it will kill both itself and the host.
The Blairites and sadly the neos on this once great newspaper have nowhere to go.
The problem is TPTB aka the 1% are in charge and they think that Reagan/Thatcher/Friedman
economics has been a huge success. So it doesn't matter who or what the 99% vote for - they
can even vote for no more austerity (as in Greece) or even no more EU - the 1% are not going
to give up, because most of them don't appear on any ballot paper.
So, as Tony Benn famously asked, "How do we get rid of you?"
Thank you Martin, for this timely piece in which you manage to articulate what seems like
every other post I've made here since 2008. Neoliberalism is in it's zombie phase, we are now
living through the morbid symptoms whilst the new struggles to be born, and 2008 is, marked
the beginning of the end of the era of peak globalisation. Very astute re The Guardian and the
PLP too, who, bereft of new ideas, have engaged in what appears to be an interminable tantrum.
Cue hundreds of posts aping the New Statesman's Helen Lewis by asking 'what's
neoliberalism?'. It's market fundamentalism + monetarism + politics, boys and girls, it's not
so difficult, and no-one denies it anymore:
For the sake of the future of planetary biosphere, the livelihoods of our children and future
generations yet to come and our place in the legacy of human history our society needs a
fundamental socioeconomic paradigm shift away from the deeply destructive and short termist
creed that is neoliberalism.
The only actor within the UK political system who clearly attempting to articulate an
ideological alternative to neoliberalism as far as I can see is Jeremy Corbyn. That's why I
support him.
Mediocrities like Heidi Alexander and Sadiq Khan can carp at him all day. What Corbyn is
trying to do is bigger than them.
Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental
cornerstone of UK policy since the early 1970s. Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in
fact about much more: a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left
behind
Quit with the patronising assumption that we voted Brexit because we felt 'left behind',
and didn't have the brain power to understand what we were voting for. Everyone in my work,
neighbourhood, flat share and extended family were discussing nothing but the EU, it's pros
and cons, and arguing their positions right up until the referendum.
I found this a very well written and interesting article, but curiously parochial given that
it's about globalisation. If you just consider Europe and the United States it seems
irrefutable that globalisation has grossly enriched a fortunate few and left many more to
struggle with stagnating and insecure incomes. The problem, in that context, is clearly
inequality. But was inequality, on a global scale, not the problem before globalisation was
conceived, and has globalisation not done much to reduce global inequality? It is not
surprising if the reduction has been at the expense of the world's relatively rich, the middle
and working classes of the western world. But the winners are not just the rich western elite,
but also the millions who have benefitted from free migration and the transfer of capital and
jobs to what used to be the third world. If the remedy for western economic ills is,
effectively, deglobalisation, there will be losers there too as well as, we hope, winners at
home.
There's some truth to this, Terry Eagleton has written well on the subject. A united
left needs to come to terms with globalisation in terms of internationalisation and
imperialism: the forward march of labour may have halted in the West towards the end of
the 1970s but it carried on in the East and the global South.
Any serious socialist analysis needs to take the international/global working class
seriously*. Sadly I don't see that happening anytime soon, it's too complex, too
abstract.
* In simple terms, we may not have miners slaving underground anymore, but
we still buy coal.
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But the point here is: the countries need to care more about their home-markets to
supply them with things necessary for a sustainable living. What goes on is much like
the old banana republic economy of the United Fruit company, where few in the developing
countries get rich, but most still has to work very hard for pennies, and where their
farming is undermined by Western industrialised mass-production of food. There is
nothing wrong with globalisation, if it stops being a new colonisation, and rather
becomes an exchange between equal partners. That is not unlikely to happen, except that
some industries get in the way, these are weapons and fossil fuels.
The death of neoliberalism has been inevitable since the 1980s. What is interesting is that it
is taking the political landscape with it. The current political structure, both in the UK and
the US, is no longer for for purpose, nor are the political elite who run them. No longer do
the working classes support the left and the middle and upper classes support the right. The
emergence of those 'further' right, such as Trump, Farage and Johnson; and those 'further'
left such as Corbyn and Saunders, have split the classes down the middle. As long as the
political elite try to cling on we will see the continuance of neoliberalism. However it's
steady decline cannot be prevented so , as always, the end will come through a form of
revolution - not violent, but through the election of more 'politically extreme' candidates
and, for the short term at least, a return to a much more isolationist and protectionist
agendas.
It may be that neo-liberalism, as we have come to see it in hindsight (for most people
really only see it in that context and had no objection to it as it was unfolding), has
faltered, but it has done its vile work. For example, Governments now have little to
sell off, so sales of publicly-owned assets are few. But the legacy of the
post-Reagan/Thatcher/Blair/Bush/Clinton/Hawke era is an embedded and pervasive
individual selfishness that has completely neutered
...any real compassion for the plight of the disadvantaged. Society is now gripped by a
level of personal selfishness that is unprecedented. This manifests itself in growing
support for the vile notions spread by conservatives that the disadvantaged only have
themselves to blame and how dare the government redistribute "my hard earned taxes" to
the undeserving bludgers. The wealthy, many of whom have more wealth than they can
spend, scream about any measure that might have the effect of redistributing even small
amounts of wealth to those less well off - many of whom are less well off because of
measures that have advantaged the wealthy and the owners of capital. We scream about
fuel prices, but SUV's now outsell sedans. We scream about energy prices, but happily
purchase ever more power-hungry contraptions. We scream about house prices, but continue
to let developers build bigger houses than most of us need on smaller blocks. We scream
about our "right to free speech", when in truth we think our views are just more
important than anybody else's and resort quickly to "techno-violence" via social media
and actual violence when the intellectual vacuity of our mindless and bigoted views are
challenged. We pretend that we are compassionate, but society as a whole really doesn't
care about the impoverished - those of us who are the "haves" convince ourselves that we
are the deserving. These are all products of the "neo-liberal model" and it is something
that has been slowly absorbed into our human fabric. Those obsessed with the purity of
"free-markets" have triumphed.
Ironically, not only do the rich scream when there is any talk of taking some more of their
earnings in taxes - they actually spend billions on lobbying Parliaments across the globe on
their behalf. They are happy to spend their millions on lobbyists, political campaign
donations, newspaper campaigns, media outlets to promote their own agendas etc.. all in order
to save themselves a few hundred thousand in extra taxes. I'm not sure they are such great
'wealth creators' after all. It's obviously not about saving their money - it's about
maintaining an ever growing inequality that matters. It's not sufficient to be wealthy -
others must be destitute
It has been clear since that day in May 1979 when Thatcher stood on the steps of 10 Downing
Street and lied about bringing peace and harmony to replace strife, that everything went wrong
and it's all been her fault. We've been right all along: she destroyed our social democracy
and sold off (cheaply) the best bits of the state to her rich friends. However, as usual, it's
ordinary people who have to pick up the pieces and pay the price. And looking at the present
total and complete shambles the Tories have led us into, it looks as if things will only get
worse while nobody has the slightest idea of what to do next.
I'm afraid Thatcher just picked up the ball from Healey and ran with it. Healey first gave us
monetarism in 1975 with cuts to public spending that Thatcher could only dream of.
The liberal elite have nothing but disdain for the white working class. They were
patronised in the 70,80's but then the glare of patronage moved to shine on black people
and the third world. Currently it shines on Muslims.
Well the white working class has had enough of being despised as ignorant, racist dregs
by this liberal elite. BREXIT was a magnificent, angry display of 'fuck you' to this
elite.
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I don't know what your definition of 'elite' is. If it includes all the people with power and
resources and they listen to you they may well think it is time to invest elsewhere.
Don't be surprised when Nissan decides to shift from Sunderland to somewhere within the EU.
At the end of the day the elite are a lot like you and me they will seek to protect their
interests. BREXIT has done a lot of damage to me a 63 ex-teacher living on a small pension in
Thailand. The 14% devaluation of the pound caused by BREXIT has had an immediate impact on me.
The impacts will be coming your way soon as more expensive imports.
The UK imports 60% of its food, the poor spend a larger proportion of their income on food,
they will suffer the most in the coming months and years.
I will try and protect my wealth as best I can. That probably means selling pounds as fast
as possible. I have no confidence in sterling and expect others to take a similar view.
What a joke. In Australia people are too stupid to notice the LNP are fucking them from behind
while smiling from the front... and then voted them in again.
If neoliberalism does die in
will ramp up big time and won't stop until ever single public asset has been shifted to the
elites and their private portfolios. Then it will be more stalling of actual progress while an
insipid authoritarianism and dictatorship takes hold.
You are dreaming if you think it will end well. Life as we know it will cease.... life as
someone from Africa or the Middle East knows it will begin.
There seems to be a lot of confusion as to why supporters of Corbyn continue to support
him. There appears to be a subtext of many of the following: naivety, blind messianic
faith, backward looking, entryist, no need to appeal to "Middle England", ideologically
Socialist, feeling good about a movement more important than winning power etc. etc.
I would like to post why I am supporting Corbyn and it comes down to 2 very simple
points:
1. The belief in a largely unrestrained market economy solving the problems for the
majority of the population (neo-liberal economics) has had its day, particularly since
the 2008 crash. Inequality and poverty are at an all-time high in recent years, as is
the declining position of the middle classes as their sons and daughters leave
university with huge debts and poor house-owning prospects, Jeremy Corbyn and his
supporters understand this. They don't have the solutions but are working towards
developing some. Hopefully, the solution will not only address the weaker members of our
society but also the concerns of "Middle England". Much of the PLP does not seem to
understand this – witness the austerity light election campaign under Miliband that was
hardly challenged by the Party.
2. Corbyn represents a chance for the Labour Party to be a democratic party. Since the
Blair years, supporters have been supposed to agree with policies handed down from on
high, often developed with the assistance of multinational corporation interests.
Members are now being offered a chance to participate in the development of policies,
and to express their concerns with our society. Corbyn and his team are unlikely to
allow multinationals to continue the same level of lobbying that has characterised the
Labour Party over the past few decades. The attempts to derail this democratic movement
by the PLP and NEC are nothing short of shocking.
I am under no illusion that these 2 points may well fall by the wayside in the
topsy-turvy situation we find ourselves. It is up to the members to further these aims,
and that includes those on the right and centre of the party, though I would suggest
those that still believe in the primacy of the market to solve the UK's problems might
want to find another party! But I doubt if there would be many of those types within the
Labour Party. I might add that this "Wind of Change" is not unique to the UK. It is
replicated all over "The West", including the USA.
From IFS Report, Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2015
"The absolute poverty rate measured AHC has been broadly flat overall since
2004–05. This is not true of absolute poverty measured before housing costs
(BHC), which fell by 3.2 percentage points (ppt) between 2004–05 and 2013"
An interesting article but I could find no suggestions of how to move forward. I could not see
any practical alternatives to so called neoliberalism.
An overarching theme of the article
was to suggest that economic growth has been anemic under neoliberalism and that we need more
economic growth. Many thinkers would reject the idea of simply believe that all economic
growth is good.
The article has ignored what should be on the front page and headlining all Media these days
is the imminent threat that is looming large over us all: catastrophic climate change.
Tinkering around with the capitalist/or alternative socialist system and ignoring the threat
of a collapsing environment is going to do us no good at all.
Although Paris was a big step forward it was not big enough and is yet to be implemented and
as yet is doing nothing to decrease predicted average global temperatures. Even if the
governments of the world do commit and implement the required measures agreed in Paris
tomorrow the increase in average global temperature is going to exceed the stated nominal
target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
This is a good analysis. Given the author's not insignificant role in the surreptitious
imposition of the cultural Marxism under which we all live today in which the expression
of any ideas by those in public life which run counter to the cultural and economic
consensus are greeted with loud indignation, feigned offence and derision, frequently
leading to social ostracism, one wonders how the new ideas are to be even debated, let
alone taken up.
Pikkety (?) is a good example of original thinking, with whom I don't
personally agree, but the way in which he has been derided in most MSM or, worse,
completely ignored shows up shallowness of modern political and philosophical discourse.
I have no idea what you mean by 'cultural Marxism', it seems you're way off beam. We
have lived through a period of hegemony dominated by neo liberal capitalism - as Martin
describes so well.
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'Cultural Marxism' is usually a euphemism for political correctness and identity politics
which the right-wing commentariat see rooted in 1960s counter culture supposedly influenced by
French and Frankfurt School marxian philosophy.
Piketty's parents were involved with a
Trotskyist group and the May 1968 protests in Paris, and although they and he no longer
subscribe in any way to those political affiliations, the idea that 'cultural marxism' is
ostracising or somehow gagging him seems particularly far fetched!
Neo-liberalism took off under Thatcher and Reagan because the bulk of the population
bought into a "me" society. To hell with the "we" thing.
The individual greedily bought shares in de-nationalised key sectors of the economy,
then quickly sold them for a quick buck to the rapacious investment houses and insurance
moguls. The same individuals now moan like hell because those key industries have been
screwed by international greed.
As individuals, there is a constant "want" for the latest gizmo-let's throw away
something that's in perfect working order. Millions of tons of perfectly good food is
wasted, because we try to eat too much. (Have a look at the waste food caddy at the end
of the week).
Second-hand shops are awash with perfectly good clothes because of the individual
obsession to have the latest designer clothes, creating greedy monsters like Philip
Green. WE created him and his ilk.
The problems of our societies, and the solution to those problems, lays within us as
individuals.
Go back to living according to need, not wants. The world will be a much better place.
You hit the nail on the head.
There was a strong move to collective thought after the second world war due to it's
trauma and everyone pulling together. Thus the NHS and the education act.
But as the society became more stable and memories faded the selfishness crept in,
managerial salaries relative to the shop floor rocketed and me first became the first
commandment.
It will take a financial crash or a plague to reverse the trend.
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Neo-liberalism took off under Thatcher and Reagan because the bulk of the
population bought into a "me" society.
The 'bulk of the population' whose wages have stagnated over 40 years, do you mean?
The 'bulk of the population' don't really have any choice about the direction capitalism
moves in, particularly when the political objective is to reduce their relative pay but
to persuade them to keep consuming through credit. Hence 2008.
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A pretty good if not new analysis of what's going wrong. Not much about what to do about it -
economically or politically.
I absolutely agree that the era when governments largely gave up their economic role or
confined it to looking after big business or the wealthy in the hope of a "trickle down"
effect has ended badly. These policies cannot now produce even the modest growth that they
seemed to in the past , and have proven major drivers of a level of inequality that is
threatening to destroy societies , particularly in Britain and the USA.
So governments have to be willing to take a much bigger economic role. What should that be
? In no particular order - 1. make sure the economic elites make their fair contribution to
society - i.e. pay a fair amount of tax , 2. Invest in the productive infrastructure -
particularly transport , education and housing. This should increase the long run growth
potential of economies if the investment is wisely made as well as boosting demand in the
short run. The investment should be financed from borrowing or creating money. 3. Make sure
that those who have little or no capital are able to get a fair chance in life compared to
those who have access to large amounts of capital - e.g. rebalance the power relationship
between workers and employers.
The political problem with this is that these are much more likely to be successful if
tackled on an international basis whereas the current political mood revolves largely around
economic nationalism - on both left and right. Indeed you could argue that one of the major
policy splits in the Labour Party is between the much more nationalistic supporters of Corbyn
and his generally much more internationally minded critics.
If my analysis is right it is going to be hard to work out a practical programme to achieve
it - at any level national , EU , G20 etc. It is going to be even harder to sell it to voters
when the easy option seems to be nationalism of the "look after yourself " variety.
However the longest journey begins with singe step - in the right direction. Pandering to
nationalism will only feed it and there is a surprising amount of international feeling out
there if currently in a rather disorganised form compared to the rich symbolism and traditions
of nationalism. We need political leaders with the courage to keep the international
perspective alive. It seems to me that the implications for those who have to decide the
future of the Labour Party over the next few weeks are pretty clear.
Make no mistake.
This wasn't incompetence or unintended consequences.
Reagan and Thatcher started a planned and deliberate transfer of wealth from the poor and
middle class to the rich.
It worked EXACTLY as it was meant to.
What's pathetic is that there are still so many who refuse to see that.
Just seeing that picture off the two of them makes me want t
Or it could just be electorate finally woke up & noticed the manifesto's were quite literally
of their day & never intended for any other reason than to write a short note of total deceit
to the electorate & win the biggest prize through those words, while failure on a 5 year basis
is well hidden as it seems a prerequisite of any incumbent government.
The facts are hidden
deep in the detail, the masses are never educated to a level that allows them to see past
their next problem, usually beset by a government of whatever hue.....with no one seeming to
notice the fact that UK government claim the need for immigration is the lack of well educated
young indigenous UK citizens...
Perhaps those young citizens & quite probably their parents afore them should point out
just who controls the 'dogma' & funding of UK education thus its failings....that would of
course be the politicians who almost without exception blame their own ineptness on the
population....although they may well have a point as the population does through its
electorate continue to elect these abject failures.
Oh, the Guardian has caught up with reality at long last. The global neo-liberal,
neo-conservative project is running into the ground. That much should have been obvious for
some time. The most strident critics have come from the hard left marxists the the libertarian
followers of Von Mises and the Austrian school on the right. Their prescriptions may not be
palatable (to some) but their analysis seems spot on, if of course you bother to read it.
The end of neoliberalism? Wonderful, but I doubt it. Power is now in the hands of
corporations, not governments. The TTP and TTIP were negotiated under the heavy influence of
corporations. The most objectionable clauses of these agreements such as the investor-state
dispute settlement and intellectual property provisions are gross intrusions of corporations
on national sovereignty, democratic government, voters and consumers. The real test will be
that these agreements are not ratified as they stand and that they are recrafted in the full
light of day and in the interests of ordinary people.
Neoliberals call for less government but this is the price we pay: the submission of our
democratic institutions to corporate interests. One might also say criminal interests because
corporate and company executive crime is not pursued nor prosecuted by governments nor is it
treated seriously by our courts. Neoliberalism is nothing more than the philosophical
justification for corporate criminality. It should die, but it won't.
Martin Jaques (the former editor of "Marxism Today") should be reminded that
It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a
particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that
between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and
Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to
the present.
is only half-true for a white males living in developed western societies with a long history
of domestic capitalism. It is wrong for the (PRoC)-Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, the
Indonesians, the Malayans - in short for the majority of mankind.
Furthermore he should be reminded that many people from countries ruled by socialists and
communist parties try to flee to countries where "neo-liberalism" is said to have caused a
crisis. If the people of Africa and Asia would be free to choose where to live - they would
settle in the neo-liberal west and would leave countries that were praised to the skies by
"Marxism today".
Well obviously, his is a critique of the West's decline; what's your point? That there's
winners and losers in any economic equation? That isn't really saying much; but
certainly policies pursued within the west have exacerbated that decline unnecessarily.
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Well obviously, his is a critique of the West's decline
He is not selling it as such but as a critique of neo-liberalism in general. But even if
we read it as a critique of the the West's decline he is wrong. The reasons for the
decline of some western countries (mind you not all of them) can be studied in PISA
rankings, innovations and productivity per capita rather than in a critique of "uber-globalisation"
- however that is defined.
That there's winners and losers in any economic equation? That isn't really saying
much
Well, it is saying more than his article.
but certainly policies pursued within the west have exacerbated that decline
unnecessarily.
Maybe, but the economic policies pursued in lets say the UK during the 60s and 70s were
not neo-liberal and have exacerbated that decline even more unnecessarily.
All opposition to neo-liberal globalist plans will be neutered. It is the intention of elites
to continue re-calibrating the economy to serve only the 1% and keep the 99% in fear and
insecurity. It's no coincidence that mass surveillance has been normalised. It has nothing to
do with terrorism and everything to do keeping tabs on unpredictable populations that terrify
powers that be. They know what's coming around the corner. Watch it all burn.
The reasons are not difficult to explain. The hyper-globalisation
era has been systematically stacked in favour of capital against labour: international trading
agreements, drawn up in great secrecy, with business on the inside and the unions and citizens
excluded, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) being but the latest examples; the politico-legal attack on the unions; the
encouragement of large-scale immigration in both the US and Europe that helped to undermine
the bargaining power of the domestic workforce; and the failure to retrain displaced workers
in any meaningful way.
And pro-immigration liberals are the capitalists' most useful idiots.
Well written and a sorely needed debate.
However I'm not really buying that neoliberalism and globalisation can be equated. "Globalisation"
as in free movement of capital yes, but not as in movement of industrialisation and
consequently a larger global spread of manufacturing, education and income. That latter
would have came anyway - there's no magic guaranteeing a never-ending industrial
advantage to the US and Europe.
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I think you're right. I was surprised the Jacques misses the critical factor, that neo liberal
approach was the an attempt to resolve a crisis in capitalism, which emerged as the
consolidation of market globalism with a technological revolution.
That crisis hasn't been
solved. It was temporarily ameliorated by two shortlived, in epochal terms, neoliberal
projects: firstly in lassaiz faire conservatism; then secondly as social managerialism.
Although both we're Atlanticist in nature, the former was conceived as a neo national solution
to the decline of high cost manufacturing by forcing restructuring on compliant populations
plying them with credit to benefit from the new global markets while the latter was conceived
as an internationalist solution to resolving the myriad of fissures that continued to emerge
as a result of the crisis . It's worth noting that the latter also had added to the mix the
fallout from the end of the cold war.
What remains missing from the analysis is what remains of that crisis to be resolved and
how are the forces aligned to struggle for a remedy. Briefly, it seems that the main
discourses are : trying are to plough on, accepting some teleological momentum to the
underlying process assuming that crisis remains essentially transitional, offering
better/fairer management; or to fight for some form of social realignment, again accepting the
teleological imperative, and attempting to accelerate the end of capitalism; or to wind back
the process, assuming it is terminally flawed, a new neo national settlement can be delivered
to fix the effects but still participate in global markets but with a regulated national
framework.
If you look at individuals such as Trump or Corbyn or at wider agglomeration of power in
America, Europe and elsewhere, the main trends in crisis resolution tend to be a pick and mix
of two of of the three.
This seems to be where the critical analysis is failing.
The sort of economic theories espoused by Friedman and Hayek and put into practice by
Thatcher, Reagan, Blair, Clinton and most western democracies are, indeed, failing and under
increasingly intense scrutiny.
The theory of trickle down economics has been usurped in reality by bubble up economics.
It's imperative that western economic policies change back towards a more
Keynesian/genuinely social democratic model, sooner rather than later before the seething mob
arrive with pitch forks. More and more people are beginning to wake up to the failings of
extreme free market ideology and the extraordinary imbalances it creates between the
wealthiest and the poorest. Top directors pay has grown out of all proportion to that of the
average worker. It cannot continue as it is.
In an age where social networks have the potential to very quickly allow very large groups
of people to come together, the consequences if genuinely social democratic economic policies
(for example a return of market intervention, controls on top directors pay, a rise in average
workers pay and conditions, closure of tax loopholes etc) don't once again become mainstream
are deeply worrying.
There is fertile ground for both the extreme left and right to prosper. The political class
need to see what's on the horizon.
It's also worth remembering the role that liberal democracy plays in protecting neeoliberalism
- as it's protected every successive stage of capitalism.
On the one hand we see the way that sections of the Labour Party in the UK and the
Democratic Party in the US have defended the economic and political status quo against
potential challenges (i.e. Corbyn and Sanders). And done so eagerly and tirelessly, with
repeated, cheerful recourse to inherently anti-democratic tactics.
On the other hand, we see Corbyn - and Labour under Corbyn - polling badly, even as the
bedrock policies of the economic and administrative alternative he represents are hugely
popular. People seem compelled to embrace the narrative of the political soap opera, at the
expense of the (seemingly irrefutable) logic of: "Want a policy? Vote for politicians who'll
implement it!"
On the third hand, we have the interesting hypothetical exercise
carried out here
, in which voting patterns across the US were used to construct the
hypothetical results of a three-way race between Clinton, Trump and Sanders.
The hypothetical result: the candidate who will probably win in November came in third -
while the semi-formal electoral duopoly has denied the candidate who (hypothetically) came in
first any meaningful route to a run at the presidency.
These are all aspects of liberal democracy doing its job - i.e. severing the links between
1) consensus about the sort of nation people
want
to live in and 2) the nation they end
up living in. And doing this by means of the mechanisms central to liberal democracy - mass
democracy - itself.
It isn't a hermetic epistemic hegemony; it's a rough and ready defence strategy based on
winning, and on the losers repeatedly giving up, slouching into the passive spectatorship that
is the essence of liberal democratic citizenship, and having to start again, coalescing into a
new challenge.
The problem with neoliberalism is taking things to extremes. Just because Communism failed, it
doesn't mean that the opposite of Communism - the free market - is absolutely right, only
relatively right.
But it's just basic common sense that a government needs to intervene in
the market, in the right way, in order to ensure balance, and in order to ensure that the
parameters within which the market operates are healthy and sustainable.
The problem with the market is it's amoral. It's blind. It operates under its own vagaries,
and if the value of Krupp ovens goes up in 1944, then so be it. That's what the market wants.
To think that you can make a god out of the market is the page 1 mistake. The market can
indicate certain things, but it's not the final word.
In the UK and the USA, neo liberalism has largely achieved its purposes of concentrating most
of the wealth in the hands of a small elite, downsizing the middle classes, creating a large
impoverished underclass and hollowing out our public services almost to the point of
extinction. Why not just let the Tories finish the job that Thatcher started and and be done
with it.
It's going to happen anyway now that the Labour Party has decided to fight amongst itself
rather than get elected.
We voted for poverty, when we elected the Tories, so we shouldn't complain when we get it.
QE is the glaring problem - it is public money,shamelessly channelled through the financial
market to the accounts,portfolios and property empires of the 1%. It's obvious that the stock
exchanges now have no interest whatsoever in the fortunes of industry,only second-guessing
when the next tranche of QE will be dished-out.
An excellent summary of the world today. The problem now is that the Neoliberals are still
firmly in control and will hang on for grim death to protect their wealth power and greed.
Seems only a disasterous fiscal event can move them or open revolt. The present theme seems to
be "Don't rock the boat".
esent theme seems to be "Don't rock the boat".
This is obviously the theme of people who flee their countries to reach the crisis stricken
neo-liberal western states.
If there is a crisis in Western politics, it is caused, quite deliberately by corporate
fascism, the neoliberal subversion of democracy and the sovereignty of the people in their own
lands.
Every neoliberal end, without exception, has served to :
1/ dilute and emasculate national
accountable democratic power and the rule of law.
Most obviously tax and employment law but also just the rule of any law that might hold the
elites to account.
2/ To set up faux democratic, actually dictatorial bodies over the heads of national
parliaments and quite beyond any democratic control, such as the EU with the power to further
increase their dictatorial strength on any ad hoc basis that takes their fancy in order to
subvert the rule of law through what amounts to Imperial Treaty.
Such treaties* are of course negotiated behind closed doors by unaccountable bureaucrats
acting without any warrant colluding with corrupt politicians to establish their ends.
Which ends are always to place unaccountable corporate courts over sovereign courts of
justice and to place supernational bureaucracies with power to control all money beyond
democratic control and to seize control of the monetary system for themselves, as far as may
be possible put in the hands of a tiny, self serving elite cartel of gangsters.
Gangsters known as bankers, but in reality a ruthless cabal of wealth worshipers with little
more to justify their positions and power than criminal instincts and ruthless greed.
The fact is that we have had a very narrow escape, largely because of the presumptuously
arrogant stupidity of the Cameron regime and the overweening arrogance of the EU dictatorship.
But also due to the democratic instincts that yet abide in Blighty, in spite of the best
endeavours of corporate fascists such as the Guardian and Observer who even now continually
try to overturn the will of the people and cut off our escape through more lies and character
assassination.
There is in fact no crisis in our democracy, now that we shall regain control over our
lives and lands, other than that put there by anti-democratic forces such as the Guardian, the
true enemies of the people, democracy, the right to self determination, the rule of the common
law and our own, sovereign courts of justice as the ultimate and only effective weapon for the
defence of liberty against the rising forces of corporate fascism and Guardian approved
tosspots of tyranny and every fashionable new form of pointless fascism.
*called with cynical contempt for truthful language and the gullibility of honest people
everywhere' free trade agreements '
I have to politely disagree with the author. The opposition to neoliberals is irrelevant
because they are, as we plainly can see, blocked in their efforts with disturbing ease and do
not pose any realistic threat to people with trillions of dollars out of the reach of the
taxman, armies, political parties and media at their disposal.
What happens next is that all
the money they stole from us (we got off lightly, the folks abroad were bombed while robbed)
is going to be invested in more power until we reach the holy grail - neofeudalism. Those
people want nothing less than royal powers and I suspect that the powers of a deity would be
next on the list - I also suspect science is going to provide them with that too, good
obedient boys and girls that they always were.
And then, when they are at the top of their might, the whole thing will crumble down as it
always does and the god-kings and queens will hopefully see themselves for what they always
were: disgusting, mad swine.
And then the whole insane cycle will start again...unless, of course, this one does not
wipe out the life on earth.
Cutting taxes and increasing government spending is a temporary move to stimulate the economy
which looks good in the short-term but creates economic decay in the long-term. The problem is
that working people don't have as much disposable income as they once did and all Western
societies have adapted to high levels of government spending. So when this correction happens,
don't say you weren't warned.
Neoliberalism will not be dislodged easily. Political party funding by big business keeps it
firmly in place. Powerful media corporations reinforce neoliberal values. Policies that would
actually help people like making university education free, as it used to be in England,
continue to be ignored. Such is the power of neoliberalism.
China, by far the fastest growing market in the world
Interesting article, but the global institutional context of the undemocratic,
supranational IMF, WTO, World Bank are key actors in spreading neoliberalism through a stick
and carrot approach, and the the neoliberalism of social democratic sacred cows like Sweden.
Plus, given the author's expertise on China (see his book When China Rules the World), China
was an early adopter of neoliberalism:
Future historians may well look upon the years 1978–80 as a revolutionary turning-point
in the world's social and economic history. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping took the first momentous
steps towards the liberalization of a communist-ruled economy in a country that accounted
for a fifth of the world's population. The path that Deng defined was to transform China in
two decades from a closed backwater to an open centre of capitalist dynamism with sustained
growth rates unparalleled in human history.
A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey
While 'neoliberal' is an often lazy, misapplied term of abuse, here's a great interview
with David Harvey on defining it. He's led work on the political, economic and geographical
roots of neoliberalism and postmodern culture:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/lilley190606.html
Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political
economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating
individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized
by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.
The role of the state is to create and preserve an
institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for
example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence,
police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to
guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets.
Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in areas such as land,
water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be
created, by state action if necessary. But beyond these tasks the state should not venture.
State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to
a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough
information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will
inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own
benefit.
The assumption had been more of the same, a Blairite or a halfway house like Miliband,
certainly not anyone like Corbyn. But the zeitgeist had changed. The membership, especially
the young who had joined the party on an unprecedented scale, wanted a complete break with
New Labour.
Take the Hint Owen Blairite polices only worked as they where sucking on the teat of
Thatcherism the family silver has almost all been sold.The monies generated went to keep the
system going in the process encouraging the haves to move their monies off shore out of Tax
harm and as they have reduced costs to the level were jobs are a fluid commodity they are
doing quite nicely Why risk any of that cash pile when the next crash is around the corner.
As big business devours all in its path feel sorry for the old guy in the corner shop when
Tesco move into the old pub they helped to close 20m away the good news 5 new jobs in the
village as his pension asset evaporates and the vacuum up continues.
The Labour Party needs to lead away out of this the PLP needs to accept this as Corbyn gets re
elected.
The real problem with neoliberalism is that it's economically and environmentally
unsustainable. A "system" which ruthlessly hoovers-up wealth from the poor to the very richest
is destructive of communities and creates the personal isolation in which violent extremists
flourish.
Neo- liberalism, monetarism, whatever you want to call it represented a structural and
paradigm change on the relationship between economy and society. I'm not seeing anyone in
politics or elsewhere proposing a break with that. The best we're getting is a softening from
one side and a harkenimg back to the policies that were failing before Neo-liberalism came
along.
Our situation today is pretty simple. After screwing over working people through
wrecking unions and globalisation the owners and beneficiaries of big business have run out if
ways to increase profit. They have chosen to reduce wages and benefits thus creating a working
poor. The government pays benefits to the working poor - in effect subsidising companies by
making up the difference. Capital is basically sucking that money out of the system.
The Neo-liberals on both sides have always recommended carrot and stick for workers - but
only carrots for companies and shareholders. Until someone is willing to accept that the
corporate tax regime ought to be a vehicle for encouraging actions that are both ethical and
I'm the national interest we aren't going to change a thing.
There's lots to think about here, that's great. Especially "what should we do next?
The foundation is debatable, however, and seems to me to have a conservative bias. Most
obviously in phrases such as
"public opinion against the banks, bankers and business
leaders. For decades, they could do no wrong"
. This is debatable. I know lots of
people who would disagree, and that from the very early days.
The second is the notion
that this is a working class revolt against the leaders. Working class such as Rupert
Murdoch, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, and Mr. Ukip there?
So two problems:
This seems an interpretation of history with a
conservative slant.
The "revolution of the people against the elite" doesn't
fit the facts.
Given that, I think this is an interesting spark to think about "what's wrong" and
"what next", but I disagree with this "popular revolution against the elite" thing.
So what's going on if it's not that, well, two more things:
Increasing scale of democracy makes elections increasingly difficult to judge. The way we vote
has never been exact: it's always a complicated mixture of personal prejudice, the media
invluence directing an approximate appreciation of what is at stake and how the different
choices on offer will deal with it.
What's at stake and what's on offer is increasingly complex, and our vote therefore
increasingly removed from it and influenced by bias.
Decreasing impact of the vote on our lives: For the moment at
least, the lifestyle of most UK voters is not strongly impacted by the vote. The average not
very well off lifestyle is not changed fundamentally because all parties maintain a minimum.
Another way of seeing this is UK society is overall wealthy enough that few people need to go
hungry and homeless, that is, not in number sufficient to cause more than a twinge of
conscience among the rest.
Furthermore, the effects of party policy apply mostly to a minority of the population.
In short, 'cos that's too wordy:
1) Democracy is on too big a scale. And even though democracy is always a random walk, the
"random" element is increasing, and democracy working less well. We all feel this.
2) This is amplified by the fact that the vote does not affect our lives very immediately.
Most citizens don't starve, yet aren't living in luxury, and notions of "Tomorrow will be
better than today!" have given way to "we muddle along as best we can".
So "What happens next" I fear is at risk of a loss of hope. The clearest symptom of this:
Where is there a politician saying "Tomorrow will be great, this is what we have to do" ? Well
there's Trump, but he's nuts, and dangerous.
And finally, what I think would do the trick: Local scale government. Wind back, and
devolve power to cities, towns, and villages.
I worked in Ireland in the immigration 'system' during the early 2000s and the flood of tens
of thousands coming into the country served one purpose - undermine the unions, destroy wage
agreements and reduce labour costs - of course this was all unspoken and somehow it was loud
and clear - and precisely effective.
The unions are a waste of space and their own worst
enemy - they had no answer to the need to improve national competitiveness and didn't feel the
need to respond to these issues until it was too late. And do you know what? They are such a
waste of space that they still don't feel the need to respond - they live in a subsidized
bubble paid for by their members and answer, in truth, to no-one. The biggest disgrace of the
success of neo-liberalism and the undermining of working class people is the abject failure of
the people who are supposed to represent them - incompetents, one and all.
Pretty accurate analysis. However no mention from the author that he and his followers in the
late 70s/80s (the so-called 'euro-communists') encouraged the left to abandon class-based
politics. Some of us strongly argued against this and predicted that neo-liberalism would
prove to be a debt-fuelled last-gasp effort to sustain a system that is life-expired.
The
task now is to make the case for a socialist economic system that plans the use of resources
for need rather than profit, based on democratic workers ownership and control of the major
banks and corporations. As fought for by Trotsky, and his followers who are alive and well in
the British labour movement. #Socialistparty
"plans the use of resources for need". Tried by Communist Russia, the infamous five year
plans, failed dismally.
Trotsky was an exceptional person, a man of very high intellect, according to his compatriots
who knew and worked with him "he stood head and shoulders above anyone else in the Party". His
ideology, and that of his associates, was the product of the grossly unfair and dehumanizing
society into which they were born and in which they were raised and educated. The peasants of
that time and place simply accepted their fate because that was "the order of things". People
such as Trotsky knew it was wrong and knew that he and others had a duty to change things, and
they did. Having said all that they got it wrong, over regulation, breathing down the neck of
each individual, controlling the daily lives of people, regulating production and consumerism,
deciding who will reside where and when leads, in the end, to the regulators deciding who will
live and who will die.
As I have said before, greedy unregulated Capitalism is evil, equally over regulated hard left
Socialism is stupid. It has been proven beyond any doubt, all throughout history, that Man is
at his best when he is free. Freedom from the shackles of regulation, freedom from the thought
police, freedom from the stupidity of religion. Man's greatest achievements have always been
those of freethinkers, unfettered people who observe a bird, free and soaring on the wing, and
say to themselves that is what I want to do, I shall be free and I shall soar to the heights
and I shall achieve. Regulation and planning stifle the natural instincts of Man. I do not
propose total freedom, that would be Anarchy, laws must be in place to protect society,
regulation, to a certain extent, must be in place, what I object to is over regulation and an
elite few, elected or not, planning for the many.
+The western financial crisis of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate
repercussions were surprisingly modest. The crisis challenged the foundation stones of the
long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed. The banks were
bailed out; hardly any bankers on either side of the Atlantic were prosecuted for their
crimes; and the price of their behaviour was duly paid by the taxpayer. Subsequent economic
policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied overwhelmingly on monetary policy,
especially quantitative easing. It has failed.
The western economy has stagnated and is
now approaching its lost decade, with no end in sight.
If it were simply the Western economy that was stagnating then there would be an obvious
solution, however it isn't. The global economy is in a downward spiral with the same or
similar decline being experienced in every nation connected to it.
This reflects the fact that 2008 was not just a financial crisis, it was complete and total
systemic failure of the global financial and economic system.
One of the major problem is that it is a system that requires trust in order to function,
but is powered by greed and stupidity - eventually the one overcomes the other and the system
fails.
Perhaps then the conversation would be more productive if we turn the conversation to what
we might replace that financial economic system with, because until we take money out of the
equation then no flavour of political system is going to break us free from this distructive
cycle.
The central trade union body in Canada did some polling and discovered that 3% of the Canadian
population knew what the "neoliberalism" meant. So basically the term is one which the 3%
(graduate students?) use to attack the 1%, leaving the rest of the population out in the cold.
Great plan.
In the absence of oppressed workers to represent, the left has latched onto the word
"inequality" , to try to get us to feel some indignation that some people have more than the
rest of us.
Problem is that it's pretty meaningless.
I strongly recommend the film "Suffragette" to anyone who wants to see how far this country
has come since Labour, as a party, was in its youth.
Or read George Orwell's essay "The Spike" about his experience in a workhouse -
institutions, let's not forget, which only ceased to exist in the 1930s.
Inequality then meant working for virtually nothing, frequently in considerable danger.
For decades, the governments in this country, of all colours, have presided over an
improvement in living standards that would be astonishing to our great-grandparents. That
improvement in living standards has been delivered across all the demographics - rich and
poor. Those improvements have been for the many, and not for the few.
We all of us live longer as a result. We all of us get a free education and no-one stands
in our way when we say "I am going to university". If I want to study law, for example, all I
need to do is study and get the grades. No-one cares about my background.
Today we have working rights that are extremely generous in terms of maternity and
paternity leave, annual holidays, minimum wage (which incidentally, is the ONLY pay-scale to
have seen incomes more-than-double since being introduced), Health & Safety and so on. Which
begs the question "just who are these oppressed workers that Labour are trying to represent?".
To a large part, they don't exist.
And so they have latched onto this word "inequality" with great vigour. I am supposed to
feel incensed, it appears, that some people have more than I do.
The problem is, I don't. Most people couldn't give a toss about such things. I don't
begrudge anyone else what they have, however much those on the left tell me I should be
bothered.
What matters to most people is that there is opportunity for all. I live near Corby -
recognised a few years ago as one of the most deprived communities in the UK - and all four of
the comprehensive schools there have kids who have gone on to Oxford and Cambridge, with many
others going on to other top universities.
People can be successful irrespective of their background. JK Rowling was a single mum, on
benefits. She is now a multi-millionaire. Duncan Bannatyne left school when he was 14. The
same. Lorraine Pascale was shunted around many foster-parents as a child, but became a
successful TV chef and publisher of excellent cookery books. Levi Roots made some sauce.
The list goes on.
In all honesty, If I am a kid today of 13, about to commence year-9 at school, who - other
than me - is stopping me from becoming whatever I want to be in life?
Throughout the hundred-plus years that Labour has existed as a party the poverty it sought
to reduce has reduced. Significantly. The current leader (that might be too strong a word)
harks back to a bygone era of dockers, ship-builders, miners etc, where workers rightly felt
oppressed. But today a boy from social-housing is more likely to become an IT service engineer
than work in any of those trades. They don't exist. The world has moved on. The "lot" of the
worker has improved considerably.
Labour needs to find a new narrative. I get that. But "inequality" doesn't work for this
reader. Jealousy is not a part of my make-up, or that of most people I know.
Uncontrolled immigration matters to most people, Hospitals, housing, schools. These are the
vote winners. This is what Labour should focus on. But sadly, with its drift to the left, it
has got out its comfort-blanket of being sneery about people who have stuff.
The world has moved on. Labour needs to too - otherwise it will cease to exist.
The problem with capitalism today is the commodification of the corporation - companies being
traded rather companies trading has become the main purpose of companies. That's the wrong
priorities for everyone. Globalisation in the sense of trade makes sense but globalisation in
the sense of global supra-national corporations is against the interests of almost everyone.
New Labour a classic in point. They knew no other way of thinking or doing: it had
become the common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci put it, hegemonic.
To really grasp how delusional New Labour is, I recommend people a reading of Gordon
Brown's recent article in the Financial Times. His lusty defense of TPP and TTIP is a real
triumph of detachment
People need to be informed about this repeatedly to undo the brainwashing from
neoliberalism spanning these last few decades in order to pressure politicians to start
undoing the damage pronto.
I actually see no signs that Neoliberalism is faltering. If anything it is digging in. True
liberals are failing to combat Neoliberal propaganda at every level. Those who might be seen
to be liberals - Democrats in the USA; Labour Party in the UK are still espousing Neoliberal
economic policies.
But how did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? Although it
failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic disaster for seven
decades, politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties of the
right, centre and left had all bought into its philosophy
It survived so long due to the successful denial of its existence and its purpose. It
survived because it was generally accepted and promoted by both political right/left
polarisations and is the reason why there is no essential difference between LibLabCon.
Its the only show in town....and its run out of money.
As it goes it (neoliberalism) doesn't have to be a bad thing but due to human nature its
made bad by avarice and corruption.
Williamson (see Washington Consensus/neoliberalism) was asked by The Washington Post in
April 2009 whether he agreed with Gordon Brown that the Washington Consensus was dead. He
responded:
It depends on what one means by the Washington Consensus. If one means the ten points
that I tried to outline, then clearly it's not right. If one uses the interpretation that a
number of people!including Joe Stiglitz, most prominently!have foisted on it, that it is a
neoliberal tract, then I think it is right.
Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;
Redirection of public spending from subsidies ("especially indiscriminate subsidies")
toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education,
primary health care and infrastructure investment;
Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;
Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;
Competitive exchange rates;
Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of
quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and
relatively uniform tariffs;
Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;
Privatization of state enterprises;
Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition,
except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and
prudential oversight of financial institutions;
Legal security for property rights.
As can be deduced, the usual suspects took the usual opportunities to co-opt things to
thier own benefit at the expense of everything and everyone else.
We now have an asset bubble that needs direct and sustained intervention by .govs globally
and as such is not exactly either 'free-market' or capitalism.
The doctrine of neoliberalism was always a failure but it claimed credit for any growth.
Unfortunately the damned thing won't die either.
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"Unfortunately the damned thing won't die either."
It won't die because it is kept alive by socio-political elites with the most to benefit
from its continuing to live.
And importantly, it bears no comparison to economic systems preceding it. Yet people
puzzle why their uni-educated kids fail to progress beyond low-paid, coffee-serving
level. They never grasp that in the last 30 or so years, capitalism has changed beyond
recognition. And that the major reality of that change is a rigged system in which all
money now flows upwards to those who already have an abundance.
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Its like that from the right - they can never own up to the results of their actions. They
blame others for their failures, and only claim responsibility when the news is good. Just
like all the Brexiters are doing now with recent news that the economy is not quite as sh*t as
everyone thought. Lets see if that continues when article 50 is triggered. If we go into
recession they will blame the remainers (for causing it out of spite).
me thinks neo liberals are seeking life raft, th esight of guillotine on capitalhill and
westminister bridge, has sent their cash into hiding all we can see is their heads, its a very
posh article, say it as it neo liberalism ="back to slavery" trump and clinton are slave
traders in any language
Neoliberaiism is a political and economic philosophy that says give the money to the rich who
will know how to invest it for the common good. This is a lie. But it convinces many by saying
that the government does not know how to invest so reduce government spending and let
corporations decide. Then you have people like GW Bush who destroy government and then when
the govt cannot respond to Hurricane Katrina, for example, say see the government is
incompetent.
The working class has been voting against their own interests since at least Thatcher/Reagan.
Unfortunately, they vote for a candidate who is socially conservative, and when he wins, they
get f*cked by his economic conservatism, i.e. neo-liberal policies, that are designed to only
benefit the wealthy.
This sort of reminds me of Sociology essays in the early 80s I used to grind out. If in
doubt, do Marxism - there's a cover all world view that the examiner can't really mark
you down for.
I am unclear what the paradigmatic shift IS here. Interventionist
Keynesian economics flourished in the Post War period because of a huge need for
infrastructure 're-building' following the war. Monetarism flourished following the
unaffordability of basic energy following the Opec price surges of the early seventies.
The need for 'living within our means' and the 'streamlining' of public finances was in
tune with the obvious increased financial challenges. Both situational responses to
political/military events.
Yet Marxists want determinism; structure; 'progress' - which rather takes me back to
A levels in the Eighties. You have a theory; it'll stand scrutiny, so you bash the
anomalies into shape. Where would Marxism be without that handy catch all 'false class
consciousness' which Marx himself never articulated?
So I don't buy former Marxism Today's editor Jacques' dismissal of the 'opponents' of
Corbyn failing because they weren't up with the zeitgeist. There were situational
factors; the crappy election system bequeathed by Miliband, the proud entryism of Tories
and Trots alike and, most critically, the explosion of social media - a technological
advance that has clearly changed attitudes and thinking in a way that we have yet to
take on board. Why do comfortable, middle class grannies take to Twitter to pour vitriol
on Israel? How does that fit in with neo-liberalism?
I prefer facts to grand theory; especially when the grand theory fails to look at WHY
change is happening, nor predicts where economic development may be heading. The
Eighties Militancy of Corbyn? That's not a system, it is a series of irrational slogans.
Socialism in one country? Impossible. International socialism? A pipe dream.
Pre Thatcher, My own town was a world centre for machine tool engineering. It boasted the
largest carpet manufacturers in the world, employing several thousand people. It was a major
centre for confectionary, again employing several thousand people. Thousands worked in the
textile industry. Instead of investment in new technology Thatcherism allowed the easy option
of selling off our industries to any willing bidder. It was not inevitable. It did not happen
in Germany. The championing of neoliberalism and short term casino capitalism is the reason
for our national decline.
Neo -liberalism can be summed up as a Corporate take over of the State and its resources,
Consigning the people to the role of serfs. This is the end product.
They have corrupted politics with their money and revolving door to cushioned sinecures.
The end result will be revolution,unless a change of course to real social democracy takes
place.
We ,the people, deserve a fair share in the wealth of our Nation and a future free of
inequality for our children.
The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in
the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest,
with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement.
The labour movement, aka trade unionism, was one of the first obstacles to neoliberalism
recognised by Friedman in the 1950s ('When unions get higher wages for their members, those
higher wages are at the expense of others"). Hence the disturbing witch hunts in US from the
sixties onwards, and the defeat of the miners in the UK coupled with a whole host of other
industries and occupations. Only the corporations were not shackled by legislation, but the
unions became toothless cult figures, especially in the eyes of the media. All of that was a
part of a plan for the suckers to fall for the most immoral politics since Hitler.
We fought fascism in two world wars and yet it returned by becoming huge corporate empires
who enslave labour and treat it like dirt, to be washed off whenever stains appear. Just
another facet of the neoliberalism when the washing powder is a paint job to mask the stench
of fraud, corruption and mass lying. The young do not understand trade unions because they
cannot become a part of their everyday lives when the law is as corrupt as it was when it
first dealt with the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Neoliberalism comes at a huge cost to anyone other than the privileged classes and their
mercenaries. It operates like a drug cartel. It needs to removed like a scum and those who
deal in it removed likewise
If we are to understand the impact of Neoliberalism on our economy we have to talk about
private sector debt and the massive increase in it since 1971 when Neoliberal deregulation
began. The problems we have now began then - we began to mine our own future wealth in order
to raise our standard of living. Only now the future is mined out. Households owe 150% of our
annual income on average and the interest payments are soaking up disposable income that we
usually spend. The only reason we are still spending at all is deflation driving down prices
and the fact that credit is still freely available.
This cannot go on. But Neoliberalism - the ideology which seeks to unbridle
merchantilism
and enslave workers through debt, is still the dominant political ideology.
The flaws in the system are not yet apparent to those who champion it - i.e.
all
of the
mainstream political parties.
Neoliberalism might still be dominant in the West but it has finally registered on the
consciousness of many and is being challenged. The worry is that new markets for the ideology
have been found in other democracies like, most significantly, India. Manmohan Singh, the
dolt, was an acolyte and the new rulers are even more radical adherents
I rarely notice the Guardian these days because i go elsewhere for my news,but this article
caught my eye and it is exceptional. The Guardian has become regressive in its own pursuit of
globalisation,share holder interests and defence of status quo arguments.....but this article
actually thinks round its subject.
I wish Trump and Corbyn all the best in their fight to
restore the place of the ordinary citizen.
It is a fantasy as it is based on free markets, whilst in reality, they are rigged by monopoly
capital and of course the banks. It has been an absolute disaster and the likes of Hayek,
Minford and all the other quack economists who still espouse this dangerous crap should be
consigned to the cesspit of history.
Decent article, but no more novel than a coroner approaching a rotten corpse and
declaring it dead.
. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of
the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the
growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.
That's misleading. The post-war growth had little to do with Keynesianism and welfare
capitalism, and what caused the demise of Keynsianism was when the growth stopped but
the inflation stayed, the stagflation period. Suddenly, the cherished Philips curve of
the
Keynians was shown to be a bunch of rank nonsense and new theories emerged.
The Nordic countries have practiced different versions of Keynesianism for decades, even when
being governed by Liberal or Conservative parties/coalitions.
These countries are still
welfare states, with the highest levels of equality in the world. Denmark is the most equal
and prosperous in the EU. Norway is the most prosperous in the world. They have very low
unemployment, and like most EU countries, increasing real wages. Unlike the UK and the US.
The article shows the practice of neo-liberalism in the Anglo-Saxon world. The form of
capitalism practiced in most EU countries is social-liberalism i.e. capitalism with built in
protection for the unemployed, sick and vulnerable. It's not about survival of the fittest.
Finally, I'd suggest that a lot of the growth after WW2 was due to the war itself. Both
Germany and Japan needed massive reconstruction due to war damage. This also meant rebuilding
their manufacturing industries. These modern new factories with the latest machinery gave the
two countries a considerable advantage over a country like the UK, which irresponsibly let
it's manufacturing capacity decline, not least during Thatcher's reign.
Interesting analysis, but what next? If the logic is correct there would be an ensuing descent
into insular marketplaces and ever more disgruntled populations looking for scapegoats. Anyone
care tto guess the next phase?
Infinite growth on a finite resource is the logic of the cancer cell.
Neoliberalism is
simply the application of extreme, deregulated capitalism. Its dynamic is the systematic
transfer of the world's wealth into fewer and fewer hands while at the same time destroying
our life sustaining environment. It is grand theft on a scale unsurpassed in human history.
The inevitable outcome of its methodology is entropy and collapse.
The process needs to be reversed, beginning with restoration of regulatory systems and the
re-establishment of the resdistributive institutions. Only then can a model of future
sustainability be sought.
The solution is to recognise it as terminal if left unchecked and to
A very good article.
Another reader commented that Neo-liberalism will not be easy to dislodge given many
liberal-democracies have veered towards a kind of plutocracy in recent decades. While this is
a genuine stumbling block, ultimately what we are seeing in the Trump/Sanders/Corbyn/Hanson(here
in Australia) phenomenon is the re-awakening of revolutionary potential within the populations
of Western Liberal Democracies. As the experience in Europe during the inter-war years tells
us, this can only be resisted for so long. If those who control the levers of power fail to
bring about reform through existing institutions, eventually, the people will act to remove
them.
However, democratic polities are inherently well suited to responding to the demands of the
people and therefore, as the impetus for change grows, it is likely that reform will take
place.
What this will look like is surely the most interesting question thrown up by this debate. The
most obvious reform is to recalibrate tax and transfer systems to bring about a much greater
re-distribution of income and wealth than what currently occurs. Prior to the embrace of
neo-liberal orthodoxy by Anglo-American states, citizens in these countries paid far higher
rates than they do now. Neo-liberals argued that this acted as a disincentive to engage in
economically productive activities and that by reducing tax, particularly the tax paid by high
income earners, this would spur growth, benefitting the entire population as it 'trickled
down'. As it turned out, while the neo-liberal model might deliver a faster rate of growth at
times, this comes with significantly greater economic instability, the potential for serious
market failure and ever increasing inequality. Rather than trickling down, it seems that if
markets are left alone to distribute income and wealth, it steadily trickles up.
Picketty identified the major cause of increasing inequality to be the fact that over time
return on capital exceeds increases in economic output. So while the extremely high rates of
growth during the post war period saw inequality reduced, the global economy has since
returned to its historical trajectory and capital is inevitably becoming concentrated among a
minority of super rich individuals. What his research showed was it was not so much the top
percentile that benefited, but the top 1% of people, who accrued wealth in dramatically
greater amounts than all the rest of us. To counteract the effects of this inevitable outcome
of free markets, he suggested taxes that attached to capital rather than income - death taxes
and the like.
A more recent contribution, by Rutger Bregman, argues the case for what he refers to as
"utopian" ideas of a universal basic income, a fifteen hour working week and the opening of
national borders. As he acknowledges, these are ideas that today's policy makers may not
initially take seriously, but he puts a compelling case as to why they are ideas whose time
has come. His book, Utopia for Realists, is well worth a look for anyone interested in these
issues.
I have an issue with the way neoliberalism is described as - 'embraced' by western cultures.
Rational decision making in a democracy is very heavily dependent on being informed, i would
argue that for the last 4 decades, this neoliberal take over needed a lot of social
conditioning to maintain its dominance, people have consistently voted against their own
interests (here and in the states) as a result and neoliberal doctrine has reigned supreme. I
think if not for the rise of independent social media it would have another 40yrs. The
mainstreeam media machine is also part if the neoliberal machinebemphasizing some narratives,
deminishing others, and many ideas completely taboo. It has all fed into neoliberal dominance.
Execellent piece, eloquenty articulating the inevitable failure of neo-liberal economic
doctrine - my principal criticism would be the lack of any definite pointers to what might be
an effective successor, although Martin Jacques does hint at some kind of return to Social
Democractic values?
One telling paragraph
Given the statistical evidence, it is puzzling, shocking even, that it has been
disregarded for so long; the explanation can only lie in the sheer extent of the hegemony
of neoliberalism and its values.
illustrates the sheer power and influence exerted by the media in this digital, interconnected
global environment - the evidence is all around us, staring us in the face every day, yet the
incumbent orthodoxy prevails - it would seem (for the present at least) sufficient numbers
have been persuaded to maintain their faith in the myth of "markets always knows best" but
what happens when the numbers in the "have nots" camp become so overwhelming that the tide of
resentment and anger boils over - things could turn nasty, very quickly indeed?
Surely, a more orderly return to more equitable distribution of wealth is the best way
forward - the challenge is how to manage this very complex process?
The author writes that the most 'disastrous feature of the neoliberal era has been the growth
in inequality'. Yes for sure, but this was the main features of this ideology in the first
place. As far as Reagan and Thatcher were concerned the general well being of their nations
overall always played second fiddle to the rich getting richer. In that sense the neoliberal
project has been a massive success for those who set it up.
It is remarkable - the cultural wasteland that neoliberalism created throughout the Western
world. It's ironic that the Guardian puts up an article like this one up on the same day as an
article about the banning of the Burqa, in which it describes how Muslims yearn for identity
through religion and how their host Western "nations" (let's be truthful and call them
"economies") provided no culture in which to assimilate or any sense of belonging, populated
as they were by consumers, not citizens.
Culture and history - the very things that defined peoples (and yes, they were VERY
distinct peoples just a century ago) throughout Europe - had no worth for the neoliberals, and
that mindset dovetailed perfectly with the catastrophic Western self-loathing that roared into
prominence on the backs of the far left in the same early 1970's to now time period.
Culture and history were tossed in a ditch and a cross (actually, that was dying too)
hammered above them. Churches became Apple stores and villages became malls - with everyone,
regardless of culture, wanting the exact same car and house.
Goodbye Neoliberalism - you stood on the shoulders of the hardest working generations the
world had ever seen, and betrayed them all, spawning both neo-poverty and a taste for lattes.
Maybe your ditch be unmarked.
"The hyper-globalisation era has been systematically stacked in favour of capital against
labour" - yes, but that is because capital has power and influence and labour doesn't. Fishing
is stacked in favour of fishermen because fishermen have opposable thumbs and abstract
reasoning and fish don't. And how exaclry is that is going to change? Because people are going
to march about holding up pieces of cardboard demanding that it changes?
Indeed - the world we live in has become grubby and greedy, sordid and selfish.
There are
those who would seek to justify it as a correction to the "temporary aberration" of 1945 to
1979 - a restoration of the "natural order".
But those 34 years held the promise of progress towards a utopian global society - one
where it would not be possible for one man to amass more wealth than could be spent in a
hundred lifetimes, while a hundred men starved and lacked shelter.
It is difficult to categorise the years since 1979 as anything but a venal exploitation of
the many by the privileged few. A true downward spiral.
The threat of communism and the need to re-build drove the post-war settlement and that was a
'temporary aberration' from the 'natural order'. Unfortunately, as that project came to an end
capitalism (as the default option) came back to the fore the Left and its institutions
capitulated and played to the new rules of the game, ones that seemed to lift all ships in a
globalising economy. You are right, it is time for a radical rethink but it appears that
Labour is not yet up for that.
For 30 years there was so much wealth floating around that the majority of people got a
little. Now that we are down to the last few pieces of pie, things don't look so good.
Neoliberalism main legacy has been to siphon the wealth to the 1%.Homes are now primarily
commodities,the stock market at record levels,not because business is doing well,but rich
people are looking for quick profit,gold and art at record prices etc.
The state which acts to trickle down the money to the poorest is severely hampered by
globalisation-Tax loopholes,offshore residences.Countries are now begging for investment,from
plutocrats and the Chinese politburo.The state tries to act to reduce uncertainty and avoid
swings in the economy,but that is counter to the wishes of speculators who want big changes to
maximise profit.
The wealth of the 99% declines.Corporations exploit workers both in the 3rd world and the
western world.Money that could be invested is being put aside by the wealthy because of
uncertainty they themselves created.For every one Elon Musk,investing in the future,there are
100 Gordon Geckos trying to break it.
Good article. We can now see that the 'free market' has not provided any real growth and has
relied upon the appropriation of public assets through privatisation to produce a veneer of
growth.
I hope that our political parties now realise that privatisation of the NHS will produce the
same chaos that selling off social housing has done.
I heard Ha-Joon Chang speak at Cambridge. He was absolutely excellent. I would strongly
recommend his books to everyone - they're very informative but very interesting and
accessible at the same time. My teenage son reads them.
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hardly any bankers on either side of the Atlantic were prosecuted for their crimes
The ones that committed actual crimes have. Being a "banker" is only a crime in the minds
of certain folk.
Anyway, this article is pretty pointless as you didn't define what you mean by "neoliberal"
at the start and then went on to apply that label to those arch neo-cons, Thatcher and Reagan,
at which point I have to admit I only scanned the rest.
It's clearly just a label that means "people and things I don't like" with a peppering of
anti-globalisation, anti-immigration and anti-free marketism.
I can't see an actual alternative economic system proposed which is not surprising as it
would necessarily look much like protectionist isolationism, which is even less good for
equality and raising living standards than the system you want to abandon.
Excellent piece. Capitalism has come up against the law of diminishing returns or specifically
the tendency of the rate of profit to decline. The American Century came to an abrupt end in
2008. The political-economic arrangements of the post-War era had become an absolute fetter on
further growth. Stagnation and monopolisation were joined by complete and utter and
irreversible bankruptcy. US-hegemony and capitalist globalization began their increasingly
rapid decay. Unlike the 1930s however there are no possible alternative political economic
arrangements that could replace the current ones and give capitalism a new lease of life.
Creative destruction is now replaced by pure destruction. This is the end game for capitalism,
a historically contingent mode of production, that has reached the absolute limits of its
potential and which is already beginning to stink the place up. It is a case of socialism or
barbarism. Socialism or a New Dark Ages from which our species would be unlikely to emerge
alive.
Neo-liberalism as personified by the Guardian and New Labour Blairites seems to combine a
extreme right-wing agenda on militarism and Imperialist interventionism, a Mugabe-esque
economic policy (the printing press), but a 'safe space' wooly hangover attitude to the
aftermath of the Permissive Society. This admixture makes no sense historically.
Indeed the inherent contradictions of it's last plank above, a craven attitude to
fundamentalist religion in the name of diversity, while promoting alternative lifestyles
simultaneously is grotesque casuistry.
Well, yes, please tell us something many of us had not already worked out. Neoliberalism is
coming towards its sell by date.
But there's a gaping hole in the article - what will or
should come next? Surely not a return to socialism, which itself collapsed in 1989-90?
Protectionism? That can often be self-defeating as the history of the 1930s attests. The
result of beggar my neighbour protectionism made the rise of fascism and Nazism easier than it
should have been.
The opponents of neoliberalism need a convincing alternative narrative. So far they have
analysed the problems, but now they need solutions. Unless they do, they will remain what they
currently are - a protest movement only.
For a start we can see that the privatisation of much of the UKs infrastructure was a
mistake-It increased costs and reduced competitiveness-I saw that working in there. Anything
that reverses the trend of wealth going from customers to shareholders would be a good
idea.Even if this added some inefficiency(in my company I saw no change),this would be
inefficiency inside the UK economy instead of wealth going outside to foreign investors.
The four pillars of modern Western society are: fear, debt,
insufficiency (the temptation to keep consuming more), and the divide-and-conquer mind-set.
This is tethered to the foreign policy idea that anything and everything is justified --
coups and assassinations, drone strikes, NSA eavesdropping -- as long as it props up those four
pillars that have shackled the plebs to a feudal and corrupt system.
This was never sustainable and now here we are.
The Guardian has it's designated role in all of this. As we see with the censorship of its
own readers who question the 'official' narrative, a role it appears to enjoy.
I read with great enthusiasm as the author was expressing my own views so well. And then
I began to think, where is this article leading? And the answer was, nowhere!
"Hope you enjoyed reading my intellectual analysis of the situation AND NOW just expect
more of the same..."
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He analyses the problem but does not offer a solution as you say. There may not be a solution
to the problem of stagnation. Success is generally equated with economic growth and it may be
that the era of continuous economic growth is now over in Japan and the West and drawing to a
close in the East. We may all have to manage decline in the future and, perhaps, that is
exactly what we should be doing. Pollution and scarcity of raw materials may contribute to a
permanent brake on expansion.
If Neoliberalism and Capitalism are responsible for increasing inequalities between rich and
poor as is suggested, perhaps a new model of redistribution is needed. Trickle down obviously
doesn't work. Communism doesn't enable efficient industry and agriculture. Perhaps Capitalism
with high taxation and socialist policies is an answer. They have something a bit more like
that in Sweden but we would all have to go much further. Unfortunately, globalisation allows
the rich to escape to other places unless we all do it or the movement of capital and people
is restricted. If that occurred it would impact upon the poor seeking to move and improve
their lot before it ever impacted upon the rich. It is a conundrum.
No one should be under any illusion what Globalism and Capitalist Neoliberal ideology has
brought us and what todays 'fight' in the Labour party is all about.
There is a lot to agree with in this overview of the evolution of politics over the last
30 years or so. None of it is original and many of the key points have been made with a
closer focus on economic and political developments on the ground
by commentators like Paul Mason
. Still, it is worth repeating the story of the rise
and fall of neo-liberalism and the almost parallel rise and fall of New Labour. I liked
the characterisation of Blair's reincarnaton as a "... money-obsessed consultant to a
shady bunch of presidents and dictators ..." as a "fitting testament to the demise of
New Labour".
The trouble with grand overviews like this is that they can give readers
(and no doubt the author) the feeling of a superior grasp of the political currents of
the time but without actually getting 'down and dirty' with anything like engagement
with current pressing problems. They lead in other words to a self-satisfied political
quietism.
Thus for example the Corbyn usurge in the Labour Party is described both as a revolt
against the loss of purpose of social democracy AND as a throwback to the 1980s. There
are good reasons for saying both of these things but this massively misses engagement
with the current choice facing Labour Party members. It's a binary choice Smith or
Corbyn. What should Labour Party members do? After reading this article readers could be
inclined to say "a plague on both your houses".
And it is here that the grand overview, full of rather excessive generalisations,
most clearly fails to engage with real politics. For our media and our personalising,
celebrity obsessed culture Labour's travails are all about one man and whether he is a
dark angel about to destroy the Labour Party or a messiah who has come to save it. But
on closer inspection there area rather more substantial issues at stake. Can politics be
reduced to what goes on in Westminster? Does the Labour Party exist to serve the
Parliamentary Labour Party or the other way round? Can Labour policy making be made
genuinely democratic and taken out of the hands of apparatchicks and professional
politicians (i.e. can members be trusted with political decisions)? These and other
questions raise a whole set of other questions in turn about such things as
organisational forms, the organisation of informed. So far there are no clear answers to
such questions and it is impossible to say if any will emerge. It is possible to say,
however, that if they are not addressed the hopes raised by Corbyn's election will
ultimately be dashed. If Corbynism is left to Corbyn then it's all over bar the
shouting, even if he is re-elected. The only chance of ensuring that this does not
become yet another opportunity to miss an opportunity is that the promise to put the
members in charge of the party is realised and is accomanied by an unprecedented level
of critical engagement. It's a very tall order but not impossible.
As Paul Mason has argued so well, the election of Smith would be a return to the long
decline of social democracy. The election of Corbyn offers a slender promise of a
vibrant politics of wider engagement i.e. of democratic politics to break the political
log jam described by Martin Jaques. In his first year Corbyn has massively failed to
deliver on this promise. Instead of far-ranging (draft) policy initiatives being debated
throughout the party we have had an intense personalisation of politics. Instead of the
end of control freakery we have warfare between the control freakery of the party
apparatus and that of the small group around Jeremy Corbyn. The only hope of a
resolution is that matters are genuinely taken to the members and therefore out of the
control of either group. Debate focussed on personalities must be replaced by debate
about policies. There is no other basis for reassembling the PLP. The election of Smith
will ensure that none of this happens. The election of Corbyn will leave open the
possibility that it could happen if enough people engage to make it so.
Martin Jaques' overview is just too grand to deal with such issues and therefore too
grand for actual political engagement. That is, I guess, why the Observer (which, along
with the Guardian, has a track record of highly biased reporting and comment re Corbyn)
has carried it rather than the more politically engaged analyses currently being
developed by contributors to websites like
Medium
and
Left Futures
.
Excellent post. For me, however, I have to say the obvious conclusion is that the Labour
Party is simply not capable of being the vehicle for even the debate much less the
profound social and political restructuring that needs to take place.
To take just one example: the UK is in desperate need of fundamental democratic
reform. Neither side even mentions it.
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The problem is that at the moment much of what passes for political thinking within the
Momentum camp is at the level of student union politics. Lots of idealism and passion but
little on how to make it work in the real world.
If you don't let the 'thinkers' / 'experts'
make informed decisions but leave it to the equivalent of 'the will of the members' you risk
some very uninformed knee jerk policies that do not resonate with the wider voting public. The
difficult part is the selection and competence of those decision makers!
Given the statistical evidence, it is puzzling, shocking even, that it has been
disregarded for so long; the explanation can only lie in the sheer extent of the
hegemony of neoliberalism and its values.
That hegemony owes itself in part to the media, who never questioned it. 'Neoliberalism'
was not a word you would have found in many mainstream newspapers much before the early
noughties, despite its advent on the scene with Thatcher in 1979. Not many would have
been aware from them that capitalism was being redefined and intensified to a level
never seen before, largely through deregulation. There was little debate. The
'normalisation' of neoliberalism in peoples' minds - the notion that There Is No
Alternative - was largely effected by a press which ignored those who opposed it, and
those overlooked by it, taking notice only to demonise them as misfits in the system
through their own fecklessness. That is why it's so surprised by and so vicious towards
the sudden emergence of a left they thought they had successfully marginalised, to the
point whereby it was no longer an effective voice. The attack by this newspaper against
Corbyn unmasks its true colours; it is, taken out of its ludicrously personal context,
an attack upon socialising forces on behalf of the corporate elite that has benefitted
so dramatically by their repression - by a supposedly liberal newspaper.
Old attitudes and assumptions still predominate, whether on the BBC's Today
programme, in the rightwing press or the parliamentary Labour party.
And that includes the 'liberal' Guardian, surely now part of the right wing press - all
of them on the wrong side of history.
But as David Marquand observed in a review for the New Statesman, what is the
point of a social democratic party if it doesn't represent the less fortunate, the
underprivileged and the losers?
This has been observed and commented upon, not least on this site, again and again, for
years, so many times, by ordinary readers. David Marquand comes after a long line.
We have long been told that in order to stand a chance of implementing one's
principles as policies it is necessary to trade them for power. Such an argument, inane
as it is, would be enough on its own to convince most people that democratic choice,
under such terms, can only die, had we not been afforded the spectacle of its passing
during the terms of the NewLabour government, which out-Thatchered Thatcher. Telling us
that Blair won three elections rather loses its shine when we consider what he did with
them, and how many left his party and haven't voted since as a result. Inequality
increased under Blair.The fact that people continued to vote for the filthy-rich loving
architect of an illegal war says much about them, as does the fact that so many did not
speaks for them too. The first are natural Blairites, and without principles, which, as
observed, need to be handed over in return for power, not fought for by debate and
persuasion. They continue to make that argument. An illegal war or two, ongoing
neoliberalisation and growing inequality appear to be no obstacle to it.
Finally:
But nor, it would seem, does he understand the nature of the new era. The danger
is that he is possessed of feet of clay in what is a highly fluid and unpredictable
political environment, devoid of any certainties of almost any kind, in which Labour
finds itself dangerously divided and weakened.
Good article up until now. There has been so much unsubstantiated criticism of Corbyn -
more, perhaps, than any other British political figure. So at this stage, it isn't
enough to make statements like this.
How
does he not understand the nature of the
new era? If you can't tell me, don't make the criticism. "Being possessed of feet of
clay" doesn't actually mean anything, unless you explain it. Rhetoric is not an
argument, and all we've ever had from the anti-Corbyn faction is empty rhetoric. It's a
charge made against him and his policies, despite them being more detailed than the
policies of any party in opposition, four years from an election, that I can recall.
Presumably it's made in the interests of balance.
The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and
the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double
that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.
This is a furphy. The growth
rate postwar was spectacular because they were picking up the pieces of that war with the
continuing momentum of a wartime economy. Arguably the turn to neoliberalism was the result of
the reaction to the slowdown.
But by far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth
in inequality.
This isn't a bad thing in itself. Humans are not all equal in ability, so the notion that
they should all enjoy equal circumstances or even opportunity is illogical.
Humans are not all equal in ability, so the notion that they should all enjoy
equal circumstances or even opportunity is illogical.
No it isn't. Unless you start off with the advantage of privilege in the first place.
What is privilege? An advantage that only one person or group of people has, usually
because of their position or because they are rich.
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This is not true. The war economy was completely abandoned by 1950. From then on it was
consumerism...... built on a relatively even distribution of wealth. It worked a treat. It was
anything but war economy.... it was in fact the deliberate undoing of fortunes earned during
the war (through high capital taxes and inflation)
This isn't a bad thing in itself
Yes it is, it's an extremely bad thing destroying the fabric of society. Social science has
documented that even the better off are more happy, satisfied with life and feel safer in
societies (i.e. the Scandinavian) where there is a relatively high degree of economic
equality. Yes, economic inequality is a BAD thing in itself.
Humans are not all equal in ability
You assume we live in a meritocracy.... where effort and talent is generally rewarded. This
is very, very far from the case. Your wealth is largely determined by why you are born to. And
once you have succeeded joining the economic elite you will in 99% of the cases stay there
even if you are a useless, lazy bastard. Society does not reward as you think (or claim);
hence economic inequality can not be defended from any ethical or moral POV.
Before the EU it was clear; globalism was a capitalist machination to drive working class
people to poverty by sending their jobs away and importing people who work for peanuts.
And
that's exactly what we got.
The left actively argued that this is a good thing. A decade ago they would have pointed out
it's an exploitation of the poor that we use to do the jobs as well as a stab in the back of
the existing working class.
See, the mystery here isn't just that the left has gone awol, but that it's not even the left
anymore. The arguments are literally the neoconservative "open borders, cheap labour,
deregulation" speech they've been railing against for a century.
The reason why the neoliberal politicians want to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn is because he wants
to get rid of neoliberalism, and return the economy to the Keynesian period, which regulated
banks, and improved the lives of the majority with incomes that would increase aggregate
demand and build the economy, and increase fairness and equality.
This is what Sadiq Kahn is
asking you to do, to keep the status quo by replacing a good man with an ex big Pharma
lobbyist. My sister lives in London, with her family. They were going to vote UKIP. Then
Corbyn came on the scene with his promises of housing and jobs for the young. So they started
to help with Sadiqs campaign. They are bitterly disappointed with his rant against the man
they joined the Labour Party to support. They feel badly let down, because they feel that it
was Corbyns goodness and policies that put Sadiq where he is. After all, Milibands lite
austerity got Boris Johnson in last time.
More like the death of neo liberalism because neo liberalism realised how out of touch with
reality, the masses, their needs and attitudes it really was so adopted means to attempt to
silence those masses and dissappear up its own jacksy as a hypocrite to its own liberal
agenda. Their rules you fools. They make it up as they go along. They will tell you how it is
your duty to tolerate whatever they decide is to be tolerated no matter what the effect upon
your own lives.
This is how my neo liberalism died. It was a horrible and violent death. Now
all that is left is a cold Clint Eastwood ghost stranger in town from the past stare into the
oppressor's eyes as we face each other off on a lonely dusty high noon where all scores must
be settled. Cue the spaghetti western soundtrack.
https://youtu.be/LQGGQ-FCe_w
I find much of this correct but neo-liberalism is not dying. The squeeze on the ordinary
public in the west is still on as the richest 1% or so are always in power but never voted for
as they work behind the scenes (lobbying etc) to create the work that benefits them the most
at any expense. Inequality with be far worse by 2030 and the price will be ever rising
political dissension - but does that matter to the international richest few percent?
The EU
is a eulogy to the world's richest 1% with many tens of thousands of lobbyists working with
the Commission to set the rules and regulations to be pro big business and anti-small business
and against the individual. The EU - driving up inequality.
What's ignored is that today virtually all western politicians and top bureaucrats are from
the richest few percent so it is no surprise whose interests they really care for.
Virtually all government schemes are new ways to take more more from the ordinary public,
deliver a worse and more inefficient service, and trickle as much money as possible to the
richest few percent. This ensures widening inequality as the few are guaranteed an ever larger
take from the real economy, much of which is squirrelled away in offshore tax havens. Since
the money does not recirculate in the real economy it does not generate growth.
Hospital PFIs are designed to offer worsening and fewer services at a much higher cost to
the public so that the rich benefit maximally.
See How PFI is crippling the NHS
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/pfi-crippling-nhs
...Since the policy was launched in 1992, report after report over almost two decades has
shown how each wave of PFI has been associated with trust mergers, leading to 30% reductions
in beds; staff lay-offs; and closures of hospitals, accident and emergency departments and an
untold number of community services – all because of lack of affordability... the high costs
of PFI debt charges means that the NHS can only operate anything from a third to half as many
services and staff as it would have done had the scheme been funded through conventional
procurement. In other words, for every PFI hospital up and running, equity investors and
bankers are charging as if for two....
Many were under new labour: New Labour. New Labour driving up inequality.
Rail privatisation is another scam by the elite to benefit the rich. It's a way of getting
the public to pay more for worsening services but the only winners are the richest 1% who
operate it with subsides to ensure a profit.
Never listen to the crocodile tears from the political elite in the problems of rising
inequality. They have been doing their level best to boost inequality as much as possible for
decades.
There is no political party that represents the interests of the ordinary public because
the elite are far too close to the richest 1% to do other than make the rich ever richer.
Corbyn's blast for the past party will not solve today's problems. Returning to 1980 is not
the answer with unions trying to run the country as their interests are these are far too
narrow.
The public will gain nothing as example if train drivers pay increases to Ł100K+ per year.
We need a government that places the interests of the ordinary public first rather than
last. There is zero possibility of this happening so inequality will continue to rise and with
it political dissension.
It is strange that you never mention the EU, even though one
of the "decent" reasons invoked for leaving it was its neoliberal stance.
Contrary to other "political" reasons such as democracy or sovereignty, which were
distorted by disinformation, that one had a factual basis.
And the EU is still around for quite some time - for some, the neoliberal behemoth next
door.
It can be argued that the UK was a vocal voice for neoliberalism during its stay, making
such words as "industrial policy" four-letter words, but it was not alone. The neoliberal
church certainly was weakened by its departure, but it is still kicking.
What I call Dumbonomics (Thatcher-Reagan and its sister austerianism) had the huge
political advantage of sounding like common sense. To conservative voters, the idea that a
national or regional economy is no different from a household's or a retail shop's is very
appealing: debt the mark of profligacy, regulations a damnable hobble, the State a costly,
useless burden, such "self-evident" notions resonate deep in the average conservative's mind.
With most European nations, especially the prosperous ones, electing committed
conservatives, it is little wonder that the mandate they gave to the EU Commission was a firmy
neoliberal one. Ham-fisted apparatchiks such as Olli Rehn, under submissive apparatchiks such
as Barroso, had a free rein.
It can be, and has been, said that the EU Commission is the last preserve of neoliberal
living fossils.
However there are signs that they're on the wane there too. Despite an unchanged mandate,
the EU Commission under Juncker - a center-right social-democrat - is no longer the
fire-breathing dragon it used to be. It goes on making threatening noises about countries
which break the neoliberal compacts - but real sanctions (fines) are not, and IMHO will not
be, applied.
Meanwhile quite a few countries are mulling a change of path, which they see as being more
possible now the rigidly Thatcherian UK has departed (and how ironical that May is now making
similar noises, although I suspect egregious dissembling there).
In view of the staunch conservative views of the German electorate, no open move is
advisable before the German elections. The evil we know, Merkel, is better (and more
open-minded) than the evil we do not know.
But in the end, the burying of the neoliberal dinosaur will not come from its exposure as a
daft and nefarious "flat-earther common sense" fantasy by serious economists, which has been
going on for some time (see the Alesina-Ardagna-Reingart-Rogoff debunking, which had little or
no effect on the economically illiterate Barroso Commission) but from growing political
awareness, in the EU as in the US/UK.
"... Since April the opposition tries to dislodge the government by instigating a regime change by force. Its protests and street fights with the police are led by violent, militarized gangs : ..."
"... This is not just by chance a similar development as was seen during the U.S. instigated color revolutions by force in Libya, Ukraine and Syria. Para-military forces hiding behind "peaceful protesters" attack police, military and civil government institutions to provoke an escalation towards a civil war. ..."
"... It is obvious that the opposition in Venezuela is heavily supported by the various regime change institutions of the United States. Some of its operatives have deep ties with DEA and the CIA U.S. media is -as usual- completely on the side of the U.S. regime change program. It has long agitated against the socialist government of Venezuela ..."
"... Venezuela is a deeply split society and the business class was consistently in the opposition. By the way of contrast, Russian oligarchs never developed "class solidarity", and Putin/Medvedev policy was to support those who support them. Sanctions on Russia have a helpful effect of restricting foreign investment opportunities. ..."
"... With hostile business class and smallish economy Venezuelans had hard time running the economy, additionally the impression is that Bolivarians just do not know much about it. ..."
"... Trump's campaign promise of ending the regime change policy was proven to be a lie, with his attitude differing little from the Neocons and Neoliberals toward that oil-rich but still impoverished nation. ..."
"... How can you possibly post a guardian link to prove your assertion about the economic mess supposedly caused by Chavez and Maduro? Don't you know that the MSM is working against the Chavismo since almost before his very birth? Venezuela is a rerun of Chile 1989 and Egypt 2013, where shortages are produced in order to make the masses angry and ready for regime change. ..."
"... is anyone handing out cookies yet?? wheres nuland when she has a role to play here? ..."
"... It is safe to say that whatever the leader of country in the US cross hairs is allegedly guilty of, the US replacement will actually be that and worse. It is not about corruption, tyranny, whatever. It is purely about subservience to US corporate wishes. ..."
"... I live is Spain and am surprised how the local media follows the Gladio line. Thought it was just the Yanks that were bonkers, but whether its Syria, Ukraine, Trump or Venezuela we're all good NATO vassals. ..."
"... The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein that goes a long way to explain how the money boys have R2Ped all of South America over the past 50+ years....and continue to hold debt over the country's heads like all the rest of the countries of the world by now......sigh ..."
"... And across the Caribbean Sea there are two countries where populists government were successfully removed, Honduras and Haiti. From the point of view of our media lords, the less is reported from there the better. ..."
"... Constantly having to fight for your freedom is very exhausting where it seems to take a special type of people/culture to prevail--why do you think the Outlaw US Empire plans to continue to hang-out in Syraq? It's willing to bet the people don't have what it takes to ensure their freedom in the longterm. ..."
"... Whenever there is a chance that a government might do something of value for its common citizens, the US is ready to eliminate the threat. Austerity for the commons. Socialism is only for Corporations and other billionaires. ..."
"... The "Corporate Empire" will tolerate no other system. Especially one that works well for the commoners... ..."
The U.S. supports the right-wing opposition in Venezuela against the socialist government of President
Maduro. Since April the opposition tries to dislodge the government by instigating a regime change
by force. Its protests and street fights with the police are led by
violent, militarized gangs :
Venezuela's ongoing street protests are increasingly looking like outright warfare. As security
forces shoot rubber bullets, tear-gas canisters and sometimes live rounds at the churning crowds,
increasingly restive mobs are responding with lethal slingshots, homemade mortars and Molotov
cocktails.
This week, seven National Guard members were injured in Caracas when a roadside bomb exploded
as they drove by on motorcycles.
Leading the opposition shock-troops are loose-knit groups of young men and women that have
names like The Templars, The Warriors and The Arcadias. Collectively, they're known as the Chamos
de la Resistencia or, roughly, the Youth Resistance.
This is not just by chance a similar development as was seen during the U.S. instigated
color revolutions by force in Libya, Ukraine and Syria. Para-military forces hiding behind "peaceful
protesters" attack police, military and civil government institutions to provoke an escalation towards
a civil war. Last week the opposition in Venezuela
announced that today is the "zero day" for another violent coup attempt against President Maduro:
The fugitive police pilot who allegedly stole a helicopter and used it to attack Venezuela's Supreme
Court has appeared at an opposition rally in the capital, Caracas, attendees tell CNN.
Oscar Perez, an officer in the country's investigative police force, addressed the gathering,
urging the opposition to continue protesting.
...
" A general walkout for July 18, walkout with no return . The zero-hour will start on Tuesday.
The referendum we'll do it, with dignity, we'll be in the street defending the people."
Venezuelan opposition leaders have called for their supporters to escalate street protests and
support a 24-hour national strike later this week after more than 7.1 million people rejected
a government plan to rewrite the constitution.
...
A coalition of some 20 opposition parties assembled in its headquarters Monday to call for a "zero
hour" campaign of civil disobedience in the two weeks leading to the government vote.
On Sunday the opposition held a private poll in which less people attended than the opposition
had hoped for. No results but the number of attendees was announced:
The opposition released only turnout numbers Sunday night, not tallies of responses to those questions,
although virtually all who voted were believed to have answered "yes" to the central rejection
of the constitutional rewrite.
There are some 19 million registered voters in Venezuela. A seven million turnout for a private
poll, if real, is significant but neither decisive nor relevant. The hiding of the results lets one
assume that the answers to the poll questions were not in favor of the opposition's plan.
It is difficult to ascertain what the real opinion of people in Venezuela is. Polls in the country
are traditionally skewed. Maduro's economic polices, restricted by falling oil prices, sabotage by
rich im- and exporters and U.S. sanction, was not successful. But the 2015 National Assembly vote
won by the opposition was more a protest vote against the economic problems than a vote for the opposition's
vague program .
It is obvious that the opposition in Venezuela is heavily supported by the various regime
change institutions of the United States. Some of its operatives have deep ties
with DEA and the CIA
U.S. media is -as usual- completely on the side of the U.S. regime change program. It has long
agitated against the socialist government of Venezuela.
An official
Trump statement on Venezuela released yesterday is noticeable for its lack of facts:
Yesterday, the Venezuelan people again made clear that they stand for democracy, freedom, and
rule of law. Yet their strong and courageous actions continue to be ignored by a bad leader who
dreams of becoming a dictator.
The United States will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles. If the Maduro regime imposes its
Constituent Assembly on July 30, the United States will take strong and swift economic actions.
Would Trump write a similar statement about the will of the "American people" if Democrats held
a private poll against him with an assured multi-million strong turnout?
The Maduro government has called for a July 30 vote to elect members of an upcoming constitutional
assembly. There is nothing "imposed" with that. The opposition will try to sew chaos in the streets
up to that date and likely has planned for some culmination point of action.
The government has so far reacted passively to the violent protests. The police protects some
government buildings and removes some road blocking barricades. But no arrest wave or more assertiveness
for government control has been ordered. One wonders at what point such measures will become inevitable.
Two of the problems with this latest Gene Sharp-inspired, CIA & State Dept-supported 'non-violent'
regime change plot are:
1. It's worked like a dream umpteen times in the past thanks to the
complicity and outright lies of the Western MSM.
2. If it follows the tr-r-aditional Gene Sharp Formula then Day Zero will be marked by the
introduction of the CIA's Hired Guns to the 'non-violent' nature of the protests to date. The
Western MSM will dutifully exaggerate the scope and scale of the bloodshed and blame it on Maduro.
And ppl in the West will dutifully, and gullibly, agree that the best way to help Venezuelans
is to impose an AmeriKKKan Military Solution aimed at destroying Venezuela's civilian infrastructure
and thereby creating a Refugee Crisis in Venezuela and its neighbors.
Venezuelan "socialists" call themselves Bolivarians and in terms of economic policies they could
be classified as social democrats, they changed the distribution of the national income using
oil revenue. One can appreciate Russian economic policies by comparing with Venezuela (or Nigeria?).
Venezuela is a deeply split society and the business class was consistently in the opposition.
By the way of contrast, Russian oligarchs never developed "class solidarity", and Putin/Medvedev
policy was to support those who support them. Sanctions on Russia have a helpful effect of restricting
foreign investment opportunities. Mildly corrupt capitalist oligarchy can function OK if
the capitalists invest back at home -- China is the premier example. Unbridled kleptocracy is
combined with capital flight that hollows the economy, I would put Nigeria and Angola as premier
examples, one could add Egypt and Ukraine.
With hostile business class and smallish economy Venezuelans had hard time running the
economy, additionally the impression is that Bolivarians just do not know much about it.
Right now, I would not criticize "the meek actions of Maduro". Avoiding or minimizing bloodshed
is a decent thing to do in itself. Additionally, a measured reaction can be politically astute,
this is a democracy after all, the times are hard, the government has to make a case that the
opposition is even worse, and without military or police rebellion they will weather the crisis
and become stronger.
The Outlaw US Empire has meddled in Venezuelan politics for decades, and its actions are at
the root of today's problems. Chavez made a very large mistake after the 2002 coup attempt failed
-- he failed to prosecute its leaders. That failure also contributes mightily to today's problems,
but it was -- again -- brought about at the instigation of the Outlaw US Empire.
Trump's campaign promise of ending the regime change policy was proven to be a lie, with
his attitude differing little from the Neocons and Neoliberals toward that oil-rich but still
impoverished nation. So far, the Chavistas have managed to stem the counter-revolutionary
tide financed by the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals, for the so-called opposition is very much
in the minority, which is why its opted for violence as it cannot win legitimately.
Wait, so the guy who took a helicopter & opened fire on a Courthouse is a free man and addressing
crowds? Unbelievable. It's no wonder these Yank puppets are running riot and causing mayhem. Mind
you, the Western media will immediately say Maduro is "violently crushing pro-democracy activists"
as soon as he orders the police to go in hard, so he's between a rock and a hard place. As we
saw in Ukraine though (Syria too), if you don't crush these fascists quickly, you are just digging
yourself into a deeper hole.
How can you possibly post a guardian link to prove your assertion
about the economic mess supposedly caused by Chavez and Maduro? Don't you know that the MSM is
working against the Chavismo since almost before his very birth? Venezuela is a rerun of Chile
1989 and Egypt 2013, where shortages are produced in order to make the masses angry and ready
for regime change.
Yes, as Petras stated again and again Chavez didn't change the fundamentals of the Venezuelan
society. He probably was to shy to. The Venezuelan Sucker-Class proved again and again to have
an equal fascistic mindset as their 'brothers' in Argentina and Chile. If they succeed there will
be a mass slaughter. It will work out like in the Philippines where the president kills scores
of people every day and nobody gives a damn.
It is safe to say that whatever the leader of country in the US cross hairs is allegedly guilty
of, the US replacement will actually be that and worse. It is not about corruption, tyranny, whatever.
It is purely about subservience to US corporate wishes.
The Venezulean chief economist states Venezuela's problems arise from sabotage, not socialism.
I live is Spain and am surprised how the local media follows the Gladio line. Thought it
was just the Yanks that were bonkers, but whether its Syria, Ukraine, Trump or Venezuela we're
all good NATO vassals.
Remember hearing the same thoughts here on MoA from a German reader about how there seemed
to be more "diversity" of thought in American blogs/media than in his home country.
It goes to show you: we're all Occupied Territories.
I haven't read a shout out for The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein that goes a long way to explain
how the money boys have R2Ped all of South America over the past 50+ years....and continue to
hold debt over the country's heads like all the rest of the countries of the world by now......sigh
And to those that write that Chavez or Maduro should have just defeated the oligarchy, show
me a country that has done so.....the China/Russia axis may be doing so but it is not clear yet.
We have an outdated and may kill us form of social structure that has the money boys and their
families in charge for centuries resulting in the God of Mammon and riches for a few class system
we live in. I hope humanity stands up and says to itself it can do better and then makes it happen.......we
have the skills I believe but only lack the common vision and motivation.
The US has removed many democratically-elected leaders by force. Whenever there is a chance that
a government might do something of value for its common citizens, the US is ready to eliminate
the threat. Austerity for the commons. Socialism is only for Corporations and other billionaires.
Expenses and Costs for Billionaires are socialized, while profits are privatized. Pick yourselves
up by your own bootstraps and dream the American Dream. /s
While Brazil shares a long border with Venezuela, it is actually rather remote from regions with
significant population. The only border that crosses reasonably populated areas is with Colombia,
which according to Economists Intelligence Unit seems a shining example of democracy, compared
with authoritarian Venezuela. Colombia is also the world leader in killing journalists and issuing
credible death threats to journalists, issuing life insurance to labor organizers also seems a
loosing line of business over there.
And across the Caribbean Sea there are two countries where populists government were successfully
removed, Honduras and Haiti. From the point of view of our media lords, the less is reported from
there the better.
What's happening now is close to a re-run of 2001-2004 antics, albeit using somewhat different
tactics similar to those of the Arab Spring and Ukrainian Maidan. The "opposition" consists of
the same socio-economic players from 15 years earlier--essentially the younger generation brainwashed
by opposition media and parental indoctrination.
If you take the time, you'll note all the rioting
takes place in middle/upper middle-class neighborhoods--never in the many slums whose residents
benefited from the uplifting policies instituted by Chavez et al.
What's waning is the revolutionary
solidarity and zeal of the Chavistas from the early 2000s against the fact that the counter-revolutionary
forces have very deep resources and are willing to wait since their bodies aren't actually on
the line. Constantly having to fight for your freedom is very exhausting where it seems to take
a special type of people/culture to prevail--why do you think the Outlaw US Empire plans to continue
to hang-out in Syraq? It's willing to bet the people don't have what it takes to ensure their
freedom in the longterm.
There are two nations where the forces of Reaction dwell--The Outlaw US Empire and its vassal
the UK. France could be included, but it isn't nearly as important or have the same clout. For
Peace to ever be established on this planet, the forces of Reaction must be euthanized--eradicated--as
they are a pestilence far worse than any insect or rodent.
" Whenever there is a chance that a government might do something of value for its
common citizens, the US is ready to eliminate the threat. Austerity for the commons. Socialism
is only for Corporations and other billionaires."
Thanks for that ff. Absolute truth is always worth repeating.
The "Corporate Empire" will tolerate no other system. Especially one that works well for the
commoners...
max Book is just anothe "Yascha about Russia" type, that Masha Gessen represents so vividly.
The problem with him is that time of neocon prominance is solidly in the past and now unpleasant
question about the cost from the US people of their reckless foreign policies get into some
newspapers and managines. They cost the USA tremedous anount of money (as in trillions) and those
money consititute a large portion of the national debt. Critiques so far were very weak and
partially suppressed voices, but defeat of neocon warmonger Hillary signify some break with
the past.
Notable quotes:
"... National Interest ..."
"... Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump. This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird our policies." ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. . . . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject. ..."
"... New York Observer ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . . . Nobody is paying attention to it, " ..."
This week's primetime knife fights with Max Boot and Ralph Peters are emblematic of the
battle for the soul of the American Right.
To be sure, Carlson rejects the term
"neoconservatism,"
and implicitly, its corollary on the Democratic side, liberal internationalism. In 2016, "the reigning
Republican foreign-policy view, you can call it neoconservatism, or interventionism, or whatever you
want to call it" was rejected, he explained in a wide-ranging interview with the National Interest
Friday.
"But I don't like the term 'neoconservatism,'" he says, "because I don't even know what it means.
I think it describes the people rather than their ideas, which is what I'm interested in. And to
be perfectly honest . . . I have a lot of friends who have been described as neocons, people I really
love, sincerely. And they are offended by it. So I don't use it," Carlson said.
But Carlson's recent segments on foreign policy conducted with Lt. Col.
Ralph Peters and the prominent neoconservative journalist and author
Max Boot were acrimonious even by Carlsonian standards. In a discussion on Syria, Russia and
Iran, a visibly upset Boot accused Carlson of being "immoral" and taking foreign-policy positions
to curry favor with the White House, keep up his
ratings , and by proxy, benefit financially. Boot says that Carlson "basically parrots whatever
the pro-Trump line is that Fox viewers want to see. If Trump came out strongly against Putin tomorrow,
I imagine Tucker would echo this as faithfully as the pro-Russia arguments he echoes today." But
is this assessment fair?
Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention
for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented
publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According
to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life
that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump.
This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And
we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird
our policies."
Even if Carlson doesn't want to use the label neocon to describe some of those ideas, Boot is
not so bashful. In 2005, Boot wrote an essay called
"Neocons May Get
the Last Laugh." Carlson "has become a Trump acolyte in pursuit of ratings," says Boot, also
interviewed by the National Interest . "I bet if it were President Clinton accused of colluding
with the Russians, Tucker would be outraged and calling for impeachment if not execution. But since
it's Trump, then it's all a big joke to him," Boot says. Carlson vociferously dissents from such
assessments: "This is what dumb people do. They can't assess the merits of an argument. . . . I'm
not talking about Syria, and Russia, and Iran because of ratings. That's absurd. I can't imagine
those were anywhere near the most highly-rated segments that night. That's not why I wanted to do
it."
But Carlson insists, "I have been saying the same thing for fifteen years. Now I have a T.V. show
that people watch, so my views are better known. But it shouldn't be a surprise. I supported Trump
to the extent he articulated beliefs that I agree with. . . . And I don't support Trump to the extent
that his actions deviate from those beliefs," Carlson said. Boot on Fox said that Carlson is "too
smart" for this kind of argument. But Carlson has bucked the Trump line, notably on Trump's April
7 strikes in Syria. "When the Trump administration threw a bunch of cruise missiles into Syria for
no obvious reason, on the basis of a pretext that I
question . . . I questioned [the decision] immediately. On T.V. I was on the air when that happened.
I think, maybe seven minutes into my show. . . . I thought this was reckless."
But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. .
. . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his
assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone
clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to
have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject.
Boot objects to what he sees as a cavalier attitude on the part of Carlson and others toward allegations
of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and also toward the deaths of citizens of other countries.
"You are laughing about the fact that Russia is interfering in our election process. That to me is
immoral," Boot told Carlson on his show. "This is the level of dumbness and McCarthyism in Washington
right now," says Carlson. "I think it has the virtue of making Max Boot feel like a good person.
Like he's on God's team, or something like that. But how does that serve the interest of the country?
It doesn't." Carlson says that Donald Trump, Jr.'s emails aren't nearly as important as who is going
to lead Syria, which he says Boot and others have no plan for successfully occupying. Boot, by contrast,
sees the U.S. administration as dangerously flirting with working with Russia, Iran and Syrian president
Bashar al-Assad. "For whatever reason, Trump is pro-Putin, no one knows why, and he's taken a good
chunk of the GOP along with him," Boot says.
On Fox last Wednesday, Boot reminded Carlson that he originally supported the 2003 Iraq decision.
"You supported the invasion of Iraq," Boot said, before repeating, "You supported the invasion of
Iraq." Carlson conceded that, but it seems the invasion was a bona fide turning point. It's most
important to parse whether Carlson has a long record of anti-interventionism, or if he's merely
sniffing the throne of the president (who, dubiously, may have opposed the 2003 invasion). "I
think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in
supporting it," Carlson told the New York Observer in early 2004. "It's something I'll never
do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who's smarter than I am, and I shouldn't have
done that. . . . I'm enraged by it, actually." Carlson told the National Interest that he's
felt this way since seeing Iraq for himself in December 2003.
The evidence points heavily toward a sincere conversion on Carlson's part, or preexisting conviction
that was briefly overcome by the beat of the war drums. Carlson did work for the Weekly Standard
, perhaps the most prominent neoconservative magazine, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Carlson today
speaks respectfully of William Kristol, its founding editor, but has concluded that he is all wet.
On foreign policy, the people Carlson speaks most warmly about are genuine hard left-wingers: Glenn
Greenwald, a vociferous critic of both economic neoliberalism and neoconservatism; the anti-establishment
journalist Michael Tracey; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation ; and her husband,
Stephen Cohen, the Russia expert and critic of U.S. foreign policy.
"The only people in American public life who are raising these questions are on the traditional
left: not lifestyle liberals, not the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) group, not liberals in D.C., not Nancy
Pelosi." He calls the expertise of establishment sources on matters like Syria "more shallow than
I even imagined." On his MSNBC show, which was canceled for poor ratings, he cavorted with noninterventionist
stalwarts such as
Ron Paul , the 2008 and 2012 antiwar GOP candidate, and Patrick J. Buchanan. "No one is smarter
than Pat Buchanan," he said
last year of the man whose ideas many say laid the groundwork for Trump's political success.
Carlson has risen to the pinnacle of cable news, succeeding Bill O'Reilly. It wasn't always clear
an antiwar take would vault someone to such prominence. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney could
be president (Boot has advised the latter two). But here he is, and it's likely no coincidence that
Carlson got a show after Trump's election, starting at the 7 p.m. slot, before swiftly moving to
the 9 p.m. slot to replace Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly, and just as quickly replacing O'Reilly at
the top slot, 8 p.m. Boot, on the other hand, declared in 2016 that the Republican Party was
dead , before it went on to hold Congress and most state houses, and of course take the presidency.
He's still at the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the New York Times (this seems
to clearly annoy Carlson: "It tells you everything about the low standards of the American foreign-policy
establishment").
Boot wrote in 2003 in the Weekly Standard that the fall of Saddam Hussein's government
"may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history" comparable to "events like the storming
of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which everything is different." He continued,
"If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if ), it may mark the moment when the powerful
antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and
began to transform the region for the better."
Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate
what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate
is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our
interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these
decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment
going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . .
. Nobody is paying attention to it, "
Carlson seems intent on pressing the issue. The previous night, in his debate with Peters, the
retired lieutenant colonel said that Carlson sounded like Charles Lindbergh, who opposed U.S. intervention
against Nazi Germany before 1941. "This particular strain of Republican foreign policy has almost
no constituency. Nobody agrees with it. I mean there's not actually a large group of people outside
of New York, Washington or L.A. who think any of this is a good idea," Carlson says. "All I am is
an asker of obvious questions. And that's enough to reveal these people have no idea what they're
talking about. None."
Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest . Follow him on Twitter:
@CurtMills .
"... Oh, it was glorious fun, yielding the kind of satisfaction that us anti-interventionists rarely get to enjoy: not one but two prominent neoconservatives who have been wrong about everything for the past decade – yet never held accountable – getting taken down on national television. Tucker Carlson, whose show is a shining light of reason in a fast-darkening world, has performed a public service by demolishing both Ralph Peters and Max Boot on successive shows. But these two encounters with evil weren't just fun to watch, they're also highly instructive for what they tell us about the essential weakness of the War Party and its failing strategy for winning over the American people. ..."
"... For the neocons, it's always 1938. The enemy is always the reincarnation of Hitler, and anyone who questions the wisdom of war is denounced as an "appeaser" in the fashion of Neville Chamberlain or Lindbergh. ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com . ..."
Oh, it was glorious fun, yielding the kind of satisfaction that us anti-interventionists
rarely get to enjoy: not one but two prominent neoconservatives who have been wrong about
everything for the past decade – yet never held accountable – getting taken down on
national television. Tucker Carlson, whose show is a shining light of reason in a
fast-darkening world, has performed a public service by demolishing both Ralph Peters and Max
Boot on successive shows. But these two encounters with evil weren't just fun to watch, they're
also highly instructive for what they tell us about the essential weakness of the War Party and
its failing strategy for winning over the American people.
Tucker's first victim was Ralph Peters , an alleged "military expert" who's been a fixture
on Fox News since before the Iraq war, of which he was a rabid proponent. Tucker starts out the
program by noting that ISIS "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may have been killed in a Russian
airstrike and that the talk in Washington is now moving away from defeating ISIS and focusing
on Iran as the principal enemy. He asks why is this? Why not take a moment to celebrate the
death of Baghdadi and acknowledge that we have certain common interests with the Russians?
Peters leaps into overstatement, as is his wont: "We can't have an alliance with terrorists,
and the Russians are terrorists. They're not Islamists, but they are terrorists." He then
alleges that the Russians aren't really fighting ISIS, but instead are bombing hospitals,
children, and "our allies" (i.e. the radical Islamist Syrian rebels trained and funded by the
CIA and allied with al-Qaeda and al-Nusra). The Russians "hate the United States," and "we have
nothing in common with the Russians" –nothing!" The Russians, says Peters, are paving the
way for the Iranians – the real evil in the region – to "build up an empire from
Afghanistan to the Mediterranean." Ah yes, the "
Shia crescent " which the Israelis and their amen corner in the US have been warning
against since before the Iraq war. Yet Tucker points out that over 3,000 Americans have been
killed by terrorists in the US, and "none of them are Shi'ites: all of [these terrorists] have
been Sunni extremists who are supported by the Saudis who are supposed to be our allies." And
while we're on the subject: "Why," asks Tucker, "if we're so afraid of Iran did we kill Saddam
Hussein, thereby empowering Iran?"
"Because we were stupid," says Peters.
Oh boy! Peters was one of the most militant advocates of
the Iraq war: we were "stupid," I suppose, to listen to him. Yet Tucker lets this ride
momentarily, saving his big guns for the moment when he takes out Peters completely. And Peters
walks right into it when Tucker wonders why we can't cooperate with Russia, since both
countries are under assault from Sunni terrorists:
PETERS: You sound like Charles Lindbergh in 1938 saying Hitler hasn't attacked us.
TUCKER: I beg your pardon? You cannot compare me to somebody who makes apologies for
Hitler. And I don't think Putin is comparable.
PETERS: I think Putin is.
TUCKER: I think it is a grotesque overstatement actually. I think it's insane.
PETERS: Fine, you can think it's insane all you want.
For the neocons, it's always 1938. The enemy is always the reincarnation of
Hitler, and anyone who questions the wisdom of war is denounced as an "appeaser" in the fashion
of Neville Chamberlain or Lindbergh. Yet no one ever examines and challenges the assumption
behind this rhetorical trope, which is that war with the enemy of the moment – whether it
be Saddam Hussein, the Iranian ayatollahs, or Vladimir Putin – is inevitable and
imminent. If Putin is Hitler, and Russia is Nazi Germany, then we must take the analogy all the
way and assume that we'll be at war with the Kremlin shortly.
After all, Charles Lindbergh's opponents in the great debate of the 1940s openly said that
Hitler, who posed an existential threat to the West, had to be destroyed, and that this goal
could not be achieved short of war. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt pretended that this wasn't
so, and pledged repeatedly that we weren't going to war, but secretly he manipulated events so
that war was practically inevitable. Meanwhile, the more honest elements of the War Party
openly proclaimed that we had to aid Britain and get into the war.
Is this what Peters and his gaggle of neocons are advocating – that we go to war with
nuclear-armed Russia and annihilate much of the world in a radioactive Armageddon? It certainly
seems that way. The Hitler-Lindbergh trope certainly does more than merely imply that.
Clearly riled by the attempt to smear him, Tucker, the neocon slayer, then moves in for the
kill:
I would hate to go back and read your columns assuring America that taking out Saddam Hussein
will make the region calmer, more peaceful, and America safer, when in fact it has been the
opposite and it has empowered Russia and Iran, the two countries you say you fear most
– let's be totally honest, we don't always know the outcomes.
They are not entirely predictable so maybe we should lower that a little bit rather than
calling people accommodationist.
This is what the neocons hate: reminding them of their record is like showing a
vampire a crucifix. Why should we listen to Peters, who's been wrong about everything for
decades? Peters' response is the typical neocon riposte to all honest questions about their
policies and record: you're a traitor, you're "cheering on Vladimir Putin!" To which Tucker has
the perfect America Firster answer:
I'm cheering for America as always. Our interests ought to come first and to the extent that
making temporary alliances with other countries serves our interests, I'm in favor of that.
Making sweeping moral claims – grotesque ones – comparing people to Hitler
advances the ball not one inch and blinds us to reality.
Peters has no real argument, and so he resorts to the method that's become routine
in American politics: accuse your opponent of being a foreign agent. Tucker, says Peters, is an
"apologist" not only for Putin but also for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Again, Tucker
answers smears with cold logic:
So because I'm asking rational questions about what's best for America I'm a friend to
strongmen and dictators? That is a conversation stopper, not a beginning of a rational
conversation. My only point is when Syria was run by Assad 10% of the population was
Christian and they lived in relative peace.
And that's really the whole point: the War Party wants to stop the conversation.
They don't want a debate – when, really, have we ever had a fair debate in this country
over foreign policy? They depend on fear, innuendo, and ad hominem "arguments" to drag us into
war after war – and Tucker is having none of it.
So why is any of this important? After all, it's just a TV show, and as amusing as it is to
watch a prominent neocon get creamed, what doe it all mean in the end? Well, it matters because
Tucker didn't start out talking sense on foreign policy. He started out, in short, as a
conventional conservative, but then something happened. As he put it to Peters at the end of
the segment:
I want to act in America's interest and stop making shallow, sweeping claims about countries
we don't fully understand and hope everything will be fine in the end. I saw that happen and
it didn't work.
What's true isn't self-evident, at least to those of us who aren't omniscient.
Many conservatives, as well as the country as a whole, learned something as they saw the
disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria unfold. On the right, many have rejected the
neoconservative "idealism" that destroyed the Middle East and unleashed ISIS. When Donald Trump
stood before the South Carolina GOP debate and told the assembled mandarins that we were lied
into the Iraq war, the chattering classes declared that he was finished – yet he won that
primary, and went on to win the nomination, precisely because Republican voters were ready to
hear that message.
Indeed, Trump's "America First" skepticism when it comes to foreign wars made
the crucial difference in the election , as a recent study shows :
communities hard hit by our endless wars put him over the top in the key states of Wisconsin,
Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This, and not "Russian meddling," handed him the White House.
Tucker Carlson's ideological evolution limns the transformation of the American right in the
age of Trump: while Trump is not, by a long shot, a consistent anti-interventionist, Tucker
comes pretty close. He is, at least, a realist with a pronounced antipathy for foreign
adventurism, and that is a big step forward from the neoconservative orthodoxy that has bathed
much of the world in blood.
Perhaps the neocons, having been trounced in round one, thought Boot could do better: they
were mistaken. Tucker took him apart simply by letting him talk: Boot didn't answer a single
question put to him, and, in the course of it all, as Boot resorted to the typical ad hominems,
Tucker made a cogent point:
[T]o dismiss people who disagree with you as immoral – which is your habit –
isn't a useful form of debate, it's a kind of moral preening, and it's little odd coming from
you, who really has been consistently wrong in the most flagrant and flamboyant way for over
a decade. And so, you have to sort of wonder, like –
BOOT: What have I been wrong about, Tucker? What have I been wrong about?
CARLSON: Well, having watch you carefully and known you for a long time, I recall vividly
when you said that if we were to topple the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, the region
will be much safer and the people who took their place would help us in the global war on
terror. Of course it didn't happen –
Boot starts to completely melt down at this point, screeching "You supported the
Iraq war!" To which Tucker trenchantly replies:
I've been wrong about a ton of things, you try to learn your lesson. But when you get out
there in the New York Times and say, we really should have done more to depose Qaddafi,
because you know, Libya is going to be better when that happens. And then to hear you say we
need to knock off the Assad regime and things will be better in Syria, he sort of wonder
like, well, maybe we should choose another professions. Selling insurance, something you're
good at. I guess that's kind of the point. Are there no sanctions for being as wrong as you
have?
Why oh why should we listen to Peters and Boot and their fellow neocons, who have
been – literally – dead wrong about everything: their crackbrained ideology has led
to untold thousands of deaths since September 11, 2001 alone. And for what?
In the end, Boot falls back on the usual non-arguments: Tucker is "immoral" because he
denies that Trump is a Russian agent, and persists in asking questions about our foreign policy
of endless intervention in the Middle East. Tucker keeps asking why Boot thinks Russia is the
main threat to the United States, and Boot finally answers: "Because they are the only country
that can destroy us with a nuclear strike."
To a rational person, the implications of this are obvious: in that case, shouldn't we be
trying to reach some sort of détente, or even achieve a degree of cooperation with Moscow?
Oh, but no, because you see the Russians are inherently evil, we have "nothing" in common with
them – in which case, war is inevitable.
At which point, Tucker avers: "Okay. I am beginning to think that your judgment has been
clouded by ideology, I don't fully understand where it's coming from but I will let our viewers
decide."
I know where it's coming from. Tucker's viewers may not know that Boot is a Russian
immigrant, who – like so many of our Russophobic warmongers – arrived on our shores
with his hatred of the motherland packed in his suitcase. There's a whole platoon of them:
Cathy Young, who recently released her polemic
arguing for a new cold war with Russia in the pages ofReason magazine; Atlantic writer and
tweeter of anti-Trump obscenities Julia Ioffe, whose visceral hatred for her homeland is a
veritable monomania; Gary Kasparov, the former chess champion who spends most of his energy
plotting revenge against Vladimir Putin and a Russian electorate that has consistently rejected
his hopeless presidential campaigns, and I could go on but you get the picture.
As the new cold war envelopes the country, wrapping us in its icy embrace and freezing all
rational discussion of foreign policy, a few people stand out as brave exceptions to the
groupthinking mass of the chattering classes: among the most visible and articulate are Tucker
Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, journalist Michael Tracey, Prof. Stephen Cohen, and of course our own
Ron Paul. I tip my hat to them, in gratitude and admiration, for they represent the one thing
we need right now: hope. The hope that this madness will pass, that we'll beat back this latest
War Party offensive, and enjoy a return to what passes these days for normalcy.
"... Cohen's appearance on Carlson's show last night demonstrated again at what a blistering pace public opinion in the West about Putin and Russia is shifting, for the better. ..."
"... Cohen is always good, but last night he nailed it, calling the media's coverage of Hamburg 'pornography'. ..."
"... It was just a year ago, pre-Trump, that professor Cohen was banned from all the networks, from any major media outlet, and being relentlessly pilloried by the neocon media for being a naive fool for defending Putin and Russia. ..."
"... "The first thing you notice is just how much the press is rooting for this meeting between our president and the Russian President to fail. It's a kind of pornography. Just as there's no love in pornography, there's no American national interest in this bashing of Trump and Putin. ..."
"... Carlson tried to draw Cohen out about who exactly in Washington is so against Assad, and why, and Cohen deflected, demurring - 'I don't know - I'm not an expert'. Of course he knows, as does Carlson - it is an unholy alliance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and their neocon friends in Washington and the media who are pushing this criminal policy, who support ISIS, deliberately. But they can't say so, because, ... well, because. Ask Rupert Murdoch. ..."
Cohen's appearance on Carlson's show last night demonstrated again at what a blistering pace public opinion in the West about
Putin and Russia is shifting, for the better.
Cohen is always good, but last night he nailed it, calling the media's coverage of Hamburg 'pornography'.
Ahh, the power of the apt phrase.
It was just a year ago, pre-Trump, that professor Cohen was banned from all the networks, from any major media outlet, and
being relentlessly pilloried by the neocon media for being a naive fool for defending Putin and Russia.
Last night he was the featured guest on the most watched news show in the country, being cheered on by the host, who has him on
as a regular. And Cohen isn't remotely a conservative. He is a contributing editor at the arch-liberal Nation magazine, of which
his wife is the editor. It doesn't really get pinker than that.
Some choice quotes here, but the whole thing is worth a listen:
"The first thing you notice is just how much the press is rooting for this meeting between our president and the Russian
President to fail. It's a kind of pornography. Just as there's no love in pornography, there's no American national interest in
this bashing of Trump and Putin.
As a historian let me tell you the headline I would write instead:
"What we witnessed today in Hamburg was a potentially historic new detente. an anti-cold-war partnership begun by Trump and
Putin but meanwhile attempts to sabotage it escalate." I've seen a lot of summits between American and Russian presidents, ...
and I think what we saw today was potentially the most fateful meeting ... since the Cold War.
The reason is, is that the relationship with Russia is so dangerous and we have a president who might have been crippled or
cowed by these Russiagate attacks ... yet he was not. He was politically courageous. It went well. They got important things done.
I think maybe today we witnessed president Trump emerging as an American statesman."
Cohen goes on to say that the US should ally with Assad, Iran, and Russia to crush ISIS, with Carlson bobbing his head up and
down in emphatic agreement.
Carlson tried to draw Cohen out about who exactly in Washington is so against Assad, and why, and Cohen deflected, demurring
- 'I don't know - I'm not an expert'. Of course he knows, as does Carlson - it is an unholy alliance of Israel, Saudi Arabia and
their neocon friends in Washington and the media who are pushing this criminal policy, who support ISIS, deliberately. But they can't
say so, because, ... well, because. Ask Rupert Murdoch.
Things are getting better in the US media, but we aren't quite able to call a spade a spade in the land of the free and the home
of the brave.
The most important feature of "neoliberalism" is that like Bolsheviks that believe in lases fare
in role of the state as "night watcher". The believe in market that they consider important the state
enforce the market mechanism of society. Nothing is left to the chance. this is "market uber alles"
religion. Market under neoliberal doctrine does not need any justification. It is a ultimate deity
that judge mere mortals and reqires compliance, achieved by spilling blood, if necessary.
Much like the idea of communism is a deity for Bolshviks. Kind of heaven on the earth. In this sense
this is market fundamentalism which is a lot in common with Islamic Fundamentalism.
Notable quotes:
"... Most Democrats are clueless about how the Neoliberals have hijacked the party. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism was ostensibly sold as promoting free-market capitalism. But what's actually happened is monopolistic, controlled-market capitalism. That's the morph. It's by design. In a Technocracy, corporate science, computer and finance wonks make the decisions, and governments enforce them. Rogue governments are economically isolated or attacked, weakened and overturned. If this all sounds like conspiracy-nut stuff, remember what you've been told about success: The losers watch things happen while the winners make things happen. ..."
"... Hitler and Stalin both harboured ideologies. Neoliberalism looks just as dangerous. The French didn't revolt because they understood economics but they knew that the system was rigged and that they were getting poorer and hungrier. When you hear the word 'ideology' you just know that it will fail and end badly. History is chock-full of examples. I can't think of a successful ideology...thanks for posting. ..."
Professor Philip Mirowski author of Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism
Survived the Financial Meltdown, explains the intellectual history of Neo-liberalism, what Neo-liberals
believe, making capitalists think differently, the role of think tanks in Neo-liberalism, the mythology
of market supremacy, how Facebook teaches you to be a Neo-liberal agent, shaming and Neo-liberalism,
how policy movements are built, climate and the affordable care act and Neo-liberal power and how
the left can respond to Neo-liberal dominance.
From the 6/26/14 episode of the Majority Report
This clip from the Majority Report, live M-F at 12 noon EST and via daily podcast at
http://Majority.FM
Regardless of the textbook definition of "neo liberalism," the left needs to start using the
word. It's an ideological icebreaker that causes people to reevaluate their thinking. The word
liberal has a negative connotation for many people. Using the word neoliberal takes advantage
of that. Additionally, the word helps point out exactly what's wrong with our economic system.
Both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are neoliberal. The word allows for a new paradigm where the
left is positioned in opposition to the uber rich and corporatists. This draws the line where
we need it to be.
The Left in Europe and elsewhere use it. It's only in the United States where you use the term
"Neoliberalism" and everyone starts getting confused. I agree, it needs to be used more often.
It might destroy The Narcissism of Minor Differences between the Democratic and Republican parties,
however. The mainstream media would never be able to handle that.
+Babak Golshahi Yes, I have a copy. I haven't read it. I just have it. I keep meaning to read
it but I get a few pages in and I get pissed off and think "I don't need this shit in my brain
just before I go to bed". I know the gist of it because I've heard some of her lectures.
I don't know who first said the market is a good servant but a poor master but they got it
right. The notion that markets 'know' best and we should therefore govern ourselves accordingly
is - it seems to me - insane and fundamentally anti- human. Humanity derives it's nature and guiding
principles from what can be bought or sold; and if you refuse to conform, then you become surplus?
So humanity(thoughts, creativity, sympathies etc.) takes a far back seat to markets? I don't get
how the soullessness of this liturgy is not evident.
I agree with your points however I would add that 'free market place' should not be over-romanticised.
the market always needs rules and regulations to function - its just that the neoliberals regulate
it to favor the rich. social democrats and other truly leftist parties would prefer to regulate
it in favor of everyone (rich and poor)
Reminds me of Ghandi's reply to, 'What do you think of Western Civilization?' "I think
it would be a good idea."
I suppose you could call swap meets or what they had at the end of feudalism free markets.
That is before the Elites swooped in with the help of the state and took over the commons. I think
one of the biggest confusions comes in the confluence of top-down Capitalism with industrialization,
as if that's the only way to organize production and build a first world economy.
I hear that one of the 'battle cries' of the European left is 'We can do better than Capitalism.'
I believe that very strongly. Human beings are nothing if not creative. We can do so much better
than this.
Neoliberalism is breathing its last but a back to the future Keynesian model is probably not
a great idea. We will very soon need a very different economic model entirely. Interesting what
Thomas Friedman recently said. "I'm left of Bernie Sanders and right of the editorial pages of
the Wall St Journal" Maybe we have to throw the old dualities of capitalism/ socialism economics
and right / left politics on the dust bin of history to make any real progres
Sounds interesting. I'm not against exploring new ideas but let's be careful. Remember that
in 1990s neoliberalism itself was sold as 'an alternative' to a supposedly outdated keynesian
model that belonged in a dust bin of history... Let's not fall for this again. Plus Friedman's
mumbo jumbo only sounds profound. If you look at his track record he's never seen a bad idea he
didn't like.
the reason why the Nordic models work so well is because innovation is championed by the state
and vital social institutions like healthcare and education are provided for, creating a healthy,
proactive population. the reason why 'socialism' has not worked in other countries (ie the Soviet
Union) is because it was not actually socialism, but messed up governments run by dictators. there
are democratic socialists (like myself) who do not advocate communism (the complete destruction
of the notion of private property) but rather think the free market can be reformulated in a democratic
way so that it can work to the benefit of everyone
"night watchmen" is a vain embellishment for what is really the work of a janitor or a babysitter.
When the "free market" shits itself after throwing a rager, who is called in the "clean up" (bail
out) the mess? The state, with taxpayers money.
Ludwig Von Mises: "What an acting man needs to know is not the state of affairs under equilibrium,
but information about the most appropriate method of transforming, by successive steps, P1 into
P2. The knowledge of conditions which will prevail under equilibrium is useless for the director
whose task it is to act today under present conditions. What he must learn is how to proceed in
the most economical way with the means available today which are the inheritance of an age with
different valuations, a different technological knowledge, and different information about problems
of location. He must know which step is the next he must take. In this dilemma the equations provide
no help. This so called state of equilibrium is a purely imaginary construction. In a changing
world it can never be realized. It differs from today's state as well as from any other realizable
state of affairs. What impels a man toward change and innovation is not the vision of equilibrium
prices, but the anticipation of the height of the prices of a limited number of articles as the
will prevail on the market on the date at which he plans to sell. A knowledge of the graduation
of the values of consumer' goods in this state of equilibrium is required. This graduation is
one of the elements of these equations assumed as known. Yet the director {lenin/obama} knows
only his present valuation, not also his valuation under hypothetical state of equilibrium. He
knows nothing about how he himself will value on the day the equilibrium will be reached." quoted
from Human Action p. 711
Your guest is a propagandist since he is using the original argument of the capitalists in
response to socialists-communist who said the government is a super-information processor who
knows about what's more valuable to a given human being at a given time and place than the human
being himself. So this guest is very unoriginal since he steals his own counter-argument from
capitalists, which is hilarious.
Great conversation. I wouldn't be as conspiratorial about it but the innovation of think tanks
is incredibly important in this. I was obsessed with neo-liberalism a few years ago; I wrote a
history of the movement in the U.S. for my undergrad dissertation - focusing mostly on the post-1945
years when it began to take hold in the establishment, particularly the 1970's. The characterization
of the market as an information processor is exactly what they argue. The notion that the market
is a naturally occurring entity is so crazy to me that I couldn't stop reading and writing about
it. For those interested in this stuff I highly recommend watching the Adam Curtis documentaries
"The Trap" and "All Watch Over by Machines of Loving Grace" - these films really get to the heart
of what Mirowski is getting at. :)
Technocracy was also borne in the 1930's. This is neoliberalism's end goal, I believe, that's
why they are running capitalism to the ground. They want it to ultimately fail so that they can
implement their technocratic utopia for a select few, but a nightmare for the rest of us.
Is neoliberalism ending? It's morphing. The International Monetary Fund is now suggesting some,
ahem, "reconsideration of what the neo-liberal agenda is likely to achieve." Neo-liberalism was
a means to an end. Behind the scenes, since the early 70's, the movement has always been toward
Global Technocracy. The key tenets of GT originally envisioned by Zbigniew Brzezinski were: *Diminished
sovereignty with more transnational corporate control; *International trade facilitated by international
banking and floating currencies; *A worldwide computer network with which economic activities
could be easily transacted and monitored. Such a network would also easily monitor the activities
of citizens. The attraction was that economically enmeshed nations would be far less likely to
war with each other. Z-Biggie suggested that nationalist tendencies, labor unions, democracy and
such would necessitate keeping the long-term GT project in the background. It popped up occasionally,
like when George H.W. Bush mentioned something about a New World Order. The privatization, deregulation,
union busting, austerity measures and government-shrinking, trade superseding sovereignty, floating
currencies -- all hallmarks of neo-liberalism. All were tools to effectuate the Global Technocracy.
You didn't really think the barely regulated, untaxed "World Wide Web" just . . . happened? Or
the change from market trading to computer and data-driven robotrading was just . . . innovation?
Neo-liberalism was ostensibly sold as promoting free-market capitalism. But what's actually
happened is monopolistic, controlled-market capitalism. That's the morph. It's by design. In a
Technocracy, corporate science, computer and finance wonks make the decisions, and governments
enforce them. Rogue governments are economically isolated or attacked, weakened and overturned.
If this all sounds like conspiracy-nut stuff, remember what you've been told about success: The
losers watch things happen while the winners make things happen.
Faced with burgeoning world population, resource and food issues, the Global Corporate Technocracy
is what the elites and their think tankers came up with. There has been some pushback from the
libertarian right and socialist left, but as long as those two factions are kept at odds and marginalized
by the media, the Technocrats will continue to progress. An economic elite and their wonks will
be protected and benefit, while the needs and aspirations of the populace will be corporately
managed as far as profit is available; abandoned if not.
Western-style Technocracy hasn't been fully successful with its Global goal. The BRICS have
been staking claim on their regions, with their own ideas about managing them. Osama bin Laden
railed against the spread of Western capitalism and culture, and the problems with Islamic fundamentalism
continue. Nevertheless, we continue bringing new markets into the fold, under the guise of 'regime
change' and 'third-world development.' Mrs. Clinton is a big believer.
Whether various recent populist or nationalist movements succeed in altering the path of Global
Technocracy remains to be seen. Some observers say the elite fostering it may need to employ something
called Soft Fascism to continue forwarding their goals. Neo-liberalism has served its purpose:
Institutionalizing transnational corporate hegemony. How the Global Technocratic elite balance
their profit-taking with the world issues they purport to manage will be the story of the coming
decades. Current CO2 levels in the atmosphere or the notional value of the financial derivatives
market may indicate just how well that's working out. ADDENDUM: Readers have mentioned a few recent
books emerging on the Global Technocracy which I haven't read but from checking their reviews
sound like they would provide more background and context. They are: The Seventh Sense: Power,
Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse Of Global Transformation
Instructive interview. I can't help thinking that there may be global social consequences (a
social kickback) from this type of ideology. Somehow, Neoliberalism comes across as a 1950s style
comic-book mad dictator, with staring eyes and a maniacal laugh, doing its best to conquer he
world. People aren't stupid. The can't be expected to understand economics and social engineering
but they have common-sense.
Hitler and Stalin both harboured ideologies. Neoliberalism looks just as dangerous. The
French didn't revolt because they understood economics but they knew that the system was rigged
and that they were getting poorer and hungrier. When you hear the word 'ideology' you just know
that it will fail and end badly. History is chock-full of examples. I can't think of a successful
ideology...thanks for posting.
interesting guy but the left / right language has gotta end. we're already talking past that
in distinguishing neo and classic libertarians.. come on!
Populism is a weasel word that is use by neoliberal MSM to delitimize the resistance. This is a typical neoliberal thinking.
Financial globalization is different from trade. It is more of neocolonialism that racket, as is
the case with trade.
Notable quotes:
"... Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account liberalisation. They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant and long-lasting declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini coefficient of income inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further, capital mobility shifts both the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile factor, labour. ..."
"... I suggest that the fact that these two countries are arguably the most unequal in the advanced world has something to do with this. Also, on many measures I believe these two countries appear to be the most 'damaged' societies in the advanced world – levels of relationship breakdown, teenage crime, drug use, teenage pregnancies etc. I doubt this is a coincidence. ..."
"... Forced Free Trade was intended to be destructive to American society, and it was . . . exactly as intended. Millions of jobs were abolished here and shipped to foreign countries used as economic aggression platforms against America. So of course American society became damaged as the American economy became mass-jobicided. On purpose. With malice aforethought. ..."
"... "Populism" seems to me to be a pejorative term used to delegitimize the grievances of the economically disenfranchised and dismiss them derision. ..."
"... In the capitalist economies globalization is/was inevitable; the outcome is easy to observe ..and suffer under. ..."
"... they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who have been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives ..."
"... This piece was a lengthy run-on Econ 101 bollocks. Not only does the writer dismiss debt/interest and the effects of rentier banking, but they come off as very simplistic. Reads like some sheltered preppy attempt at explaining populism ..."
"... But like almost all economists, Rodrik is ignoring the political part of political economy. Historically, humanity has developed two organizational forms to select and steer toward preferred economic destinies: governments of nation states, and corporations. ..."
"... The liberalization of trade has come, I would argue, with a huge political cost no economist has reckoned yet. Instead, economists are whining about the reaction to this political cost without facing up to the political cost itself. Or even accept its legitimacy. ..."
"... Second, there are massive negative effects of trade liberalization that economists simply refuse to look at. Arbitration of environmental and worker safety laws and regulations is one. ..."
"... As I have argued elsewhere, the most important economic activity a society engages in us the development and diffusion of new science and technology. ..."
"... Rodrik is also wrong about the historical origins of agrarian populism in USA. It was not trade, but the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original grievances of the Grangers, Farmers Alliances after the Civil War. ..."
"... The salient characteristic of populism is favoring the people vs. the establishment. The whole left/right dichotomy is a creation of the establishment, used to divide the public and PREVENT an effective populist backlash. As Gore Vidal astutely pointed out decades ago, there is really only one party in the U.S. – the Property Party – and the Ds and Rs are just two heads of the same hydra. Especially in the past 10 years or so. ..."
'Populism' is a loose label that encompasses a diverse set of movements. The term originates from
the late 19th century, when a coalition of farmers, workers, and miners in the US rallied against
the Gold Standard and the Northeastern banking and finance establishment. Latin America has a long
tradition of populism going back to the 1930s, and exemplified by Peronism. Today populism spans
a wide gamut of political movements, including anti-euro and anti-immigrant parties in Europe, Syriza
and Podemos in Greece and Spain, Trump's anti-trade nativism in the US, the economic populism of
Chavez in Latin America, and many others in between. What all these share is an anti-establishment
orientation, a claim to speak for the people against the elites, opposition to liberal economics
and globalisation, and often (but not always) a penchant for authoritarian governance.
The populist backlash may have been a surprise to many, but it really should not have been in
light of economic history and economic theory.
Take history first. The first era of globalisation under the Gold Standard produced the first
self-conscious populist movement in history, as noted above. In trade, finance, and immigration,
political backlash was not late in coming. The decline in world agricultural prices in 1870s and
1880s produced pressure for resumption in import protection. With the exception of Britain, nearly
all European countries raised agricultural tariffs towards the end of the 19th century. Immigration
limits also began to appear in the late 19th century. The United States Congress passed in 1882 the
infamous Chinese Exclusion Act that restricted Chinese immigration specifically. Japanese immigration
was restricted in 1907. And the Gold Standard aroused farmers' ire because it was seen to produce
tight credit conditions and a deflationary effect on agricultural prices. In a speech at the Democratic
national convention of 1896, the populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan uttered the famous words:
"You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
To anyone familiar with the basic economics of trade and financial integration, the politically
contentious nature of globalisation should not be a surprise. The workhorse models with which international
economists work tend to have strong redistributive implications. One of the most remarkable theorems
in economics is the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, which generates very sharp distributional implications
from opening up to trade. Specifically, in a model with two goods and two factors of production,
with full inter-sectoral mobility of the factors, owners of one of the two factors are made necessarily
worse off with the opening to trade. The factor which is used intensively in the importable good
must experience a decline in its real earnings.
The Stolper-Samuelson theorem assumes very specific conditions. But there is one Stolper-Samuelson-like
result that is extremely general, and which can be stated as follows. Under competitive conditions,
as long as the importable good(s) continue to be produced at home – that is, ruling out complete
specialisation – there is always at least one factor of production that is rendered worse off by
the liberalisation of trade. In other words, trade generically produces losers. Redistribution is
the flip side of the gains from trade; no pain, no gain.
Economic theory has an additional implication, which is less well recognised. In relative terms,
the redistributive effects of liberalisation get larger and tend to swamp the net gains as the trade
barriers in question become smaller. The ratio of redistribution to net gains rises as trade liberalisation
tackles progressively lower barriers.
The logic is simple. Consider the denominator of this ratio first. It is a standard result in
public finance that the efficiency cost of a tax increases with the square of the tax rate. Since
an import tariff is a tax on imports, the same convexity applies to tariffs as well. Small tariffs
have very small distorting effects; large tariffs have very large negative effects. Correspondingly,
the efficiency gains of trade liberalisation become progressively smaller as the barriers get lower.
The redistributive effects, on the other hand, are roughly linear with respect to price changes and
are invariant, at the margin, to the magnitude of the barriers. Putting these two facts together,
we have the result just stated, namely that the losses incurred by adversely affected groups per
dollar of efficiency gain are higher the lower the barrier that is removed.
Evidence is in line with these theoretical expectations. For example, in the case of NAFTA, Hakobyan
and McLaren (2016) have found very large adverse effects for an "important minority" of US workers,
while Caliendo and Parro (2015) estimate that the overall gains to the US economy from the agreement
were minute (a "welfare" gain of 0.08%).
In principle, the gains from trade can be redistributed to compensate the losers and ensure no
identifiable group is left behind. Trade openness has been greatly facilitated in Europe by the creation
of welfare states. But the US, which became a truly open economy relatively late, did not move in
the same direction. This may account for why imports from specific trade partners such as China or
Mexico are so much more contentious in the US.
Economists understand that trade causes job displacement and income losses for some groups. But
they have a harder time making sense of why trade gets picked on so much by populists both on the
right and the left. After all, imports are only one source of churn in labour markets, and typically
not even the most important source. What is it that renders trade so much more salient politically?
Perhaps trade is a convenient scapegoat. But there is another, deeper issue that renders redistribution
caused by trade more contentious than other forms of competition or technological change. Sometimes
international trade involves types of competition that are ruled out at home because they violate
widely held domestic norms or social understandings. When such "blocked exchanges" (Walzer 1983)
are enabled through trade they raise difficult questions of distributive justice. What arouses popular
opposition is not inequality per se, but perceived unfairness.
Financial globalisation is in principle similar to trade insofar as it generates overall economic
benefits. Nevertheless, the economics profession's current views on financial globalisation can be
best described as ambivalent. Most of the scepticism is directed at short-term financial flows, which
are associated with financial crises and other excesses. Long-term flows and direct foreign investment
in particular are generally still viewed favourably. Direct foreign investment tends to be more stable
and growth-promoting. But there is evidence that it has produced shifts in taxation and bargaining
power that are adverse to labour.
The boom-and-bust cycle associated with capital inflows has long been familiar to developing nations.
Prior to the Global Crisis, there was a presumption that such problems were largely the province
of poorer countries. Advanced economies, with their better institutions and regulation, would be
insulated from financial crises induced by financial globalisation. It did not quite turn out that
way. In the US, the housing bubble, excessive risk-taking, and over-leveraging during the years leading
up to the crisis were amplified by capital inflows from the rest of the world. In the Eurozone, financial
integration, on a regional scale, played an even larger role. Credit booms fostered by interest-rate
convergence would eventually turn into bust and sustained economic collapses in Greece, Spain, Portugal,
and Ireland once credit dried up in the immediate aftermath of the crisis in the US.
Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries
as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy
is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account liberalisation.
They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant and long-lasting
declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini coefficient of income
inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further, capital mobility shifts both
the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile factor, labour.
The populist backlash may have been predictable, but the specific form it took was less so. Populism
comes in different versions. It is useful to distinguish between left-wing and right-wing variants
of populism, which differ with respect to the societal cleavages that populist politicians highlight
and render salient. The US progressive movement and most Latin American populism took a left-wing
form. Donald Trump and European populism today represent, with some instructive exceptions, the right-wing
variant (Figure 2). What accounts for the emergence of right-wing versus left-wing variants of opposition
to globalization?
Figure 2 Contrasting patterns of populism in Europe and Latin America
Notes : See Rodrik (2017) for sources and methods.
I suggest that these different reactions are related to the forms in which globalisation shocks
make themselves felt in society (Rodrik 2017). It is easier for populist politicians to mobilise
along ethno-national/cultural cleavages when the globalisation shock becomes salient in the form
of immigration and refugees. That is largely the story of advanced countries in Europe. On the other
hand, it is easier to mobilise along income/social class lines when the globalisation shock takes
the form mainly of trade, finance, and foreign investment. That in turn is the case with southern
Europe and Latin America. The US, where arguably both types of shocks have become highly salient
recently, has produced populists of both stripes (Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump).
It is important to distinguish between the demand and supply sides of the rise in populism. The
economic anxiety and distributional struggles exacerbated by globalisation generate a base for populism,
but do not necessarily determine its political orientation. The relative salience of available cleavages
and the narratives provided by populist leaders are what provides direction and content to the grievances.
Overlooking this distinction can obscure the respective roles of economic and cultural factors in
driving populist politics.
Finally, it is important to emphasise that globalization has not been the only force at play -
nor necessarily even the most important one. Changes in technology, rise of winner-take-all markets,
erosion of labour market protections, and decline of norms restricting pay differentials all have
played their part. These developments are not entirely independent from globalisation, insofar as
they both fostered globalization and were reinforced by it. But neither can they be reduced to it.
Nevertheless, economic history and economic theory both give us strong reasons to believe that advanced
stages of globalisation are prone to populist backlash.
One question he does not address is why the opposition to globalization has had its most obvious
consequences in two countries:- the US and the UK with Trump and Brexit respectively.
I suggest
that the fact that these two countries are arguably the most unequal in the advanced world has
something to do with this. Also, on many measures I believe these two countries appear to be the
most 'damaged' societies in the advanced world – levels of relationship breakdown, teenage crime,
drug use, teenage pregnancies etc. I doubt this is a coincidence.
For me the lessons are obvious
– ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed among all affected, not just some; act
to prevent excessive inequality; nurture people so that their lives are happier.
re: "ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed among all affected"
Note that for the recent TPP, industry executives and senior government officials were well
represented for the drafting of the agreement, labor and environmental groups were not.
There simply may be no mechanism to "ensure the benefits are distributed among all affected"
in the USA political climate as those benefits are grabbed by favored groups, who don't want to
re-distribute them later.
Some USA politicians argue for passing flawed legislation while suggesting they will fix it
later, as I remember California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein stating when she voted for
Bush Jr's Medicare Part D ("buy elderly votes for Republicans").
It has been about 15 years, and I don't remember any reform efforts on Medicare Part D from
Di-Fi.
Legislation should be approached with the anticipated inequality problems solved FIRST when
wealthy and powerful interests are only anticipating increased wealth via "free trade". Instead,
the political process gifts first to the wealthy and powerful first and adopts a "we'll fix it
later" attitude for those harmed. And the same process occurs, the wealthy/powerful subsequently
strongly resist sharing their newly acquired "free trade" wealth increment with the free trade
losers..
If the USA adopted a "fix inequality first" requirement, one wonders if these free trade bills
would get much purchase with the elite.
Forced Free Trade was intended to be destructive to American society, and it was . . . exactly
as intended.
Millions of jobs were abolished here and shipped to foreign countries used as economic aggression
platforms against America. So of course American society became damaged as the American economy
became mass-jobicided. On purpose. With malice aforethought.
NAFTA Bill Clinton lit the fuse to the bomb which finally exploded under his lovely wife Hillary
in 2016.
The big problem I find in this analysis is that it completely forgets how different countries
use fiscal/financial policies to play merchantilistic games under globalization.
Yves, thanks for posting this from Dani Rodrik - whose clear thinking is always worthwhile.
It's an excellent, succinct post. Still, one 'ouch': "Redistribution is the flip side of the gains
from trade; no pain, no gain."
This is dehumanizing glibness that we cannot afford. The pain spreads like wildfire. It burns
down houses, savings, jobs, communities, bridges, roads, health and health care, education, food
systems, air, water, the 'real' economy, civility, shared values - in short everything for billions
of human beings - all while sickening, isolating and killing.
The gain? Yes, as you so often point out, cui bono? But, really it goes beyond even that question.
It requires asking, "Is this gain so obscene to arguably be no gain at all because its price for
those who cannot have too many homes and yachts and so forth is the loss of humanity?
Consider, for example, Mitch McConnell. He cannot reasonably be considered human. At all. And,
before the trolls create any gifs for the Teenager-In-Chief, one could say the same - or almost
the same - for any number of flexians who denominate themselves D or R (e.g. Jamie Gorelick).
No pain, no gain? Fine for getting into better shape or choosing to get better at some discipline.
It's an abominable abstraction, though, for describing phenomena now so far along toward planet-o-cide.
"Populism" seems to me to be a pejorative term used to delegitimize the grievances of the economically
disenfranchised and dismiss them derision.
Another categorization that I find less than apt, outmoded
and a misnomer is the phrase "advanced economies", especially given that level of industrialization
and gdp per capita are the key metrics used to arrive at these classifications. Globalization
has shifted most industrial activity away from countries that invested in rapid industrialization
post WW2 to countries with large pools of readily exploitable labour while gdp per capita numbers
include sections of the population with no direct participation in creating economic output (and
the growth of these marginalized sections is trending ever upward).
Meanwhile the financial benefits
of growing GDP numbers gush ever upwards to the financial-political elites instead of "trickling
downwards" as we are told they should, inequality grows unabated, stress related diseases eat
away at the bodies of otherwise young men and women etc. I'm not sure any of these dynamics, which
describe perfectly what is happening in many so called advanced economies, are the mark of societies
that should describe themselves as "advanced"
Sorry, but the original populist movement in the US called themselves the Populists or the
Populist Party. Being popular is good. You are the one who is assigning a pejorative tone to it.
Populism is widely used in the mainstream media, and even in the so called alternative media,
as a really pejorative term. That is what he means (I would say).
"What all these share is an anti-establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people
against the elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalisation, and often (but not always)
a penchant for authoritarian governance."
On the other hand:
"What all these share is an establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the elites against
the people, support for liberal economics and globalisation, and always a penchant for authoritarian
governance."
"Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries
as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy
is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account
liberalisation. They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant
and long-lasting declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini
coefficient of income inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further,
capital mobility shifts both the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile
factor, labour."
So, translated, Rodrick is saying that the free flow of money across borders, while people
are confined within these artificial constraints, results in all the riches flowing to the fat
cats and all the taxes, famines, wars, droughts, floods and other natural disasters being dumped
upon the peasants.
The Lakota, roaming the grassy plains of the North American mid-continent, glorified their
'fat cats,' the hunters who brought back the bison which provided food, shelter and clothing to
the people. And the rule was that the spoils of the hunt were shared unequally; the old, women
and children got the choice high calorie fatty parts. The more that a hunter gave away, the more
he was revered.
The Lakota, after some decades of interaction with the European invaders, bestowed on them
a disparaging soubriquet: wasi'chu. It means 'fat-taker;' someone who is greedy, taking all the
best parts for himself and leaving nothing for the people.
"So, translated, Rodrick is saying that the free flow of money across borders, while people
are confined within these artificial constraints .."
Nailed it!!
That's something that has always bothered me it's great for the propagandists to acclaim globalization
but they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who have
been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives .there should be a murderous outrage against
this kind of globalized exploitation and the consequent sufferings. Oh, but I forgot! It's all
about the money that is supposed to give incentive to those who are left behind to "recoup",
"regroup" and in today's age develop some kind of "app" to make up for all those losses .
In the
capitalist economies globalization is/was inevitable; the outcome is easy to observe ..and suffer
under.
they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who
have been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives
That's a feature, not a bug. Notice that big corporations are all in favor of globalization
except when it comes to things like labor law. Then, somehow, local is better.
"The economic anxiety and distributional struggles exacerbated by globalization generate a
base for populism, but do not necessarily determine its political orientation. The relative salience
of available cleavages and the narratives provided by populist leaders are what provides direction
and content to the grievances. "
Excellent and interesting point. Which political party presents itself as a believable tool
for redress affects the direction populism will take, making itself available as supply to the
existing populist demand. That should provide for 100 years of political science research.
Anonymous2 : "For me the lessons are obvious – ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed
among all affected, not just some; act to prevent excessive inequality; nurture people so that
their lives are happier."
It ought to be but sadly I fear our politicians are bought. I am unsure I have the solution
. In the past when things got really bad I suspect people ended up with a major war before these
sorts of problems could be addressed. I doubt that is going to be a solution this time.
This piece was a lengthy run-on Econ 101 bollocks. Not only does the writer dismiss debt/interest
and the effects of rentier banking, but they come off as very simplistic. Reads like some sheltered
preppy attempt at explaining populism
Yep, Rodrik has been writing about these things for decades and has a remarkable talent for
never actually getting anywhere. He's particularly enamored by the neoliberal shiny toy of "skills",
as if predation, looting, and fraud simply don't exist.
This is a prime example of what is wrong with professional economic thinking. First, note that
Rodrik is nominally on our side: socially progressive, conscious of the increasingly frightful
cost of enviro externalities, etc.
But like almost all economists, Rodrik is ignoring the political
part of political economy. Historically, humanity has developed two organizational forms to select
and steer toward preferred economic destinies: governments of nation states, and corporations.
Only nation states provide the mass of people any form and extent of political participation in
determining their own destiny. The failure of corporations to provide political participation
can probably be recited my almost all readers of NC. Indeed, a key problem of the past few decades
is that corp.s have increasingly marginalized the role of nation states and mass political participation.
The liberalization of trade has come, I would argue, with a huge political cost no economist has
reckoned yet. Instead, economists are whining about the reaction to this political cost without
facing up to the political cost itself. Or even accept its legitimacy.
Second, there are massive negative effects of trade liberalization that economists simply refuse
to look at. Arbitration of environmental and worker safety laws and regulations is one. Another
is the aftereffects of the economic dislocations Rodrik alludes to.
One is the increasing constriction
of government budgets. These in turn have caused a scaling back of science R&D which I believe
will have huge but incalculable negative effects in coming years. How do you measure the cost
of failing to find a cure for a disease? Or failing to develop technologies to reverse climate
change? Or just to double the charge duration of electric batteries under load? As I have argued
elsewhere, the most important economic activity a society engages in us the development and diffusion
of new science and technology.
Intellectually poisoned by his social environment perhaps. The biggest problems with this piece
were its sweeping generalizations about unquantified socio-political trends. The things that academic
economists are least trained in; the things they speak about in passing without much thought.
I.e. Descriptions of political 'populism' that lumps Peronists, 19th century U.S. prairie populists,
Trump, and Sanders all into one neat category. Because, social movements driven by immiseration
of the common man are interchangeable like paper cups at a fast food restaurant.
Agree with much of what you comment .I believe that the conditions you describe are conveniently
dismissed by the pro economists as: "Externalities" LOL!! They seem to dump everything that doesn't
correlate to their dream of "Free Markets", "Globalization", etc .into that category .you gotta
love 'em!!
Rodrik is also wrong about the historical origins of agrarian populism in USA. It was not trade,
but the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original
grievances of the Grangers, Farmers Alliances after the Civil War.
In fact, the best historian of USA agrarian populism, Lawrence Goodwyn, argued that it was
exactly the populists' reluctant alliance with Byran in the 1896 election that destroyed the populist
movement. It was not so much an issue of the gold standard, as it was "hard money" vs "soft money"
: gold AND silver vs the populists' preference for greenbacks, and currency and credit issued
by US Treasury instead of the eastern banks.
A rough analogy is that Byran was the Hillary Clinton
of his day, with the voters not given any way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or
the House of Morgan.
"the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original
grievances "
That power was expressed in total control of the Congress and Presidential office. Then, as
now, the 80-90% of the voters had neither R or D party that represented their economic, property,
and safety interests. Given the same economic circumstances, if one party truly pushed for ameliorating
regulations or programs the populist movement would be unnecessary. Yes, Bryan was allowed to
run (and he had a large following) and to speak at the Dem convention, much like Bernie today.
The "Bourbon Democrats" kept firm control of the party and downed Jennings' programs just as the
neolib Dem estab today keep control of the party out of the hands of progressives.
an aside: among many things, the progressives pushed for good government (ending cronyism),
trust busting, and honest trade, i.e not selling unfit tinned and bottled food as wholesome food.
Today, we could use an "honest contracts and dealings" act to regulate the theft committed by
what the banks call "honest contract enforcement", complete with forges documents. (Upton Sinclair
wrote The Jungle (1906) about the meatpacking industry. What would he make of today's mortgage
industry, or insurance industry, for example.)
For an author and article so interested in international trade, I'm fascinated by the lack
of evidence or argumentation that trade is the problem. The real issue being described here is
excessive inequality delivered through authoritarianism, not international trade. The intra-city
divergence between a hospital administrator and a home health aid is a much bigger problem in
the US than trade across national borders. The empire abroad and the police state at home is a
much bigger problem than competition from China or Mexico. Etc. Blaming international trade for
domestic policies (and opposition to them) is just simple misdirection and xenophobia, nothing
more.
I take exception to most of Prof. Rodrik's post, which is filled with factual and/or logical
inaccuracies.
"Populism appears to be a recent phenomenon, but it has been on the rise for quite some time
(Figure 1)."
Wrong. Pretending that a historical generic is somehow new Populism has been around since
at least the time of Jesus or William Wallace or the American Revolution or FDR.
"What all these share is an anti-establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people
against the elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalisation, and often (but not always)
a penchant for authoritarian governance."
Wrong. Creating a straw man through overgeneralization. Just because one country's "populism"
appears to have taken on a certain color, does not mean the current populist movement in another
part of the world will be the same. The only essential characteristics of populism are the anti-establishment
orientation and seeking policies that will redress an imbalance in which some elites have aggrandized
themselves unjustly at the expense of the rest of the people. The rest of the items in the list
above are straw men in a generalization. Rise of authoritarian (non-democratic) governance after
a populist uprising implies the rise of a new elite and would be a failure, a derailing of the
populist movement – not a characteristic of it.
"Correspondingly, the efficiency gains of trade liberalisation become progressively smaller
as the barriers get lower."
If, in fact, we were seeing lower trade barriers, and this was driving populism, this whole
line of reasoning might have some value. But as it is, well over half the US economy is either
loaded with barriers, subject to monopolistic pricing, or has not seen any "trade liberalization".
Pharmaceuticals, despite being commodities, have no common global price the way, say, oil does.
Oil hasn't had lowered barriers, though, and thus doesn't count in favor of the argument either.
When China, Japan and Europe drop their import barriers, and all of them plus the U.S. get serious
about antitrust enforcement, there might be a case to be made
"It is useful to distinguish between left-wing and right-wing variants of populism"
Actually it isn't. The salient characteristic of populism is favoring the people vs. the establishment.
The whole left/right dichotomy is a creation of the establishment, used to divide the public and
PREVENT an effective populist backlash. As Gore Vidal astutely pointed out decades ago, there
is really only one party in the U.S. – the Property Party – and the Ds and Rs are just two heads
of the same hydra. Especially in the past 10 years or so.
About the only thing the author gets right is the admission that certain economic policies
unjustly create pain among many groups of people, leading to popular retribution. But that's not
insightful, especially since he fails to address the issue quantitatively and identify WHICH policies
have created the bulk of the pain. For instance, was more damage done by globalization, or by
the multi-trillion-$ fleecing of the U.S. middle class by the bankers and federal reserve during
the recent housing bubble and aftermath? What about the more recent ongoing fleecing of the government
and the people by the healthcare cartels, at about $1.5-2 trillion/year in the U.S.?
What arouses popular opposition is not inequality per se, but perceived unfairness.
Which is the primary worldview setting for the neo-reactionary right in America. Everything
is a question of whether or not ones income was "fairly earned."
So you get government employees
and union members voting for politicians who've practically declared war against those voters'
class, but vote for them anyway because they set their arguments in a mode of fairness morality:
You can vote for the party of hard workers, or the party of handouts to the lazy. Which is why
China keeps getting depicted as a currency manipulator and exploiter of free trade agreements.
Economic rivals can only succeed via "cheating," not being industrious like the US.
That describes a number of my relatives and their friends. They are union members and government
employees yet hold hard right-wing views and are always complaining about lazy moochers living
on welfare. I ask them why they love the Republicans so much when this same party demonizes union
members and public employees as overpaid and lazy and the usual answer is that Republicans are
talking about some other unions or other government employees, usually teachers.
I suspect that the people in my anecdote hate public school teachers and their unions because
they are often female and non-white or teach in areas with a lot of minority children. I see this
a lot with white guys in traditional masculine industrial unions. They sometimes look down on
unions in fields that have many female and non-white members, teachers being the best example
I can think of.
I can't stand Tucker Carlson from his time as a loyal footsoldier in the ranks of the George Dubya Bush Apologist Army, but it's
easy to feel in synch with him here just because CNN is so deservedly hated. Can't argue with your conclusions, either.
Then this will make you chuckle Mark – when I was discussing CNN at a meeting, one of the smarter analysts commented: "yet another
reason to hate CNN is because they're making Tucker Carlson look good! Why doesn't anyone bring that up?"
The room responded with laughter. Remember the days when CNN used to claim that they're "the most trusted name in news" – well
they're not doing that anymore:
"In the poll published Wednesday by Rasmussen Reports, 1,000 likely voters were asked to describe their media viewing habits.
Seventy-five percent said they watch at least some form of cable news each week, with 42 percent saying they most frequently watch
Fox News, 35 percent usually choosing CNN, and 19 percent favoring MSNBC. An even 50 percent of frequent Fox News viewers agreed
with a followup question, "Do you trust the political news you are getting?" By comparison, 43 percent of frequent MSNBC viewers
and just 33 percent of those who mostly watch CNN said they trust their political news."
"For instance, on Tuesday, over the course of the day, CNN was only able to attract a measly 670,000 viewers. For context,
MSNBC nearly doubled this number; Fox News nearly tripled it. CNN has almost always lagged a bit behind MSNBC in total viewers,
but not like this."
Why couldn't it be 620,000? The reason I'm asking, is because 6.2 million Americans watched Putin's interview with Megyn Kelly.
I'm not yet sure about Stone's Putin Interviews – but that number also seems to be very positive and in the millions. Of course
losing to Discovery Channel didn't help CNN:
"Furthermore, throughout this same quarter, CNN lost to MSNBC in total and primetime demo viewers. This is the first time since
2014 that CNN has lost that demo crown to its leftwing rival. In total viewers last quarter, among all cable news channels, Fox
News placed first, MSNBC third, and CNN is all alone in tenth place, just barely ahead of Investigative Discovery, a second-tier
offshoot of the Discovery Network."
I predicted this would happen back when they fucked up their coverage of the Ossetian War. Now I'm just watching the train-wreck,
thinking "am I really eating the best tasting popcorn? Have I finally found it?"
I hope they are driven right out of existence – I can't wait to see Wolf Blitzer sitting on a bench outside Hope Cottage in downtown
Halifax, bleary-eyed and waiting for the free soup line to open. All of a journalist's enemies should be among the corrupt mages
of the state apparatus – when the common man earnestly prays for you to be brought low, you've lost your way, and are feeding
on a projected image of yourself. I think it's safe to say that we have seen the most precipitous decline in ethics in journalism,
this past decade, that has occurred since its humble beginnings.
The time for rhetorical reservations is over. Things have to be called by their name to make it
possible for a co-ordinated democratic reaction to be initiated, above all in the public services.
Liberalism was a doctrine derived from the philosophy of Enlightenment, at once political and
economic, which aimed at imposing on the state the necessary distance for ensuring respect for liberties
and the coming of democratic emancipation. It was the motor for the arrival, and the continuing progress,
of Western democracies.
Neoliberalism is a form of economism in our day that strikes at every moment at every sector of
our community. It is a form of extremism.
Fascism may be defined as the subordination of every part of the State to a totalitarian and nihilistic
ideology.
I argue that neoliberalism is a species of fascism because the economy has brought under subjection
not only the government of democratic countries but also every aspect of our thought.
The state is now at the disposal of the economy and of finance, which treat it as a subordinate
and lord over it to an extent that puts the common good in jeopardy.
The austerity that is demanded by the financial milieu has become a supreme value, replacing politics.
Saving money precludes pursuing any other public objective. It is reaching the point where claims
are being made that the principle of budgetary orthodoxy should be included in state constitutions.
A mockery is being made of the notion of public service.
The nihilism that results from this makes possible the dismissal of universalism and the most
evident humanistic values: solidarity, fraternity, integration and respect for all and for differences.
There is no place any more even for classical economic theory: work was formerly an element in
demand, and to that extent there was respect for workers; international finance has made of it a
mere adjustment variable.
Every totalitarianism starts as distortion of language, as in the novel by George Orwell. Neoliberalism
has its Newspeak and strategies of communication that enable it to deform reality. In this spirit,
every budgetary cut is represented as an instance of modernization of the sectors concerned. If some
of the most deprived are no longer reimbursed for medical expenses and so stop visiting the dentist,
this is modernization of social security in action!
Abstraction predominates in public discussion so as to occlude the implications for human beings.
Thus, in relation to migrants, it is imperative that the need for hosting them does not lead to
public appeals that our finances could not accommodate. Is it In the same way that other individuals
qualify for assistance out of considerations of national solidarity?
The cult of evaluation
Social Darwinism predominates, assigning the most stringent performance requirements to everyone
and everything: to be weak is to fail. The foundations of our culture are overturned: every humanist
premise is disqualified or demonetized because neoliberalism has the monopoly of rationality and
realism. Margaret Thatcher said it in 1985:
There is no alternative."
Everything else is utopianism, unreason and regression. The virtue of debate and conflicting perspectives
are discredited because history is ruled by necessity.
This subculture harbours an existential threat of its own: shortcomings of performance condemn
one to disappearance while at the same time everyone is charged with inefficiency and obliged to
justify everything. Trust is broken. Evaluation reigns, and with it the bureaucracy which imposes
definition and research of a plethora of targets, and indicators with which one must comply. Creativity
and the critical spirit are stifled by management. And everyone is beating his breast about the wastage
and inertia of which he is guilty.
The neglect of justice
The neoliberal ideology generates a normativity that competes with the laws of parliament. The
democratic power of law is compromised. Given that they represent a concrete embodiment of liberty
and emancipation, and given the potential to prevent abuse that they impose, laws and procedures
have begun to look like obstacles.
The power of the judiciary, which has the ability to oppose the will of the ruling circles, must
also be checkmated. The Belgian judicial system is in any case underfunded. In 2015 it came last
in a European ranking that included all states located between the Atlantic and the Urals. In two
years the government has managed to take away the independence given to it under the Constitution
so that it can play the counterbalancing role citizens expect of it. The aim of this undertaking
is clearly that there should no longer be justice in Belgium.
A caste above the Many
But the dominant class doesn't prescribe for itself the same medicine it wants to see ordinary
citizens taking: well-ordered austerity begins with others. The economist Thomas Piketty has perfectly
described this in his study of inequality and capitalism in the twenty-first century (French edition,
Seuil, 2013).
In spite of the crisis of 2008 and the hand-wringing that followed, nothing was done to police
the financial community and submit them to the requirements of the common good. Who paid? Ordinary
people, you and me.
And while the Belgian State consented to 7 billion-euro ten-year tax breaks for multinationals,
ordinary litigants have seen surcharges imposed on access to justice (increased court fees, 21% taxation
on legal fees). From now on, to obtain redress the victims of injustice are going to have to be rich.
All this in a state where the number of public representatives breaks all international records.
In this particular area, no evaluation and no costs studies are reporting profit. One example: thirty
years after the introduction of the federal system, the provincial institutions survive. Nobody can
say what purpose they serve. Streamlining and the managerial ideology have conveniently stopped at
the gates of the political world.
The security ideal
Terrorism, this other nihilism that exposes our weakness in affirming our values, is likely to
aggravate the process by soon making it possible for all violations of our liberties, all violations
of our rights, to circumvent the powerless qualified judges, further reducing social protection for
the poor, who will be sacrificed to "the security ideal".
Salvation in commitment
These developments certainly threaten the foundations of our democracy, but do they condemn us
to discouragement and despair?
Certainly not. 500 years ago, at the height of the defeats that brought down most Italian states
with the imposition of foreign occupation for more than three centuries, Niccolo Machiavelli urged
virtuous men to defy fate and stand up against the adversity of the times, to prefer action and daring
to caution. The more tragic the situation, the more it necessitates action and the refusal to "give
up" (The Prince, Chapters XXV and XXVI).
This is a teaching that is clearly required today. The determination of citizens attached to the
radical of democratic values is an invaluable resource which has not yet revealed, at least in Belgium,
its driving potential and power to change what is presented as inevitable. Through social networking
and the power of the written word, everyone can now become involved, particularly when it comes to
public services, universities, the student world, the judiciary and the Bar, in bringing the common
good and social justice into the heart of public debate and the administration of the state and the
community.
Neoliberalism is a species of fascism. It must be fought and humanism fully restored.
AS an Amerikan the term neoliberal has a different impact I believe than it does in the context
of European use of the word. Could someone give a succinct definition of what the term means in
the context of European parlance.
I too have found this article and discussion incredibly interesting and enlightening, especially
in light of the potential nightmare of our next four years here in the states.
These same neo-fascists work with the NEOCON Party on the side of so-called Conservatives to pursue
Globalist repression, waste and population reduction genocide. In this way they keep both Conservative
and Liberal parties COVERED and dominated by Globalist dogma. To hell with Equity, Justice or
Fairness.
Funny how many critics of neo-liberalism are fascists such as Le Pen. That's because to be a fascist
is to be a nationalist and to believe in strong national governments. Neo-liberalism in contrast
supports the transfer of power to supra-national entities. The fascist economy is a mixed economy
with the national government able to exert immense power over the conduct of private business.
Neo-liberalism in contrast expects national governments to have no influence over private business.
The word 'Fascism' comes from 'fascio' in Italian meaning bundle or sheaf. If 'Fascism' as
a word is to have a meaning, it is to describe Italy under Mussolini. To use the same word to
describe 21st century globalisation is to negate the word's meaning.
A very good point, as, strictly speaking, by those terms, we should refer to neo-liberalism as
a transnational plutocracy, or at least that appears to be where it's heading. However for many
people, increasingly robbed of democracy and being bled dry, down at the sharp end of things,
there is little difference between the two systems in practice. Furthermore, the term Fascism
has long since passed into common parlance, to be widely viewed by many as simply anti-democratic
and supportive of a totalitarian regime, sometimes with nationalistic, or even racist connotations.
In this instance, you are very right to point out that neo-liberalism is neither racist, nor nationalistic
in nature, though it does, if left unchecked, lead to an hegemony of international moneyed interests
over the affairs and government of nation states, so we can at least say that it is anti-democratic
and supportive of totalitarianism (in this case, a plutocracy). I guess most of us do tend to
use the word out of context and quite offhand, and I am as guilty as the next man, but I do think
it's always a good thing to be pulled up on such things.
An excellent and most thought provoking article. I have long thought neoliberalism to be fascism,
except I arrived at that conclusion from an economic perspective, whilst researching the foundation
and rise of neoclassical economics. Also that quote from Orwell has haunted me for quite some
time, as it was a corruption of the very language of economics that lies at the heart of that
story, which is one that played out over 100 years ago. It's a story that involves the same moneyed
interests, the same use of public relations, and the same erosion of democracy in both political
and academic institutions, simply because it is the same story, and to fully understand neoliberalism,
you have to rewind about 120 years to pinpoint the preconditions for its inception. Fortunately
most of what happened did so in plain sight and is well documented. No laws were broken, as such,
but nevertheless, arguably one of the greatest crimes against humanity was set in motion for the
most banal reasons of economic protectionism. There is a way out of the problem, but it'll take
years and an incredible effort to reform what is to all intents and purposes a predominant religion
that has become ingrained into our society.
Shadia Drury is the author of a number of books on neconservatism, including "Leo Strauss And
The American Right." It's informative is somewhat confusing in places. A few authors and famous
people (Howard Zinn, Tommy Douglas) dispense with the academic minutiae and talk about fascism
in simple terms. It's good to know history, but the object of knowing is to be enabled. Learn
not in order to know, but in order to know how to proceed.
As Douglas noted, You don't have to wear brown shirts in order to be fascist. Huey Long, a
famous, corrupt American politician (who fought the capitalist class; It happens) was asked if
America would ever see fascism. He said yes, but it won't be called fascism. Indeed. Obama et
al call it democracy, just as Hitler called his Germany democratic.
If you reduce it to something useable (for purposes of mobilizing the working class), fascism
is simply a situation where the political class and the capitalist class jointly rule, telling
the people that because they have elections and can vote they therefore have democracy and a voice
when in reality the police state robs them of that. Media complies with elites' wishes or are
shut down in the name of national security. All opinions and protests get the same treatment.
And to keep the people's attention diverted from the abusers in power, you whip up nationalism.
Neoconservatism existed before it was formulated as such. Neocons 'believe' that a nation needs
to have an enemy and be at war in order to stay strong. If there's no enemy, then one must be
created. One can see how nationalisn (which isn't) patriotism, is useful to fascist leaders. And
can see how neoconservatism is convenient to certain powerful, entrenched special interests like
the military/intelligence industrial complex.
Strauss 'believed', as did Marx, that religion is the opiate of the people, but unlike Marx,
who wasn't thinking in terms of how to manage and exploit the people, Strauss felt that the people
should be given their fix. He saw it as another mechanism of control. (I see organized religion
as being a racket, even though I am religious.)
Neoconservatism is a political philosophy and neoliberalism is one type of social economic
system and they are both sides of the same evil coin. One needn't be a student of Strauss in order
to called a neocon, which is why you often find writers referring to Hillary Clinton as one.
I'd only point out that nationalism isn't a required ingredient at all. On the contrary. Nationalism
is often what the current order fears the most. The globalists, all of them neoliberals to a man
and a woman - use the language of internationalism. It's a fascist kind of internationalism, to
be sure, but cleverly deployed and manipulated, it gives them moral credibility in the eyes of
a large segment of the population.
Agreed in spades about neo-liberalism. But let us not forget the other side of the counter-revolutionary
coin, to wit, neo-conservatism. For the western ruling elites neo-liberalism is an attack directed
on its internal enemies, the 99% and neo-conservatism is an attack on its external enemies, principally
the Russian Federation and China, but in fact anyone who doesn't toe the Pentagon, State department
line. Austerity without end at home and a creeping dismantling of democracy, and everlasting war
abroad, that is the future: a global slave empire controlled through the Washington, Brussels,
London, Tel Aviv axis of evil. This is a fight to the death and the future of humanity depends
on the outcome.
WOW such a lightbulb moment. This makes my blood go into thermal nuclear boil. I have been saying
this for the last 30 years and now this quantum leap moment. I really hope we the sheeple can
wake up and really start getting all the elite to be accountable for they conspiracy. Since 1979
the west has been walking like a zombie towards fascism. Reagon and Thatcher were their front
persons . The Chicago school of economic theory.The Liberal interventionist. The helicopter money
to bail out the biggest fraud in the western financial history. Then they turn around and get
the PAYE public to bail them out. The sip[ their Champagne and eat their caviar and we live on
austerity. Hitler in drag will be the next POTUS and the MSM call Trump a xenophobic fascist when
we all know Hitlary and all her cohorts and all the western political establishment r fascist's.
That has been my point for over a quarter of a century. The use of the term democracy and veil
themselves in these hollow terms without any substance or facts is insulting at best. Putin,Xi
and Rohani have been trying now and hopefully they will prevail and once Syria settles down in
might c the dawn of a new pan -arabism which will start the century of humanism and human dynamism
for the good of all and not 64000 people. Gramsci forewarned us all from his cell in the 30's
and before him Engels as well. That is why i finish my spiel with this old journalistic quote.YESTERDAY'S
NEWS GETS WRAPPED IN TODAYS FISH. If only more humans would study and analyse history more maybe
we would not be in such a pickle.. Luv this website wish it had more pull and a following.
Yes, at least some familiarity with Wolin's concept of 'inverted totalitarianism' is absolutely
essential for understanding what is really happening in our world today. The fascism we have today
differs from the classical model in one key respect: the original fascist regimes were all of
the state-corporatist model, with an all-powerful government presiding over the banks and corporations;
our modern fascism, however, is of a new corporate-statist (and thus, according to Wolin, inverted)
variety, where the banks and the corporations completely control the state. Therefore, the age
of the Hitlers and Mussolinis–at least in the West–is over. Our so-called 'rulers' are really
nothing more than corporate executives or CEOs who serve at the leisure of a kind of hidden board
of directors, composed of those banks corporations we all know, and probably a few powerful oligarchs,
such as a the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds.
Liberal dupes, however, believe that we are still free, because they wrongly understand fascism
as an ideology (Racism! Nationalism! Xenophobia!) or else confuse it with certain systems of symbology
(swastikas, fasces, cool-looking uniforms, etc.). But in reality true fascism in neither an ideology
(false consciousness, as the Marxists would say), nor is it a particular system of symbology.
Fascism, properly understood is simply a state of affairs–namely, the total fusion of state
and corporate power. That was the definition Mussolini gave it long ago, and since he was
fascism's inventor, I'll take his word for it! The consequence of this is that fascism, in practice,
can adopt virtually any ideology or symbology, even some that might, at first glance, seem rather
'lefty'. In the west today, for example, the true fascists have now adopted cultural (not economic!)
Marxism as their ideology.
Ironically then, the new fascism has cleverly disguised itself as anti-fascism! Pretty
slick, eh?
Spot on Mussolini is the father of modern fascism , historically speaking fuedalism was an older
form of fascism. With the birth of industrial capitalism and nouveau bourgeoisie was the beginning
of modern day fascism. Mussolini from returning from the WW1 and being shun by fellow socialist
and the new founded Gramscian movement decided to form his own party. He was always into grandiosity
and ancient empire mythology. Most of the socialist including Gramsci did not support the WW1
they all identified it as the bankers war . Many leftist of the time also recognised the con job
in the USA with the rewritting the Federal reserve act of 1913 as the Private bankers taking over
the money supply of the US .
> Define "neoliberal" as you mean it otherwise it is a meaningless word
Let my try.
Like a communist is the person who subscribed/is indoctrinated/brainwashed into Marxism as
an ideology (which is actually different from Marxism as a political economy; Marx claimed that
he is not a Marxist), neoliberal is the person who subscribed/is indoctrinated/brainwashed to
neoliberalism as an ideology.
Neoliberalism as an ideology was formulated mainly by Mont Pelerin Society with academic criminals
of Chicago School such as Milton Friedman playing outsize role.
We can assume that neoliberals are in power, and neoliberalism is enforced as the dominant
ideology in the USA since 1980. Since 9/11 it took a new form called "inverse totalitarism" (Sheldon
Wolin) -- a flavor of national security state without mass repression of opponents. The suppression
is performed mainly by exclusion and silencing of the opponents. But the level of surveillance
of citizens probably exceeds the level typical for GDR with its STASI.
Neoclassic economics is the major tool for the indoctrination into neoliberalism in the US
universities. Ann Rand objectivism is another pillar of neoliberalism ("creators myth").
1.THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds
imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater
openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing
workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more
price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince
us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic
growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down"
economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much.
2.CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING
THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again
in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies
and tax benefits for business.
3.DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including
protecting the environmentand safety on the job.
4.PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors.
This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals
and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often
needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few
hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
5.ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY" and replacing it with "individual
responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack
of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they
fail, as "lazy."
The unofficial manifest of neoliberalism is "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman (1962,
University of Chicago Press). In foreign policy neoliberalism is defined by so called Washington
consensus (Wikipedia):
1.Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;
2.Redirection of public spending from subsidies ("especially indiscriminate subsidies")
toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary
health care and infrastructure investment;
3.Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;
4.Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;
5.Competitive exchange rates;
6.Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination
of quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low
and relatively uniform tariffs;
7.Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;
8.Privatization of state enterprises;
9.Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition,
except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudential
oversight of financial institutions;
10.Legal security for property rights.
Neoliberalism is closely connected (but is not identical) with the Neoconservatism in the USA
(Trotskyism for the rich). Simplifying, neocons are just neoliberals with the gun.
Like Trotskyism and Bolshevism before, neoliberalism creates its own form of perverted rationality
called "neoliberal rationality"
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/cogn_150/Readings/brown.pdf
Here are some quotes from Wendy Brown interview "What Exactly Is Neoliberalism" to
Dissent Magazine (Nov 03, 2015):
"... I treat neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is "economized"
and in a very specific way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of
activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business,
or state) is governed as a firm. Importantly, this is not simply a matter of extending commodification
and monetization everywhere-that's the old Marxist depiction of capital's transformation of everyday
life. Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres-such as learning, dating, or
exercising -- in market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques
and practices. Above all, it casts people as human capital who must constantly tend to their own
present and future value. ..."
"... The most common criticisms of neoliberalism, regarded solely as economic policy rather
than as the broader phenomenon of a governing rationality, are that it generates and legitimates
extreme inequalities of wealth and life conditions; that it leads to increasingly precarious and
disposable populations; that it produces an unprecedented intimacy between capital (especially
finance capital) and states, and thus permits domination of political life by capital; that it
generates crass and even unethical commercialization of things rightly protected from markets,
for example, babies, human organs, or endangered species or wilderness; that it privatizes public
goods and thus eliminates shared and egalitarian access to them; and that it subjects states,
societies, and individuals to the volatility and havoc of unregulated financial markets. ..."
"... with the neoliberal revolution that homo politicus is finally vanquished as a fundamental
feature of being human and of democracy. Democracy requires that citizens be modestly oriented
toward self-rule, not simply value enhancement, and that we understand our freedom as resting
in such self-rule, not simply in market conduct. When this dimension of being human is extinguished,
it takes with it the necessary energies, practices, and culture of democracy, as well as its very
intelligibility. ..."
"... For most Marxists, neoliberalism emerges in the 1970s in response to capitalism's falling
rate of profit; the shift of global economic gravity to OPEC, Asia, and other sites outside the
West; and the dilution of class power generated by unions, redistributive welfare states, large
and lazy corporations, and the expectations generated by educated democracies. From this perspective,
neoliberalism is simply capitalism on steroids: a state and IMF-backed consolidation of class
power aimed at releasing capital from regulatory and national constraints, and defanging all forms
of popular solidarities, especially labor. ..."
"... The grains of truth in this analysis don't get at the fundamental transformation of social,
cultural, and individual life brought about by neoliberal reason. They don't get at the ways that
public institutions and services have not merely been outsourced but thoroughly recast as private
goods for individual investment or consumption. And they don't get at the wholesale remaking of
workplaces, schools, social life, and individuals. For that story, one has to track the dissemination
of neoliberal economization through neoliberalism as a governing form of reason, not just a power
grab by capital. There are many vehicles of this dissemination -- law, culture, and above all,
the novel political-administrative form we have come to call governance. It is through governance
practices that business models and metrics come to irrigate every crevice of society, circulating
from investment banks to schools, from corporations to universities, from public agencies to the
individual. It is through the replacement of democratic terms of law, participation, and justice
with idioms of benchmarks, objectives, and buy-ins that governance dismantles democratic life
while appearing only to instill it with "best practices." ..."
"... Progressives generally disparage Citizens United for having flooded the American electoral
process with corporate money on the basis of tortured First Amendment reasoning that treats corporations
as persons. However, a careful reading of the majority decision also reveals precisely the thoroughgoing
economization of the terms and practices of democracy we have been talking about. In the majority
opinion, electoral campaigns are cast as "political marketplaces," just as ideas are cast as freely
circulating in a market where the only potential interference arises from restrictions on producers
and consumers of ideas-who may speak and who may listen or judge. Thus, Justice Kennedy's insistence
on the fundamental neoliberal principle that these marketplaces should be unregulated paves the
way for overturning a century of campaign finance law aimed at modestly restricting the power
of money in politics. Moreover, in the decision, political speech itself is rendered as a kind
of capital right, functioning largely to advance the position of its bearer, whether that bearer
is human capital, corporate capital, or finance capital. This understanding of political speech
replaces the idea of democratic political speech as a vital (if potentially monopolizable and
corruptible) medium for public deliberation and persuasion. ..."
"... My point was that democracy is really reduced to a whisper in the Euro-Atlantic nations
today. Even Alan Greenspan says that elections don't much matter much because, "thanks to globalization
. . . the world is governed by market forces," not elected representatives. ..."
anne -> im1dc... ,
Define "neoliberal":
Neoliberal means let there be markets everywhere and let governments leave markets alone. There
is no other word of definition needed.
This is wrong. You completely misunderstand the role of government under neoliberalism. Under
neoliberalism it is the government that impose markets on people via deregulation. Impose "from
above" like socialism in socialist states. So it is the government that is an instrument for "imposition
of markets everywhere". And, if necessary, by brute force.
Unlike libertarian ideology, under neoliberalism the government is not passive, it is an active
player which forcefully "opens markets" everywhere.
In foreign countries this takes the form of neocolonialism, and color revolutions or direct
military intervention are typical tool for bending "not so democratic as we would like" countries,
especially with oil or other valuable deposits. In this sense, it is very similar to Islamic fundamentalism
and can be called "market fundamentalism."
In other words this more vicious ideology then just promotion of "markets" as in "socialism
for the rich and feudalism or plantation slavery for the poor"
"... Put another way, historical perspectives conceived in what Becker termed "the specious present" have a sell-by date. Beyond their time, they become stale and outmoded, and so should be revised or discarded. This process of rejecting truths previously treated as authoritative is inexorable and essential. ..."
"... Memories, whether directly or vicariously acquired, are "necessary to orient us in our little world of endeavor." Yet the specious present that we inhabit is inherently unstable and constantly in flux, which means that history itself must be pliable. Crafting history necessarily becomes an exercise in "imaginative creation" in which all participate. However unconsciously, Everyman adapts the past to serve his most pressing needs, thereby functioning as "his own historian." ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... This idée fixe ..."
"... my sense is that many Americans have an inkling that history of late has played them for suckers. This is notably true with respect to the post-Cold War era, in which the glories of openness, diversity, and neoliberal economics, of advanced technology and unparalleled U.S. military power all promised in combination to produce something like a new utopia in which Americans would indisputably enjoy a privileged status globally. ..."
"... "Of course money-lovers will want the United States Government, because it's the one government that exists simply and solely to protect money. " ..."
"... Nah, they'll put a few more bricks in the wall, reinforce the gates, and hire more guards so they can rest well at night while bathed in the glow that they continue to advance the best interests of human-kind over the objections of the unwashed masses on the other side of the wall. ..."
"For all practical purposes history is,
for us and for the time being, what we know it to be." So
remarked
Carl Becker in 1931 at the annual meeting of the American
Historical Association. Professor Becker, a towering figure among historians
of his day, was president of the AHA that year. His message to his
colleagues amounted to a warning of sorts: Don't think you're so smart. The
study of the past may reveal truths, he allowed, but those truths are
contingent, incomplete, and valid only "for the time being."
Put another way, historical perspectives
conceived in what Becker termed "the specious present" have a sell-by date.
Beyond their time, they become stale and outmoded, and so should be revised
or discarded. This process of rejecting truths previously treated as
authoritative is inexorable and essential. Yet it also tends to be fiercely
contentious. The present may be specious, but it confers real privileges,
which a particular reading of the past can sustain or undermine. Becker
believed it inevitable that "our now valid versions" of history "will in due
course be relegated to the category of discarded myths." It was no less
inevitable that beneficiaries of the prevailing version of truth should
fight to preserve it.
Who exercises the authority to relegate?
Who gets to decide when a historical truth no longer qualifies as true?
Here, Becker insisted that "Mr. Everyman" plays a crucial role. For Becker,
Mr. Everyman was Joe Doakes, John Q. Public, or the man in the street. He
was "every normal person," a phrase broad enough to include all manner of
people. Yet nothing in Becker's presentation suggested that he had the
slightest interest in race, sexuality, or gender. His Mr. Everyman belonged
to the tribe of WHAM.
Memories, whether directly or vicariously
acquired, are "necessary to orient us in our little world of endeavor." Yet
the specious present that we inhabit is inherently unstable and constantly
in flux, which means that history itself must be pliable. Crafting history
necessarily becomes an exercise in "imaginative creation" in which all
participate. However unconsciously, Everyman adapts the past to serve his
most pressing needs, thereby functioning as "his own historian."
Yet he does so in collaboration with
others. Since time immemorial, purveyors of the past - the "ancient and
honorable company of wise men of the tribe, of bards and story-tellers and
minstrels, of soothsayers and priests, to whom in successive ages has been
entrusted the keeping of the useful myths" - have enabled him to "hold in
memory those things only which can be related with some reasonable degree
of relevance" to his own experience and aspirations. In Becker's lifetime it
had become incumbent upon members of the professoriate, successors to the
bards and minstrels of yesteryear, "to enlarge and enrich the specious
present common to us all to the end that 'society' (the tribe, the nation,
or all mankind) may judge of what it is doing in the light of what it has
done and what it hopes to do."
Yet Becker took pains to emphasize that
professional historians disdained Mr. Everyman at their peril:
"Berate him as we will for not reading our
books, Mr. Everyman is stronger than we are, and sooner or later we must
adapt our knowledge to his necessities. Otherwise he will leave us to our
own devices The history that does work in the world, the history that
influences the course of history, is living history It is for this reason
that the history of history is a record of the 'new history' that in every
age rises to confound and supplant the old."
Becker stressed that the process of
formulating new history to supplant the old is organic rather than
contrived; it comes from the bottom up, not the top down. "We, historians by
profession, share in this necessary effort," he concluded. "But we do not
impose our version of the human story on Mr. Everyman; in the end it is
rather Mr. Everyman who imposes his version on us."
Donald Trump as Everyman's
Champion?
Becker offered his reflections on
"Everyman His Own Historian" in the midst of the Great Depression. Perhaps
because that economic crisis found so many Americans burdened with
deprivation and uncertainty, he implicitly attributed to his everyman a
unitary perspective, as if shared distress imbued members of the public with
a common outlook. That was not, in fact, the case in 1931 and is, if
anything, even less so in our own day.
Still, Becker's construct retains
considerable utility. Today finds more than a few White Heterosexual
American males (WHAM), our own equivalent of Mr. Everyman, in a state of high
dudgeon. From their perspective, the specious present has not panned out as
it was supposed to. As a consequence, they are pissed. In November 2016, to
make clear just how pissed they were, they elected Donald Trump as president
of the United States.
This was, to put it mildly, not supposed
to happen. For months prior to the election, the custodians of the past in
its "now valid version" had judged the prospect all but inconceivable. Yet
WHAMs (with shocking support from other tribes) intervened to decide
otherwise. Rarely has a single event so thoroughly confounded history's
self-assigned proctors. One can imagine the shade of Professor Becker
whispering, "I warned you, didn't I?"
Those deeply invested in drawing a
straight line from the specious present into the indefinite future blame
Trump himself for having knocked history off its prescribed course. Remove
Trump from the scene, they appear to believe, and all will once again be
well. The urgent imperative of doing just that - immediately, now, no later
than this afternoon - has produced what
New York Times
columnist
Charles Blow aptly
calls
a "throbbing anxiety" among those who (like Blow himself) find
"the relentless onslaught of awfulness erupting from this White House"
intolerable. They will not rest until Trump is gone.
This
idée fixe
, reinforced on a
daily basis by ever more preposterous presidential antics, finds the nation
trapped in a sort of bizarre do-loop. The media's obsession with Trump
reinforces his obsession with the media and between them they simply crowd
out all possibility of thoughtful reflection. Their fetish is his and his
theirs. The result is a cycle of mutual contempt that only deepens the
longer it persists.
Both sides agree on one point only: that
history began anew last November 8th, when (take your pick) America either
took leave of its senses or chose greatness. How the United States got to
November 8th qualifies, at best, as an afterthought or curiosity. It's
almost as if the years and decades that had preceded Trump's election had
all disappeared into some vast sinkhole.
... ... ...
...my sense is that
many Americans have an inkling that history of late has played them for
suckers. This is notably true with respect to the post-Cold War era, in
which the glories of openness, diversity, and neoliberal economics, of
advanced technology and unparalleled U.S. military power all promised in
combination to produce something like a new utopia in which Americans would
indisputably enjoy a privileged status globally.
In almost every respect, those
expectations remain painfully unfulfilled. The history that "served for the
time being" and was endlessly reiterated during the presidencies of Bush 41,
Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama no longer serves. It has yielded a mess of
pottage: grotesque inequality, worrisome insecurity, moral confusion, an
epidemic of self-destructive behavior, endless wars, and basic institutions
that work poorly if at all. Nor is it just WHAMs who have suffered the
consequences. The history with which Americans are familiar cannot explain
this outcome.
The Mandate of Heaven, which members of my tribe once took as theirs
by right, has been cruelly withdrawn. History itself has betrayed us.
How did we manage to sleepwalk for two plus centuries with dreams of "the
city on a hill", our "exceptional nation" etc etc and quite freely disparage
others for their war making proclivities without getting wise to it all?
This line from D.H.Lawrence in his graphic novel "Quetzalcoatl" charges
Mexico and other governments with encouraging our nefarious actions.
"Of
course money-lovers will want the United States Government, because it's the
one government that exists simply and solely to protect money. "
Trump only exists because the two political parties have become so corrupt
and arrogant they don't give a damn about working people. In theory, the
Democratic party represents workers, but as profane lefty Jimmy Dore
recently explained, the Dems are worse than Trump:
When that happens, when promises of American greatness restored prove
empty, there will be hell to pay. Joe Doakes, John Q. Public, and the man
in the street will be even more pissed. Should that moment arrive,
historians would do well to listen seriously to what Everyman has to say.
Some thoughts on this would be that American greatness needed 1) a high
level of national unity 2) a lot of discipline and hard work.
There's a tendency to look back to the 1950′s when talking about
"American Greatness", but in reality this was a very unusual time. America
lacked industrial competitors. After WW2, Germany and Japan were in ruins.
China was still an economic basket case and Europe was recovering with the
help of US multi-nationals and US investment.
Rather than start partying, the US needed an awareness of the coming
challenges and needed from the 1950′s to develop a modern industrial base in
new technologies with top class technological skills among its workforce as
a national project. The aim should have been to build a world class
education system at least to match the STEM results of the best Europeans
and N/E Asians.
In the event, the US disappeared into counter cultural Hippiedom and sent
all its industries to Asian for cheaper and more efficient production. A government stuffed with commercial special interests is obviously going
to do what is best for their bottom lines i.e. produce in Asia and sell in
the US – they're not in business to look after the US public. The public are
Consumers and they are Vendors.
Nah, they'll put a few more bricks in the wall, reinforce the gates, and
hire more guards so they can rest well at night while bathed in the glow
that they continue to advance the best interests of human-kind over the
objections of the unwashed masses on the other side of the wall.
"Are we any better off than we were 50 years ago? Absolutely . . . White
dominance is on the decline as the demographic white majority heads for
oblivion over the course of the next 30 years."
Mark Potok in an August 2013 column for the white-hating SPLC.
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Mark_Potok#Quotes
Us WHAMs are in the bulls eye of many a group who would like to see us
join the dinosaurs.
There is very strong trans-species-trans phylum evidence
for what is going to happen in response to betrayal-deception .and it ain't
pretty as they say. Harvard biologist Robert Trivers I believe Comrade Unz
mentioned that he was a research assistant for Robert Trivers at
Harvard wrote a book about the biology of betrayal and revenge using a
massive amount of trans-species and trans-phylum evidence-data
So I recommend that you read Robert Triver's book I also recommend that
you read the conversation betwern Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers ..where
Trivers discusses the overwhelming ethnological evidence for this which you
can very easily google for
Larger point being made by Noam Chomsky these days: White Males are dying
at an historically unprecedented rate .worse than if there was a
plague-epidemic at higher rate than WW2
Donald Trump's MAGA!!! Jobs Program for Working Class Native Born White Teenage Males from
economically distressed Native Born White Working Class Families from the American Heartland=a Tour
of Duty on patrol with a US Army issued M-16 in Afghanistan .Iraq Syria .coming back to their
Mother's as limbless freaks .human sausages .canon fodder for Donald Trump's precious Jew
only Israel .
"War is a Racket" ..as USMC General and two time Congressional Medal
winner .Smedley Butler wrote over 75 years ago
I'm a big fan of the late Dick Winters and 101 Airborne Easy Company Band of
Brothers WW2. But I just found out recently that Easy Company members Ronald
Spiers and Robert "Burr" Smith were at a high level actively involved in the
destruction of Laos which was bombed back to the Stone Age by the USAF
Interestingly Robert "Burr" Smith trained the US Army Delta Force Team that
died in the Iranianian desert in 1980 .Smith avoided dying in that desert
crash when the CIA yanked him out of this doomed mission at the last minute
out of fear that if Smith a CIA Operative .was captured .risk of spilling
the beans to the Iranians about what the CIA was up to Robert "Burr" Smith was the embodiment of "Invade the World-Invite the
World with his role in the destruction of Laotian Society and his adopted
Laotian teenage "son" .
"We only want to be life as easy as it was under Eisenhower (to be fair,
from Truman to LBJ)."
Nostalgia has a funny way of warping our sense of
reality. Life for some people was "easy" in the 1950′s, but for a number of
people, it was cold, hard, and dark.
Another of the usual enemies of free
speech & Israeli citizen, Potok, supports strict Israeli immigration laws
which specify JEWS ONLY, while he demands massive 3rd world immigration into
the US & Europe.
Interesting post, I've read it through twice, but it has complicated issues.
WHAMs
Wherever corporate CEOs,] . etc.etc.etc.--, [politicians, and generals
congregate to pat each other on the back, you can count on WHAMs
-reciting bromides about the importance of diversity!
Important detail:
some of my brethren - let's call them one percenters -
YEah, SOME "brethren"! THat tiny fraction of a %point, that lives large!
Some Brethren to the name WHAMs! they are.
Sociopaths
who some kind of way masquerade as W H A M. And
what
they do is done in the name of the W H A M
, which is my sticking point.
That small fraction of a %point does all the
bad
, and shifts the
blame ( from the World!!) on to the real WHAMs, what's left of 'em, ( what's
left of the White Hetero part
of 'em, ) who aren't polluted from the social scientist/ ongoing war to turn
WHAMs into WIAMPs! (White Inverted American Male/Tranny Punks.)!! That the
world will hate, and eventually probably be encouraged to completely get rid
of, while the fraction of the %point rides off into the sunset! Then you can
see the real perverts in action!
What happens if you get rid of
Trump? The people who voted for him will most likely replace him with
someone very similar in almost every way, but more competent. Probably a
professional politician version of him. Is that what you want?
Yes, in ancient Greek history Trump is analogous to the Tyrants of Athens,
who were a transition from aristocratic to truly democratic rule. Of course
once democracy was installed the common people of Athens demanded and got
wars against a variety of enemies. Trump rise is an alarming portent. A few
decades from now George W. Bush will be regarded as the last of the cautious
Skull and Bones aristocrats. It is a bit silly to talk of WHAMS, as if the
displacement of white gentiles is less important that open acceptance of
homosexuality. It is WASPs, gay or straight, who have lost.
As was said above, so many words, so little content.
Bacevich has gone off the deep end. Truly.
The idea that white males were sitting around lording it up with their
privilege is absolutely preposterous. No white male ever has done that, and
Bacevich certainly know that. Andrew? Exactly how many times in your long
lifetime have you been slapping backs with other white men laughing about
how great you have it because of your gender and your race?
I'll help you out. It's zero, Andrew. You know it. I know it. We know it.
So this writing is horseshit. Col. Bacevich, you do really great military
anlysis and opinion.
Stop with the virtual signalling fairy tales.
As a white male nothing was ever easy. Yeah, perhaps I did not get my
head beat a few times and avoided some jail. Maybe.
And that makes how much difference in anyone's life?
You really need to get back to the military analysis, bud. You are
sounding like a lunatic with this stuff. But more than that. Dishonest.
I tuned out when he started saying WHAMS misguidedly didn't consider
non-WHAMS in their history, which was completely rational considering before
very recent times there was no reason to.
Interesting but nowhere near your better pieces, too meandering. Although I
only hit the H in the WHAM formulation you have. WHAM doesn't work on two
counts.
i. The pop band, Wham, still well-known due to pop music being in
stasis, and they had one great single and a few others that tasteless people
like.
ii. H also stands for homosexual. It is funny how that word is not
goodspeak in English of now, and heterosexual almost has a pejorative
quality but is widely used. The sickness of western culture. The equivalent
in Japanese of homosexual is used to refer to people who are, well,
homosexual. The equivalent of heterosexual is just about never heard. That
is not discrimination, simply that it is naturally, as it should be, seen as
the norm.
@restless94110
The traditional role of the white male is to support a family by bringing
home the bacon; be courageous when things get rough and defend your family
and friends with your blood; fix everything that's broken; build everything
you need with your hands, or build the machines necessary to build
everything; run everything with competence and man up and take the blame if
you screw up; teach your children how to deal with life; teach people right
from wrong and set the example for them to follow; create high-level
science, medicine, art, physics, math, engineering, etc.
It's a very tall
order, and anyone who thinks it's easy, is a fool.
What about the likes of my aunt who was the
second wife of a childless mega millionaire who died when she was 38 leaving
her to enjoy 50 healthy years as a rich woman until she suddenly died in her
sleep?
The first paragraph was enough social justice warrior crap to make it
unnecessary reading the rest. Yet, I did try for another five paragraphs and
it's just more of the same tripe.
Yeah, all of us stand in line and get free hand-outs. White people at the
front of the line. Nobody works for what they have. Everyone has the same
IQ, the same work ethic, the same adherence to law. I'm upset because the
color of my skin is supposed to dictate my place in the line for free
hand-outs and I am no longer at the front of the line. God what arrogant,
malicious crap.
We just went through IQ scores by country in homeschool today. My kids
are muti-racial, SE Asians, who occupy the top five spots worldwide. They
have the highest average income in this country, the highest academic
performance, and the lowest crime rates.
Of course, we sat around talking about their "privilege" as SE Asians and
how everything is handed to them for free. How they just go up to any line
and cut in front. Right? No.
What I just did was show them your article as a perfect example of why we
don't go to government school.
We are not your "peeps" for the white blood in us and you are not some
hero of ours for having the arrogance to speak for our non-white blood
either.
You are disgusting and worthy of nothing but contempt. I'm majority
white, not pure blood (Seneca Indian) but don't buy into the cult of
victimology where I am supposed to get job preferences, school preferences,
etc. because I am quantum blood Indian. That doesn't make me an "Indian". I
am an American. Our kids are Americans.
The idea that we should knock off "whitey" because we're mixed blood,
like it's "our" turn now – how nonsensical and revolting.
@Backwoods Bob
You are obviously a slow reader but apparently handicapped in dealing with
numbers too. If you had actually read "another five paragraphs" you would
have read the author's "All of which is nonsense of course" at the beginning
of his sixth par.
Fortunately I didn't waste time on many of your paragraphs.
@Anon
The traditional role of ANY male is to support a family by bringing home the
bacon, etc.
It's just what males do, anon.
Bacevich's idiotic virtue signaling nonsense that posits that all white
males knew this and knew that. and that we all had secret meetings in the
basement of the church is ridiculous.
I've known whites who had racist views on black people. I've also known
blacks who have racist views on white people.
But even racists never had any thought that they were suddenly privileged
because of their skin color and/or they were smirking about it in secret or
whatever it is that this guy is claiming in his long, long, long, overly
long piece.
In other words, men did those things, anon, white ones, black one, etc.
This white privilege stuff is just bullshit. It has to go. Andrew B., let
it die it's own irrelevant death.
@Stogumber
Yes if you want life as it was in the 1950′s, then you need to recognize
that we got out of the Great Depression because we started to pay farmers
their fair share. Today they only get 35% of the Parity Dollar, the dollar
that provided for the prosperity across the nation, because it was not
stolen from the producer of that which keeps us alive, literally, and
literally kept the economy afloat, because it was based upon real wealth
properly monetized, meaning not stolen as is the system today .but we lost
that when we stopped Parity, which created earned income at sufficient
levels to not have to borrow as we are now addicted .. as the "interests
whose interest is interest" intend.
Here is a letter to Trump with an
important chart.
These are dark times for free marketeers. Voters are only
lukewarm about the virtues of capitalism; the Grenfell
disaster is widely regarded as showing the case for greater
regulation; and, as Sam Bowman says, even the Tories "have
totally failed to make a broad-brush case for free markets."
I share some of their disquiet. Flawed as they are,
markets have virtues as selection and information-aggregation
mechanisms.
What, then, can be done to strengthen the case for
markets?
There's one thing that's crucial – equality of power. For
free markets to have public acceptance, the worst-off must
have bargaining power. Without this, "free" markets merely
become a device for exploitation.
Imagine, for example, that we had overfull employment
and/or high out-of-work benefits. Workers would then be able
to reject low wages and bad working conditions. Market forces
would then deliver higher wages and good, safer, conditions
simply because employers that didn't offer these wouldn't
have any workers. Equally – though it's harder to imagine –
if we had an abundance of housing, landlords who offered
shoddy or dangerous accommodation would either have to
refurbish their property to acceptable standards or suffer a
lack of tenants.
We wouldn't, therefore need "red tape." The market would
raise working and living standards.
We don't need thought experiments to see this. We have
empirical evidence too.
Philippe Aghion and colleagues have shown that there's a
negative correlation across countries between unions density
and minimum wage laws. Countries with strong unions have less
stringent minimum wage laws – because greater bargaining
power reduces the need for such laws. Remember that the UK
adopted minimum wages in the 1990s, when unions had been
emasculated. In the 60s and 70s, when unions were strong, the
market raised wages.
Also, there is a negative correlation across developed
countries between inequality (as measured, imperfectly, by
Gini coefficients) and business freedom. Egalitarian Denmark
and Sweden, for example, score better on the Heritage
Foundation's index of freedom than the unequal US. There's a
simple reason for this. Working people want what they regard
as a fair deal. If they can't get it through bargaining in
free markets, they'll seek it through politics and
regulation.
The inference here is, for me, obvious. If you are serious
about wanting free markets you must put in place the
conditions which are necessary for them – namely, greater
bargaining power for tenants, customers and workers. This
requires not just strong anti-monopoly policies but also
policies such as a high citizens income, full employment and
mass housebuilding.
In short, free markets require egalitarian policies. Free
marketeers who don't support these are not the friends of
freedom at all, but are merely shills for exploiters.
"Egalitarian Denmark and Sweden, for example, score better on
the Heritage Foundation's index of freedom than the unequal
US. There's a simple reason for this. Working people want
what they regard as a fair deal. If they can't get it through
bargaining in free markets, they'll seek it through politics
and regulation."
Hillary Clinton famously said "we're not
Denmark" to distinguish herself from the "unserious" Bernie
Sanders in the primary debates.
She was trying to appeal to meritocratic Democrats and
Republicans. As Josh Marshall wrote of yesterday's special
election:
"The district is relatively diverse for a GOP district and
educated and affluent. In other words, it's made up of just
the kind of Republicans who proved most resistant to Trump."
Hillary was trying to appeal to the affluent and
indoctrinated and educated meritocrats. The "non-deploreables."
And she lost. Corbyn running on an anti-austerity platform
and a manifesto that pointed more in the direction of Denmark
pulled off a biggest swing in votes since 1945.
Of course the center left, PGL and Krugman were silent
about Corbyn's great showing and complained about people who
wanted to discuss it. But it's okay to discuss the
disappointing outcome in yesterday's special election.
Free markets need "a comprehensive socialization of
investment":
"In some other respects the foregoing theory
is moderately conservative in its implications. For whilst it
indicates the vital importance of establishing certain
central controls in matters which are now left in the main to
individual initiative, there are wide fields of activity
which are unaffected. The State will have to exercise a
guiding influence on the propensity to consume partly through
its scheme of taxation, partly by fixing the rate of
interest, and partly, perhaps, in other ways. Furthermore, it
seems unlikely that the influence of banking policy on the
rate of interest will be sufficient by itself to determine an
optimum rate of investment. I conceive, therefore, that a
somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove
the only means of securing an approximation to full
employment; though this need not exclude all manner of
compromises and of devices by which public authority will
co-operate with private initiative. But beyond this no
obvious case is made out for a system of State Socialism
which would embrace most of the economic life of the
community. It is not the ownership of the instruments of
production which it is important for the State to assume. If
the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of
resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic
rate of reward to those who own them, it will have
accomplished all that is necessary. Moreover, the necessary
measures of socialisation can be introduced gradually and
without a break in the general traditions of society"
Caution
The path to Keynesian futures turned out to have a long back
traverse
From 1973 to 2008 and beyond
As yet we have not moved forward
but at least the power
driving the back traverse is over
We can recommence the advance toward greater socialization of
net investment
"... Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to entirely suppress it. ..."
"... Mes petits sous, mon petit cri de coeur. ..."
"... But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points, too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm with it.) ..."
"... American Psycho ..."
"... The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers or, even more grandly, what success means in America. ..."
"... unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do. ..."
"... our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population of individualists who can't see the big picture. ..."
"... That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel that our governments are working for us. ..."
"... Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional, to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal. ..."
"... "Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing, just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability. ..."
"... Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best that can be achieved? ..."
"... JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The "remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which has never existed. ..."
"... Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit. Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets. ..."
"... Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile, Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away. ..."
"... My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. ..."
"... The class war continues, and the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity? No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of the Obama administration and the Trump administration. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens if any, are kept meticulously clean. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. ..."
"... There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game for commercial exploitation. ..."
"... The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. ..."
"... "Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief." ..."
"... "Four Futures" ..."
"... Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first. "Greed is good". ..."
"... Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel. In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class, and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. ..."
Yves here. I have been saying for some years that I did not think we would see a revolution, but
more and more individuals acting out violently. That's partly the result of how community and social
bonds have weakened as a result of neoliberalism but also because the officialdom has effective ways
of blocking protests. With the overwhelming majority of people using smartphones, they are constantly
surveilled. And the coordinated 17-city paramilitary crackdown on Occupy Wall Street shows how the
officialdom moved against non-violent protests. Police have gotten only more military surplus toys
since then, and crowd-dispersion technology like sound cannons only continues to advance. The only
way a rebellion could succeed would be for it to be truly mass scale (as in over a million people
in a single city) or by targeting crucial infrastructure.
By Gaius Publius
, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to
DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter
@Gaius_Publius ,
Tumblr and
Facebook . GP article archive
here . Originally published at
DownWithTyranny
"[T]he super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues
to grow. An
analysis of
2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion
in total wealth. As of
June 8,
2017 , the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average,
each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people."
-Paul Buchheit,
Alternet
"Congressman Steve Scalise, Three Others Shot at Alexandria, Virginia, Baseball Field"
-NBC News,
June 14, 2017
"4 killed, including gunman, in shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco"
-ABC7News,
June 14, 2017
"Seriously? Another multiple shooting? So many guns. So many nut-bars. So many angry
nut-bars with guns."
-MarianneW via
Twitter
"We live in a world where "multiple dead" in San Francisco shooting can't cut through
the news of another shooting in the same day."
-SamT via
Twitter
"If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood, expect the victims to
put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty. I'm not arguing for social war; I'm
arguing for justice and peace."
-
Yours truly
When the social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.
Until elites stand down and stop the
brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come
apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate
the whole of the
Neoliberal
Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There
are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently
militarized "order" to entirely suppress it.
As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure - the storm that kills this year,
the hurricane that kills the next - but I'm also concerned about the longer term as well. If the
beatings
from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the rich" policies improves,
the beatings will never stop, and both sides will take up the cudgel.
Then where will we be?
America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain
I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably more than last year and
the year before. And they're noticeably scruffier, less "kemp," if that makes sense to you (it does
if you live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as neighbors).
The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society have nowhere to drain to
but down - physically, economically, emotionally. The
Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying
of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just
remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?
The pot isn't boiling yet - these shootings are random, individualized - but they seem to be piling
on top of each other. A hard-boiling, over-flowing pot may not be far behind. That's concerning as
well, much moreso than even the random horrid events we recoil at today.
Many More Ways Than One to Be a Denier
My comparison above to the climate problem was deliberate. It's not just the occasional storms
we see that matter. It's also that, seen over time, those storms are increasing, marking a trend
that matters even more. As with climate, the whole can indeed be greater than its parts. There's
more than one way in which to be a denier of change.
These are not just metaphors. The country is already in a
pre-revolutionary state ; that's one huge reason people chose Trump over Clinton, and would have
chosen Sanders over Trump. The Big Squeeze has to stop, or this will be just the beginning of a long
and painful path. We're on a track that nations we have watched - tightly "ordered" states, highly
chaotic ones - have trod already. While we look at them in pity, their example stares back at us.
But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really
the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to
call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points,
too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm
with it.)
"If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible
they'll also aim their anger out as well?"
Not necessarily. What Lacan called the "Big Other" is quite powerful. We internalize a lot
of socio-economic junk from our cultural inheritance, especially as it's been configured over
the last 40 years - our values, our body images, our criteria for judgment, our sense of what
material well-being consists, etc. Ellis's American Psycho is the great satire of our
time, and this time is not quite over yet. Dismemberment reigns.
The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA
is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge
or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers
or, even more grandly, what success means in America.
The idea that agency could be a collective action of a union for a strike isn't even on the
horizon. And at the same time, these same students don't bat an eye at socialism. They're willing
to listen.
But unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do.
Most of the elite do not understand the money system. They do not understand how different
sectors have benefitted from policies and/or subsidies that increased the money flows into these.
So they think they deserve their money more than those who toiled in sectors with less support.
Furthermore, our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population
of individualists who can't see the big picture.
Thank you Gaius, a thoughtful post. That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably
has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel
that our governments are working for us.
Of tangential interest, Turnbull has just announced another gun amnesty targeting guns that
people no longer need and a tightening of some of the ownership laws.
One problem is the use of the term "social contract", implying that there is some kind of agreement
( = consensus) on what that is. I don't remember signing any "contract".
I fear for my friends, I fear for my family.
They do not know how ravenous the hounds behind nor ahead are. For myself? I imagine myself the same in a Mad Max world. It will be more clear, and perception shattering, to most whose lives allow the ignoring of
gradual chokeholds, be them political or economic, but those of us who struggle daily, yearly,
decadely with both, will only say Welcome to the party, pals.
Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on
a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces
people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional,
to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal.
Each person
does what is right in their own eyes, but the net effect is impoverishment and destruction. Life
is unfair, indeed. A social contract is a mutual suicide pact, whether you renegotiate it or not.
This is Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club, is we don't speak of Fight Club. Go to the gym,
toughen up, while you still can.
"Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing,
just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability.
Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of
how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best
that can be achieved? Recalling that as my Contracts professor in law school emphasized over and
over, in "contracts" there are no rights in the absence of effective remedies. It being a Boston
law school, the notion was echoed in Torts, and in Commercial Paper and Sales and, tellingly,
in Constitutional Law and Federal Jurisdiction, and even in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure.
No remedy, no right. What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social
contract," the "have-naught" halves?
When honest "remedies under law" become nugatory, there's always the recourse to direct action
of course with zero guarantee of redress
"What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social contract,"
the "have-naught" halves?"
Ah yes the ultimate remedy is outright rebellion against the highest authorities .with as you
say, " zero guarantee of redress."
But, history teaches us that that path will be taken ..the streets. It doesn't (didn't) take a
genius to see what was coming back in the late 1960's on .regarding the beginnings of the revolt(s)
by big money against organized labor. Having been very involved in observing, studying and actually
active in certain groups back then, the US was acting out in other countries particularly in the
Southern Hemisphere, against any social progression, repressing, arresting (thru its surrogates)
torturing, killing any individuals or groups that opposed that infamous theory of "free market
capitalism". It had a very definite "creep" effect, northwards to the mainstream US because so
many of our major corporations were deeply involved with our covert intelligence operatives and
objectives (along with USAID and NED). I used to tell my friends about what was happening and
they would look at me as if I was a lunatic. The agency for change would be "organized labor",
but now, today that agency has been trashed enough where so many of the young have no clue as
to what it all means. The ultimate agenda along with "globalization" is the complete repression
of any opposition to the " spread of money markets" around the world". The US intends to lead;
whether the US citizenry does is another matter. Hence the streets.
JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The
"remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which
has never existed.
The Social Contract, ephemeral, reflects perfectly what contracts have become. Older rulings
frequently labeled clauses unconscionable - a tacit recognition that so few of the darn things
are actually agreed upon. Rather, a party with resources, options and security imposes the agreement
on a party in some form of crisis (nowadays the ever present crisis of paycheck to paycheck living
– or worse). Never mind informational asymmetries, necessity drives us into crappy rental agreements
and debt promises with eyes wide open. And suddenly we're all agents of the state.
Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit.
Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts
with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets.
Solidarity, of course. Hard when Identity politics lubricate a labor market that insists on
specialization, and talented children of privilege somehow manage to navigate the new entrepreneurism
while talented others look on in frustration. The resistance insists on being leaderless (fueled
in part IMHO by the uncomfortable fact that effective leaders are regularly killed or co-opted).
And the overriding message of resistance is negative: "Stop it!"
But that's where we are. Again, just my opinion: but the pivotal step away from the jackpot
is to convince or coerce our wealthiest not to cash in. Stop making and saving so much stinking
money, y'all.
and there's the Karma bec. even now we see a private banking system synthesizing an economy
to maintain asset values and profits and they have the nerve to blame it on social spending.
I think Giaus's term 'Denier' is perfect for all those vested practitioners of profit-capitalism
at any cost. They've already failed miserably. For the most part they're just too proud to admit
it and, naturally, they wanna hang on to "their" money. I don't think it will take a revolution
– in fact it would be better if no chaos ensued – just let these arrogant goofballs stew in their
own juice a while longer. They are killing themselves.
When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we
have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have
seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the
grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome;
they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let
us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we
shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry
with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by
themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment
they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they
wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to
take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another,
to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to
go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten
the game. -Learned Hand
Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't
just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal
decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected
to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile,
Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity
has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away.
My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think
Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest environmentalists.
Meanwhile, I just got a message from my car-share service: They are cutting back on the number
of cars on offer. Too much vandalism.
Are these things caused by pressure from above? Yes, in part: The class war continues, and
the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly
impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity?
No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies
that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of
the Obama administration and the Trump administration.
DJG: My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash:
Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws
on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest
environmentalists.
Yes, the trash bit is hard to understand. What does it stand for? Does it mean, We can infinitely
disregard our surroundings by throwing away plastic, cardboard, metal and paper and nothing will
happen? Does it mean, There is more where that came from! Does it mean, I don't care a fig for
the earth? Does it mean, Human beings are stupid and, unlike pigs, mess up their immediate environment
and move on? Does it mean, Nothing–that we are just nihilists waiting to die? I am so fed up with
the garbage strewn on the roads and in the woods where I live; I used to pick it up and could
collect as much as 9 garbage bags of junk in 9 days during a 4 kilometer walk. I don't pick up
any more because I am 77 and cannot keep doing it.
However, I am certain that strewn garbage will surely be the last national flag waving in the
breeze as the anthem plays junk music and we all succumb to our terrible future.
Related to this, I thought one day of who probably NEVER gets any appreciation but strives
to make things nicer, anyone planning or planting the highway strips (government workers maybe
although it could be convicts also unfortunately, I'm not sure). Yes highways are ugly, yes they
will destroy the world, but some of the planting strips are sometimes genuinely nice. So they
add some niceness to the ugly and people still litter of course.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the
public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away
in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens
if any, are kept meticulously clean.
Basically, the world people care about stops outside their dwellings, because they do not feel
it is "theirs" or that they participate in its possession in a genuine way. It belongs to the
"town administration", or to a "private corporation", or to the "government" - and if they feel
they have no say in the ownership, management, regulation and benefits thereof, why should they
care? Let the town administration/government/corporation do the clean-up - we already pay enough
taxes/fees/tolls, and "they" are always putting up more restrictions on how to use everything,
so
In conclusion: the phenomenon of litter/trash is another manifestation of a fraying social
contract.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population
views the public space/environment as a shared, common good.
There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game
for commercial exploitation.
I live in NYC, and just yesterday as I attempted to refill my MetroCard, the machine told me
it was expired and I had to replace it. The replacement card doesn't look at all like a MetroCard
with the familiar yellow and black graphic saying "MetroCard". Instead? It's an ad. For a fucking
insurance company. And so now, every single time that I go somewhere on the subway, I have to
see an ad from Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper
classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. From Yves's posting of Yanis Varoufakis's analysis
of the newest terms of the continuing destruction of Greece:
With regard to labour market reforms, the Eurogroup welcomes the adopted legislation safeguarding
previous reforms on collective bargaining and bringing collective dismissals in line with best
EU practices.
I see! "Safeguarding previous reforms on collective bargaining" refers, of course, to the 2012
removal of the right to collective bargaining and the end to trades union representation for each
and every Greek worker. Our government was elected in January 2015 with an express mandate to
restore these workers' and trades unions' rights. Prime Minister Tsipras has repeatedly pledged
to do so, even after our falling out and my resignation in July 2015. Now, yesterday, his government
consented to this piece of Eurogroup triumphalism that celebrates the 'safeguarding' of the 2012
'reforms'. In short, the SYRIZA government has capitulated on this issue too: Workers' and trades'
unions' rights will not be restored. And, as if that were not bad enough, "collective dismissals"
will be brought "in line with best EU practices". What this means is that the last remaining constraints
on corporations, i.e. a restriction on what percentage of workers can be fired each month, is
relaxed. Make no mistake: The Eurogroup is telling us that, now that employers are guaranteed
the absence of trades unions, and the right to fire more workers, growth enhancement will follow
suit! Let's not hold our breath!
The so-called "Elites"? Stand down? Right.
Every year I look up the cardinal topics discussed at the larger economic forums and conferences
(mainly Davos and G8), and some variation of "The consequences of rising inequality" is a recurring
one. Despite this, nothing ever comes out if them. I imagine they go something like this:
"-Oh hi Mark. Racism is bad.
-Definitely. So is inequality, right, Tim?
-Sure, wish we could do something about it. HEY GUYS, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT MY NEW SCHEME TO BUY
OUT NEW AND UPCOMING COMPANIES TO MAKE MORE MONEY?"
A wet dream come true, both for an AnCap and a communist conspiracy theorist. I'm by no means
either. However, I think capitalism has already failed and can't go on for much longer. Conditions
will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief.
"Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement
or relief." Frase's Quadrant Four. Hierarchy + Scarcity = Exterminism (From "Four Futures" )
Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat
up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there
were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first.
"Greed is good".
Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel.
In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the
early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically
for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates
among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates
were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful
and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical
public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster.
Here in the US the New Deal and other legislation helped preserve social order in the 1930s.
Yves also raises an important point in her preface that can provide support for the center by
those who are able to do so under the current economic framework. That glue is to participate
in one's community; whether it is volunteering at a school, the local food bank, community-oriented
social clubs, or in a multitude of other ways; regardless of whether your community is a small
town or a large city.
" Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and
educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks."
None of which applies to the Imperium, of course. There's glue, all right, but it's the kind
that is used for flooring in Roach Motels (TM), and those horrific rat and mouse traps that stick
the rodent to a large rectangle of plastic, where they die eventually of exhaustion and dehydration
and starvation The rat can gnaw off a leg that's glued down, but then it tips over and gets glued
down by the chest or face or butt
I have to note that several people I know are fastidious about picking up trash other people
"throw away." I do it, when I'm up to bending over. I used to be rude about it - one young attractive
woman dumped a McDonald's bag and her ashtray out the window of her car at one of our very long
Florida traffic lights. I got out of my car, used the mouth of the McDonald's bag to scoop up
most of the lipsticked butts, and threw them back into her car. Speaking of mouths, that woman
with the artfully painted lips sure had one on her
"... According to what I saw, the only high profile economists to support Corbyn were Stiglitz, Piketty, and Dillow. These rest of the librul commentariat shunned Corbyn, apparently hoping that his progressive campaign would just disappear. ..."
"... Tutition used to be free in the UK. Then they decided that those lazy students needed to have some skin in the game and suddenly tuition was 1000 pounds. Then a few years later it was 9000 pounds and all the college grads there now have US-level student debt. ..."
"... A big reason Corbyn's a commie is because he wants to abolish tuition to bring the UK back to its communist past of 1997 and give young people the same deal all the people in charge had. ..."
Someone finally brought the dreaded dragon of austerity and neoliberalism to its knees. Conservatives
are holding onto power by a thread. Tony B.liar has been repudiated. Time for joy!
Or is it? Instead of exulting, austerity-hating libruls here are reacting with sullen silence.
At the New York Times, it is not morning, but time for mourning. They still seem still barely
able to include the word 'Corbyn' in the 'fit to print' category.
pgl, who never had a nice thing to say about Corbyn, claimed yesterday that he favored him...but
only after the exist polls showed the inevitability of his success.
According to what I saw, the only high profile economists to support Corbyn were Stiglitz,
Piketty, and Dillow. These rest of the librul commentariat shunned Corbyn, apparently hoping that
his progressive campaign would just disappear.
As for Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs noted two years ago: "It is truly odd to read Paul Krugman rail,
time and again, against the British government. His latest screed begins with the claim that "Britain's
economic performance since the financial crisis struck has been startlingly bad." He excoriates
Prime Minister David Cameron's government for its "poor economic record," and wonders how he and
his cabinet can possibly pose "as the guardians of prosperity."
Hmm. In recent months, Krugman has repeatedly praised the US economic recovery under President
Barack Obama, while attacking the United Kingdom's record. But when we compare the two economies
side by side, their trajectories are broadly similar, with the UK outperforming the United States
on certain indicators." Opposition to austerity seemed to have a distinctly partisan character.
All this changed after Corbyn became Labour leader. Krugman's attacks on Conservatives suddenly
stopped. Austerity seemed to have lost its toxicity. Krugman had absolutely no comment on this
UK election, refusing to talk at all about the anti-austerity candidate. It is probably just as
well, since support from a compromised librul commentariat could only have damaged Corbyn's credibility.
As Robert Kuttner said 20 years ago, "Krugman is the conservatives ideal liberal." It appears
that he has a lot of company...libruls who claim to oppose austerity but can't muster the courage
to support an anti-austerity candidate.
No actual figures, but presumably there was big yute turnout in the UK Everyone will now claim
that a non-commie Labour leader like that nice Ed Miliband would OF COURSE have done as well as
Joseph Stalin Lenin Marx Corbyn, and in fact BETTER, but that's bullshit.
That nice Ed Miliband couldn't do in 2015, and I'm not sure who the "unnamed generic normal
Labour candidate" would otherwise be. Theresa May's incompetent evil helped, but Corbyn staved
off what was supposed to have been a Labour extinction election and while there will still likely
be a Tory-led government, it will be pretty fragile. A coalition with a bunch of bigoted religious
nutters from Northern Ireland who aren't on board with May's Brexit plans.
Labour went after The Kids Today and got them to the polls. Wasn't enough to win, but the polling
outfit predicting a likely hung parliament was considered to be "insane" even just a few days
ago.
Tutition used to be free in the UK. Then they decided that those lazy students needed to
have some skin in the game and suddenly tuition was 1000 pounds. Then a few years later it was
9000 pounds and all the college grads there now have US-level student debt.
A big reason Corbyn's a commie is because he wants to abolish tuition to bring the UK back
to its communist past of 1997 and give young people the same deal all the people in charge had.
In 2015, Miliband said he'd cut them. To just SIX THOUSAND POUNDS. Maybe if he'd gone all the
way...
"... Meanwhile, at home, despite all that wealth, despite billionaires galore , including the one running for president, despite the transnational corporate heaven inhabited by Google and Facebook and Apple and the rest of the crew, parts of this country and its infrastructure were starting to feel distinctly (to use a word from another universe) Third Worldish. He sensed that, too. He regularly said things like this: "We spent six trillion dollars in the Middle East, we got nothing And we have an obsolete plane system. We have obsolete airports. We have obsolete trains. We have bad roads. Airports." And this : "Our airports are like from a third-world country." And on the nation's crumbling infrastructure , he couldn't have been more on the mark. ..."
"... Admittedly, that other superpower of the Cold War era, the Soviet Union, imploded in 1991, which was about the fastest way imaginable to leave the global stage. Still, despite the " evil empire " talk of that era, the USSR was always the secondary, the weaker of the two superpowers. It was never Rome, or Spain, or Great Britain. ..."
"... It wasn't he, after all, who gave the U.S. heartland an increasingly Third World feel. It wasn't he who spent those trillions of dollars so disastrously on invasions and occupations, dead-end wars, drone strikes and special ops raids, reconstruction and deconstruction in a never-ending war on terror that today looks more like a war for the spread of terror. It wasn't he who created the growing inequality gap in this country or produced all those billionaires amid a population that increasingly felt left in the lurch. It wasn't he who hiked college tuitions or increased the debt levels of the young or set roads and bridges to crumbling and created the conditions for Third World-style airports. ..."
"... If both the American global and domestic systems hadn't been rotting out before Donald Trump arrived on the scene, that "again" of his wouldn't have worked. Thought of another way, when the U.S. was truly at the height of its economic clout and power, American leaders felt no need to speak incessantly of how "indispensable" or "exceptional" the country was. It seemed too self-evident to mention. Someday, some historian may use those very words in the mouths of American presidents and other politicians (and their claims , for instance, that the U.S. military was "the finest fighting force that the world has ever known") as a set of increasingly defensive markers for measuring the decline of American power. ..."
"... Mr. Trump made it clear that he loves the military and loves his generals. Oh well. When it takes up over 60% of the annual budget, what's not to love. The 1% won't be homeless or hungry, the tax code for which they lobbied is in place and secure. Individuals below them continue to take on debt. The nation continues to do the same. I sincerely desire that this country does go to hell in a handbasket even though I love the country. ..."
"... I don't like Capitalist Imperialists. I don't like usury. Like all "Great World Powers before them, the U.S. is set up to fail. As someone wrote here, before. Most Generals don't have good records. My guess is that same lacking may be pervasive. Every government program has failed. Every war they have created for the U.S. to fight in has failed. Every "reform " has been another fleecing of the worker. In recent decades, the money Exchangers have been given free license to steal from those who gambled for a better life. They would put the great J.P. Morgan to shame with their computer-generated theft schemes. "Now you see it. Now, you dont!" That will become America, land that I love. ..."
In its own inside-out, upside-down way, it's almost wondrous to behold. As befits our president's
wildest dreams, it may even prove to be a record for the ages, one for the history books. He was,
after all, the candidate who sensed it first. When those he was running against, like the
rest of Washington's politicians, were still insisting that the United States remained at the
top of its game, not an - but the - "
indispensable nation ," the only truly "
exceptional
" one on the face of the Earth, he said nothing of the sort. He campaigned on America's decline,
on this country's increasing lack of exceptionality, its potential dispensability. He ran on the
single word "again" - as in "make America great again " - because (the implication was) it
just isn't anymore. And he swore that he and he alone was the best shot Americans, or at least non-immigrant
white Americans, had at ever seeing the best of days again.
In that sense, he was our
first declinist candidate for president and if that didn't tell you something during the election
season, it should have. No question about it, he hit a chord, rang a bell, because out in the heartland
it was possible to sense a deepening reality that wasn't evident in Washington. The wealthiest country
on the planet, the most militarily powerful in the history of well, anybody, anywhere, anytime (or
so we were repeatedly told )
couldn't win a war, not even with the investment of
trillions of taxpayer
dollars, couldn't do anything but spread chaos by force of arms.
Meanwhile, at home, despite all that wealth, despite
billionaires galore , including the one running for president, despite the transnational corporate
heaven inhabited by Google and Facebook and Apple and the rest of the crew, parts of this country
and its infrastructure were starting to feel distinctly (to use a word from another universe) Third
Worldish. He sensed that, too. He regularly
said things like this: "We spent six trillion dollars in the Middle East, we got nothing And
we have an obsolete plane system. We have obsolete airports. We have obsolete trains. We have bad
roads. Airports." And
this
: "Our airports are like from a third-world country." And on the nation's
crumbling infrastructure
, he couldn't have been more on the mark.
In parts of the U.S., white working-class and
middle-class Americans could sense that the future was no longer theirs, that their children
would not have a shot at what they had had, that they themselves increasingly didn't have a shot
at what they had had. The American Dream seemed to be gaining an almost nightmarish sheen, given
that the real value of the average wage of a worker
hadn't
increased since the 1970s; that the
cost of a college education had gone through the roof and the educational
debt burden for children with dreams of getting ahead was now staggering; that unions were
cratering ; that income inequality was at a
historic high ; and well, you know the story, really you do. In essence, for them the famed
American Dream seemed ever more like someone else's trademarked property.
Indispensable? Exceptional? This country? Not anymore. Not as they were experiencing it.
And because of that, Donald Trump won the lottery. He answered the
$64,000 question . (If you're not of a certain age, Google it, but believe me it's a reference
in our president's memory book.) He entered the Oval Office with
almost 50% of the vote and a fervent base of support for his promised program of doing it all
over again,
1950s-style .
It had been one hell of a pitch from the businessman billionaire. He had promised a future of
stratospheric
terrificness , of greatness on an historic scale. He promised to keep the evil ones - the
rapists , job thieves, and terrorists - away, to
wall them out or
toss them out or
ban them from ever traveling here. He also promised to set incredible records, as only a mega-businessman
like him could conceivably do, the sort of all-American records this country hadn't seen in a long,
long time.
And early as it is in the Trump era, it seems as if, on one score at least, he could deliver something
for the record books going back to the times when those recording the acts of rulers were still scratching
them out in
clay or wax . At this point, there's at least a chance that Donald Trump might preside over the
most precipitous decline of a truly dominant power in history, one only recently considered at the
height of its glory. It could prove to be a fall for the ages. Admittedly, that other superpower
of the Cold War era, the Soviet Union, imploded in 1991, which was about the fastest way imaginable
to leave the global stage. Still, despite the "
evil empire " talk of that era, the USSR was always the secondary, the weaker of the two superpowers.
It was never Rome, or Spain, or Great Britain.
When it comes to the United States, we're talking about a country that not so long ago saw itself
as the only great power left on planet Earth, "the lone superpower." It was the one still standing,
triumphant, at the end of a history of great power rivalry that went back to a time when the wooden
warships of various European states first broke out into a larger world and began to conquer it.
It stood by itself at, as its proponents liked to claim at the time, the
end of history .
Applying Hard Power to a Failing World
....While, in the Trump era, a drive to cut domestic spending of every sort is evident,
more money is still slated to go to the military, already funded at levels not reached by
combinations of other major powers.
Given the last 15 years of
history , it's not hard to imagine what's likely to result from the further elevation of military
power: disaster. This is especially true because Donald Trump has appointed to key positions in his
administration a
crew of generals who spent the last decade and a half fighting America's catastrophic wars across
the Greater Middle East. They are not only notoriously incapable of thinking outside the box about
the application of military power, but faced with the crisis of failed wars and
failing states , of spreading terror movements and a growing
refugee crisis across that crucial region, they can evidently only imagine one solution to just
about any problem: more of the same. More
troops , more
mini-surges , more military trainers and advisers, more
air strikes , more
drone strikes more .
After a decade and a half of such thinking we already know perfectly well where this ends - in
further failure, more chaos and suffering, but above all in an inability of the U.S. to effectively
apply its hard power anywhere in any way that doesn't make matters worse. Since, in addition, the
Trump administration is filled with Iranophobes, including a president who has only recently fused
himself to the Saudi royal family in an attempt to further isolate and undermine Iran, the possibility
that a military-first version of American foreign policy will spread further is only
growing .
... ... ...
The First American Laster?
If a Trump presidency achieves a record for the ages when it comes to the precipitous decline
of the American global system, little as The Donald ever cares to share credit for anything, he will
undoubtedly have to share it for such an achievement. It's true that kings, emperors, and autocrats,
the top dogs of any moment, prefer to take all the credit for the "records" set in their time. When
we look back, however, it's likely that President Trump will be seen as having given a tottering
system that necessary push. It will undoubtedly be clear enough by then that the U.S., seemingly
at the height of any power's power in 1991 when the Soviet Union disappeared, began heading for the
exits soon thereafter, still enwreathed in self-congratulation and triumphalism.
Had this not been so, Donald Trump would never have won the 2016 election. It wasn't he, after
all, who gave the U.S. heartland an increasingly Third World feel. It wasn't he who spent those trillions
of dollars so disastrously on invasions and occupations, dead-end wars, drone strikes and special
ops raids, reconstruction and
deconstruction in a never-ending war on terror that today looks more like a war for the spread
of terror. It wasn't he who created the growing inequality gap in this country or produced all those
billionaires amid a population that increasingly felt left in the lurch. It wasn't he who hiked college
tuitions or increased the debt levels of the young or set roads and bridges to crumbling and created
the conditions for Third World-style airports.
If both the American global and domestic systems hadn't been rotting out before Donald Trump
arrived on the scene, that "again" of his wouldn't have worked. Thought of another way, when the
U.S. was truly at the height of its economic clout and power, American leaders felt no need to speak
incessantly of how "indispensable" or "exceptional" the country was. It seemed too self-evident to
mention. Someday, some historian may use those very words in the mouths of American presidents and
other politicians (and their claims
, for instance, that the U.S. military was "the finest fighting force that the world has ever
known") as a set of increasingly defensive markers for measuring the decline of American power.
So here's the question: When the Trump years (months?) come to an end, will the U.S. be not the
planet's most exceptional land, but a pariah nation? Will that "again" still be the story of the
year, the decade, the century? Will the last American Firster turn out to have been the first American
Laster? Will it truly be one for the record books?
This lunatic keeps on coming up with new insanities. He appears to be saying that because Trump
is withdrawing from the globalist agenda, that makes him a bad guy, and furthermore, it puts America
last. Because we will lose our "soft" influence, Trump is making America "last."
Well, I swan! In all my days, I never thought I would live to see a liberal spout such utter,
misguided horseshit.
Tom, the lunatic, seems to believe that if America has no soft power anymore, then all they
will have is hard power. Message to Tom: what has been being used in the World by the United States
in the past 15 years, hell, in the past 65 years? Ever hear of world events, Tom? This guy. He's
so old he's sounding like John McCain. Are you ok, buddy? Maybe you should get an MRI to check
for brain rot.
I'll save you the funds. You do have brain rot. And this stuff you write is rotten to the core.
I can't quite see how getting out of shitty trade deals and cutting back on that giant wad
of goo that is NATO is going to wreck America? Increasing military spending seems stupid to me
but it may be a stop gap to maintain the economy during the transition to a Public Works phase
which the Country badly needs. As to the Wall and immigration in general how can anyone not see
the turmoil it is causing pretty well everywhere else and not want to keep that from coming here?
In an era of decreasing employment we do not need more of the great unwashed? If we must import
help let's choose the ones with the brains and some cash! The last twenty years of globalism have
taken a big bite out of everyone but the very rich, enough of this crap, make the changes or there
will be a civil war! Naa, I think the author is dead wrong.
One third of the population, the "experts" estimate, are mentally ill. I don't have an incling
whether the restless expat lives in a glass house or not but maturity or, rather, immaturity OR
tequila may be in his soupy criticism. Throwing stones in the form of personal insult toward a
writer? I don't know. Thanks to Mr. Unz, many writers get a shot at making their point, as I have
read, here. I would disagree with restless and Tom, but not completely.
Mr. Trump made it clear that he loves the military and loves his generals. Oh well. When
it takes up over 60% of the annual budget, what's not to love. The 1% won't be homeless or hungry,
the tax code for which they lobbied is in place and secure. Individuals below them continue to
take on debt. The nation continues to do the same. I sincerely desire that this country does go
to hell in a handbasket even though I love the country.
I don't like Capitalist Imperialists. I don't like usury. Like all "Great World Powers
before them, the U.S. is set up to fail. As someone wrote here, before. Most Generals don't have
good records. My guess is that same lacking may be pervasive. Every government program has failed.
Every war they have created for the U.S. to fight in has failed. Every "reform " has been another
fleecing of the worker. In recent decades, the money Exchangers have been given free license to
steal from those who gambled for a better life. They would put the great J.P. Morgan to shame
with their computer-generated theft schemes. "Now you see it. Now, you dont!" That will become
America, land that I love.
"... My point in writing about that movement was not to say, "We told you so," but there is no doubt that the far right is entering into a vacuum left by neoliberal centrism and liberalism. It is worth remembering that not so long ago, there was a very large, progressive, committedly internationalist movement that was taking on the whole logic of what was called "free trade" or "globalization" or "corporate globalization." We called it "corporate rule" for the most part, because the problem was not trade, it was the writing of rules for the global economy in the interests of a small group of powerful corporations. Forget hollow brands. The center of that fight was about the hollowing out of democracy. Yes, sure, you can still vote, but the most important decisions about your life are being outsourced to institutions over which you have no control. ..."
"... The fact that neoliberal centrist parties pushed those deals, signed those deals, negotiated those deals, and never aligned themselves with that grassroots progressive movement, left the space open for the Donald Trumps and the Nigel Farages and the Marine Le Pens of the world ..."
"... Particularly because the kind of organizing that has happened in the neoliberal age has mostly not been attached to some sturdy institutions. So, we needed the trade unions to stay with us, and pretty notably large trade unions basically just decided that they couldn't be associated with people who were being cast as quasi-terrorists. That broke apart the coalition. ..."
"... particularly in Latin America, what happened was that in several countries, the left took power and was able to put policies in place that started to significantly take on some of the core institutions of neoliberalism. I don't want to overly idealize it and say they had everything figured out by any means. In This Changes Everything ..."
Naomi Klein:
[Laughs] I didn't set out to do that. I was
having a lot of people ask me to update
The Shock Doctrine
and add a
chapter about Trump. I was like, "Well, I am not going to do that, but maybe
there is a way that I can write something to prepare people for what happens if
there is a major crisis." Because everyone was talking about "shock this" and
"shock that" and how they are using shock and Kellyanne Conway as a shock to
the system and all of that.
These shocks are just the shocks that Trump is
generating himself, whether by design or by incompetence and corruption, but
what really scares me is: What happens when there is a major external shock to
exploit? When I look at who he has surrounded himself with, from Mike Pence,
who played a central role in the looting of New Orleans, to vulture bankers
like Steven Mnuchin, to Betsy DeVos and her dreams of privatizing the school
system . I wanted to do that, but then once I started writing about Trump I was
like, "Well, it does have some relevant stuff from
No Logo
, too." He
is first and foremost a brand who has spawned brands. He breeds brands, in his
family.
I think in understanding his relationship to his voters and how he gets away
with what he gets away with, I don't think you can understand it without
understanding the pact between a lifestyle brand and its consumer base and how
that really transformed the global economy in the 1990s.
Then, there is climate change. I had to get that in. So, it turned into
being a bit of a mixtape.
It is interesting because that shows us how shocking Trump isn't. In
the book, you point out that the term "horror" might actually be more
appropriate to apply to Trump because he is not that shocking.
I think by naming him "shocking" there is a way in which people absolve
themselves. Shocking is like a bolt from the blue. It is something external
that ruptures your world. That is why I think the most helpful way of
understanding Trump is as living dystopian fiction, in the sense that what
dystopian art tries to do is just follow existing trends to their logical
conclusion, in exaggerated form, and then reflect that back to people and say,
"Well, this is where all roads are leading. Do you want to get off this
dangerous road?"
A lot of the emotion is being misnamed. It is not shock. It
is the horror of recognition. It is actually really bad dystopian fiction
because it is so predictable. Like, "Of course America would elect Donald Trump
as the corporate president." I really do think we need to interrogate this idea
of shock. Of course, there were many people in the United States who were not
shocked by Trump's election because they were very in touch with the racism and
misogyny and xenophobia that elevated him and saw him as a fulfillment. There
is this way of casting ourselves as innocents, "I am shocked! How could that
happen?" It is almost like, "How could this not have happened? Everything has
been put into place for this to happen."
It is interesting to think back to the anti-globalization movement
of the 1990s. It seems very far away, but when you are talking about these
questions of hollow brands, the way you described Trump, and then the fact that
it would be impossible for Trump to divest from his brand because his brand is
his name. But, that movement and that time actually sort of gives some
opportunities for ways to challenge Trump and his family.
My point in writing about that movement was not to say, "We told you
so," but there is no doubt that the far right is entering into a vacuum left by
neoliberal centrism and liberalism. It is worth remembering that not so long
ago, there was a very large, progressive, committedly internationalist movement
that was taking on the whole logic of what was called "free trade" or
"globalization" or "corporate globalization." We called it "corporate rule" for
the most part, because the problem was not trade, it was the writing of rules
for the global economy in the interests of a small group of powerful
corporations. Forget hollow brands. The center of that fight was about the
hollowing out of democracy. Yes, sure, you can still vote, but the most
important decisions about your life are being outsourced to institutions over
which you have no control.
The fact that neoliberal centrist parties pushed those deals, signed
those deals, negotiated those deals, and never aligned themselves with that
grassroots progressive movement, left the space open for the Donald Trumps and
the Nigel Farages and the Marine Le Pens of the world
to come in and say,
"We know how out of control you are. We believe you should be authors of your
own fate, of your own destiny." We left these ideas unattended, let's just say.
There are lots of great groups that never stopped focusing on trade, like
Public Citizen and Food and Water Watch and lots of groups in Europe. But it
stopped being a mass movement in the global north after September 11. It is
worth interrogating why that happened.
As you mentioned, this is not just a US phenomenon, which is another
way that we could talk about Trump not being shocking. Can you talk about how
that movement faded from the attention of people in the US and other places and
where we saw the rise of these nativist movements? It is also interesting to
think about where we didn't see those.
It played out differently in different contexts. The turning point for us in
North America, and also for Europeans, was September 11. I remember very, very
vividly because immediately we started to see leaders try to associate our
movement with terrorism.
That July, the July before the September 11 attack, there had been a huge
demonstration in Genoa. I think 300,000 people on the streets. It was really
all walks of Italian life. It was against the G8 Summit, but it was really a
continuation of these mobilizations that had been happening outside summits,
IMF, the World Bank. This was a movement against neoliberalism, really, more
than anything. Some people called themselves anticapitalist; not everybody did,
there was diversity within the movement ideologically.
Immediately after September 11, Silvio Berlusconi said, "These are the same
forces that we were up against in Genoa." And already the repression, the
violence that demonstrators were facing was getting more intense. In Genoa,
there had been a young man who had been killed by police. We started to see
more live ammunition used against protestors.
But even the symbolism of it. We were taking on the World Trade
Organization, which sounds a little bit like the World Trade Center. Obviously,
it was very different, but there was such a desire to bury that movement. In
the book, I quote a headline that appeared in a Canadian newspaper, a
right-wing national newspaper that appeared just a few days after the September
11 attacks, "Globalization Is So Yesterday."
So, part of it was smearing the movement as being quasi-terrorist because
people were fighting with police and they were breaking windows and it was not
a neat purely pacifist movement. There was property destruction. It was not
violence against people, but there was property destruction.
There had been very broad coalitions bringing together people across
political spectrums. You have coalitions that brought together big NGOs that
were focused on trade, as well as big trade unions, as well as anticapitalist
anarchist groups and No One is Illegal and Indigenous groups. It was difficult
navigating that diversity, but it was happening. What happened overnight after
9/11, to be perfectly honest, is that these coalitions need anchor
institutions. Institutions that have resources.
Particularly because the
kind of organizing that has happened in the neoliberal age has mostly not been
attached to some sturdy institutions. So, we needed the trade unions to stay
with us, and pretty notably large trade unions basically just decided that they
couldn't be associated with people who were being cast as quasi-terrorists.
That broke apart the coalition.
People still continued to do the work, but it was the broadness of it that
was where the power lay. I think there are important lessons to be learned from
that -- this is hard, but you can't [get] spooked in the midst of crisis. That
movement was important . It was always too white in North America. It was a
diverse movement, it was a deeply international movement, it was around the
world, it was largest in countries like India . If it had become more diverse
and not less, that space would never had been available to Donald Trump to
exploit.
In that space, you saw the terrorist-baiting of that movement and
then these right-wing nativist movements -- the Trumps and the Marine Le Pens
-- put together that fear of terrorism with the "Also, trade is bad for you"
and really weaponized that in a way that was interesting.
Latin America wasn't spooked by 9/11. The global South wasn't, in general.
But,
particularly in Latin America, what happened was that in several
countries, the left took power and was able to put policies in place that
started to significantly take on some of the core institutions of
neoliberalism. I don't want to overly idealize it and say they had everything
figured out by any means. In
This Changes Everything
I am quite
critical of the fact that a lot of these countries continued to be very
extractive in where their incomes were coming from, which also made them
extremely vulnerable -- most notably Venezuela and Bolivia -- these essentially
petrol and gas states, and were doing very important income redistribution. But
then, when the prices collapse, what have you got?
Then the old school corporate right manages to slide back into power
in some of these places.
"... Everything about Comey is wrong. The fact that he felt the need to 'take notes' because the President asked for loyalty is fucking absurd. What sort of example did he make for fellow G men when he referred to his dealings with his commander in chief as being 'slightly cowardly'? The whole thing is rot, helping to fuel a bogus investigation spearheaded by a broken democratic party who have lost their fucking mind. ..."
"... He also touched upon the mercenary media's fake news about Trump, provided by bad sources, which was confirmed by Comey today. ..."
"... Don't forget it was McCain who took the 'pee' dossier that had been floating around DC which was so phoney even the media wouldn't touch - and told Comey to investigate. ..."
"... This is nothing less than a coordinated overthrow of the government by the deep state, media and uniparty ..."
"... So what do we need special counsel Mueller for in light of all this? Everyone knows the whole Russia collusion affair is politically motivated BS and deflection. ..."
"... Not to mention Comey handing out immunity deals like Christmas candy on Hillary's email investigation. Why would he do that? ..."
"... Comey took notes because he planned to blackmail Trump in the future just like J Edgar Hoover did when he ran the FBI. ..."
"... "Politicized" by the global central banks who own and operate virtually all world governments. I believe we need to keep the players very CLEAR in our minds. It's all of us; humanity, against the globalists who want us dead. Politicians, our institutions... all are aligned with the globalist psychopaths. It's that simple. ..."
"... Comey makes a memo, because that is the M.O. of the FBI. He fully expects gullible sheeple to believe any written statement by an FBI agent is truth, rather than a manipulating fake. ..."
"... Comey has admitted to a number of criminal acts ..."
"... Comey and his FBI partner should be legally charged by the Justice Department for releasing his FBI Memo to NY Times. His FBI partner should be fired and charged. They had no authority to release private government information and breach confidentiality with the president of the United States. The memo proved nothing and meant nothing but releasing it by a fired employee and FBI partner is a breach to FBI and the office of the president of the USA. ..."
"... Not one coward on that Senate committee had the balls to ask about the Seth Rich investigation........disappointing ..."
"... Comey also stated as 100% undisputed fact that Russia had "meddled" with the election. Again, no proof was cited, yet not a single Republican asked for such proof, nor has Trump managed to articulate a similar request. This is somewhat disturbing. ..."
"... The threat of being "Clintoned" is a powerful force. ..."
There will come a day when the city square will be packed with gibbets filled with swinging heads
of traitorous bastard commies -- most readily found in leftshit cities. The degeneracy must end.
Today's testimony by Comey was a farce, a transparent attempt by a spent and bitter bureaucrat trying
to hurt a sitting President.
Everything about Comey is wrong. The fact that he felt the need to 'take notes' because the President
asked for loyalty is fucking absurd. What sort of example did he make for fellow G men when he referred
to his dealings with his commander in chief as being 'slightly cowardly'? The whole thing is rot,
helping to fuel a bogus investigation spearheaded by a broken democratic party who have lost their
fucking mind.
Tucker chimes in and reviews the day's events, pointing out the hypocrisy of Comey and his dealings
with AG Lynch, who asked for Comey to word the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email scandal as
a 'matter.' If that's not collusion and political pressure on the FBI, nothing is.
He also touched upon the mercenary media's fake news about Trump, provided by bad sources, which
was confirmed by Comey today.
After watching this political circus it is very clear that no one should be re-elected from
either party, with the single exception of Paul.
Looks like what we really need is a new political party that actually serves the public tax
payers, unfortunately it may take a major financial depression and its accompanying turmoil to
bring that about.
IMHO, the Comey hearing was John McCain's chance to redeem himself, and he blew it. I think
his idea to go after Comey's interactions with the Obama regime was a great idea, but he came
unprepared and unrehearsed. McCain had an opportunity to display leadership, but he failed to
lead.
Don't forget it was McCain who took the 'pee' dossier that had been floating around DC
which was so phoney even the media wouldn't touch - and told Comey to investigate.
It's time 81 year old McCain - last in his Naval Academy class - shuffled off to an assisted
living center in Arizona.
Comey created a memo because it's hard to leak to multiple sources at one time in person.
We're living history folks. This is nothing less than a coordinated overthrow of the government
by the deep state, media and uniparty dominated by leftojihadis. The Gang of 8 is composed
of 4 dimocrites and 4 rinos. The rinos had a duty to come forward and not only refute the lies
in the media but to reveal it all as a hoax. Only Nunes told President Trump what was going on
and he was forced to recuse himself from the intelligence committee investigation.
Even an atheist has to admit there's divine intervention at work here. Flawed though he admits
to be, Trump is being guided and protected by a force more powerful than the swamp.
So what do we need special counsel Mueller for in light of all this? Everyone knows the
whole Russia collusion affair is politically motivated BS and deflection.
But Mueller won't. He & Comey are besties of 25 year standing. All Mueller will do it find
no direct links between the Russians and Trump or his administration but justify Comey's investigation
by saying the Russians are bad, evil people who were trying to co-opt naive and inexperienced
Trump colleagues.
If they wanted an honest and truthful investigation they would not have selected a retired
swamp general.
It scares me that people actually believe this shit. I guess we are doomed considering how
many morons like PitBullsRule are lapping up the koolaid with their heads in the sand
Not to mention Comey handing out immunity deals like Christmas candy on Hillary's email
investigation. Why would he do that?
Comey's (limited hangout) strategy: Say a few things to look honest, so he could sell "the
Russians did it (hack)" - despite showing no evidence. Otherwise, there would be no need for a
Special Counsel and he knows Mueller will forment more troubles for Trump, perhaps for years.
Trump needs to end this Russian hack nonsense ASAP.
I'd like Loretta Lynch to show me where in the FBI handbook it explains the proper procedure
for conducting "matters".
They just make shit up to suit their needs. The Comey incident is another sad example of how
every branch of government and every agency has become politicized by both sides, to the point
they can no longer perform their intended function.
"Politicized" by the global central banks who own and operate virtually all world governments.
I believe we need to keep the players very CLEAR in our minds. It's all of us; humanity, against
the globalists who want us dead. Politicians, our institutions... all are aligned with the globalist
psychopaths. It's that simple.
"how every branch of government and every agency has become politicized by both sides, to the
point they can no longer perform their intended function" and should therefore be disbanded. Fixed
it for you.
Comey makes a memo, because that is the M.O. of the FBI. He fully expects gullible sheeple
to believe any written statement by an FBI agent is truth, rather than a manipulating fake. Trump's
possible recording constrained Comey's M.O..
Nobody will do anything about any of this. Time to shitcan the lot of them. I hope not a single
doofus up for re-election goes back to D.C. in '18.
It's hard to know which to slap first, those that break the law out in the open--or those that
turn a blind eye to the flagrant lawlessness of the trangressors.
Comey has admitted to a number of criminal acts I think.
He admitted leaking FBI information to the media
He admitted leaking FBI information to the media in order to have an effect on the country
(ie a counsel)
He admitted he was concerned enough with his meeting with Trump to make a memo of it - instead
of going to the DOJ as required by law
He admitted he was concerned with Lynch telling him to not use the word investigation (which
was the truth) and agreeing to it, instead of resigning or reporting it.
He demonstrates that he leaked information to the media, but not the truth that Trump was not
under investigation - thus showing politcal bias in his job.
There are a few crimes there that I gather the DOJ has no option but to prosecute, how can
it not? Since they are also prosecuting Winner for the exact same thing?
Feral Bureau of Weasels Head Weasel James Comey said that he behaved 'slightly cowardly'. Well,
that is the sort of behavior one expects from a Weasel.
[No insults intended to the small mammals grouped together in the weasel family.]
Great review Tucker Carlson! Comey is a disgruntled loser like Killary. Comey never followed
up on Seth Rich murder, a more serious matter than playing stupid politics.
Comey and his FBI partner should be legally charged by the Justice Department for releasing
his FBI Memo to NY Times. His FBI partner should be fired and charged. They had no authority to
release private government information and breach confidentiality with the president of the United
States. The memo proved nothing and meant nothing but releasing it by a fired employee and FBI
partner is a breach to FBI and the office of the president of the USA.
Feral Bureau of Weasels Head Weasel James Comey was actively covering up for the murderers
who murdered Seth Rich and the people who hired them. He should be shitting whole goats knowing
that Attorney General Sessions seized everything in his office while he was in LACALIFUSA. Comey
will probably be joining Obama shortly wherever it is that he is hanging out overseas.
Comey also stated as 100% undisputed fact that Russia had "meddled" with the election.
Again, no proof was cited, yet not a single Republican asked for such proof, nor has Trump managed
to articulate a similar request. This is somewhat disturbing.
"... No I want the return on New Deal Capitalism. But this is impossible as managerial class changed it allegiance and the political block that made the New Deal possible no longer exists. ..."
"... I do not see the alternative to neoliberalism right now. Soviet style "state capitalism" (which some call socialism) is definitely worse. Over centralization proved to be really deadly for large states. ..."
"... Left is not panacea for solving economic problems. Neither is the US style neoliberalism. There is probably "golden level" in redistributive policies like in tennis: if you hold the racket too tightly you can't play well; if you hold it too lose (deregulation) you can't play well either. ..."
So, you want Chavez style government
with all the wealth redistributed to the masses and the central bank printing money like crazy
so everyone is able to consume far more than is produced?
Or do you blame Obama for US oil production
doubling while oil demand was cut by efficiency and alternatives thus destroying half the wealth
in Venezuela, the half Chavez hadn't yet redistributed?
I can't figure out which is worse, the free lunch right-wing or the free lunch leftist.
"So, you want Chavez style
government with all the wealth redistributed to the masses and the central bank printing
money like crazy so everyone is able to consume far more than is produced?"
No I want
the return on New Deal Capitalism. But this is impossible as managerial class changed it
allegiance and the political block that made the New Deal possible no longer exists.
I do not see the alternative to neoliberalism right now. Soviet style "state capitalism"
(which some call socialism) is definitely worse. Over centralization proved to be really
deadly for large states.
As for Venezuela we simply do not know what part of their problems were created externally
(being of the same continent with Uncle Sam and not to dance to his neoliberal tune is a
dangerous undertaking, if you ask me). Please note the Argentina and Brazil already folded
and neoliberal governments are in power again, and not without help from Uncle Sam.
And what part are internal and rooted in mismanagement of the economy due to corruption
within the left government and or unrealistic redistribution policies.
Left is not panacea for solving economic problems. Neither is the US style neoliberalism.
There is probably "golden level" in redistributive policies like in tennis: if you hold
the racket too tightly you can't play well; if you hold it too lose (deregulation) you can't
play well either.
John Harris is wonderful too. The only guy on the staff who can write about the working class
with clarity, respect and understanding. But Monbiot is also the biscuit.
'The Invisible Hand' is not an ideology or dogma. It's just a metaphor to describe those with
problems grasping abstract concepts: when there are a large number of buyers and suppliers for
a good, the 'market finds a price' which is effectively the sum of all the intelligence of the
participants, their suppliers, customers etc..
The Socialists, who have difficulty grasping this reality, want to 'fix' the price, which abnegates
the collective intelligence of the market participants, and causes severe problems.
Capitalism is freedom, Socialism is someone's ideology.
'The Invisible Hand' is... a metaphor to describe those with problems grasping abstract
concepts: when there are a large number of buyers and suppliers for a good, the 'market finds
a price' which is effectively the sum of all the intelligence of the participants
You clearly haven't read Wealth of Nations. The only mention of an invisible hand is actually
a warning against what we now call neoliberalism. Smith said that the wealthy wouldn't seek to
enrich themselves to the detriment of their home communities, because of an innate home bias.
Thus, as if by an invisible hand, England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality.
Your understanding of the 'invisible hand' is a falsehood perpetuated by neoliberal think tanks
like the Adam Smith institute (no endorsement or connection to the author, despite using his name).
'The Invisible Hand' is not dogma.
You definitely know a lot about dogma (and false dichotomies):
Capitalism is freedom, Socialism is someone's ideology.
This is an interesting academic piece but the reality is that we don't have anything like neo-liberalism
in this country as defined by Hayek and it has become a term of abuse by people who really ought
to know better. The strongest abuse of course is linked to the Blair Government, a period, of
course, when, with substantial success, the size and reach of the state increased quite substantially,
ie the complete opposite of neo-liberalism.
In fact, suggesting that the UK is neo liberal is not that much different for suggesting that
Russia had communism as defined by Marx.
Whether it is a good or bad thing that we don't have neo-liberalism is open to academic debate
but is not of much use in real life.
Monbiot suggests that a coherent alternative to the current situation needs to be developed
but disappointingly fails to give any clues as to what it might look like except, of course, that
it must have some type of environmental context.
A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left,
the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to
design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century
All very well, but how? Did anyone hear the screams of rage when Sanders started threatening Hillary,
or when Corbyn trounced the Blairites? The dead hand of Bernays and Goebbels controls everything.
There is no alternative on offer by the left.
The socialist/trade union package is outmoded.
The failure to describe reality in a way that concurs with what ordinary people experience has
driven off much support and reduced credibility.
There is no credible model for investment and wealth creation.
The focus on social mobility upwards rather than on those who do not move has given UK leftism
a middle-class snobby air to it.
Those entering leftist politics have a very narrow range of life experience. The opposition to
rightist politics is cliched and outmoded.
There is a complete failure to challenge the emerging multi-polar plutocratic oligarchy which
runs the planet - the European left just seeks a comfy accommodation.
There is no attempt to develop a post-socialist, holistic worldview and ideology.
The trade union package, gave us meal breaks, holidays, sickness benefits, working hours restrictions,
as opposed to the right wing media agenda, that if you aint getting it nobody should, pour poison
on the unions, pour poison on the public sector, a fucking media led race to the bottom for workers,
and there were enough gullible (poor )mugs around to accept it. You can curse the middle class
socialists all you like, but without their support the labour movement would never have got off
the ground.
During the industrial revolution, profitability and productivity were off the scale because the
workforce were just commodities, Unionisation instigated the idea that without the workforce,
your entrepreneurs can't do anything on their own, Henry Ford wouldn't have become a millionaire
without the help of his workforce. 'Poorest performing structures' Guess what! some of us are
human beings not auto- matrons. I hope you dine well on sterling and dollars, cause they're not
the most important things in life.
What if the highest possible taxes, zero avoidance / evasion and high employment still equals
deficits and increasing national debt ?
The paragraph written above neatly describes the post WW2 years, where the UK was pretty much
in perpetual surplus. High employment does not equate to national debt/deficit. Quite the opposite,
the more people in gainful employment the better. Increasing unemployment, driving wages down
while simultaneously increasing the cost of living is a recipe for complete economic failure.
This whole economics gig is piss easy, when the general mass of people have cash to spare they
spend it, economy thrives. Hoard the cash into the hands of a minority and starve the masses of
cash, economy dies. It really is that simple.
Public deficits exist to match the private surplus created by the rich enriching themselves. To
get rid of the deficit therefore we need to get rid of the private wealth of the rich through
financial repression and taxation
I read, cannot remember where, that with neo liberalism the implementation is all that matters,
you do not need to see the results. I suppose because the followers believe when implemented it
will work perfectly.
I think it's supporters think it is magic and must work because they believe it does.
Yes, a high priest of neo-liberalism, Lord Freud, was given only 13 weeks to investigate and reform
key elements of the the UK's welfare system, it hasn't worked and Freud is now invisible.
Hopeful this is the start for change through identifying issues and avoiding pitfalls.
Failed neoliberalism and not restricting markets that do not benefit the majority are the cause
and we stand on the brink of falling further should the Brexiter's have their way. If there's
one thing the EU excels at it's legislating against the excesses of business and extremism.
Let's make a start by staying in the EU. !--
Report
John Harris is wonderful too. The only guy on the staff who can write about the working class
with clarity, respect and understanding. But Monbiot is also the biscuit.
'The Invisible Hand' is not an ideology or dogma. It's just a metaphor to describe those with
problems grasping abstract concepts: when there are a large number of buyers and suppliers for
a good, the 'market finds a price' which is effectively the sum of all the intelligence of the
participants, their suppliers, customers etc..
The Socialists, who have difficulty grasping this reality, want to 'fix' the price, which abnegates
the collective intelligence of the market participants, and causes severe problems.
Capitalism is freedom, Socialism is someone's ideology.
'The Invisible Hand' is... a metaphor to describe those with problems grasping abstract
concepts: when there are a large number of buyers and suppliers for a good, the 'market finds
a price' which is effectively the sum of all the intelligence of the participants
You clearly haven't read Wealth of Nations. The only mention of an invisible hand is actually
a warning against what we now call neoliberalism. Smith said that the wealthy wouldn't seek to
enrich themselves to the detriment of their home communities, because of an innate home bias.
Thus, as if by an invisible hand, England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality.
Your understanding of the 'invisible hand' is a falsehood perpetuated by neoliberal think tanks
like the Adam Smith institute (no endorsement or connection to the author, despite using his name).
'The Invisible Hand' is not dogma.
You definitely know a lot about dogma (and false dichotomies):
Capitalism is freedom, Socialism is someone's ideology.
This is an interesting academic piece but the reality is that we don't have anything like neo-liberalism
in this country as defined by Hayek and it has become a term of abuse by people who really ought
to know better. The strongest abuse of course is linked to the Blair Government, a period, of
course, when, with substantial success, the size and reach of the state increased quite substantially,
ie the complete opposite of neo-liberalism.
In fact, suggesting that the UK is neo liberal is not that much different for suggesting that
Russia had communism as defined by Marx.
Whether it is a good or bad thing that we don't have neo-liberalism is open to academic debate
but is not of much use in real life.
Monbiot suggests that a coherent alternative to the current situation needs to be developed
but disappointingly fails to give any clues as to what it might look like except, of course, that
it must have some type of environmental context.
A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left,
the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to
design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century
All very well, but how? Did anyone hear the screams of rage when Sanders started threatening Hillary,
or when Corbyn trounced the Blairites? The dead hand of Bernays and Goebbels controls everything.
There is no alternative on offer by the left.
The socialist/trade union package is outmoded.
The failure to describe reality in a way that concurs with what ordinary people experience has
driven off much support and reduced credibility.
There is no credible model for investment and wealth creation.
The focus on social mobility upwards rather than on those who do not move has given UK leftism
a middle-class snobby air to it.
Those entering leftist politics have a very narrow range of life experience. The opposition to
rightist politics is cliched and outmoded.
There is a complete failure to challenge the emerging multi-polar plutocratic oligarchy which
runs the planet - the European left just seeks a comfy accommodation.
There is no attempt to develop a post-socialist, holistic worldview and ideology.
The trade union package, gave us meal breaks, holidays, sickness benefits, working hours restrictions,
as opposed to the right wing media agenda, that if you aint getting it nobody should, pour poison
on the unions, pour poison on the public sector, a fucking media led race to the bottom for workers,
and there were enough gullible (poor )mugs around to accept it. You can curse the middle class
socialists all you like, but without their support the labour movement would never have got off
the ground.
During the industrial revolution, profitability and productivity were off the scale because the
workforce were just commodities, Unionisation instigated the idea that without the workforce,
your entrepreneurs can't do anything on their own, Henry Ford wouldn't have become a millionaire
without the help of his workforce. 'Poorest performing structures' Guess what! some of us are
human beings not auto- matrons. I hope you dine well on sterling and dollars, cause they're not
the most important things in life.
What if the highest possible taxes, zero avoidance / evasion and high employment still equals
deficits and increasing national debt ?
The paragraph written above neatly describes the post WW2 years, where the UK was pretty much
in perpetual surplus. High employment does not equate to national debt/deficit. Quite the opposite,
the more people in gainful employment the better. Increasing unemployment, driving wages down
while simultaneously increasing the cost of living is a recipe for complete economic failure.
This whole economics gig is piss easy, when the general mass of people have cash to spare they
spend it, economy thrives. Hoard the cash into the hands of a minority and starve the masses of
cash, economy dies. It really is that simple.
Public deficits exist to match the private surplus created by the rich enriching themselves. To
get rid of the deficit therefore we need to get rid of the private wealth of the rich through
financial repression and taxation
I read, cannot remember where, that with neo liberalism the implementation is all that matters,
you do not need to see the results. I suppose because the followers believe when implemented it
will work perfectly.
I think it's supporters think it is magic and must work because they believe it does.
Yes, a high priest of neo-liberalism, Lord Freud, was given only 13 weeks to investigate and reform
key elements of the the UK's welfare system, it hasn't worked and Freud is now invisible.
Hopeful this is the start for change through identifying issues and avoiding pitfalls.
Failed neoliberalism and not restricting markets that do not benefit the majority are the cause
and we stand on the brink of falling further should the Brexiter's have their way. If there's
one thing the EU excels at it's legislating against the excesses of business and extremism.
Let's make a start by staying in the EU. !--
Report
John Harris is wonderful too. The only guy on the staff who can write about the working class
with clarity, respect and understanding. But Monbiot is also the biscuit.
'The Invisible Hand' is not an ideology or dogma. It's just a metaphor to describe those with
problems grasping abstract concepts: when there are a large number of buyers and suppliers for
a good, the 'market finds a price' which is effectively the sum of all the intelligence of the
participants, their suppliers, customers etc..
The Socialists, who have difficulty grasping this reality, want to 'fix' the price, which abnegates
the collective intelligence of the market participants, and causes severe problems.
Capitalism is freedom, Socialism is someone's ideology.
'The Invisible Hand' is... a metaphor to describe those with problems grasping abstract
concepts: when there are a large number of buyers and suppliers for a good, the 'market finds
a price' which is effectively the sum of all the intelligence of the participants
You clearly haven't read Wealth of Nations. The only mention of an invisible hand is actually
a warning against what we now call neoliberalism. Smith said that the wealthy wouldn't seek to
enrich themselves to the detriment of their home communities, because of an innate home bias.
Thus, as if by an invisible hand, England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality.
Your understanding of the 'invisible hand' is a falsehood perpetuated by neoliberal think tanks
like the Adam Smith institute (no endorsement or connection to the author, despite using his name).
'The Invisible Hand' is not dogma.
You definitely know a lot about dogma (and false dichotomies):
Capitalism is freedom, Socialism is someone's ideology.
This is an interesting academic piece but the reality is that we don't have anything like neo-liberalism
in this country as defined by Hayek and it has become a term of abuse by people who really ought
to know better. The strongest abuse of course is linked to the Blair Government, a period, of
course, when, with substantial success, the size and reach of the state increased quite substantially,
ie the complete opposite of neo-liberalism.
In fact, suggesting that the UK is neo liberal is not that much different for suggesting that
Russia had communism as defined by Marx.
Whether it is a good or bad thing that we don't have neo-liberalism is open to academic debate
but is not of much use in real life.
Monbiot suggests that a coherent alternative to the current situation needs to be developed
but disappointingly fails to give any clues as to what it might look like except, of course, that
it must have some type of environmental context.
A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left,
the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to
design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century
All very well, but how? Did anyone hear the screams of rage when Sanders started threatening Hillary,
or when Corbyn trounced the Blairites? The dead hand of Bernays and Goebbels controls everything.
There is no alternative on offer by the left.
The socialist/trade union package is outmoded.
The failure to describe reality in a way that concurs with what ordinary people experience has
driven off much support and reduced credibility.
There is no credible model for investment and wealth creation.
The focus on social mobility upwards rather than on those who do not move has given UK leftism
a middle-class snobby air to it.
Those entering leftist politics have a very narrow range of life experience. The opposition to
rightist politics is cliched and outmoded.
There is a complete failure to challenge the emerging multi-polar plutocratic oligarchy which
runs the planet - the European left just seeks a comfy accommodation.
There is no attempt to develop a post-socialist, holistic worldview and ideology.
The trade union package, gave us meal breaks, holidays, sickness benefits, working hours restrictions,
as opposed to the right wing media agenda, that if you aint getting it nobody should, pour poison
on the unions, pour poison on the public sector, a fucking media led race to the bottom for workers,
and there were enough gullible (poor )mugs around to accept it. You can curse the middle class
socialists all you like, but without their support the labour movement would never have got off
the ground.
During the industrial revolution, profitability and productivity were off the scale because the
workforce were just commodities, Unionisation instigated the idea that without the workforce,
your entrepreneurs can't do anything on their own, Henry Ford wouldn't have become a millionaire
without the help of his workforce. 'Poorest performing structures' Guess what! some of us are
human beings not auto- matrons. I hope you dine well on sterling and dollars, cause they're not
the most important things in life.
What if the highest possible taxes, zero avoidance / evasion and high employment still equals
deficits and increasing national debt ?
The paragraph written above neatly describes the post WW2 years, where the UK was pretty much
in perpetual surplus. High employment does not equate to national debt/deficit. Quite the opposite,
the more people in gainful employment the better. Increasing unemployment, driving wages down
while simultaneously increasing the cost of living is a recipe for complete economic failure.
This whole economics gig is piss easy, when the general mass of people have cash to spare they
spend it, economy thrives. Hoard the cash into the hands of a minority and starve the masses of
cash, economy dies. It really is that simple.
Public deficits exist to match the private surplus created by the rich enriching themselves. To
get rid of the deficit therefore we need to get rid of the private wealth of the rich through
financial repression and taxation
I read, cannot remember where, that with neo liberalism the implementation is all that matters,
you do not need to see the results. I suppose because the followers believe when implemented it
will work perfectly.
I think it's supporters think it is magic and must work because they believe it does.
Yes, a high priest of neo-liberalism, Lord Freud, was given only 13 weeks to investigate and reform
key elements of the the UK's welfare system, it hasn't worked and Freud is now invisible.
Hopeful this is the start for change through identifying issues and avoiding pitfalls.
Failed neoliberalism and not restricting markets that do not benefit the majority are the cause
and we stand on the brink of falling further should the Brexiter's have their way. If there's
one thing the EU excels at it's legislating against the excesses of business and extremism.
Let's make a start by staying in the EU.
"So, you want Chavez style government
with all the wealth redistributed to the masses and the central bank printing money like crazy so
everyone is able to consume far more than is produced?"
No I want the return on New Deal Capitalism.
But this is impossible as managerial class changed it allegiance and the political block that made
the New Deal possible no longer exists.
I do not see the alternative to neoliberalism right now. Soviet style "state capitalism" (which
some call socialism) is definitely worse. Over centralization proved to be really deadly for large
states.
As for Venezuela we simply do not know what part of their problems were created externally (being
of the same continent with Uncle Sam and not to dance to his neoliberal tune is a dangerous undertaking,
if you ask me). Please note the Argentina and Brazil already folded and neoliberal governments are
in power again, and not without help from Uncle Sam.
And what part are internal and rooted in mismanagement of the economy due to corruption within
the left government and or unrealistic redistribution policies.
Left is not panacea for solving economic problems. Neither is the US style neoliberalism. There
is probably "golden level" in redistributive policies like in tennis: if you hold the racket too
tightly you can't play well; if you hold it too lose (deregulation) you can't play well either.
Moreover extreme inequality propagated
by neoliberalism inevitable create the rule of oligarchy. At which point you can kiss democracy
goodbye, as, in a way, already happened in the USA, is you judge from the last elections.
As Putin said: now it does not matter who is elected the President. Other "very serious
people" in dark suits determine the USA policy, especially foreign policy. Currently the president
is just a figurehead. He has his say, he is still a minor player, but that's about it.
This is a pretty educational staff, especially in the current atmosphere of anti-Russian
hysteria. Which is used as a smokescreen to hide real problems facing the USA and fighting
of different clans for power, without any regard for the dignity of the country.
And there are people of Putin level in the USA. Why they are blocked and stay on lower levels?
Something is really wrong.
Why Putin was not meddling in UK as in French election securing macron victory ;-)...
Notable quotes:
"... One can only hope that renewal within the British Labour party continues and that they don't get bogged down in identity politics in refuting neo-liberalism. ..."
"... We need major structural paradigm shifts that go far beyond the declared priorities of some newly elected "party leader" (i.e. cleptocrats' spokesperson) because I for one, still remember all the promised "hopes and changes" of the past 2 decades. Like Einstein said: You can't solve problems by using the same mindset that created them... ..."
"... May Blew it but was that for purpose? Why those three false flag terrorists' operations where MI5 was involved in all of them?And May was personally implicated in all of them, being responsible for counterterrorism and recruiting of terrorists on UK payroll on her watch. ..."
"... Why she attacked stupidly and callously pensions of elderly? Why now? It was suppose to be about Brexit mandate. OR as a excuse to loosing such a mandate. ..."
"... As far as Brexit was concerned what's tragic is that Jeremy Corbyn shown himself a traitor of working people as Sanders in US did, despite Cobryn's former impeccable working class credentials, they both sold out to the establishment. ..."
Corbyn delivered the best results for Labour since at least 1997. This even though the
Labour establishment and its media organs had defamed him since he was elected party
leader in 2015. Consider the fake-leftist (and Zionist) columnist
Nick Cohen
, one of several of his kind in the Guardian columnist stable. Only three
month ago
Cohen wrote
:
The Tories have gone easy on Corbyn and his comrades to date for the transparently
obvious reason that they want to keep them in charge of Labour.
In an election, they would tear them to pieces. They will expose the far left's
record of excusing the imperialism of Vladimir Putin's gangster state , the
oppressors of women and murderers of gays in Iran, the IRA, and every variety of
inquisitorial and homicidal Islamist movement, while presenting itself with
hypocritical piety as a moral force. Will there be 150, 125, 100 Labour MPs by the
end of the flaying? My advice is to think of a number then halve it.
For the record: Labour won
at least 261 seats
, 31 more than in the last election. The Tories won 42.5% of the
votes, Labour 40% - 10 percent points more than the last time. The British elections
system transfers the small Tory advantage in voter share into a rather big difference in
parliament seats.
The Corbyn win gives hope for future developments in other European countries. (The
long-term trends are way more important than Brexit shenanigans.)
Corbyn has proven that social-democratic parties can again be competitive if they
shun the neo-liberal dogma and go back to their class based policy roots. The lesson
comes too late for the elections in France and the upcoming elections in Germany. In
both countries the establishment still rules the social-democratic parties and loses one
election after the other. Like Labour in Britain they need a renewal in which real
left-wing politicians and socialist policies move back to the top. (The U.S. would
probably have made a comparable move if the party establishment had not sabotage Bernie
Sanders in favor of an un-electable Hillary Clinton. Sanders though was probably a
one-of-a kind chance that will not return for a long time.)
It will need some time for Jeremy Corbyn's win to transfer into a Europe wide
renaissance of social-democratic policies. But his was a huge step forward and the
movement and trend are coming along well.
LXV | Jun 9, 2017 8:32:10 AM |
1
Sorry b, for the past 20-something years social democracy has proven time and again
(at least in Europe) that it's failed big time; nowadays they are just
another "neo-quasi-something" tool
(I highly recommend Reading the book) in the
globalists' toolbox.
LXV #1, but that's exactly the point. For the past twenty years, there hasn't been
social democracy in Europe. Corbyn & McDonnell's philosophy and policies represent a
pre-welsh-windbag politics, i.e. pre-neolib (refreshed for the 21C, of course).
One can only hope that renewal within the British Labour party continues and that
they don't get bogged down in identity politics in refuting neo-liberalism. I think
we can expect the globalist forces to try and subvert those within the Labour Party
by all means at their disposal to see that this Party returns to the fold. Early days
yet but promising early days. Meanwhile the globalist Tories will continue to self
destruct as their policies go against the population as a whole and more Brits cotton
on to the game in play.
I'm afraid the old traditional left-right distinction is no longer
applicable after the last 20 years of globalist lunacy. Both sides are used by the
lobbyists of the mega-rich to fit the Cleptocratic Oligarchy's needs above all else.
The "left" is supposed to support the poor when in reality they destroy the poor
by making them dependent on welfare... not to mention their support of neo-colonial
wars of aggression on all continents. OTOH, the "right" is supposed to support ideas
of limited government; good luck with that! Both have proven to be birds of a
feather, pushers of a false dichotomy of what they actually do, which in essence is
whatever their Big Lobbyist Handlers® tell them to implement.
We need major structural paradigm shifts that go far beyond the declared
priorities of some newly elected "party leader" (i.e. cleptocrats' spokesperson)
because I for one, still remember all the promised "hopes and changes" of the past 2
decades. Like Einstein said: You can't solve problems by using the same mindset that
created them...
I'm sure May's argument to keep her job will be - we won the election (if just
barely) and changing leaders now will prove a huge disruption to the Brexit
negotiations of which time is running short.
Give me the chance to negotiate the Brexit we need and judge me after that about
whether or not I should continue as leader until the next election.
In other words - after this huge scare I've been given, give me the next 2 years
to prove myself and judge me then - afterall, at that point there is still plenty of
time for a new leader to establish themselves!! A whole 3 years in fact!!
I'm sure that'll be the basis of her argument, not at all sure it will, or even
should, work though.
he's already back-pedaling on anything of real interest he's said. we'll get to see
something of what it'd had been like if sanders had won in the US: big frickin'
snooze.
"social-democratic parties" as well as "Christian Democratic" or "conservative"
parties are in the process of committing a genocide upon the indigenous peoples of
Europe. The only hope for saving these nations is to liquidate the segments of
society that support autogenocide of Europeans, and that means physically liquidating
all supporters of "social democracy".
Round them up, send them to concentration
facilities, debrief them to gather as much information as possible and then tell them
they will be getting a shower and fresh clothes after an eye exam. The "eye exam"
would involve sitting in a chair with a cattle stun probe positioned above. It would
quickly thrust a bolt into the head of the patient, puncturing the skull and
rendering a painless, humanitarian euthanasia. When a person threatens suicide, you
get them help to remediate and remove the pathological elements of their
psychological state. When a society threatens suicide, you have to remove the
pathological elements that are the source of the pathological state.
May Blew it but was that for purpose? Why those three false flag terrorists'
operations where MI5 was involved in all of them?And May was personally implicated in
all of them, being responsible for counterterrorism and recruiting of terrorists on
UK payroll on her watch.
Why she attacked stupidly and callously pensions of
elderly? Why now? It was suppose to be about Brexit mandate. OR as a excuse to
loosing such a mandate.
Was Corbyn suppose to win this time? An reverse Brexit leaving it by name only
while all the EU jurisdiction, laws and rules left intact?
It all stinks to heaven. Was that psyop of "blame labor" for upcoming next episode
of 2000, 2008, 2018 disaster movie?
It seems that way since already they talk about new elections this year. Two-time
charm for Corbyn. He looks already like a goat so he will make perfect scapegoat, a
phony leftist who want to arm more police and refurbish nukes and want to study the
policy change for next decade instead of arresting Tory government as they are war
criminals, proved and documented starting from Blair.
As far as Brexit was concerned what's tragic is that Jeremy Corbyn shown himself a
traitor of working people as Sanders in US did, despite Cobryn's former impeccable
working class credentials, they both sold out to the establishment.
Corbyn should have stand with labor, poor working people who voted Brexit, by now
he would have been a PM. Now instead of readying for new UK PM with a chance to
dismantle this abhorrent UK aristocratic regime of puppetry and no circumstance after
EU shackles are thrown off, he divided Labor once again.
I too wish to congrat Jeremy Corbyn, even if he did not win completely. He is the
proof that a (more or less) left platform can still - or again - be an option.
Without having illusions about the socialdemocratic approach the Corbyn labour
results are a ray of hope that Europe will not totally succumb to the hard right. If
only the people my age would have the balls to stand against the ongoing disaster.
They might think they on the safe side - what a misjudgment. Just ask younger people,
they will tell them what's in store for everybody.
"... Nobody should have any doubts about the determination of this former Rothschild banker to carry out his mission, which is none other than to be the Margaret Thatcher of France. In any case, if he was chosen for this role, it is precisely because he has been trained for decades in the most absolute discipline and because he does not seem to have any particular emotional ties with his own country. It is not a professional politician but a man of "the markets" and of Finance who has come to govern France. If there is anyone who is determined to display as much harshness as is necessary and to take as many risks as are necessary, that person is Macron. ..."
"... Macron's appearance, the day that he won the election, was flawless. Even his arrogance evidently served as a reminder to the French that he came from the class that is destined to govern. His speech was a series of generalities, which could have been delivered a century in the past or a century in the future. Except at one point: where he skewered via the terms "extremisms" the Left and the far Right, serving notice that his aim was war against them. ..."
"... The banker-President has come to disencumber the country of all of this type of thing. His amazing success: entering politics and becoming President of France within three years, is a reflection of the massive power, influence and potential of finance capital, the Empire of Davos, in our era. ..."
"... This is probably Finance Capital's "Plan B". But after the election of Trump and the Brexit there came the Dutch, and now the French, elections, to curb (temporarily?) its impetus. ..."
"... Macron's victory gives the EU a reprieve, staving off the likelihood of a sudden death, even though it would be a mistake for anyone to assume that its crisis has been overcome. ..."
"... In the final analysis Macron probably won because France did not trust (this time) a lady of the far right, which seemed dangerous to it, but also because it felt the Left is not yet ready. This delay in the manifestation of the crisis will most probably contribute to its revealing itself more powerfully at a certain point. ..."
"... This is ensured in any case by today's European elites, who are more than ever dependent on, and guided by Finance and so persist in precisely the policies that caused the crisis, the discontent and the rebellion. ..."
Macron "scooped the pool and decamped" in the second round of the French presidential elections,
scoring an easy victory over Marine Le Pen. Her performance was in any case so bad in the last week
of the pre-election campaign that it led some commentators to the conclusion that the National Front
did not want to be required to govern.
We have to wait and see if Macron consolidates his victory in the parliamentary elections also.
But already both the Socialist Party and the Right, the two traditional parties of power in the country,
project a picture of total disintegration and decay, with their cadres leaping into the water like
rodents from a sinking ship and heading for the safety of Macron.
Consummating the humiliation of France's political class, former "socialist" Prime Minister Manuel
Valls pronounced the Socialist Party dead and affirmed his transposition to the party of Macron,
for which he said he intended to be a parliamentary candidate. Only to receive the public answer
from the party of his former Minister that he must submit his application through the Internet, following
the procedures applicable for everyone. Finally they told him that his services are not required.
But even if in the parliamentary elections he achieves the institutional omnipotence that is his
dream, Macron and his ideas remain isolated and espoused by a minority in French society, as indicated
by analysis of the results of the first and second round of the presidential elections. The capture
of the GS & M factory by its workers, who threaten to blow it up as these lines are being written,
is a reminder that the tasks the new President has been set, or has set himself, will not be in any
way easy.
A man of the "Markets" and of "Finance"
Nobody should have any doubts about the determination of this former Rothschild banker to carry
out his mission, which is none other than to be the Margaret Thatcher of France. In any case, if
he was chosen for this role, it is precisely because he has been trained for decades in the most
absolute discipline and because he does not seem to have any particular emotional ties with his own
country. It is not a professional politician but a man of "the markets" and of Finance who has come
to govern France. If there is anyone who is determined to display as much harshness as is necessary
and to take as many risks as are necessary, that person is Macron.
His hagiographers are now proliferating in the French press at the speed of mushrooms in the forest
after rain. Many would like to liken him to Napoleon. Aware, though, that they would run the risk
of being ridiculed, they confine themselves to reminders that since the Emperor the country has never
had such a young ruler.
But this Napoleon does not plan to start any war with the monarchs of Europe, who linked themselves
together, funded – it is said – by Rothschild, to strangle revolutionary France. His campaigns will
be on the domestic front, like those of Thiers. Recall also that the Paris Commune emerged from the
refusal of the people of France to accept their country's capitulation to Germany.
Macron's appearance, the day that he won the election, was flawless. Even his arrogance evidently
served as a reminder to the French that he came from the class that is destined to govern. His speech
was a series of generalities, which could have been delivered a century in the past or a century
in the future. Except at one point: where he skewered via the terms "extremisms" the Left and the
far Right, serving notice that his aim was war against them.
The only half-way human spontaneous element of M. Macron on his day of victory was at the end
of celebrations, his embarrassed laugh when he was the only one in the group not to sing the Marseillaise.
Either he did not know the words or he could not sing them.
If there is one song that the ruling class of France hates it is the country's national anthem,
summoning the citizenry "to arms". And the same applies for the national rallying emblem
"Liberté,
égalité, fraternité."
The banker-President has come to disencumber the country of all of this type of thing. His amazing
success: entering politics and becoming President of France within three years, is a reflection of
the massive power, influence and potential of finance capital, the Empire of Davos, in our era.
At the international level, Macron's victory discontinues, at least temporarily, the string of
successes of the most radical wing of the Western establishment which, persuaded that Fukuyama-type
"benign globalization" is not making much progress, decided to place its bets on the "Huntington
model" of the war of civilizations.
This is probably Finance Capital's "Plan B". But after the election of Trump and the Brexit there
came the Dutch, and now the French, elections, to curb (temporarily?) its impetus.
Macron's victory gives the EU a reprieve, staving off the likelihood of a sudden death, even though
it would be a mistake for anyone to assume that its crisis has been overcome.
And how could it overcome it when the predominant political forces on the continent, Berlin and
the Commission, persist with insouciance of a Marie Antoinette, in the same policies of administering
to the patient the medicine that is killing him.
A minority president
The new president was elected by a minority of French voters in absolute terms and many who voted
for him did not endorse his program but wanted to block Le Pen.
* In contrast to Chirac, who won 82% of the vote against Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002, Macron
obtained only 65%.
* For the first time since 1969 participation in the second round smaller (by 3%) than in the
first.
* Τhe 12% figure for spoiled or blank ballots was an absolute record for the Fifth Republic
(in 2012 it was 5.8%)
* 42% of those with the right to vote supported Macron and of those, according to public opinion
polls, only 55% agreed with his ideas.
The results of the first round are genuinely representative of the political preferences of the
French, half of whom voted for political forces opposed to the European Union in its present form.
If we factor in the votes for "La France Insoumise", Mélenchon, the left-wing Socialist Hamon
and the two Trotskyist candidates, we see that they account for 27% of the votes in the first round,
slightly more than the proportion of votes that went to the far right and the anti-systemic Right
Gaullists of Dupon-Aignan. Even if we do not count Hamon, we are still speaking of more than 50%
"anti-systemic" votes, in a European country of central importance.
Hamon, remember, supported policies which, if implemented, would have led to clashes with Brussels.
The reason that we include him in an intermediate category is that he was clearly unwilling to proceed
to a break with the EU for the sake of imposing them.
In other words 50-55% of voters favor "antisystemic" parties, whether of the Left, the Right or
the extreme Right.
55% was also the percentage of the French who voted against the draft European Constitutional
Treaty (in essence the Maastricht structure) in the 2005 referendum. But at that time there were
no political subjects in France to articulate this "No". And the deep structural economic crisis
of 2008 had not yet broken.
France became the second country in the EU, after Greece, where the majority of citizens voted
for parties declaring themselves to be "antisystemic". Confirming that we are in a situation of profound
and intensifying structural, not cyclical, crisis of Western capitalism and its political system,
of a depth, though not of an intensity, comparable to that of the 1929 crisis.
As occurred in the 1930s, the crisis tends to generate radical political subjects on the left
and the far right, particularly in relatively stronger countries such as France, Britain and the
United States, which can more easily imagine relying on their own forces. In weaker countries radicalization
has manifested itself mainly on the Left, as with SYRIZA and PODEMOS.
A geopolitical Weimar
Not only are there significant structural similarities between the socio-political crisis of today's
Europe and that of the Weimar Republic (1919-33) in interwar Germany. Geopolitically today Europe
is also reminiscent of the 1930s and early 1940s . By all indications it is under German hegemony,
with only two countries at the opposite extremes challenging the desiderata of Berlin: Putin's Russia
to the east, obliged almost against its will to resist the West. And to the west Britain, whose ruling
class dreams of a more powerful role for London, for the benefit always of the rising "Empire of
Finance" and the USA.
Italy comes over as the perennial opportunist and vacillator, as in the time of Mussolini, prior
to his final decision to side with Hitler. Poland reminds us in some ways of Pilsudski's heyday.
Spain seems to have withdrawn into its own peninsula, as it did then. A special case on the European
periphery is Turkey, which is bargaining for its international position, not to mention another non-European
country, which did not exist in the interwar period, Israel, but exerts massive influence over European,
and even more so Mediterranean, developments.
Of course "German hegemony" over Europe always remains under the supervision of Finance, of the
IMF, of the USA and NATO, which take care from time to time to remind Berlin of the limits of the
permissible, and to impose them.
France has for some time positioned itself in a stance of submission and subordination to Germany,
somewhat reminiscent – naturally with all due allowances for the very different conditions – of the
Vichy regime of General Petain.
France is now , mutandis mutandis , in the position Germany was towards the victors of
the First World War. This is why there is a potential for developing both a leftist radical and a
far right answer, as happened with Germany in the intrawar period, when it vacillated between the
Left and Hitler, ending with the Nazis, given the incompetence and betrayal of both German Social
Democrats and Communists.
France, Germany and the EU
In Berlin signs of relief greeted the election of Macron in preference to Le Pen. They were soon
followed, however, by warnings both from Germany and from the Brussels Commission to the newly elected
President not to expect relaxation of "fiscal discipline".
Macron has the support of the "International of Finance", of which he is any case a representative.
But despite the fact that Berlin allied itself with this "International" to impose its priorities
on Europe, the German Right has no desire to expend the German surpluses on assisting its allies
or the revival of the European and international economy, despite the fact that Mr. Gabriel (but
not Mr. Schulz) and certain Green politicians are beginning to flirt with the idea, judging that
the maintenance of German hegemony requires somewhat greater flexibility.
It remains to be seen what Macron is going to do, given that he must on the one hand confront
a very real, albeit dissimulated, "civilized" German nationalism and on the other prepare to proceed
with the demolition of labour law in his own country.
The resurrection of the Left
France is a country that has made ten revolutions in two centuries. From the Popular Front to
the post-war predominance of the Communist Party, from the Trotskyists' struggle for the Algerian
Revolution up to May 1968 and the Socialist Party's electoral victory in 1981, the Left has set its
seal on the country's history.
Many believed that this tradition has died, along with the distinction between Left and Right,
with the total capitulation of the Socialist Party to neoliberalism, in conditions of progressive
cultural decline and "Americanization". The traditional socialist culture of the popular classes
survived, but in a state of perennial defensiveness, without ideological-political representatives
or a presence in the media. What remained of social revolt began to emigrate to the far right, the
National Front of Marine Le Pen.
Until the underlying social demand for a true, authentic left met up with the political drive
of Mélenchon and a miracle, a resurrection, occurred, a Left was born that has some connection with
its name.
Mélenchon's result in the first round must be seen as historic. It brings to a close the era of
Socialist Party hegemony that opened with the Epinay congress in 1971, a development analogous to
SYRIZA's eclipse of PASOK.
There is nothing accidental about this result for Mélenchon. It reflects the enormous demand in
all of the Western world for an authentic Left wing. A recent poll showed that 45% of American youth
would vote socialist and 21% communist, although socialists and communists are almost non-existent
in the US (or perhaps also because they are non-existent!). A few days ago a majority of British
people opted in opinion polls for the Leftist electoral program of the Labour Party, which provides
for renationalization of the railways, the Post Office and water, with corresponding measures to
that effect.
It appears to have been pre-planned from the outset that the electoral game in France would go
the way it went, with a match between Macron and Le Pen. Only against Le Pen was Macron assured of
victory. Only against the Macron-Rothschild and deploying every dissident element in her arsenal
could Le Pen have any hope of attaining credibility.
Mélenchon's performance, challenging Le Pen's monopoly over expression of social dissent and revolt,
changed the situational data. And we cannot know what would have happened if the terrorist attack
had not taken place on the eve of the first round, strengthening Macron, stabilizing Fillon and assisting
with exclusion of Mélenchon.
"La France Insoumise" won more than three times as many votes as the Socialist candidate. Its
rise has been as spectacular as that of SYRIZA, Corbyn and Sanders. Of course getting off to a very
good start by no means ensures that the sequel will be as propitious. Problems frequently arise in
the next stage as the tragic experience of the Greek betrayal and disaster has already amply proven.
In the case of France the problems emerged immediately with the sectarianism and the inability
of the French Left as a whole to coalesce for the parliamentary elections. Given France's super-majoritarian,
two-round, profoundly undemocratic electoral system, this failure may have adverse consequences when
it comes to the final number of left-wing members in parliament.
In the final analysis Macron probably won because France did not trust (this time) a lady of the
far right, which seemed dangerous to it, but also because it felt the Left is not yet ready. This
delay in the manifestation of the crisis will most probably contribute to its revealing itself more
powerfully at a certain point.
This is ensured in any case by today's European elites, who are more than ever dependent on, and
guided by Finance and so persist in precisely the policies that caused the crisis, the discontent
and the rebellion.
Dimitris Konstantakopoulos is a journalist and writer, former Secretary of the Independent
Citizens Movement, former member SYRIZA's Central Committee, current editorial board member of the
international magazine Utopia Review, ex-chief of the Greek Press Agency office in Moscow, formerly
served as Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou's adviser in East-West relations and arms control.
"... Why didn't the FBI do their own investigation? ..."
"... "They say that, but it's bogus," Cohen argued. "When Clapper, the director of national intelligence, signed that report in January, technically he represents all seventeen. I'll bet you a dime to a nickel you couldn't get a guest on, unprepared, who could name ten of them. This figure -- seventeen -- is bogus!" ..."
"... "The one agency that could conceivably have done a forensic examination on the Democratic computers is a national security agency ..."
Professor Stephen Cohen: Not One Piece of Factual Evidence That Russia 'Hacked the Election' March 31, 2017
chat 176 comments
Prof. Cohen: Not One Piece of Factual Evidence That Russia 'Hacked the Election'
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton, spoke Thursday evening with
Fox News' Tucker Carlson about the
latest shoes to drop in the investigations into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.
The Wall
Street Journal reported late Thursday that Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national security advisor, has told the FBI
and congressional investigators that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution -- not
a particularly good sign for the Trump White House.
Cohen, one of the country's foremostexperts on Russia, has been arguing for months that the anti-Russia hysteria in Washington,
D.C., is becoming a
"grave national security threat."
Carlson began the discussion by bringing up what he sees as the core issue-- the allegations that the Russian government "hacked
our election" by breaking into email accounts at the DNC and the Clinton campaign office.
"Everyone assumes this is true," he said. "We're all operating under the assumption that it's true. Do we know it's true?"
"No," Cohen answered flatly. "And if you listen to the hearings at the Senate today, repeatedly it was said -- particularly by
Senator Warner, the Democratic co-chair of the proceedings -- that Russia had hijacked our democracy. What he means is that, the
Russians, at Putin's direction, had gone into the Democratic National Committee's emails, which were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton,
given them to Wikileaks, Wikileaks then released them to damage Mrs. Clinton and put Trump in the White House."
He noted, "This is a very dramatic narrative and they're saying in Washington that this was an act of war.... So whether or not
it's true is existential. Are we at war?"
After studying Russian leadership for 40 years, focusing on Putin in particular, Cohen said it was hard for him believe that the
Russian president would have done such a thing.
"I could find not one piece of factual evidence," he said. "The only evidence ever presented was a study hired by the Clintons
-- the DNC -- to do an examination of their computers.They
[Crowdstrike] concluded the Russians did it. Their report
has fallen apart." He
added, " Why didn't the FBI do their own investigation? "
Tucker pointed out that even Republicans say that seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies (including Coast Guard Intelligence!) have
concluded that Russian intelligence was behind this.
"They say that, but it's bogus," Cohen argued. "When Clapper, the director of national intelligence, signed that report in
January, technically he represents all seventeen. I'll bet you a dime to a nickel you couldn't get a guest on, unprepared, who could
name ten of them. This figure -- seventeen -- is bogus!"
The professor made one more critical point: "The one agency that could conceivably have done a forensic examination on the
Democratic computers is a national security agency ," he said.
He continued: "When they admit that they have no evidence, they fall back on something else which I think is very important. They
say Putin directed Russian propaganda at us and helped elect Trump. I don't know about you, Tucker, but I find that insulting --
because the premise they're putting out ... at this hearing is that the American people are zombies. ... It's the premise of democracy
that we're democratic citizens," he said. "That we have a B.S. detector in us and we know how to use it."
ValVeggie •
2 months ago Maybe not, but let's not forget that there IS evidence that the Obama administration apparently employed police-state
tactics to spy on their political rivals during the election, and to widely disseminate the information they collected in hope
that it would be illegally leaked in order to undermine the Trump administration.
Remember, the only felony we have clear proof of is the leak of Flynn's surveillance data to the press.
Time to get focused on where the crimes are, and stop falling for the progressive's shell game.
RedDog
ValVeggie •
2 months ago Now what do we have here....
WikiLeaks Reveals "Marble": Proof CIA Disguises Their Hacks As Russian, Chinese, Arabic...
"... On "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Dana Loesch said the agenda-driven media is focused on negatively portraying Trump, while they're largely giving Democrats a pass. ..."
"... Let's talk for a moment about the California Democrat convention ... where you had a number of Democrats on stage screaming 'expletive Trump' and 'expletive Republicans.'" She said Democrats and the mainstream media then want to turn around and accuse Trump and those on the right of fomenting violence. ..."
Following Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte's alleged assault of a reporter, some in the mainstream media
are trying to blame the incident on President Trump. CNN host Don Lemon argued that Trump has culpability because he's said "very
horrible things" about reporters and suggested that they are the enemy of the American people. MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell said that
Trump has helped whip up "hostility" toward the press, while Joe Scarborough said a "straight line" can be drawn between Trump's
anti-media rhetoric and the Gianforte incident.
On "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Dana Loesch said the agenda-driven media is focused on negatively portraying Trump, while they're
largely giving Democrats a pass.
"Let's discuss Tom Perez and his cussing crusade that he's been giving at so many different fundraisers.
Let's talk for a
moment about the California Democrat convention ... where you had a number of Democrats on stage screaming 'expletive Trump' and
'expletive Republicans.'" She said Democrats and the mainstream media then want to turn around and accuse Trump and those on the
right of fomenting violence.
"... When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties, it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as an "occupying force". ..."
"... That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual". Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections. ..."
"... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
"... Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs. ..."
"... ...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." ..."
"... That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat. ..."
"... There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous. ..."
Trump is just a one acute symptom of the underling crisis of the neoliberal social system, that
we experience. So his removal will not solve the crisis.
And unless some kind of New Deal Capitalism is restored there is no alternative to the neoliberalism
on the horizon.
But the question is: Can the New Deal Capitalism with its "worker aristocracy" strata and the
role of organized labor as a weak but still countervailing force to corporate power be restored
? I think not.
With the level of financialization achieved, the water is under the bridge. The financial toothpaste
can't be squeezed back into the tube. That's what makes the current crisis more acute: none of
the parties has any viable solution to the crisis, not the will to attempt to implement some radical
changes.
When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties,
it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust
of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as
an "occupying force".
That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call
it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and
common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual".
Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections.
At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some
even attacked him vociferously. But, unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate
who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended up with the nomination.
The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar,
ill-mannered, tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become
so bad in their view that they turned to the man who most clamorously rebelled against it.
... ... ...
The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over
the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated
purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many
elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise
in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag
is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.
... ... ...
Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively
after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting
decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied
by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and
corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings
accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer
, was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests
in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial
transactions, divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating,
and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial zest, generate new enterprises,
and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of
the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and
fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.
...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid
of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before
the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk
about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors."
That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday
Night Massacre."
That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even
minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat.
... ... ...
There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly
problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself.
But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the
Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.
IMHO Trump betrayal of his voters under the pressure from DemoRats ("the dominant neoliberal
wing of Democratic Party", aka "Clinton's wing") makes the situation even worse. a real Gordian
knot. Or, in chess terminology, a Zugzwang.
Le Pen was similar to Trump in her desire to improve the relations with Russia and generally more
realistic view of recent events. she is not a USA stooge. That probably a partial reason why she lost.
Macron is somewhat like French Obama a shadow figure who is a marionette of forces behind him, not a
actual politician.
Notable quotes:
"... the 'abstain in disgust' demographic has been over-hyped from the day after results were announced. ..."
"... the abstain thing was overhyped for one and only reason, put the "shame" on the the left so that'll cut their chances for the June Legsilatives election (the one that counts contrary to the sunday joke). ..."
"... It's the only reason all major tv/radio/newspapers spent the last 2 weeks vociferating against Melenchon & his voters as "irresponsible" while 90% of those insulted will NOT vote for Le Pen. That would be total nonsense if the thing those media were fighting was Le Pen... ..."
"... Problem is with the media and the establishment EU globalists, all dissenting and opposite views will be quashed even further under the 'fighting terrorism' guise. People will be smeared, fined, arrested, jailed, whatever it takes for them to maintain a grip on power. ..."
"... Yes the russian-hating-blaming-millionare Macron will win no doubt, the election is more or less fixed after the propaganda campaing for him everywhere in the west. The same Macron and MSM are already cooking up disinformation about russian hackers, theese people are insane, and its also a sign of what policy he will carry out. ..."
"... Long term though? Next election Le Pen or whoever rule her party will win. It will also cause more extremism because the elite under Macron wont deal with regular people and their problems but with the elite. ..."
"... to be fair though, those emails leaks seem totally dull. I browsed what I could, it's just generic staff chat, campaign bills to pay, bills to make, yadda yadda Whoever got the mail passwords few months ago must have waited for something juicy to land and since nothing really interesting came up, they're just posting the whole stock as is. Won't make the slightest difference on sunday. ..."
"... Exactly. I wouldnt be surprised if its Macron team itself that leaked this dull, uninportant stuff to show that "russians have interfered". ..."
"... Macron won 1st step with the intense fear campaign spammed on our heads during 6 months. I know plenty reasonable people who voted Macron while they hardly can stand his program, because they were told hundreds times he was the "best choice" to beat Le Pen. ..."
"... That's so absurd Macron got the most votes last sunday AND at the same time got the LOWEST "adhesion" (adherence ? not sure in english) rate of all 11 candidates, basically nearly half of "his" voters put the bulletin with his name for reasons that have nothing to do with him. ..."
"... they're both pro-Zionist. Just another shell game of an election whilst the media does its assigned job of shouting loudly about some supposed vast gulf existing between the 2 candidates. Having said that, if I was French there's just no way I could vote for a slimy Rothschild banking reptile like Macron. At least Le Pen appears to be an actual human. ..."
"... Without Trump's 100 first days, le Pen would probably have done better, possibly even taken it. The French have been given full flood propaganda that Marine le Pen is the equivalent of Donald Trump. She is not. There are some similarities, but le Pen is more nuanced than Trump, far more experienced in politics, and would be at least somewhat more consistent with her campaign promises. ..."
"... That said, she is not the economic "populist" many imagine and many more hope for. Her actual platform would be remarkably like that of Obama or Hillary; neoliberal. ..."
"... she might make improvements in, and the emphasis should be on "might", one of them is avoiding participation in every war that the US starts up in the Middle East as well as all the Putin bashing that is de rigeur for US allies ..."
"... long term outcome of globalists verses nationalists? the globalists are going to win, and full on slavery will continue to ensue.. the younger generations will not see the comforts and lifestyle their parents enjoyed - far from it in fact.. freedoms will be clamped down, alternative views will be made illegal and stuff like that.. after that, there is a small chance people will possibly wake up, but i wouldn't count on it.. ..."
"... " the epic fight of globalists versus nationalists" No. It is the epic fight of corporatists versus nationalists. ..."
"... Corporations are trying to assert themselves as bigger, better and more powerful than states. Time to remind corporatists that they exist only at the will and control of a state. By allowing a corporation to establish themselves, the state should be their front, Potemkin village or not. ..."
"... A strand in F politics / commentators etc. brands him as a candidat fabriqué , a candidat du systčme a sort of cut-out ersatz pol, created and boosted by the financial elites, Mega Corps., banking - as he worked for Rotschild, etc. The MSM, particularly magazines... ensuring his win with 24/24 favorable coverage. Sure, he is young, good-looking, etc. ..."
"... Some gays support Macron as rumors about him being gay with his older wife as a 'mommy type cover' indulging in an affair with some sultry media guy. ..."
"... Macron is an opportunist taking advantage of the break-down of trad. F politics - death of the Socialist party, divisions on the right, oppos parties no clout, Sarkozy despised, Hollande then more so.. to present a quasi 'evangelical' solution as a last ditch effort against decline, sinking GDP per capita, > as 'collaborationist' with the US-EU-NATO - etc. He is most likely quite, or semi-sincere, in his desire to fix it all. A 'maverick' who is yet 'hyper conventional' - a very conventional profile! ..."
"... You're right about Trump I think. Even if the 100 day benchmark is arbitrary it's something that's paid a lot of attention. It's been very unsettling for a lot of Americans. Other countries have been watching closely. They watched as Trump front loaded his cabinet with bankers and generals. They wondered whatever happened to nonintervention and draining the swamp. They wondered if the demonization of certain religious and ethnic groups was the harbinger of a brave new world that wasn't all that brave or all that new. His attack on all things environmental, while weather events become worse year by year, strictly to accommodate big business is another problem. So is the new health bill that gives the coup de grâce to any idea that he's the champion of the common man. ..."
"... In any case the French election will go a long way to determining if the new philosophy of undoing all the constructs since WW11 is what the people want. it's starting to look like it isn't. The losers are sure to cry that big finance and the press skewered the vote but it might just be that the French are happy the way things are. ..."
"... Macron will be to France what Obama has been to the US. Just like Obama's presidency made possible Trump's victory four years later, Macron's presidency will make possible a Front National victory in five years. ..."
"... The Chancellors of the French universities have asked their students to vote Macron. (Link in French) Not a single Chancellor has asked students to vote Le Pen. The same can be said of the French press. The media barrage in favor of Macron has been so one-sided, some Frenchmen call their country jokingly "East Corea" ..."
"... I find it difficult to hear people praising Le Pen who won't have to live under her presidency. Let me remind you that Europe had more than its share of nationalist wars, and the last thing the continent needs are governments adding fuel to the fire of existing tensions. Macron is a puppet, but in the end he'll do what's necessary to stabilize things. Le Pen might well blow things up and lead to civil war. ..."
"... I am not a supporter of Le Pen and hell no, not supporter of a "French Trump" Macron, Yes, it is Macron in my opinion that is French Trump, a Flaccid Clown of Global Oligarchy while Le Pen is slightly reversed Sanders as far as elements of political platform that matter for ordinary people in France and the US. ..."
"... Brilliant move by Marine Le Pen was to campaign on her own more centrist platform and not be obliged to follow strictly FN platform as a FN leader would have to follow. ..."
"... In fact as Macron was first who shed his discrediting Socialist label as hated Hollande minister, now Le Pen shed her FN right-wing and neo-fascist label to commence entirely new campaign as true French populist and nationalist. ..."
"... She already told French that they have a clear choice between neoliberal oligarchic rule of globalists under a thieving investment banker or French people rule under populist leader liken to de Gaulle. ..."
"... Does she have a chance against unified block of French MSM media and Globalist media worldwide, against slander, lies and fake news, against 95% of largest French press being against her? Not likely, especial that as it was documented CIA has capabilities and used them to manipulate french elections already in the past. But it is more complicated than that and Marine Le Pen is not Trump. ..."
"... The Macron campaign identified the first tweet referring to the documents as coming from the Twitter account of Nathan Damigo , a far-right activist and convicted felon based in northern California. Damigo is known on social media for punching a female anti-fascist in the face at a Berkeley protest. ..."
"... Originated online in California, just before the 2.5 hour debate between Le Pen and Macron. ..."
"... Melenchon is the one to listen to to understand the situation in France. While he didn't make it into round two, he has a good chance of a large parliamentary victory in the round of elections after the presidential one. He's been locked out of the English-language press in the U.S. and Britain (he falls outside their narrow spectrum of acceptable political views) so you have to read the French press (I use Google Translate) or watch his youtube (with subcaptions) channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsGkA4TXqyw ..."
"... In order to combat mass immigration, which is mainly internal to developing countries, the causes of migration must be tackled: the impossibility of any development in the countries of departure, due to debts and Structural adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank, the plundering of resources by multinationals and free trade. ..."
"... Outside the fact most media pre-prepare their headlines for such occasions when time does not allow for late information to be disseminated by normal publishing procedures, the Dewey / Truman was marked by the media believing their own propaganda to the extent they became divorced from reality. This recently has shown its tracks in the Clinton / Trump campaign with 'interesting result' - the Russians did it! ..."
"... Macron has no effective political party in the French parliament, the fictional party he was supported by has no parliamentary standing and is unlikely to obtain standing. ..."
"... she has said that she won't allow French citizens to have Israeli passports ..."
"... Those Francophone African countries that are part of the West African and Central African Franc currency zones were among the most enthusiastic backers of Colonel Muammar Gaddhafi's pan-African "gold dinar" economic market. No wonder Nicolas Sarkozy signed onto the US no-fly zone over Libya idiocy tout de suite in 2011. ..."
"... The relative lack of power of France made me wonder the real reason why they led the NATO attack on Libya. Was it the financial dealings between Sarkozy and Gaddhafi like some sites say or were they really prodded by the US to lead the way of the overall game plan? ..."
"... Macron's dirty secrets according to The Duran: http://theduran.com/breaking-macron-emails-lead-to-allegations-of-drug-use-homosexual-adventurism-and-rothschild-money/ ..."
"... Le Pen voters, who decry globalisation, foreignors, terrorists, muslims, etc. / the remnants of the left (socialist - Trotskyist - add anarchist - ..), who voted Mélenchon or not at all / those who are 'foreign' - outcasts in any case - and thus can't rally to Le Pen or to anyone.. and just keep their heads down. ..."
"... The divide-to-rule strategy has worked perfectly on these workers. In two factories I know of, the 3 different groups don't speak to each other, except as routine politeness / ugly jokes small skirmish etc., as they are all in the same boat, subject to the same oppressive rules, etc. though some contacts/friendships cross these lines. ..."
"... Listening to NPR spreading their propaganda about French elections made me want to vomit. Are the majority of western folks really as stupid as they seem to be? Judging by the crap people post on Facebook I'd say yes. The more "educated" a person is the more likely they are to believe the lies. ..."
"... As for the farce in France... I think Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com has a good grasp of what the elite are trying to do. He has a series of articles postulating what he believes is the long game of the bankers and other wealthy feces, mostly using Trump as the example of how nationalist/conservatives are being set-up for a big fall. Interesting point of view that I find rather rational considering all the craziness taking place. ..."
"... Good short summmary: The Truth About Macron https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6H0cjIN4gw ..."
"... n America, American Voters in the USA elections, are allowed to elect by majority vote, either of two persons(for each position); but the between candidate platforms, boil down to the same side of two identical coins. Those elected are paid a salary to operate the USA for the benefit of, and "according to" the "allowed policy" established by, those in control of the national policy. ..."
"... The French election is not about choice of platforms, but instead, the French election is about choice of persons to be paid to execute the allowed platforms. The range of choices in the French election.. and in republics throughout the world, has been and is, limited to candidates who subscribe to "allowed platforms". It is clear to me, the policies the candidates will be paid, if elected, to execute are, all the same in every Republic, around the globe. ..."
"... That all the evils in western society are the fault of the external bogeyman. Putin, ISIS Refugees, Asian footwear makers, whatever. ..."
"... Is that your services & politicians Would never pull a false leak or a controlled leak or a limited hangout. That they are angels that sit on their hands. ..."
"... These two underpin the absolute lunacy we have seen unfold before our eyes. An extraordinarily dangerous situation to be in which is getting worse fast. ..."
"... Everyone backed the wrong horse. Instead of pushing for JL Melenchon who's also a non-interventionist on foreign policy from the very beginning as opposed to the unpopular candidate of Sarkozy's party, F. Fillon, and then the Islamophobe Le Pen, you'all had to back Le Pen who had no chance in hell of winning because she scared not only Muslims but many on the Left. ..."
"... Obomo praises Emmanuel Macron well run campaign and like Emmanuel Macron's "Liberal value" . Good ridden! ..."
"... Last year, when Joe visited the US, we were discussing the US presidential campaign and Bernie Sanders. Joe and I agreed that the West is experiencing a general political meltdown. Joe then went on to describe the default pattern that EU elections follow: ..."
"... The prospective candidates are inevitably the "Usual Suspects", i.e. centrist/moderate careerist technocrats, the odd "maverick" or two with limited, cultlike support-- and The Extremist ..."
"... The Establishment power elite, institutions, and complicit mass-media begin an orchestrated howling: "Anybody But [insert Extremist du jour here]!" ..."
"... The "Anybody But!" coalition throws massive resources into a public relations campaign to generate mass hysterical fear at the prospect that The Extremist may win and lead the nation straight to Hell. ..."
"... The terrified, confused, hysterical, panic-stricken public accordingly falls in line and elects the favorite centrist/moderate careerist technocrat who will perpetuate the neoliberal status quo. ..."
"... The Establishment power elite and its mass-media megaphone will effusively praise the inconquerable wisdom and good sense of The People in once again Saving the Republic by rejecting a dangerous Extremist. ..."
"... Macron is a shark (report from the family), not a victim of the banksters. He followed May's strategy in UK of staying quiet till elected. Future policy: not merely a bankster, but also the son of a conservative family of doctors from Amiens. So not a pure neo-liberal, as has been suggested, but someone who is forced by his family background to take their point of view into account. ..."
"... The prospect is not too bad. Other than in foreign policy, where he has declared himself against the Asad regime in Syria. I don't take that too seriously. Once in power, he may discover what is implied in attacking Asad, that is war against Russia, and he may hesitate. ..."
"... I am French. Macron won because of an unprecedented media onslaught that led 25% of voters who don't know their heads for their a... to vote for him in the first round, while the media had blocked anyone but Macron and Le Pen from getting to the second round. That's because they know that people would elect a head of lettuce if that head of lettuce was running against Le Pen. ..."
"... You see, the US only stopped major civil war kind of s... because Trump won, which disarmed the anger of the disenfranchised masses. Unfortunately, in France, Emmanuel Clinton won. And the French extreme left wing, who hates Macron's guts, can be dangerous. I mean, physically dangerous. Other clear-headed observers than Gave are already mumbling words like "barricades" and "civil war". ..."
"... What does that say about any French thinking their vote matters? Look at the choices they were "offered". ..."
"... the parallels between obama and micro seem very strong ... someone linked elsewhere - on the open thread - to a biography of obama that had him making decisions with an eye to future "political showbiz" career at an early age. ..."
"... the 'destiny' of the 'political' showbiz - class seems now to be to surf the waves of financial power, all pretense to politics long gone. probably always thus, to a great extent. but with the need for real politics so striking now - the disaster to be had for relying on autopilot more apparent than ever - so too is the self-centeredness of the showbiz personalities. ..."
"... If Macron manages to trick the French fools again and his non-existing party actually gets a majority in parliament, I expect things to go South before his first mandate is over. ..."
"... A total of 4.2 million of French voters cast empty ballots in the presidential run-off on Synday, a survey conducted by Ispos and Sopra Steria said ....8.9 percent of the total of 47.6 million voters cast empty ballots, refusing to give their support to either of the candidates." ..."
The French 2017 election has become the battle of the status quo; one a historical myth (La Pen)
providing some comfort from a perceived tradition, the other of hidden political power looking
to perpetuate itself by stealth and deception (Macron). Should the French electorate decide that
silence can be an effective form of a lie, they can support the candidate which best meets the
voter's best interests. La Pen is a candidate of a legitimate but small political party; Macron
has, like any good magician, produced a facsimile political group, a crypto-political party. Taking
a page from U.S. political history, lies never produce the results they promise. Good luck France,
reach into your conscious and vote your best interests Sunday. The world awaits your collective
decision if politics still operates in France.
"It seems clear so far the the synthetic Rothschild candidate will win this round."
That's the way it's shaping up, despite the weirdness of Obama adding his name to the Kiss
Of Death list of pro-Micron Swamp Dwellers headed by such unpopular has-beens as Hollande, Sarkozy
et al.
There's too much contrived 'flexibility' in this charade. In Round 1 the voter-participation
rate settled at 77.1% after early cites that it was a fraction under 70%. That's a huge jump in
a factor which normally reveals reliable trends. Also the 'abstain in disgust' demographic has
been over-hyped from the day after results were announced.
The final outcome will hinge on how gullible/docile French voters are, historically-speaking.
the abstain thing was overhyped for one and only reason, put the "shame" on the the left so that'll
cut their chances for the June Legsilatives election (the one that counts contrary to the sunday
joke).
It's the only reason all major tv/radio/newspapers spent the last 2 weeks vociferating
against Melenchon & his voters as "irresponsible" while 90% of those insulted will NOT vote for
Le Pen. That would be total nonsense if the thing those media were fighting was Le Pen...
France will be rudderless, adrift, enduring a exponential increase in violence and internal political
and cultural strife. Then, next election Le Pen will nab it. They aren't there yet.
Problem is with the media and the establishment EU globalists, all dissenting and opposite
views will be quashed even further under the 'fighting terrorism' guise. People will be smeared,
fined, arrested, jailed, whatever it takes for them to maintain a grip on power.
I see the UK is now wanting to introduce more investigatory powers on the web essentially eliminating
end to end encryption. The EU countries are going to go full Big Brother before they let the populist
right movement gain any more traction. Again, they may only be delaying the inevitable.
Yes the russian-hating-blaming-millionare Macron will win no doubt, the election is more or
less fixed after the propaganda campaing for him everywhere in the west.
The same Macron and MSM are already cooking up disinformation about russian hackers, theese people
are insane, and its also a sign of what policy he will carry out.
Pro-bankers
Pro-war
Pro-establishment
Anti-Russia
Pro-Nato
Pro EU
Long term though? Next election Le Pen or whoever rule her party will win. It will also cause
more extremism because the elite under Macron wont deal with regular people and their problems
but with the elite.
I cant see why anyone would vote for Macron, even his eyes/looks are slimy.
Another Leaks about emails, this time about Macron. The difference is that nobody is allowed to
publish any part of it by the electoral commission (15,000 euros fine). No doubt there will be
a huge crackdown on alt media once he gets elected.
France is an occupied country, much more than the US
to be fair though, those emails leaks seem totally dull. I browsed what I could, it's just
generic staff chat, campaign bills to pay, bills to make, yadda yadda Whoever got the mail passwords
few months ago must have waited for something juicy to land and since nothing really interesting
came up, they're just posting the whole stock as is. Won't make the slightest difference on sunday.
@jen : what possibility ? none Macron won 1st step with the intense fear campaign spammed on our heads during 6 months. I
know plenty reasonable people who voted Macron while they hardly can stand his program, because
they were told hundreds times he was the "best choice" to beat Le Pen. And that's it. They
probably don't fully believe it, but the doubt was hammered deep in their mind, and they won't
take the (imaginary) risk to appear the on "wrong" side of history and be shamed for years...
And the same thing will obviously happen tomorrow.
That's so absurd Macron got the most votes last sunday AND at the same time got the LOWEST
"adhesion" (adherence ? not sure in english) rate of all 11 candidates, basically nearly half
of "his" voters put the bulletin with his name for reasons that have nothing to do with him.
they're both pro-Zionist. Just another shell game of an election whilst the media does its assigned
job of shouting loudly about some supposed vast gulf existing between the 2 candidates. Having
said that, if I was French there's just no way I could vote for a slimy Rothschild banking reptile
like Macron. At least Le Pen appears to be an actual human.
Without Trump's 100 first days, le Pen would probably have done better, possibly even taken
it. The French have been given full flood propaganda that Marine le Pen is the equivalent of Donald
Trump. She is not. There are some similarities, but le Pen is more nuanced than Trump, far more
experienced in politics, and would be at least somewhat more consistent with her campaign promises.
That said, she is not the economic "populist" many imagine and many more hope for. Her
actual platform would be remarkably like that of Obama or Hillary; neoliberal. Of the two
areas she might make improvements in, and the emphasis should be on "might", one of them is
avoiding participation in every war that the US starts up in the Middle East as well as all the
Putin bashing that is de rigeur for US allies . The other is possibly succeeding in upending
the European Union and the Eurozone - which as it stands, does everything for rapacious banks
and an export at any cost dependent Germany, and nothing for anyone else other than a small group
of plutocrats.
long term outcome of globalists verses nationalists? the globalists are going to win, and full
on slavery will continue to ensue.. the younger generations will not see the comforts and lifestyle
their parents enjoyed - far from it in fact.. freedoms will be clamped down, alternative views
will be made illegal and stuff like that.. after that, there is a small chance people will possibly
wake up, but i wouldn't count on it..
in france, terrorism will continue.. in europe a greater
malaise will prevail.. in the world, things look to be falling apart.. maybe more war for all
the wrong reasons, if nothing else.. macron will be onside with global dominance thru the west
of syria.. the usual lame excuses will be trotted out..
" the epic fight of globalists versus nationalists" No. It is the epic fight of corporatists
versus nationalists.
Corporations are trying to assert themselves as bigger, better and more powerful than states.
Time to remind corporatists that they exist only at the will and control of a state. By allowing
a corporation to establish themselves, the state should be their front, Potemkin village or not.
This US has ceded much of their power to corporations. Past time to take it back.
Macron, next Pres. of France, an exceptional person. (I am not a fan.)
A strand in F politics / commentators etc. brands him as a candidat fabriqué , a
candidat du systčme a sort of cut-out ersatz pol, created and boosted by the financial
elites, Mega Corps., banking - as he worked for Rotschild, etc. The MSM, particularly magazines...
ensuring his win with 24/24 favorable coverage. Sure, he is young, good-looking, etc.
This pov is conveniently conspiratorial, and the media support is real; yet, the MSM merely
follow and go for the winner, in kind of positive feed-back loop, pretty mindless.
"Manu" - pour les intimes - is very clever, tough, and determined to rise / become powerful
since he was a precocious child, attracted to and competing within the world of adults, since
the age of 5? Yes, a psych profile approach is superficial, junky, or only one aspect.
The 'parental' love of his life was his grand-mother. Manu took decisions about his life very
young. At 12 he was baptised Catholic, by his decision. Pic in church first from coll. of pix
young Macron, Gala gossip mag.
At 15 -17 he decided he would marry the teacher B. Trogneux (24 years older than him, with
one child older than him, another the same age and in his class at school), and he managed that.
The 'unconventional' marriage is now 100% accepted, and even a I'd say a 'plus' point, in the
sense that 'different love-lives' tinged with trangression attract support from certain quarters.
Some gays support Macron as rumors about him being gay with his older wife as a 'mommy type
cover' indulging in an affair with some sultry media guy.
Macron is an opportunist taking advantage of the break-down of trad. F politics - death
of the Socialist party, divisions on the right, oppos parties no clout, Sarkozy despised, Hollande
then more so.. to present a quasi 'evangelical' solution as a last ditch effort against decline,
sinking GDP per capita, > as 'collaborationist' with the US-EU-NATO - etc. He is most likely quite,
or semi-sincere, in his desire to fix it all. A 'maverick' who is yet 'hyper conventional' - a
very conventional profile!
@ Gravatomic at 6. Le Pen will never win, the FN will never have a 'prez.' About the social
unrest, yes.
You're right about Trump I think. Even if the 100 day benchmark is arbitrary it's something
that's paid a lot of attention. It's been very unsettling for a lot of Americans. Other countries
have been watching closely. They watched as Trump front loaded his cabinet with bankers and generals.
They wondered whatever happened to nonintervention and draining the swamp. They wondered if the
demonization of certain religious and ethnic groups was the harbinger of a brave new world that
wasn't all that brave or all that new. His attack on all things environmental, while weather events
become worse year by year, strictly to accommodate big business is another problem. So is the
new health bill that gives the coup de grâce to any idea that he's the champion of the common
man.
This whole idea of turning everything upside down to spark some kind of political renewal has
taken a few hits of late. After Trump's election and Brexit the there was a school of thought
that had it that upcoming elections in Europe would fall in line with the new political philosophy.
First would be The Netherlands, that didn't happen. Then it would be France, unless something
very drastic and unexpected happens then that's another bad bet. Nobody's yet surmising that Merkel
is toast. In spite of the unpopularity of her immigration policy at its outset it may be that
Germans are ready to forgive her that and stick with the status quo. I don't know enough about
English politics to guess if any party can unseat May but it's evident that a lot of Brits are
wishing that Brexit had failed.
In any case the French election will go a long way to determining if the new philosophy
of undoing all the constructs since WW11 is what the people want. it's starting to look like it
isn't. The losers are sure to cry that big finance and the press skewered the vote but it might
just be that the French are happy the way things are.
Emmanuel Macron will have to make a decisive move on Europe The most exciting promise of his candidacy is the agenda for eurozone reform
--Wolfgang Münchau Emmanuel Macron has a convincing lead in the polls, but a low turnout among his more reluctant
supporters could still produce a result too close for comfort.
The final round of the French presidential election on May 7 should not really be a contest.
Mr Macron has the backing of more or less the entire political establishment - from the left to
the centre-right. But events can intrude even in such a situation and already have. His decision
to celebrate his first-round victory in a smart brasserie in Paris's sixth arrondissement was
politically illiterate. During a visit to a Whirlpool factory in Amiens, northern France, Mr
Macron was upstaged by his opponent, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right National Front.
As a political campaigner she is in a different league. If she crushes him in Wednesday's television
debate, she might have a chance.
The problem with Mr Macron's agenda is that nobody really knows how he can make it work. The
role of the French president is powerful, but the fate of François Hollande should serve as a
cautionary tale of the limits of what a president can do. Mr Hollande's Socialists at least had
a majority in the National Assembly, the French parliament. It is not clear whether Mr Macron
will have a single MP after the legislative elections in June. Will he end up as a mere figurehead
- like the German president - whose job is to shake hands and give grand speeches? Or can he find
a way to force change?
Macron will be to France what Obama has been to the US.
Just like Obama's presidency made possible Trump's victory four years later, Macron's presidency
will make possible a Front National victory in five years.
Here's my prediction: five years from now, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen will win the presidential
elections.
sounds like the french will find in micro endless, magnificent diversion from the collapse
of their republic at the hands of his puppet masters the financiers. had he a religion at all
before choosing to become a catholic at 12? or just ambition?
The Chancellors of the French universities have asked their students to vote Macron.
(Link in French) Not a single Chancellor has asked students to vote Le Pen. The same can be
said of the French press. The media barrage in favor of Macron has been so one-sided, some Frenchmen call their country
jokingly "East Corea"
I find it difficult to hear people praising Le Pen who won't have to live under her presidency.
Let me remind you that Europe had more than its share of nationalist wars, and the last thing
the continent needs are governments adding fuel to the fire of existing tensions.
Macron is a puppet, but in the end he'll do what's necessary to stabilize things.
Le Pen might well blow things up and lead to civil war.
Truth be told, even if she hadn't much chance of winning, Le Pen could've hoped to go close to
45% if she had played it right and campaigned well. She totally blew it with an awful performance
in the debate, though, while Macron was probably a bit better than expected.
The most worrying bit is that voters who sided with Macron might feel compelled to give him a
majority in parliament, which is the key. Considering how human psychoology tends to work too
often, there will be a follower/commitment effect with some voters, who have crossed a line by
voting for him and will find it less abhorrent to back him again in the legislative elections.
If that happens, imho, it would mean France had just gone through a coup, and democracy is dead
there. The good news is that it means that sooner or later, bloody revolution will sweep the country
- but it might take time and, as most if not all revolutions, will probably not be thorough enough
in wiping out the ruling elites.
@33 smuks quote "Macron is a puppet, but in the end he'll do what's necessary to stabilize things."
there is stability and then there is stability.. if a house of cards needs to be held up - macron
is the man, lol..
Will people of France show that they are worthy their great sons like Voltaire and vote their
conscience or will they vote out of fear and intimidation?
That is the question.
I admit that French people or EU citizen may have totally different view of the French political
process from perspective of the details and particularities they are acutely aware of, than my
view from The US, by may be this very distance and emotionally cold judgment of outsider is needed
as well to have truly a big picture of what is going on.
I am not a supporter of Le Pen and hell no, not supporter of a "French Trump" Macron, Yes,
it is Macron in my opinion that is French Trump, a Flaccid Clown of Global Oligarchy while Le
Pen is slightly reversed Sanders as far as elements of political platform that matter for ordinary
people in France and the US.
None of them are politically radical in any shape or form, and definitely not Marine Le Pen
who just want to ask French people what to do since they never had really a chance to do so. Either
to support continuing pauperization of society and allowing for further collapse of French sovereignty
and cultural autonomy which is one of the pillars of European culture and western tradition and
hence retain status quo or reject it by demanding EU to return to its EEC roots and give up on
a superstate projects like Euro or banking unity/ECB. And that is the highest crime in Brussels
and hence she was set for at least metaphorical assassination of her character and her populist
appeal.
Brilliant move by Marine Le Pen was to campaign on her own more centrist platform and not be
obliged to follow strictly FN platform as a FN leader would have to follow.
In fact as Macron was first who shed his discrediting Socialist label as hated Hollande minister,
now Le Pen shed her FN right-wing and neo-fascist label to commence entirely new campaign as true
French populist and nationalist.
She already told French that they have a clear choice between neoliberal oligarchic rule of
globalists under a thieving investment banker or French people rule under populist leader liken
to de Gaulle.
Does she have a chance against unified block of French MSM media and Globalist media worldwide,
against slander, lies and fake news, against 95% of largest French press being against her? Not
likely, especial that as it was documented CIA has capabilities and used them to manipulate french
elections already in the past. But it is more complicated than that and Marine Le Pen is not Trump.
The real issue in these elections though will be how strong roots of sociopolitical/economic
dependency on EU imperial clique are in France and believe me they are strong.
Millions of French know or feel there are dependent of Brussels and will vote status-quo regardless
even of their suffering, threatened with supposedly worse alternative under Le Pen.
How strong such a calcifying paralysis may be was shown in Roman empire collapsing over two
centuries only because people supported status-quo in fear of change into unknown, even when the
world around them was collapsing.
But if Le Pen thinks she can do without a sort of "revolution" metaphorically breaking legs
and heads, she is not gonna get anywhere since the autocratic EU system is designed to prevent
popular upheavals and drastic changes to the EU imperial order of bureaucratic rule.
EU has all the money, power, courts and propaganda machine to derail Le Pen presidency without
another French revolution to defend it.
Even case of Brexit showed that EU turned from happy family of loving EU nations to a pool
of viscous brats, little puny weasels, exhibiting embarrassing insecure teenage hysteria, wanting
revenge and nursing their personal hurt feelings, pretending to be conducting supposedly rational
and serious international negotiations among formally at least, sovereign countries.
This Sunday we will know if in France once again fear prevailed over courage.
The Macron campaign identified the first tweet referring to the documents as coming
from the Twitter account of
Nathan Damigo , a far-right activist and convicted felon based in northern California.
Damigo is known on social media for punching a female anti-fascist in the face at a Berkeley
protest.
Melenchon is the one to listen to to understand the situation in France. While he didn't make
it into round two, he has a good chance of a large parliamentary victory in the round of elections
after the presidential one. He's been locked out of the English-language press in the U.S. and
Britain (he falls outside their narrow spectrum of acceptable political views) so you have to
read the French press (I use Google Translate) or watch his youtube (with subcaptions) channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsGkA4TXqyw
Melenchon is the only one who points out the realities (translate from Lemonde):
In order to combat mass immigration, which is mainly internal to developing countries, the
causes of migration must be tackled: the impossibility of any development in the countries
of departure, due to debts and Structural adjustment policies imposed by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank, the plundering of resources by multinationals and free
trade.
Here's Melenchon on Africa, LeMonde Feb 17:
"We are part of the political camp that was against colonialism and for the self-determination
of peoples. We know the misfortunes endured, but we consider that it is up to historians to
write history and not to politicians to instrumentalize it. It seems to us more urgent to fight
the scourge of ultraliberal predation that is falling on Africa."
"The best advantage that France can derive from it is the harmonious and successful development
of African societies. If we consider only the climatic risk, it is 250 million migrants whose
humanity will have to deal with by 2050. It is time to ensure a balanced development that does
not aggravate the state of the planet. But the condition for achieving this is to return Africa
to the Africans, to ensure national and popular sovereignty on the bases advocated by Thomas
Sankara or Patrice Lumumba." [Notably Lumumba was overthrown and killed in a CIA-supported
coup in 1961]
"The defense agreements, and in particular their secret clauses – which have the real objective
of controlling popular movements for the benefit of dictators – must be denounced by democratic
scrutiny by Parliament. In the event that some of these bases are maintained, military cooperation
can only be envisaged with democracies, with priority being given to the formation of an
independent national republican army."
Can you imagine any U.S. politician pledging to end military cooperation with Saudi Arabia
unless it converts to a democratic form of government? Maybe Tulsi Gabbard, I don't know.
Outside the fact most media pre-prepare their headlines for such occasions when time does not
allow for late information to be disseminated by normal publishing procedures, the Dewey / Truman
was marked by the media believing their own propaganda to the extent they became divorced from
reality. This recently has shown its tracks in the Clinton / Trump campaign with 'interesting
result' - the Russians did it! It also had effect in Brexit as well and may be at work in France,
though time will tell the better story there. Propaganda may be omnipotent in many ways, it certainly
isn't omniscient and predicting the future of things that haven't happened is notoriously difficult.
Whoever wins the French presidency can be helped or hobbled by other factors. Macron has no effective
political party in the French parliament, the fictional party he was supported by has no parliamentary
standing and is unlikely to obtain standing. M. Le Pen's party has been on the margins of the
French political spectrum but does have an identifiable political history that is evolving from
its origins. Of the two, the least likely to effect disastrous policy on the French public is
the FN of Le Pen, it is a known and does have knowledgable opposition to waywardness; not so Macron
who hasn't revealed who supports or funds his candidacy for the office. That would be the greatest
danger to the French Republic. About this time tomorrow, the electorate will have spoken.
The French still collect billions of whatever currency you want to use from their ex-African colonies.
An agreement for paying the French for leaving and for the "benefits of colonialism". It's a big
% of the French government budget - straight from the poorest countries on the planet. This is
why I hate France with all my heart.
Macron is an opportunist taking advantage of the break-down of trad. F politics.
With regards to FN's steady rise over decades, this really is well forecasted opportunism at
work here. Spot climate trending too far in one direction, find slogan like 'never le pen', install
manufactured centre left/right cardboard cutout.
And (as far as the west goes with it's super concentrated media power nearly running off one
script) it could nearly be cut and pasted into any race where one side strays too far from centre.
I'm sure there is a couple of seminars at Davos about it.
When far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen Marine made it through to the run-off
of the French presidential election on Sunday, some powerful people in the United States were
celebrating.
One is hoping to be celebrating in Paris tomorrow.
BTW: The dual nationals : French -Israeli may have to rethink in which country they would want
to live should Marine become Mme La Présidente ( she has said that she won't allow French
citizens to have Israeli passports )
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is [allegedly] the daughter of
Roger Auque:
Roger Auque died from brain cancer on September 8, 2014, at the age of 58. He revealed
in a book that was published posthumously in 2015 that he had been a Mossad agent.
. . . . .
In 1989, he is said to have fathered a child with Yann, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
This daughter, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, elected deputy in 2012, was born out of wedlock
and subsequently recognized by Yann's husband, Samuel Maréchal, a fact only revealed publicly
in 2013 in a book by Christine Clerc titled "Les Conquérantes."[6]
Mischi @ 48: Those Francophone African countries that are part of the West African and Central
African Franc currency zones were among the most enthusiastic backers of Colonel Muammar Gaddhafi's
pan-African "gold dinar" economic market. No wonder Nicolas Sarkozy signed onto the US no-fly
zone over Libya idiocy tout de suite in 2011.
In these times, it really shows how small influence people have, it is media and their
millionaire
candidate that have already fixed the election with their huge power. Quite sad.
@46 anon.. that macron leak story has legs! i like what some guy on twitter said - "Amazing that
the French government and media now stand as enemies of freedom of speech." who whudda thunk it?
lol... remind anyone of any other countries?
AKSA 8 The relative lack of power of France made me wonder the real reason why they led the NATO attack
on Libya. Was it the financial dealings between Sarkozy and Gaddhafi like some sites say or were
they really prodded by the US to lead the way of the overall game plan?
USA will win anyway. Macron and Dupont-Aignan (prime minister of Le Pen) was both member of the
program of "The Young Leaders : French-American Foundation France":
http://french-american.org/en/initiatives/young-leaders/
Its means neoliberalism, NATO and free finance.
Well well well... you know... its France... le pen's mother made nacked pictures for french playboy
when she divorced the father... another one is on x... just pawns.
The MSM are going to be embarassed with the leaks. On one side they keep referring to the Ruskies
and Trump, and on the other no one among the Western politicians has a B plan in case Trump continues
to wreck havoc (and he will).
Next week, he goes to KSA before Israel and since the Saudi prince said it would be 'historical'
we can bet KSA will announce the recognizance of Israel
Then step 2 will be to say Syria and Iran: you recognize or we turn you to Somalia.
And where will Junker, Hollande, Macron and co go then?
even Wikileaks says the metadata is full of cyrillic. clumsiness or the will to point towards
the usual culprits?
not sure if Hollande has really turned into a Machiavel but that sounds like him
More broadly, the U.S. should reconsider whether blindly supporting the EU is in America's
best interests. The EU is a supranational organization that infringes on national sovereignty.
It prevents the creation of genuine transatlantic free trade areas, harms transatlantic security,
distorts European immigration policies, and wastes taxpayer money.
jfl @ 30. Something like that yes! - no religion afaik before 12 yrs. (Macron.)
jen wrote: "What's the possibility that le Pen will receive a large proportion of her votes
from people who would vote for anyone who looks like a winner, regardless of political and ideological
affiliations, simply to stop Macron from winning?"
MLP will not attract votes as 'the winner' as it is known that she is, and probably always
will be - a loser. Yet, some Mélenchon - Fillon, 'other' voters, who are rabidly against Macron,
will vote Le Pen. The anti-Macron crowd was discussing voting MLP/abstention/nul vote to death
on boards, and some said, heh go for MLP.
My prediction was that the outcome would be closer to 70-30 than 60-40, in favor of Macron;
for sure MLP will pick up some anti-M voters, not enough though imho to change that prediction,
but who knows, trivial details, no matter.
More seriously.. It is generally assumed, or put forward, that Le Pen voters are the poor,
the unemployed, the ugly racists, etc. - see Trump and Brexit. While the correlation with region/unemployment
is high (as in GB and rust-belt US), for the rest it doesn't hold.
The poor - those under the poverty line or severely disadvantaged, vote exactly the same as
the national average, that is, not more for the FN, Le Pen, or FN candidates. (no link..)
Le Pen's *presumed electorate* in the worker category, i.e. low-paid private-sector
employees (factories, supermarkets, services, small biz, agri, etc.; *State* personnel votes socialist)
is imho made up of roughly 3 equal parts.
Le Pen voters, who decry globalisation, foreignors, terrorists, muslims, etc. / the remnants
of the left (socialist - Trotskyist - add anarchist - ..), who voted Mélenchon or not at all /
those who are 'foreign' - outcasts in any case - and thus can't rally to Le Pen or to anyone..
and just keep their heads down.
The divide-to-rule strategy has worked perfectly on these workers. In two factories I know
of, the 3 different groups don't speak to each other, except as routine politeness / ugly jokes
small skirmish etc., as they are all in the same boat, subject to the same oppressive rules, etc.
though some contacts/friendships cross these lines.
Marine is not pro-worker, and 2/3 ppl working one or two jobs of that type or those wanting
to actually GET a job like that are aware. The last third grabs an opportunity to make noise,
be heard, posture, play some kind of role, etc.
Listening to NPR spreading their propaganda about French elections made me want to vomit.
Are the majority of western folks really as stupid as they seem to be? Judging by the crap people
post on Facebook I'd say yes. The more "educated" a person is the more likely they are to believe
the lies.
Started watching 500 Nations
about Europeans 'discovering' the Americas and all the brutality that came from it... had
to turn it off because it isn't the sort of program a person wants to watch right before bed (unless
one likes horror tales before sleep)
All Spanish, English, French, South American, Central American and North American people should
be required to watch it and contemplate our future based on this terrible past. Brutal thugs is
what most of our supposed 'hero/discoverers' were, just like now.
We continue to repeat the past, doing the same stupid crap that brought us to this moment in
time when we have the ability to wipe our species off the face of the planet (as well as most
other too). Will we continue on the road to mutually assured destruction, or will we try something
new?
As for the farce in France... I think Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com has a good grasp
of what the elite are trying to do. He has a series of articles postulating what he believes is
the long game of the bankers and other wealthy feces, mostly using Trump as the example of how
nationalist/conservatives are being set-up for a big fall. Interesting point of view that I find
rather rational considering all the craziness taking place.
Every nation in Europe and the USA have at least 25-30% nativist, nationalist, (name of country
here)-first voters. Trump managed to take advantage of a nearly dysfunctional electoral system,
a fawning, celebrity-obsessed media and a highly disliked opposition candidate to gain enough
popular votes to win. Other systems are not as dysfunctional, nor are their media as useless,
but they will remain a presence on the political landscape, ready to exploit any weaknesses they
can use to their advantage.
Everybody expected Le Pen to be much stronger than Macron for the debate on Wednesday. Instead,
she made a fool of herself and certainly lost a number of her own voters. check "Macron Le Pen
débat" on google you will probably find videos. the image and sounds should be enough without
need of subtitles.
Really? Asking the question of what will be the long term result of elections within the bailiwick
of the western plutocracy? I believe it is long past the time of crystal ball gazing and time
to grow up and face the reality of the situation. Any political entity that is not issuing from
a grassroots spontaneous popular grievance is completely suspect. When any of these candidates
can have a million or more people accompany them as they march on the plutocracy's seat of power
at the site of government and more importantly the site of their central banks then I will believe
their message that they mean to clean house and usher in the necessary changes needed. Otherwise
we must assume that an illusion is being presented as a deception to bestow legitimacy, via false
democratic institutions, on an illegitimate system of plutocratic rule conducted with a carrot
and stick structure that permeates all levels of civil society.
The EU is drawing up a tax haven blacklist, due to be finalized by the end of 2017, with the
intention of preventing money from being diverted to avoid taxation. It is also compiling a
list sanctions it will take against any country or jurisdiction that ends up on the EU tax
haven blacklist.
I think the between nation comparison of platforms shows, except for the individuals named to
play the role of candidate, in each of the respective countries, the role of the candidates is
the same, to carry out "allowed policy". Further, the "allowed policy" seems nearly always the
same in all of the Republic nations. Some-how the "allowed policies" are being established globally
and mandated locally?
I n America, American Voters in the USA elections, are allowed to elect by majority vote,
either of two persons(for each position); but the between candidate platforms, boil down to the
same side of two identical coins. Those elected are paid a salary to operate the USA for the benefit
of, and "according to" the "allowed policy" established by, those in control of the national policy.
The French election is not about choice of platforms, but instead, the French election is
about choice of persons to be paid to execute the allowed platforms. The range of choices in the
French election.. and in republics throughout the world, has been and is, limited to candidates
who subscribe to "allowed platforms". It is clear to me, the policies the candidates will be paid,
if elected, to execute are, all the same in every Republic, around the globe.
Candidate A or Candidate B may seem to be a choice: but either, if elected, will be obligated
to execute only the "allowed platforms" established by those in control of these Republics. Candidates
seeking to present non-allowed platforms, are nearly always silenced and defeated. Example: the
policy allowed by the hidden powers is that the target nation, is slated to go to war. That "go
to war" policy may or may not be articulated by the viable person candidates, but the election
is not about whether or not "perpetual war should be the policy of the nation" instead the election
is about which candidate should be paid to operate the war time government in accord to "globally
determined, locally allowed policy".
On election day citizens may choose; but if they don't, make a choice on election day, the
choice of elected persons will be made for them; either way the winning candidate is obligated
to execute only the "allowed policy".
Maybe it would be useful to concentrate discussions, not to the person of the candidates, but
to "allowed policy", such person candidates, if elected, will be obligated to accord with, when
talking about national elections.
Politics is always a 'house of cards'. A political/ societal system exists as long as most
everyone believes in its legitimacy; once this is no longer the case, it can rapidly disintegrate.
And don't say 'things can't get worse', they definitely can - would you prefer living in a delicate
'house of cards' or in a civil war?
@somebody 70
Exactly. There is no more profits/ capital yield under stable conditions ('new normal'), so
let's create a huge crisis to reap the benefits. It's strange how many people hate the 'deep state'
in their own country, yet wilfully support its agenda in other parts of the world.
@jfl 72
It's not a question of belief, but of analysing what's actually going on. Don't let prejudice
get in the way of a rational view. It's still a long way to go, but there are important first
and second steps. What do you think why the right-wing (=pro-capital) media is so anti-EU?
The title is misleading (typical with France Culture) what the journalist says is that no actual
figures exist for the expenses of each ministries. She had been trying to find the figures dealing
with the decrease of subsidies for culture in the last 5 years and could not get a single document
from the gov. When you start the famous ENA school, the first thing you are told is that all the
number are fakes. The journalist of this piece i linked to ends up her paper saying that in the
end, discussing the few figures mentioned here and there without any support by the officials
is equivalent to spreading fake news.
None of it makes sense, yet everyone laps it up like mother's milk. This is the 1st of these
leaks to have obvious forgeries in it.
The release date makes no sense, there appears to be nothing damaging in it, the speed at
which the trusties found the Cyrillic metadata says they were looking for it / told where to
look / not looking for damaging material.
The sheer scale of the breach from what must be the closely monitored mail server in political
history.
None of it adds up if you look at it with an open mind. This is dangerous slavish behavior
from infosec, the media and public. If you will swallow this hook, line & sinker then your
parliaments need more fire extinguishers
Everything is based on two enormous falacies.
1. That all the evils in western society are the fault of the external bogeyman. Putin,
ISIS Refugees, Asian footwear makers, whatever. That the Trumps, Le Pens, Farages are
not a native virus.
2. Is that your services & politicians Would never pull a false leak or a controlled
leak or a limited hangout. That they are angels that sit on their hands.
These two underpin the absolute lunacy we have seen unfold before our eyes. An extraordinarily
dangerous situation to be in which is getting worse fast.
"You can flood these [phishing] addresses with multiple passwords and log-ins, true ones, false
ones, so the people behind them use up a lot of time trying to figure them out," Mounir Mahjoubi,
the head of Macron's digital team, told The Daily Beast for its earlier article on this subject.
In the end, whoever made the dump may not have known what is real and what is false, which
would explain in part the odd timing. After the disruptive revelations of the Democratic National
Committee hacks in the United States, the public is conditioned to think that if there's a
document dump like this, it has to be incriminating. By putting it out just before the news
blackout, when Macron cannot respond in detail, the dump becomes both the medium and the message.
...
>> The relative lack of power of France
>> wonder the real reason why they
>> led the NATO attack on Libya.
Because they were the only unit Oceania could field safely at the time without potentially
undermining its political regime.
"War weary" populations oppose overt war. (When populations oppose more overt war, regimes
start or continue wars un-overtly.) Sizable percentages of the populations in the rest of NATO
realized they'd been conned. What would be the domestic reaction if those NATO countries "led"
another effort against an "enemy" generally considered even less dangerous than the prior one
(whom the populations learned wasn't a threat)?
In contrast, because France didn't join in on the most recent invasion of Iraq, their population
was not as "war weary" and thus did not protest/oppose overt war.
>> Was it the financial dealings between
>> Sarkozy and Gaddhafi like some sites say
What do they say? Heard that G gave money to S's campaign. I didn't read anything into that
other than "another example of why never again to trust or give money to a politician".
>> or were they really prodded by the US to
>> lead the way of the overall game plan?
Think about "the dogs that did not bark".
What do EU leaders do in response to allegations of being bugged? They blame Eurasia for interfering
with elections! That tells me Oceania is their master.
Everyone backed the wrong horse. Instead of pushing for JL Melenchon who's also a non-interventionist
on foreign policy from the very beginning as opposed to the unpopular candidate of Sarkozy's party,
F. Fillon, and then the Islamophobe Le Pen, you'all had to back Le Pen who had no chance in hell
of winning because she scared not only Muslims but many on the Left.
So now the result is this - more of the same shit. Ugh.
Emmanuel Macron victory speech praising 5-years François Hollande's regime.
Good luck good ridden!
exiled off mainstreet | May 7, 2017 3:21:46 PM |
106
It is unfortunate that the propaganda globalist state now appears unassailable. How anyone of
intelligence could support such a fascist empty suit carrying his baggage is beyond me, unless
propaganda received wisdom has reached such a level. I agree that it would have been better if
Melenchon or Fillon had been the opponent, since Le Pen carries the baggage of her family inheritance.
It seems to me that an undoubted status of being part of a present day fascist structure is
more relevant than having an inheritance of collaboration with a prior regime a lifetime ago.
It is also obvious that Le Pen's positions were in the interest of the French people rather than
the unelected international power structure. I see little future for anything after this result.
I wonder when Israel will start sweating. The idea is to make the use of lethal force against
Muslims acceptable in the NATO countries with mass influx of them that will not assimilate but
go to war on their host one way or another. Good plan but...
Plans could go awry as there is a real danger of a Sharia Europe if they forgotten how to be
a barbarian.
the media in unison crowing over the result of course. Was at a lunch today and all the obedient
little Europhiles there watching the media talking heads were delighted.
I'm not even a Le Pen supporter in particular but merely by questioning Macron's agenda, where
he came from, etc, I was met with mock Nazi salutes and snide remarks. The ideologues amongst
the middle classes who back the EU/Globalist project are genuine fanatics, I can see it with my
own eyes with every passing week. They won't accept any counter arguments or dissenting voices.
They refuse to think critically but merely rehash whatever the Guardian, New York Times or BBC
say. The level of pro-Brussels tribalism is astonishing, even as someone who has grown up with
and befriended many of these people down the years. One day their bubble will burst though but
unlike them I'll have the good grace to smile inside and whisper "I told you so" under my breath.
Indeed, these people are brainwashed, they have no idea whats going on in the world, just watching
msm and like you say you cant debate with people like these. The worst is that the left is the
most brainwashed by this liberal right-wing propaganda. Thats why leftists parties are so weak
today.
I know that France attempts to rigorously regulate "their" French language, so I presume that
the Académie française prohibits the importation of the US colloquial term "sheeple".
So we won't see any French newspapers or websites proudly proclaiming " La Sheeple Ont Parlé!
"
This is an utterly predictable, even routine tragicomedy. But I must post this to give credit
to an expatriate relative I'll call "Joe"; Joe lives in France, and has proved to be a prophet.
Last year, when Joe visited the US, we were discussing the US presidential campaign and
Bernie Sanders. Joe and I agreed that the West is experiencing a general political meltdown. Joe
then went on to describe the default pattern that EU elections follow:
1) The prospective candidates are inevitably the "Usual Suspects", i.e. centrist/moderate
careerist technocrats, the odd "maverick" or two with limited, cultlike support-- and The Extremist
(s).
2) The Establishment power elite, institutions, and complicit mass-media begin an orchestrated
howling: "Anybody But [insert Extremist du jour here]!"
3) The "Anybody But!" coalition throws massive resources into a public relations campaign
to generate mass hysterical fear at the prospect that The Extremist may win and lead the nation
straight to Hell.
4) The terrified, confused, hysterical, panic-stricken public accordingly falls in line
and elects the favorite centrist/moderate careerist technocrat who will perpetuate the neoliberal
status quo.
5) The Establishment power elite and its mass-media megaphone will effusively praise the
inconquerable wisdom and good sense of The People in once again Saving the Republic by rejecting
a dangerous Extremist.
________________________________________________
At the time, Joe offered this scenario to explain why Bernie Sanders wouldn't be allowed to
succeed. As it turned out, there are many reasons why the US debacle didn't precisely conform
to this pattern.
But Joe's description perfectly fits what's happened in France.
The French elections are also the end of the post-world war 2 world order. Until now, the elections
were left against right, socialists against conservatives.
In these elections both socialists and conservatives lost out. Now it's nationalism against
globalisation.
So Macron 65%, and Le Pen has already conceded. Campaign well run. Macron is a shark (report
from the family), not a victim of the banksters. He followed May's strategy in UK of staying quiet
till elected. Future policy: not merely a bankster, but also the son of a conservative family
of doctors from Amiens. So not a pure neo-liberal, as has been suggested, but someone who is forced
by his family background to take their point of view into account.
The prospect is not too bad. Other than in foreign policy, where he has declared himself
against the Asad regime in Syria. I don't take that too seriously. Once in power, he may discover
what is implied in attacking Asad, that is war against Russia, and he may hesitate.
"The worst is that the left is the most brainwashed by this liberal right-wing propaganda.
Thats why leftists parties are so weak today."
couldn't have put it better. As many have commented on, the notion of left vs right is dying.
In Europe it has morphed into something akin to pro-EU vs pro-nation state. The levels of cognitive
dissonance from people of the traditional left is truly astonishing.
I am French. Macron won because of an unprecedented media onslaught that led 25% of voters
who don't know their heads for their a... to vote for him in the first round, while the media
had blocked anyone but Macron and Le Pen from getting to the second round. That's because they
know that people would elect a head of lettuce if that head of lettuce was running against Le
Pen.
There is a very good interview of a French liberal (as in "proponent of free-market rather
than big State". Americans would call him "a libertarian"), Charles Gave, who gives a clear vision
of the whole shebang, and of why this could be getting out of control in the near future.
You see, the US only stopped major civil war kind of s... because Trump won, which disarmed
the anger of the disenfranchised masses. Unfortunately, in France, Emmanuel Clinton won. And the
French extreme left wing, who hates Macron's guts, can be dangerous. I mean, physically
dangerous. Other clear-headed observers than Gave are already mumbling words like "barricades"
and "civil war".
@90, smuks, 'It's not a question of belief, but of analysing what's actually going on. ...'
righto ... you offer an assertion with zero analysis. meanwhile the rothschilds guy is president
of france. superficial analysis, sure, but hard to walk around. or is big finance our friend?
seems to be yours.
the parallels between obama and micro seem very strong ... someone linked elsewhere - on
the open thread - to a biography of obama that had him making decisions with an eye to future
"political showbiz" career at an early age.
the 'destiny' of the 'political' showbiz - class seems now to be to surf the waves of financial
power, all pretense to politics long gone. probably always thus, to a great extent. but with the
need for real politics so striking now - the disaster to be had for relying on autopilot more
apparent than ever - so too is the self-centeredness of the showbiz personalities.
@119 Psychohistorian: the other way around. High turnout compared to your average election in
Western democracies, moderate turnout for France. Macron still got more than 40% of all possible
voters' approval.
Which leads me to:
@117 Lea: If Macron manages to trick the French fools again and his non-existing party actually gets
a majority in parliament, I expect things to go South before his first mandate is over. As
in major demonstrations. And unlike Nick, I'll make my best to remind to all my acquaintances
who voted Macron by default / because their friends/significant others were brainwashed idiots
who would've killed them otherwise that they did vote for the guy and are to be blamed for that
shit. I want all those who voted for him without considering him worthy of the office and despite
considering his opinions as utter shit to actually hate themselves for what they've just done,
and then to hate him for what they did. And I mean *hate*, not dislike.
I'm also not sure it's hardcore leftists who would go the farthest in violence; antifas and
similar groups mostly seem to focus on soft targets and heavily outnumbered cops. FN guys are
just as tough and desiring violence, they just don't dare to risk it now considering how everyone
else suspects them of being closer fascists; and the longer they're kept out of any significant
power, the closer they'll come to giving in to violence.
" ...PARIS (Sputnik) - A total of 4.2 million of French voters cast empty ballots in
the presidential run-off on Synday, a survey conducted by Ispos and Sopra Steria said ....8.9
percent of the total of 47.6 million voters cast empty ballots, refusing to give their support
to either of the candidates."
Kind of a new French Trump with Goldman Sachs flavor -- the person who never hold a
political office. this is a configuration the neoliberalism is still strong and can
counterattack and win. In this sense French election are somewhat similar to Argentinean elections.
Notable quotes:
"... It was globalization against nationalism. ..."
"... Emmanuel Macron, the centrist who has never held elected office, won because he was the beneficiary of a uniquely French historic and cultural legacy ..."
The French presidential runoff transcended national politics. It was globalization against
nationalism. It was the future versus the past. Open versus closed.
But in his resounding victory on Sunday night, Emmanuel Macron, the centrist who has never
held elected office, won because he was the beneficiary of a uniquely French historic and
cultural legacy, where many voters wanted change but were appalled at the type of populist
anger that had upturned politics in Britain and the United States. He trounced the far-right
candidate Marine Le Pen, keeping her well under 40 percent, even as her aides said before the
vote that anything below that figure would be considered a failure.
His victory quickly brought joy from Europe's political establishment, especially since a Le
Pen victory would have plunged the European Union into crisis. But in the end, Mr. Macron, only
39, a former investment banker and an uninspired campaigner, won because of luck, an unexpected
demonstration of political skill, and the ingrained fears and contempt that a majority of French
still feel toward Ms. Le Pen and her party, the National Front.
... ... ...
But he also played his limited hand with great skill from the beginning, outmaneuvering his
elders. First, he wisely renounced the man who had given him his break, the deeply unpopular
Socialist president François Hollande, quitting his post as economy minister in Mr. Hollande's
government before it was too late. Then, he refused to take part in the Socialist Party primary
in January, rightly judging that party activists would dominate and choose a far-left candidate
on the fringes, who would then be devoured by Mr. Mélenchon - exactly what happened.
Mr. Macron's final correct bet was that French voters, like those elsewhere, were disgusted by
the mainstream parties, having judged the policy prescriptions of both the establishment right
and left as failures in dealing with France's multiple ills. He positioned himself in the center,
drawing on left and right, balancing protection of the French welfare state with mild
encouragement for business, in an attempt to break through France's employment and productivity
stagnation.
But Mr. Macron's pro-market views stirred much opposition. Mr. Mélenchon not only refused to
endorse him, but also encouraged the idea that Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen were equivalent menaces
- a calculation endorsed by many far-left voters. Nearly half the first-round electorate voted
for candidates hostile to the free market and to capitalism. Even if they voted for Mr. Macron on
Sunday to save the country from Ms. Le Pen, they did so without enthusiasm.
Some of the antipathy sprang from his hermetic persona, as a caricature of the elite-educated,
know-it-all technocrats, perpetually encased in a dark suit, who have guided France for much its
postwar history, usually from behind the scenes, and whose record is mixed.
"He's not someone I feel a lot of conviction for," said Thomas Goldschmidt, a 26-year-old
architectural firm employee in Paris who voted for Mr. Macron after supporting the Socialist
Benoît Hamon in the first round. "He's someone who raises a lot of questions. It's a vision of
society that is too business-friendly," Mr. Goldschmidt said. "It's this whole idea of making
working life more uncertain. We just can't bet on it, that everyone out there can be an
entrepreneur. Society isn't built like that."
... ... ...
The National Front could win as many as 100 seats in the new Parliament, according to some
analyses, making it a formidable opposition party. Indeed, even as Ms. Le Pen was soundly
defeated on Sunday, she still managed a showing that not too long ago would have been
unthinkable. And in her concession, she made it clear that she was already looking toward the
parliamentary elections, and the future.
Then there is the potential opposition represented by Mr. Mélenchon, who won in some of
France's biggest cities - Marseilles, Toulouse and Lille - and is already claiming the mantle of
Mr. Macron's principal opponent on the left. His voters, as much as Ms. Le Pen's, do not trust
Mr. Macron.
"... This is why all the economic populists will inevitably be labelled right-wing. The 'left' is incapable of dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism, because the most effective tool of neoliberalism, mass immgration, is now held as utterly sacrosanct by them. ..."
"... The modern 'left' is totally anti-working class in every dimension. Only they do adore welfare as a form of charity to dull the effects of mass migration (Though it is likely now more an accelerant of it) and corporatists are fine with it because they pay less from tax increases than they make in outsourcing and insourcing. ..."
"... And the modern left is like this because it is so thoroughly middle class, there are so many reasons for this, but the reality is what it is. So they get confused and ponder why the working class is 'voting against it's own interests'. ..."
"... The part that irks me the most is their disdain for native working class for various, often exaggerated, PC defects and then praise newcomers who have even worse pathologies. Maybe they don't recognise it, but they hate the native working class because they are of their society and thus a threat whereas outsiders can be safely brought in like strike breakers. (They think) ..."
Introduction: Every day in unimaginable ways, prominent leaders from the left and the right,
from bankers to Parisian intellectuals, are fabricating stories and pushing slogans that denigrate
presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
They obfuscate her program, substituting the label 'extremist' for her pro-working class and anti-imperialist
commitment. Fear and envy over the fact that a new leader heads a popular movement has seeped into
Emmanuel "Manny" Macron's champagne-soaked dinner parties. He has good reason to be afraid: Le Pen
addresses the fundamental interests of the vast- majority of French workers, farmers, public employees,
unemployed and underemployed youth and older workers approaching retirement.
The mass media, political class and judicial as well as street provocateurs savagely assault Le
Pen, distorting her domestic and foreign policies. They are incensed that Le Pen pledges to remove
France from NATO's integrated command – effectively ending its commitment to US directed global wars.
Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have enriched
bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum over the
EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and, instead, increase
trade. She will end France's intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran and Palestine.
Le Pen is committed to Keynesian demand-driven industrial revitalization as opposed to Emmanuel
Macron's ultra-neoliberal supply-side agenda.
Le Pen's program will raise taxes on banks and financial transactions while fining capital flight
in order to continue funding France's retirement age of 62 for women and 65 for men, keeping the
35 hour work-week, and providing tax free overtime pay. She promises direct state intervention to
prevent factories from relocating to low wage EU economies and firing French workers.
Le Pen is committed to increasing public spending for childcare and for the poor and disabled.
She has pledged to protect French farmers against subsidized, cheap imports.
Marine Le Pen supports abortion rights and gay rights. She opposes the death penalty. She promises
to cut taxes by 10% for low-wage workers. Marine is committed to fighting against sexism and for
equal pay for women.
Marine Le Pen will reduce migration to ten thousand people and crack down on immigrants with links
to terrorists.
Emmanuel Macron: Macro Billionaire and Micro Worker Programs
Macron has been an investment banker serving the Rothschild and Cie Banque oligarchy, which profited
from speculation and the pillage of the public treasury. Macron served in President Hollande's Economy
Ministry, in charge of 'Industry and Digital Affairs' from 2014 through 2016. This was when the 'Socialist'
Hollande imposed a pro-business agenda, which included a 40 billion-euro tax cut for the rich.
Macron is tied to the Republican Party and its allied banking and business Confederations, whose
demands include: raising the retirement age, reducing social spending, firing tens of thousands of
public employees and facilitating the outflow of capital and the inflow of cheap imports.
Macron is an unconditional supporter of NATO and the Pentagon. He fully supports the European
Union. For their part, the EU oligarchs are thrilled with Macron's embrace of greater austerity for
French workers, while the generals can expect total material support for the ongoing and future US-NATO
wars on three continents.
Propaganda, Labels and Lies
Macron's pro-war, anti-working class and 'supply-side' economic policies leave us with only one
conclusion: Marine Le Pen is the only candidate of the left. Her program and commitments are pro-labor,
not 'hard' or 'far' right – and certainly not 'fascist'.
Macron, on the other hand is a committed rightwing extremist, certainly no 'centrist', as the
media and the political elite claim! One has only to look at his background in banking, his current
supporters among the oligarchs and his ministerial policies when he served Francois Holland.
The 'Macronistas' have accused Marine Le Pen of extreme 'nationalism', 'fascism', 'anti-Semitism'
and 'anti-immigrant racism'. 'The French Left', or what remains of it, has blindly swallowed the
oligarchs' campaign against Le Pen despite the malodorous source of these libels.
Le Pen is above all a 'sovereigntist': 'France First'. Her fight is against the Brussels oligarchs
and for the restoration of sovereignty to the French people. There is an infinite irony in labeling
the fight against imperial political power as 'hard right'. It is insulting to debase popular demands
for domestic democratic power over basic economic policies, fiscal spending, incomes and prices policies,
budgets and deficits as 'extremist and far right'.
Marine Le Pen has systematically transformed the leadership, social, economic program and direction
of the National Front Party.
She expelled its anti-Semites, including her own father! She transformed its policy on women's
rights, abortion, gays and race. She won the support of young unemployed and employed factory workers,
public employees and farmers. Young workers are three times more likely to support her national industrial
revitalization program over Macron's 'free market dogma'. Le Pen has drawn support from French farmers
as well as the downwardly mobile provincial middle-class, shopkeepers, clerks and tourism-based workers
and business owners.
Despite the trends among the French masses against the oligarchs, academics, intellectuals and
political journalists have aped the elite's slander against Le Pen because they will not antagonize
the prestigious media and their administrators in the universities. They will not acknowledge the
profound changes that have occurred within the National Front under Marine Le Pen. They are masters
of the 'double discourse' – speaking from the left while working with the right. They confuse the
lesser evil with the greater evil.
If Macron wins this election (and nothing is guaranteed!), he will certainly implement his 'hard'
and 'extreme' neo-liberal agenda. When the French workers go on strike and demonstrators erect barricades
in the streets in response to Macron's austerity, the fake-left will bleat out their inconsequential
'critique' of 'impure reason'. They will claim that they were right all along.
If Le Pen loses this election, Macron will impose his program and ignite popular fury. Marine
will make an even stronger candidate in the next election if the French oligarchs' judiciary does
not imprison her for the crime of defending sovereignty and social justice.
This is why all the economic populists will inevitably be labelled right-wing. The 'left'
is incapable of dealing with the crisis of neoliberalism, because the most effective tool of neoliberalism,
mass immgration, is now held as utterly sacrosanct by them. Thus any salves by the 'left'
or 'far-left' (Hi Syriza and your blanket amnesty of illegal immigrants at a time of 40% unemployment
in Greece!) will be temporary at best. No amount of welfare will make up for increased unemployment,
lowered wages, a lack of housing, a lack of affordable family foundation and ethnic displacement.
It makes me sick when I see so-called socialists making energetic campaigns to stop failed asylum
seekers being deported.
The modern 'left' is totally anti-working class in every dimension. Only they do adore
welfare as a form of charity to dull the effects of mass migration (Though it is likely now more
an accelerant of it) and corporatists are fine with it because they pay less from tax increases
than they make in outsourcing and insourcing.
And the modern left is like this because it is so thoroughly middle class, there are so
many reasons for this, but the reality is what it is. So they get confused and ponder why the
working class is 'voting against it's own interests'. It's painful to watch. One's ethnic
group having a majority and centrality in it's homeland is the most valuable thing imaginable.
The wealthy whites who sneer pay an exorbitant tax to insulate their children and raise them among
their own kind, but don't ever seem to realise.
The part that irks me the most is their disdain for native working class for various, often
exaggerated, PC defects and then praise newcomers who have even worse pathologies. Maybe they
don't recognise it, but they hate the native working class because they are of their society and
thus a threat whereas outsiders can be safely brought in like strike breakers. (They think)
Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after seeing this short
video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting World War III with
Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and then asking for a comment:
The antisemitism of old Le Pen was just two statements:
the gas chambers are just a footnote in history
the German occupation was relatively benign.
Both statements are objectively true.
Le Pen's crime is denying the unique holocaust.
He's not the only one, a USA Indian has the same view
Ward Churchill, 'A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the
Present', San Francisco 1997
Ward Churchill, a professor of Boulder university, also fell into disgrace.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
@Carlton Meyer Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after
seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting
World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and
then asking for a comment:
@Carlton Meyer Like most Americans, I knew little about Le Pen, but became an admirer after
seeing this short video clip of her crushing CNN's famous neocon Christiane Amanpour promoting
World War III with Russia. Note Amanpour's propaganda technique of proclaiming falsehoods and
then asking for a comment:
The big issue is why Le Pen's popularity seems to have tanked, even though opinion polls suggest
most French people support immigration restrictionism.
The usual explanation is MSM brainwashing, which no doubt plays a part, but if people are so
easily influenced by the media, why haven't they been brainwashed into supporting more immigration?
In my personal experience, people say they won't vote for nationalist candidates like Le Pen
for two reasons:
1. they're dejected working class people who distrust all politicians (including nationalists)
and can't be persuaded to turn up and vote
2. they're cautious middle-class people who want less immigration but are afraid politically
inexperienced outsiders will mess up the economy and social services.
"Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have
enriched bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum
over the EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and,
instead, increase trade. She will end France's intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran
and Palestine."
Do you remember anybody from recent history who also made similar lofty promises, but found
himself neutered by invisible rulers?
France (that hypocrite nation) is a proud part of the western civilisation, which thrives on
hegemony. So, LePen-the-cursed will not do anything to change that fundamental world order. Therein
lies the rub.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
True but misleading. Most of those deaths were due to accidentally introduced diseases. North
America, in particular, was largely emptied out by waves of new diseases that struck down tribes
that had never seen or heard of the white man.
Yes, there was some fighting, though much of it was factional rather than racial - eg, the
abused slaves of the Aztecs sided with the Spaniards for good reason . the Spaniards, at least,
weren't cannibals (except in the transubstantiational sense.) Yes, there were a few cases where
- after the vast accidental wipeout - whites noticed the disease vulnerability of the natives
and intentionally exploited it (smallpox tainted blankets).
But even if none of the deliberate massacres had been done, the demographics wouldn't look
much different - a Europe teeming with starving peasants simply wasn't going to stay put while
the recently-emptied North America sat mostly idle. Nature abhors a vacuum and adverse-possession
laws exist for a reason.
Today, of course, whites in Europe and America contracept themselves to extinction and then
bitch and moan about Moslem and Mexican invasion . silly people. At least the American Indians
didn't do it to themselves.
@Z-man Amanpour isn't a Neocon, per say, as she isn't genetically a Jew. However since she
married and had an offspring with a Jew and from this interview's tone she now qualifies. lol
She is also a beast to look at or listen to. (Grin)
@jilles dykstra The antisemitism of old Le Pen was just two statements:
- the gas chambers are just a footnote in history
- the German occupation was relatively benign.
Both statements are objectively true.
Le Pen's crime is denying the unique holocaust.
He's not the only one, a USA Indian has the same view
Ward Churchill, 'A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the
Present', San Francisco 1997
Ward Churchill, a professor of Boulder university, also fell into disgrace.
Estimates of how many Indians died as a result of the coming of white man go to 100 million.
@unpc downunder The big issue is why Le Pen's popularity seems to have tanked, even though
opinion polls suggest most French people support immigration restrictionism.
The usual explanation is MSM brainwashing, which no doubt plays a part, but if people are so
easily influenced by the media, why haven't they been brainwashed into supporting more immigration?
In my personal experience, people say they won't vote for nationalist candidates like Le Pen
for two reasons:
1. they're dejected working class people who distrust all politicians (including nationalists)
and can't be persuaded to turn up and vote
2. they're cautious middle-class people who want less immigration but are afraid politically
inexperienced outsiders will mess up the economy and social services.
Readers might like to know that Davis Sloan Wilson is a fervent champion
of the importance of group selection in evolution, a possible mechanism
(differential survival among groups, distinct in genetically-based
socially-mediated characters) often deployed as an 'explanation' for
altruistic behaviours. He also sees an understanding of group selection as
crucial to the solution of myriad human social ills: "Evolutionary science,"
Wilson argues, "will eventually prove so useful on a daily basis that we
will wonder how we survived without it. I'm here to make that day come
sooner rather than later, starting with my own city of Binghamton [NY]."
After decades of effort, he has so far failed to make many converts, and
the prevailing view is that, while group selection is indeed a mechanism
that might possibly operate in some circumstances, those circumstances are
generally very limited in most organisms, and, moreover, the strength of
group selection will almost always be much lower than that operating among
individuals. As Jerry Coyne put it in a commentary on Wilson's
"Neighbourhood Project" in the NYT: "Group selection isn't widely accepted
by evolutionists for several reasons. First, it's not an efficient way to
select for traits, like altruistic behavior, that are supposed to be
detrimental to the individual but good for the group. Groups divide to form
other groups much less often than organisms reproduce to form other
organisms, so group selection for altruism would be unlikely to override the
tendency of each group to quickly lose its altruists through natural
selection favoring cheaters. Further, little evidence exists that selection
on groups has promoted the evolution of any trait. Finally, other, more
plausible evolutionary forces, like direct selection on individuals for
reciprocal support, could have made humans prosocial." see
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/books/review/the-neighborhood-project-by-david-sloan-wilson-book-review.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
"... [Neo]liberalism that needs monsters to destroy can never politically engage with its enemies. It can never understand those enemies as political actors, making calculations, taking advantage of opportunities, and responding to constraints. It can never see in those enemies anything other than a black hole of motivation, a cesspool where reason goes to die. ..."
"... Hence the refusal of empathy for Trump's supporters. Insofar as it marks a demand that we not abandon antiracist principle and practice for the sake of winning over a mythicized white working class, the refusal is unimpeachable. ..."
"... Such a [neo]liberalism becomes dependent on the very thing it opposes, with a tepid mix of neoliberal markets and multicultural morals getting much-needed spice from a terrifying right. Hillary Clinton ran hard on the threat of Trump, as if his presence were enough to authorize her presidency. ..."
"... Clinton waged this campaign on the belief that her neoliberalism of fear could defeat the ethnonationalism of the right. ..."
"... In the novel, what begins as a struggle against inherited privilege results in the consolidation of a new ruling class that derives its legitimacy from superior merit. This class becomes, within a few generations, a hereditary aristocracy in its own right. Sequestered within elite institutions, people of high intelligence marry among themselves, passing along their high social position and superior genes to their progeny. Terminal inequality is the result. The gradual shift from inheritance to merit, Young writes, made "nonsense of all their loose talk of the equality of man": ..."
"... Losing every young person of promise to the meritocracy had deprived the working class of its prospective leaders, rendering it unable to coordinate a movement to manifest its political will. ..."
"... A policy of benign neglect of immigration laws invites into our country a casualized workforce without any leverage, one that competes with the native-born and destroys whatever leverage the latter have to negotiate better terms for themselves. The policy is a subsidy to American agribusiness, meatpacking plants, restaurants, bars, and construction companies, and to American families who would not otherwise be able to afford the outsourcing of childcare and domestic labor that the postfeminist, dual-income family requires. At the same time, a policy of free trade pits native-born workers against foreign ones content to earn pennies on the dollar of their American counterparts. ..."
"... Four decades of neoliberal globalization have cleaved our country into two hostile classes, and the line cuts across the race divide. On one side, college students credential themselves for meritocratic success. On the other, the white working class increasingly comes to resemble the black underclass in indices of social disorganization. On one side of the divide, much energy is expended on the eradication of subtler inequalities; on the other side, an equality of immiseration increasingly obtains. ..."
[Neo]liberalism that needs monsters to destroy can never politically engage with its enemies.
It can never understand those enemies as political actors, making calculations, taking advantage
of opportunities, and responding to constraints. It can never see in those enemies anything other
than a black hole of motivation, a cesspool where reason goes to die.
Hence the refusal of empathy for Trump's supporters. Insofar as it marks a demand that we
not abandon antiracist principle and practice for the sake of winning over a mythicized white working
class, the refusal is unimpeachable. But like the know-nothing disavowal of knowledge after
9/11, when explanations of terrorism were construed as exonerations of terrorism, the refusal of
empathy since 11/9 is a will to ignorance. Far simpler to imagine Trump voters as possessed by a
kind of demonic intelligence, or anti-intelligence, transcending all the rules of the established
order. Rather than treat Trump as the outgrowth of normal politics and traditional institutions -
it is the Electoral College, after all, not some beating heart of darkness, that sent Trump to the
White House - there is a disabling insistence that he and his forces are like no political formation
we've seen. By encouraging us to see only novelty in his monstrosity, analyses of this kind may prove
as crippling as the neocons' assessment of Saddam's regime. That, too, was held to be like no tyranny
we'd seen, a despotism where the ordinary rules of politics didn't apply and knowledge of the subject
was therefore useless.
Such a [neo]liberalism becomes dependent on the very thing it opposes, with a tepid mix of
neoliberal markets and multicultural morals getting much-needed spice from a terrifying right. Hillary
Clinton ran hard on the threat of Trump, as if his presence were enough to authorize her presidency.
Where Sanders promised to change the conversation, to make the battlefield a contest between a
multicultural neoliberalism and a multiracial social democracy, Clinton sought to keep the battlefield
as it has been for the past quarter-century. In this single respect, she can claim a substantial
victory. It's no accident that one of the most spectacular confrontations since the election pitted
the actors of Hamilton against the tweets of Trump. These fixed, frozen positions - high
on rhetoric, low on action - offer an almost perfect tableau of our ongoing gridlock of recrimination.
Clinton waged this campaign on the belief that her neoliberalism of fear could defeat the
ethnonationalism of the right. Let us not make the same mistake twice. Let us not be addicted
to "the drug of danger," as Athena says in the Oresteia, to "the dream of the enemy that
has to be crushed, like a herb, before [we] can smell freedom."
The term "meritocracy" became shorthand for a desirable societal ideal soon after it was coined
by the British socialist Sir Michael Young. But Young had originally used it to describe a dystopian
future. His 1958 satirical novel, The Rise of the Meritocracy, imagines the creation and growth of
a national system of intelligence testing, which identifies talented young people from every stratum
of society in order to install them in special schools, where they are groomed to make the best use
possible of their innate advantages.
In the novel, what begins as a struggle against inherited privilege results in the consolidation
of a new ruling class that derives its legitimacy from superior merit. This class becomes, within
a few generations, a hereditary aristocracy in its own right. Sequestered within elite institutions,
people of high intelligence marry among themselves, passing along their high social position and
superior genes to their progeny. Terminal inequality is the result. The gradual shift from inheritance
to merit, Young writes, made "nonsense of all their loose talk of the equality of man":
Men, after all, are notable not for the equality, but for the inequality, of their endowment.
Once all the geniuses are amongst the elite, and all the morons are amongst the workers, what meaning
can equality have? What ideal can be upheld except the principle of equal status for equal intelligence?
What is the purpose of abolishing inequalities in nurture except to reveal and make more pronounced
the inescapable inequalities of Nature?
I thought about this book often in the years before the crack-up of November 2016. In early 2015,
the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam published a book that seemed to tell as history the same story
that Young had written as prophecy. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis opens with an evocation
of the small town of Port Clinton, Ohio, where Putnam grew up in the 1950s - a "passable embodiment
of the American Dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for all the kids in town, whatever
their background." Port Clinton was, as Putnam is quick to concede, a nearly all-white town in a
pre-feminist and pre-civil-rights America, and it was marked by the unequal distribution of power
that spurred those movements into being. Yet it was also a place of high employment, strong unions,
widespread homeownership, relative class equality, and generally intact two-parent families. Everyone
knew one another by their first names and almost everyone was headed toward a better future; nearly
three quarters of all the classmates Putnam surveyed fifty years later had surpassed their parents
in both educational attainment and wealth.
When he revisited it in 2013, the town had become a kind of American nightmare. In the 1970s,
the industrial base entered a terminal decline, and the town's economy declined with it. Downtown
shops closed. Crime, delinquency, and drug use skyrocketed. In 1993, the factory that had offered
high-wage blue-collar employment finally shuttered for good. By 2010, the rate of births to unwed
mothers had risen to 40 percent. Two years later, the average worker in the county "was paid roughly
16 percent less in inflation-adjusted dollars than his or her grandfather in the early 1970s."
Young's novel ends with an editorial note informing readers that the fictional author of the text
had been killed in a riot that was part of a violent populist insurrection against the meritocracy,
an insurrection that the author had been insisting would pose no lasting threat to the social order.
Losing every young person of promise to the meritocracy had deprived the working class of its
prospective leaders, rendering it unable to coordinate a movement to manifest its political will.
"Without intelligence in their heads," he wrote, "the lower classes are never more menacing
than a rabble."
We are in the midst of a global insurrection against ruling elites. In the wake of the most destructive
of the blows recently delivered, a furious debate arose over whether those who supported Donald Trump
deserve empathy or scorn. The answer, of course, is that they deserve scorn for resorting to so depraved
and false a solution to their predicament - and empathy for the predicament itself. (And not just
because advances in technology are likely to make their predicament far more widely shared.) What
is owed to them is not the lachrymose pity reserved for victims (though they have suffered greatly)
but rather a practical appreciation of how their antagonism to the policies that determined the course
of this campaign - mass immigration and free trade - was a fully political antagonism that was disregarded
for decades, to our collective detriment.
A policy of benign neglect of immigration laws invites into our country a casualized workforce
without any leverage, one that competes with the native-born and destroys whatever leverage the latter
have to negotiate better terms for themselves. The policy is a subsidy to American agribusiness,
meatpacking plants, restaurants, bars, and construction companies, and to American families who would
not otherwise be able to afford the outsourcing of childcare and domestic labor that the postfeminist,
dual-income family requires. At the same time, a policy of free trade pits native-born workers against
foreign ones content to earn pennies on the dollar of their American counterparts.
In lieu of the social-democratic provision of childcare and other services of domestic support,
we have built a privatized, ad hoc system of subsidies based on loose border enforcement - in effect,
the nation cutting a deal with itself at the expense of the life chances of its native-born working
class. In lieu of an industrial policy that would preserve intact the economic foundation of their
lives, we rapidly dismantled our industrial base in pursuit of maximal aggregate economic growth,
with no concern for the uneven distribution of the harms and the benefits. Some were enriched hugely
by these policies: the college-educated bankers, accountants, consultants, technologists, lawyers,
economists, and corporate executives who built a supply chain that reached to the countries where
we shipped the jobs. Eventually, of course, many of these workers learned that both political parties
regarded them as fungible factors of production, readily discarded in favor of a machine or a migrant
willing to bunk eight to a room.
Four decades of neoliberal globalization have cleaved our country into two hostile classes,
and the line cuts across the race divide. On one side, college students credential themselves for
meritocratic success. On the other, the white working class increasingly comes to resemble the black
underclass in indices of social disorganization. On one side of the divide, much energy is expended
on the eradication of subtler inequalities; on the other side, an equality of immiseration increasingly
obtains.
Even before the ruling elite sent the proletariat off to fight a misbegotten war, even before
it wrecked the world economy through heedless lending, even before its politicians rescued those
responsible for the crisis while allowing working-class victims of all colors to sink, the working
class knew that it had been sacrificed to the interests of those sitting atop the meritocratic ladder.
The hostility was never just about differing patterns in taste and consumption. It was also about
one class prospering off the suffering of another. We learned this year that political interests
that go neglected for decades invariably summon up demagogues who exploit them for their own gain.
The demagogues will go on to betray their supporters and do enormous harm to others.
If we are to arrest the global descent into barbarism, we will have to understand the political
antagonism at the heart of the meritocratic project and seek a new kind of politics. If we choose
to neglect the valid interests of the working class, Trump will prove in retrospect to have been
a pale harbinger of even darker nightmares to come.
Russian writer Dmitry Orlov has in fact written an entire book on just
this subject: "Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American
Prospects" (2011). In it he argues that the American empire is headed for
the same kind of collapse as the Soviet Union experienced, but that
Americans will have a harder time of it as we're much less self-sufficient
both individually and as a society as a whole.
Thank YOU for using Better World Books. I volunteer at our local
library and we send many of our discarded books to BWB and they PAY us
for them. So their business helps support libraries : )
Yes, he likens it to falling out of a several stories high window, as
opposed to falling out of a ground floor window. People were used to
getting by with less and so when the USSR collapsed (economically, not in
any other way) people didn't have that hard a time of it. Not to worry,
the gradual diminishing of expectations that's being conducted right now
should help us along.
Thank you very much for this, Lambert. I am in the late stages of an
anthropology doctorate and have been studying the Soviet Union and its
legacy for nearly a decade. The parallels between the U.S. and the late
Soviet period have been becoming more obvious with each passing year. I
especially think that your emphasis on the out-of-touch character of the
elite nomenklatura is on point. To me this stands out as one of the primary
reasons for the Soviet Union's dissolution. It was their increasing desire
to emulate Western consumption, their appetite for foreign goods, and their
own loss of faith in the Soviet project that was instrumental to tearing it
apart. In Central Asia, where I've done most of my work, it is rarely the
Soviet Union per se that is the subject of critique, but rather the actions
of its leaders, who lived in an increasingly insular world with its own set
of institutions and norms, their own resorts, their own stores, etc. apart
from the rest of the population.
There are important differences with the contemporary U.S., however.
Despite hiccups and shortages in many areas of the economy, the late Soviet
Union did a very good job of ensuring access to basic goods such as food,
housing, and medical care. Even with quotas and shortages, my sense is that
the average person had far better access to these things in the USSR than
many people in the U.S. do today. i.e. You could not always get an apartment
in central Moscow, but you would have a place to live somewhere in the
country. The planned economy did a very poor job at providing automobiles
and "consumer goods," which many came to desire, but it did a very good job
at providing basic welfare, especially in its later years. It's critical to
emphasis this point so as not to fall into the narrative of capitalist
inevitability, what Francis Fukuyama called "the end of history." I don't
think the Soviet Union's end was inevitable and it could have been managed
differently if the interests of the broader population rather than the
elites had been the focus of concern. (There are also important differences
across regions: the Baltic states, Ukraine, etc. had a much more hostile
relationship to Moscow than did Central Asia and the Caucasus; a lot of this
nuance sometimes gets lost in discussions of the end of the USSR in which
Eastern Europe looms large in the U.S. imagination).
The more important parallel, it seems to me, is what the post-Soviet
situation can tell us about our own near-future. The experience of the
Soviet Union's end left people in a state of shock and surprise. It also
exposed the way in which so many social institutions only work to the extent
that people believe in them or at least act as if they believe in them. It
is a profoundly disorienting sensation and I think that that is where some
of the greatest parallels between the end of these two different empires
will be most pronounced.
Something you might look into: When I was in college and studying
anthropology, about 1967, I was told there was an Indian (from India)
anthropologist doing fieldwork in a small town in the greater midwest –
Missouri? I never followed up and found his monograph, but it's probably
out there, and there should be many more like it.
So, the bigger question: is there ethnography of the US, done by
cultural outsiders? It should be very revealing.
Etnog
Confused ussr politboro & military had created great animus among muslim
southern flank provinces with its bombing of muslims in Afghanistan not
that the blob did not help, but the advent of cheap/affordable still &
video cameras, along with the vcr removed the power of the govt approved
media to control the narrative with porous borders along the muslim
provinces, the central committee had lost control of the Soviet union and
was not prepared to revert to Stalinist retributions to regain control
As to the main question there is no breaking up america russia spans
two/three continents and had a very distinct religious divide with
borders across dozens of countries with enemies on all sides working to
disrupt it
Neither canada nor mexico have a navy, air force nor army of any real
consequence and except for opportunistic economic activities, do not have
any history or inkling of wanting to disrupt the u.s. of "ay what you
lookin at"
Many parts of the country have been economically abandoned and most
state and local govts are led and fed by failed attorneys hiding their
incompetence on the bench or in elected office
Things are not as they should be, but most people will suffer and live
rather than fight and die
We don't have all the loose ends which brought the soviet collapse and
sadly, we killed off most of those who were here before us, taking
advantage of their own disunity and discooperationalism to slowly
eliminate them in the quest for sea to shining sea
The world is not full of people who are looking to pay tens of
thousnds of dollars to be illegally entered into russia for its
"opportunities"
Thanks for posting this, Lambert. Like many others, I've been thinking
about how the US has been following a similar downward path as the USSR. I
recently read "Armageddon Averted" by Stephen Kotkin, who pointed to the
following reasons for Soviet collapse:
1.
Economic stagnation
(no incentives for workers, stalled
productivity, R&D diverted to military applications, inflexibility and high
costs of the heavy industry physical plant)
2.
Elite apathy
on the communist project (who saw they could make
more money under capitalism while retaining power in a new regime)
3.
Degradation of public health and morale
(popular cynicism and
civic disengagement, escalating drug, alcohol use, illness, and disability)
The reasons I think we may go a different way than the USSR (perhaps even
avoiding collapse) is that while we have been suffering stagnation for about
a decade now, we still have a pretty dynamic economy. Many Americans aspire
to be small business owners and workers across sectors have, comparatively,
pretty high productivity. The ethos for fairness and hard work is very
strong, it is just hard to believe this country is fair on any fronts these
days (we're all cynics now). Even though cartels and a complicit government
have allowed the financialization and oligopoloziation of the economy, it is
not outside the realm of possibility that these things get dismantled over
the next few decades if the right groups get energized, mobilized, and gain
power.
Another reason for the likely perpetuation of the status quo or avoidance
of collapse is that the elites are raking in the money. American capitalism
has worked and continues to work very well for them. If anything, they may
be more willing now to turn away from the democratic project (but they've
always been against democracy). Then again, we should ask ourselves: are we
more/less democratic or more/less surveilled and oppressed now than we were
fifty or sixty years ago, under Jim Crow and the Red Scare? How much
more/less? Probably about the same. In other words, the elite are probably
not willing to let the USA go down the tubes the same way the elites of the
USSR were okay with their collapse.
I think the symptoms of USSR/USA collapse are similar, but the causes are
very different. And we also have some historical experience with these
causes (monopolies/oligopolies, wealth inequality, anti-democratic elites).
It can be reversed.
"Then again, we should ask ourselves: are we more/less democratic or
more/less surveilled and oppressed now than we were fifty or sixty years
ago, under Jim Crow and the Red Scare? How much more/less? Probably about
the same."
I would say Big Brother has many more ways to watch us and track our
every movement now. Also, it's my impression that Americans under 40 not
only don't know the value of privacy, they don't even want to know what
it is.
Also, American materialism has had another 5-6 decades to do its
corrosive work of undermining the human spirit.
So, I would say, in many ways, more surveilled/less democratic.
Um, "Prices That Do Not Send Signals": can we put the price of our
centrally planned, monopoly-issued, fiat-declared
money
into that
category? The
Politboro
Fed meets and declares exactly how
much money the system will need at what precise time and at what precise
price. Then the analysts practice their Kremlinology (did Yellen say "may
increase" or "might increase"?) and then scramble to buy or sell the goods
and services represented by this so-called "money". Right now the
Commissars
Fed analysts have decided that the precisely-right price
of money according to their calculations and astrological observations
should be the lowest it has ever been in recorded history. Like the Soviet
Union, however, they come out every so often to declare "все прекрасно"
("everything is great!")
Setting the base rate of money is not a terribly offense, market-wise.
However, practices like the Greenspan-Bernanke and presumably Yellen put,
to intervene to stop stock market swoon is one example. Another is the
extensive intervention in the mortgage market, with 90% of mortgages now
government guaranteed. The result of artificially cheap credit is
inflated housing prices, which helps builders and brokers (and those who
got in early, meaning older people who could buy housing and haven't
suffered reversals) at the expense of most citizens.
Seems slicing and dicing income streams, w/ long expectation tails, w/
at the center of it is RE, w/ everything else bolted on it, all whilst
wages and jobs are crapified, meaning the aforementioned is a substitute
for the former wellie that's a wee bit of pressure on the – unknown –
future ™ and as we all know you can't price the unknown now can we .
Don't know about the centrally planned rant, the bimetallism standard,
is just as, if not more authoritarian, let alone just an sole object as a
price anchor vs. a basket of assets. But as YS is want to repetitively
inform political and ideological factors during the Vietnam period had a
much more fundamental role in setting the stage than say bimetallism vs
fiat fixations. Had the anti taxers taken a intellectual and functional
purview of the state of things, then we might not be in this mess, but
yeah ev'bal fiat . sigh
I would add per your last response to a comment of mine wrt enabling
capital flows freedom, remind me again the manifold size of the shadow
sector and its velocity vs USD base money. Not to mention its ability to
FX shape shift in a blink of an eye.
disheveled . with no less than a hundred years of history its a bit
much to lay it all at the feet of fiat.
I read somewhere that one thing the Founding Fathers WANTed Congress
to do was to issue the money and "regulate the value thereof". I presume
that means they wanted the value of the money kept constant so people
could always understand what "things cost" or "were worth" in relation to
eachother.. .
now, right now, tomorrow and next week.
It is fun making The Amazing Rubber Yardstick longer or shorter at
your every whim, but just try measuring something with The Amazing Rubber
Yardstick.
You have to be careful about reading into history, you have to make
sure its in accurate context. Observational Bias has a pertinacity to
project ones desires where they are not warrantied.
There are some parallels, particularly WRT leadership, but our situation
is fairly unique in that we are getting far too much of what we don't need
for cheap (bad food, entertainment, junk consumer products) and getting far
too little of what we need for a premium (good food, education, healthcare,
etc.). Capitalists figured out Brave New World was far more effective than
1984.
Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US
Blossoming?
This book explores the why, how, when and where of the present decline
and fall of the US Empire, based on a theory of synergizing contradictions
used in 1980 to predict the fall of the Soviet empire. It then maps possible
futures for the US and the world, with a blueprint for a desirable global
future. This book is best read as a companion to Peace Economics: From a
Killing to a Life Enhancing Economy.
Author: Johan Galtung, born 1930 in Oslo, Norway. Lives in Spain, France,
Japan and the USA and is mainly engaged in mediation and research. He
founded TRANSCEND: A network for Peace and Development, in 1993, and is the
rector of TRANSCEND Peace University.
I would like to disagree with the thesis of this article, and if I think
of something I'll let you know. I don't think I'll be letting you know.
Sure, there are differences, but there are numerous similarities between the
late stage USSR and the current USA, and we ignore them at our peril.
As for part of the problem with Russian queuing in general, the initial
discussion of this particular breed of post-USSR-fall Russians c. 2001 at
McDonald's in Taibbi's writeup is a good and very funny illustration in
short (quote below). But the full length of it is golden prose and very
worth reading for those of you who might be interested in keen observation
of social types, with an interesting early assessment of Putin as
anti-Sovok. It's overall right on the money to anyone who has ever spent any
time in Russian social circles.
____________________________
The specific mission of the staffers at the McDonald's take-out window
was to record the number of instances of a certain kind of conversation,
a conversation only possible in Russia- the old Russia, anyway. It takes
place when a middle-aged and usually overweight person makes his way to
the front of a long line at McDonald's. The person has had as long as
five full minutes to read the menu before getting to the front of the
line, but he's waited until he actually reaches the front to do so. Now
that he is at the front of the line, and six or seven people are safely
camped behind him in impatient agony, he squints up at the menu, scanning
the letters some 4-6 minutes longer than it is physically possible to
actually read the information. From there, he starts asking questions of
the cashier:
"A Royal Cheeseburger, what's that?"
"Which is the sandwich that comes with tomatoes and horseradish?"
"Why should I order the meal if it's not cheaper than ordering the
items separately?"
"Can I get an extra box with the McNuggets?"
And so on, and so on. There is no way to stop such a person, no way to
make the process go faster. He is progressing at maximum speed. Any
attempt to speed him up will only cause behavioral spillage in any number
of new and ugly directions. You are at his mercy.
America is a hot, decaying mess. And using examples of our mess of a
healthcare system is spot on, though you could have just as easily used our
decaying infrastructure, for example. Anyway, I just spent the last two
weeks dealing with a very serious health scare, and I bless my lucky stars
for having access to the VA system. Given my sharply reduced income, the
"market"-based system would have really extracted a nice chunk of my
savings. All I had to worry about with the VA was showing up on time for my
many appointments with various specialists (all of which were made in a
timely manner, given the urgency of my situation). I want EVERYBODY to have
what I have, because it is good and it saves lives, rather than mint cash
for stockholders and MBA douchenozzles. Of course, that's precisely why the
VA is a thorn in the side of our politicos, and explaisn why they have been
trying to strangle the VA and privatize it in order to turn it into yet
another rent-extraction opportunity for our rentier class.
Yes. The fall of the Soviet Union was due to the party elite finding a
way to cash out and the people felt that they no longer had a vested
interest In their government thanks gulf between reality and the propaganda.
Both are occurring in the USA right now with similar results.
Thanks for examples! I've been saying this since the Clinton-fans went
into Permanent Putin mode, but I wasn't able to break it down with examples.
I think the Russia Paranoia has 2 psychological roots:
the pundit class is terrified that USA is going to be like post-communism
Russia: they lost their empire and became a laughing-stock, despite going
capitalist. That's why a Russian future is more scary to them than a, say,
Chinese or Nazi future. In their hearts they know it's more likely. That's
why nobody big is accusing trump of being a "chinese spy"
Plus even though Russia is no longer communist, the word 'russia' still
packs commie connotations. So centrist Dems frightened of a Sanders-like
party takeover can say "russia" to strike at their left flank and right
flank simultaneously.
No other country I can think of fills both these psychological needs so
well.
The question for America's future is . . . does America "have" an Empire?
Or is America "is" an Empire?
If we "have" an Empire, perhaps we can get rid of it gracefully and preserve
our worthwhile national existence. If we "are" an Empire, then we may
delaminate into tens or dozens of mutually hostile nasty little pieces and
no-man's-lands between them. Because we don't have a core Mother
AngloSaxonia dominating other regions the way the USSR had a core Mother
Russia. We are a bunch of other regions with no core. If the "sum total" of
the regions is NOT a core, then there is NO CORE.
The elite in the USSR, especially those who ran the nominally state-owned
businesses, wanted to be capitalists, and ditching the nominally socialist
system was their ticket. What do the elites in the US want to be? And what
do they want to ditch the whatever-you-call-what-we-got-now system for?
(This is the biggest difference. The other big diff might be if the
general population arises in the US rather than a sector of the elites as
happened in the USSR.)
queues and being embarrassed by petty apparatchik:
Found at any
North American airport, stadium, coming to your local subway and train
station? Meanwhile oligarchy in private jets go unsoiled.
"... The World Economic Forum has called for "reimagining" and "reforming" capitalism. To what extent is this need for reform the result of disruption brought by technological change, globalization, and immigration and to what extent is it the effect of rent-seeking and regulatory capture? ..."
"... "Martin Hellwig and I discuss "global competitiveness" and THE PARTICULARLY HARMFUL SYMBIOSIS BETWEEN BANKS AND GOVERNMENTS in our book The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It." ..."
"... Private/public arrangements are often a way for private parties to bleed wealth from society. Our current banking system is the most egregious example of this. ..."
"... With the same idea that the "vanguard" recruited mainly from "Intelligentsia" will drive sheeple to the "bright future of all mankind" using bullets for encouragement, if needed. And this "bright future of all mankind" is the global neoliberal empire led by the USA. ..."
"... Including full scale use of three letter agencies. Also like Bolshevism before, neoliberalism created its own "nomenklatura" -- the privileged class which exists outside the domain of capital owners, which along with high levels management and professionals include neoclassical economists. They are integral and important part of neoliberal nomenklatura and are remunerated accordingly. ..."
"... Because you can't be half-pregnant -- it is difficult to try anything else when neoliberalism still dominates globally and try to enforce its will via global financial institutions. They do not hesitate to punish detractors for Washington consensus. ..."
"... It is difficult to survive trying to find alternatives to neoliberalism on the continent with Uncle Sam and his extremely well financed three letter agencies which operate with impunity. And it does not cost too much money to implement more moderate variant of Chile Pinochet coup model -- create economic difficulties and then bring neoliberals back to power on the wave of dissatisfaction with the current government due to economic difficulties. ..."
"... Difficulties of finding the right balance avoid sliding into opposite extreme -- "over-regulating" the economy. In view of sabotage experienced (and encouraged), which produces natural (and damaging) counteraction, this is almost impossible. Looks like a real trap -- the efforts of the USA to undermine the economy of countries with left wing governments produce a counteraction which helps to undermine the economy and pave the way for restoration of neoliberal regime ..."
"... In this sense Trump is just Obama II -- neoliberal "bait and switch" artist, who capitalized on pre-existing discontent using fake slogans and then betrayed the electorate. ..."
"... "Class dictatorship. Raw or refined" ..."
"... My interpretation is that it's a class project, now masked by a lot of rhetoric about individual freedom, liberty, personal responsibility, privatisation and the free market. ..."
"... That rhetoric was a means towards the restoration and consolidation of class power, and that neoliberal project has been fairly successful ..."
... Q: The World Economic Forum has called for "reimagining" and
"reforming" capitalism. To what extent is this need for reform the
result of disruption brought by technological change,
globalization, and immigration and to what extent is it the effect
of rent-seeking and regulatory capture?
Acemoglu and
Robinson argued in Why
Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
that "man-made political and economic institutions underlie
economic success (or lack of it)." Technological developments have
highlighted the immense power associated with controlling
information. The business of investigative reporting is in a
crisis. Corporations often play off governments, shopping
jurisdictions and making bargains. For capitalism to work, the
relevant institutions must work effectively and avoid excessive
rent extraction. The governance challenge of the global economy is
daunting.
RGC said...
"Martin Hellwig and I discuss "global competitiveness" and THE PARTICULARLY HARMFUL
SYMBIOSIS BETWEEN BANKS AND GOVERNMENTS in our book The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong
with Banking and What to Do about It."
[Private/public arrangements are often a way for private parties to bleed wealth from
society. Our current banking system is the most egregious example of this.]
"Acemoglu and Robinson argued in Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and
Poverty that "man-made political and economic institutions underlie economic success (or lack
of it)."
Neoliberalism is the second after Marxism social system that was "invented" by a group of intellectuals
(although there was no any single dominant individual among them) and implemented via coup d'état.
From above. Much like Bolshevism.
Looks like it is more resilient then Marxism based economic systems and it demonstrated staying
power even after 2008 -- when the ideology itself was completely discredited and became a joke.
Neoliberalism survived the demise of neoliberal ideology and entered zombie stage. Much like
many sects with discredited predictions like the Second Coming.
Neoliberalism borrowed quite a lot from Marxism. Actually analogies with Marxism are too numerous
to list. But one is very important: neoliberalism replaced "Dictatorship of proletariat" with
the dictatorship of "free markets" and proletariat itself with so called "creative class".
With the same idea that the "vanguard" recruited mainly from "Intelligentsia" will drive
sheeple to the "bright future of all mankind" using bullets for encouragement, if needed. And
this "bright future of all mankind" is the global neoliberal empire led by the USA.
They also demonstrated the same ruthlessness in the best style of "end justifies means". Killed
are mainly "brown people" (is we do not count ten thousand Ukrainians)
In short, neoliberalism is a kind of "Trotskyism for rich." Gore Vidal once famously said that
the neoliberal economic system is "free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich." As
unforgettable Bush II said "I'm a free market guy. But I'm not gonna let this economy crater in
order to preserve the free market system" – George W. Bush, December 17, 2008, William Simon,
President Nixon's Treasury Secretary, once famously observed of those who preach free markets
typically are simultaneously rushing to the public treasury: "I watched with incredulity as businessmen
ran to the government in every crisis, whining for handouts or protection from the very competition
that has made this system so productive always, such gentlemen proclaimed their devotion to free
enterprise and their opposition to the arbitrary intervention into our economic life by the state.
Except, of course, for their own case, which was always unique and which was justified by their
immense concern for the public interest."
And neoliberalism uses the same repressive tactics including dominance in MSM and the control
of the university education to get and stay in power, which were invented by Bolsheviks/Trotskyites.
Including full scale use of three letter agencies. Also like Bolshevism before, neoliberalism
created its own "nomenklatura" -- the privileged class which exists outside the domain of capital
owners, which along with high levels management and professionals include neoclassical economists.
They are integral and important part of neoliberal nomenklatura and are remunerated accordingly.
That fact the deification of markets is a "fools gold" was know from the Great Recession (and
Karl Polanyi famous book), but when 50 years passed and generation changed they manage to shove
it down throat. Because the generation which experienced horrors of the Great Depression at this
point was gone (and that include cadre of higher level management which still have some level
of solidarity with workers against capital owners). The new generation switched camps and allied
with capital owners against the working class.
Both treat the country the same way as bacteria treat a squirrel carcass.
Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason-the
powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market
governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit-and, most of the time,
genteel-oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are
the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows,
so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people
make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making
bigger and riskier bets. They reckon-correctly, in most cases-that their political connections
will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.
As Paine noted neoliberalism in zombie state (which it entered after 2008) remains dangerous
and is able to counterattack -- the US sponsored efforts of replacement of left regimes in LA
with right wing neoliberal regimes were by-and-large successful.
Among them are two key LA countries -- Brazil and Argentina. That happened despite that this
phase of neoliberal era has been marked by slower growth, greater trade imbalances, and deteriorating
social conditions. In Latin America the average growth rate was lower by 3 percent per annum in
the 1990s than in the 1970s, while trade deficits as a proportion of GDP are much the same.
Contrary to neoliberal propaganda the past 25 years (1980–2005) have also characterized by
slower rate of improvement of key social indicators for the vast majority of low- and middle-income
population of LA countries [compared with the prior two decades ]
In an effort to keep growing trade and current account deficits manageable, third world
states, often pressured by the IMF and World Bank, used austerity measures (especially draconian
cuts in social programs) to slow economic growth (and imports). They also deregulated capital
markets, privatized economic activity, and relaxed foreign investment regulatory regimes in
an effort to attract the financing needed to offset the existing deficits. While devastating
to working people and national development possibilities, these policies were, as intended,
responsive to the interests of transnational capital in general and a small but influential
sector of third world capital. This is the reality of neoliberalism.
As for the question "Why?" there might be several reasons.
Because you can't be half-pregnant -- it is difficult to try anything else when neoliberalism
still dominates globally and try to enforce its will via global financial institutions. They
do not hesitate to punish detractors for Washington consensus.
This is LA specific part. It is difficult to survive trying to find alternatives to neoliberalism
on the continent with Uncle Sam and his extremely well financed three letter agencies which
operate with impunity. And it does not cost too much money to implement more moderate variant
of Chile Pinochet coup model -- create economic difficulties and then bring neoliberals back
to power on the wave of dissatisfaction with the current government due to economic difficulties.
Difficulties of finding the right balance avoid sliding into opposite extreme -- "over-regulating"
the economy. In view of sabotage experienced (and encouraged), which produces natural (and
damaging) counteraction, this is almost impossible. Looks like a real trap -- the efforts of
the USA to undermine the economy of countries with left wing governments produce a counteraction
which helps to undermine the economy and pave the way for restoration of neoliberal regime.
My impression is that before the next oil crisis (defined as oil price crossing $150 mark or
so) attempts to displace financial oligarchy are bound to fail.
So, in some "mutated" form, like Trump's "bastard neoliberalism" ( aka neoliberalism without globalization,
limited to a single country) it will stay put.
In this sense Trump is just Obama II -- neoliberal "bait and switch" artist, who capitalized
on pre-existing discontent using fake slogans and then betrayed the electorate.
"Does this crisis signal the end of neoliberalism? My answer is that it depends what you
mean by neoliberalism. My interpretation is that it's a class project, now masked by a
lot of rhetoric about individual freedom, liberty, personal responsibility, privatisation and
the free market.
That rhetoric was a means towards the restoration and consolidation of class power, and that
neoliberal project has been fairly successful."
almost all the increment in incomes
has been harvested by the top 1%. As values,
principles and moral purpose are lost, the promise of growth is all that's left.
You can see the effects in a
leaked memo
from the UK's Foreign Office: "Trade and growth are now priorities
for all posts work like climate change and illegal wildlife trade will be scaled
down." All that counts is the rate at which we turn natural wealth into cash. If this
destroys our prosperity and the wonders that surround us, who cares?
We cannot hope to address our predicament without a new worldview. We cannot use
the models that caused our crises to solve them. We need to reframe the problem. This
is what the most inspiring book published so far this year has done.
In
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
, Kate
Raworth of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute reminds us that
economic growth was not, at first, intended to signify wellbeing.
Simon Kuznets
, who standardised the measurement of growth, warned: "The welfare
of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income." Economic
growth, he pointed out, measured only annual flow, rather than stocks of wealth and
their distribution.
Raworth
points out that economics in the 20th century "lost the desire to
articulate its goals". It aspired to be a science of human behaviour: a science based
on a deeply flawed portrait of humanity. The dominant model – "rational economic
man", self-interested, isolated, calculating – says more about the nature of
economists than it does about other humans. The loss of an explicit objective allowed
the discipline to be captured by a proxy goal: endless growth.
The aim of economic activity, she argues, should be "meeting the needs of all
within the means of the planet". Instead of economies that need to grow, whether or
not they make us thrive, we need economies that "make us thrive, whether or not they
grow". This means changing our picture of what the economy is and how it works.
The central image in mainstream economics is the circular flow diagram. It depicts
a closed flow of income cycling between households, businesses, banks, government and
trade, operating in a social and ecological vacuum. Energy, materials, the natural
world, human society, power, the wealth we hold in common all are missing from the
model. The unpaid work of carers – principally women – is ignored, though no economy
could function without them. Like rational economic man, this representation of
economic activity bears little relationship to reality.
So Raworth begins by redrawing the economy. She embeds it in the Earth's systems
and in society, showing how it depends on the flow of materials and energy, and
reminding us that we are more than just workers, consumers and owners of capital.
If people can:
1. understand the nature of money which
is in fact energy
2. bypass fiat currencies and therefore
Immune to all the misery from these fake
money (such as unfair wealth
distribution...etc)
3. have some elementary-math
understanding about energy constraint by
https://1drv.ms/o/s!AlY9OXkn9NHujFuH2HElKWc3WgeJ
A proper land tax, progressive taxation
and a utter ruthless pursuit of those
that don't pay their share. Oh and,
here's a thought, corporation tax not
set at a pissy ridiculous level. But
then the great British public always
vote for the opposite of all these
things. Well done!
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Let down in the last few sentences.
Idealised models are all well and good
but the crucial issue is the current
wealth distribution and the unequal
power that stems from it. We now live in
an era of nationalist autocracies, a
necessary carapace for post capitalism
but definitely not a prerequisite for
the kind of model you describe.
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Constant economic growth also
necessitates a pyramid scheme of
constant population growth to supply
labor.
In Western countries with low birth
rates and high salaries, this translates
into our oligarchs adopting the
neoliberal model of immigration,
globalization, and free trade.
From a certain perspective, all the
recent political upheaval in the West
(Brexit, Trump, Etc.) can be described
as the working classes realizing what
"constant growth" and resulting
neoliberalism means for them and their
children personally.
Another interesting model is that of the
Gift-economy, the system that dominated
the world during millenia (and persists
somewhat today). In its extreme form -
the potlatch - an entire society's drive
is based on how much wealth it can give
away, not take. Georges Bataille
described this as "feneral economics"
whereas academic economists' mumblings
he called "restricted economics", a
purely useless attempt to erase life.
Time to read him and the anthropologists
(Mauss, Bloch, Mead, Levi-Strauss) who
described this, again.
State-owned banks
would
invest in projects that transform our
relationship with the living world,
State owned banks? As in a
nationalised banking alternative....in
Britain?
Mention the word "nationalisation" in
London and the Home Counties and
everyone, from the middle-classes
upwards, immediately assumes this must
mean a return to Miners strikes, a three
day week, power cuts, flared trousers,
beer and sandwiches, formica kitchen
workops, the lot!
State-owned banks is what we got
after the 2008 banking crisis. But if
your suggestion is that politicians
can make better investment decisions
than commercial banks and with access
to all the money printing power of
the economy then that would be truly
scary.
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Nothing wrong with flared trousers or
miners' strikes ot Formica. And even
power cuts would be tolerable if they
meant absence of HIV, 3-day weeks and
a thoroughly humiliated, depressed
Establishment - my idea of heaven :)
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This looks like an extension to John
Elkington's triple bottom line model
published in 1997, updated to embrace
the advance of social enterprise and to
acknowledge the ever greater impact of
global warming.
I'd will have to read
the full book to understand this new
model better. It would be interesting to
see how any government, in power or in
waiting, could articulate real
objectives associated with this model to
give a sense that we were on a better
economic journey than present.
Thoughtful and well presented article..
BUT...Until money and the worship of
power it creates is relieved of its God
like status..the 'opening' towards a
more sustainable values system continues
to be a very tough sell...in essence,
the door remains closed..
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An economic model is supposed to
describe way the economy actually works,
not the way you would like it to work.
To judge that I suppose I will have to
read the book and perhaps some critical
reviews, since you can't get and sense
of that from Monbiot's article. Does it
provide a better forecast about the
effect of Brexit for example? would it
have predicted the financial crash of
2008? If it can't do these things then
it isn't an economic model but it might
be a philosophy or belief system like
Zen Buddhism and should be treated with
the same level of detachment we would
apply to such faiths, including that of
Monbiot.
One where people were incentivised to
mis-price assets and not
de-incentivised from doing so.
Because one of the rules of an
economic model is that people respond
to incentives.
People declaim that "economics" is
dead as proved by 2008, whereas what
the crash actually proves is that
ignoring some of the incentives means
you don't understand what people are
doing.
"Economics" is not the model, it's
the modelling process. Climatology,
to pick another modelling discipline,
has produced some astoundingly wrong
results in the past -- the 1970s
cooling hypothesis, for example --
but we don't declare it dead, we let
it have more goes in the hope of
getting outputs which help us
understand the world.
I mistakenly gave you a thumbs up
before I realized that "tawhid"
refers to the monotheistic belief
that muslims adopted from the older
Jewish religion (islam and
christianity both being Jewish
religions). Just religious propaganda
on your part, in other words.
Religion is a load of crap so I take
back my thumbs up. Fuck "God". Fuck
religion.
Your earlier post about
the interview with Banisadr looks
more interesting.
We are converging on a realisation that
we have things catastrophically wrong
and continue to do so. George
understands,
Kate clearly understands
and
Peter Joseph
more than understands
to create a movement. I've hopefully
tried to connect Peter and Kate through
Twitter, Kate has responded favourably.
Currently reading '
The
New Human Rights Movement'
and have
'Doughnut Economics' on order. We have
solutions but will we overcome
resistance in culture due to ignorance
and religion? I hope so but have little
'faith' in the way that humanity is
conducting itself with regard to itself
and the planet.
Tell it how it is Peter and Kate. We
need a new direction toward happiness,
sustainability and understanding. Our
current power structures are crumbling
and rightly so...
Sadly it will probably take a
catastrophic collapse before any new
model is implemented. It was only in
the wake of WW2 that social welfare
systems and health services were set
up in western countries. I am fearful
of what we might have to endure
before a political consensus emerges
that a new economic model is needed.
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>"It was only in the wake of WW2 that
social welfare systems and health
services were set up in western
countries."
Grossly untrue. Such
systems, albeit primitive compared to
the NHS but not the state pension,
were pioneered by Bismarck (a
conservative!) in Germany around
1870. The German healthcare system
still suffers from a "first adopter"
syndrome.
"then demand that those who wield power
start working towards its objectives:" -
I am very willing. Do you think an email
will do the trick?
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I think this probably counts as an
interesting economic description but I
don't see it as a great leap forward of
understanding at the practical level.
The advice for how an economy should be
run as opposed to the current approach
doesn't change. Forget deficits and
surpluses, forget growth and don't
obsess about inflation, in a well run
economy, these things will look after
themselves.
A well run economy is one which
maximises its main potential, which is
its workforce by trying to ensure
they're in gainful employment (less than
2% unemployment)
. Gainful employment
means not massaging the numbers by
making delivery drivers self-employed or
using zero hours contracts but having
people do useful work for proper wages
and if the private sector can't always
supply it then the public sector should
- that is real work not just New-Labour
bean counting (measuring what other
people do). Do that and you will always
(by definition) have enough growth and
whilst at times you will (if you bother
to check) run big public deficits, you
are also likely to find yourself running
occasional public surpluses.
Beyond that you want to encourage work
which utilises renewables &/or recycling
and discourage plundering natural
resources - including foreign resources,
the tax system can help with that, make
the polluters & plunderers subsidise the
recyclers, as well as other , currently
seen as a sin, government interference
in markets.
Sounds nice but...what about about
automation destroying lots of the
lovely jobs you're talking about? It
seems to me that a crucial question
for our times is whether in the face
of the latest wave of automation, AI
and machine learning, the lump of
labour fallacy will still hold true.
If it doesn't, I forecast a lot of
violence and death in addition to the
violence and death that climate
change and antibiotic resistance are
already causing and which I
respectfully suggest is going to grow
exponentially.
Unemployment isn't measured by what
the government says it is. It's
measured by phoning people up and
asking them if they think they're in
work. In order to get the figures
down, you'd have to get a bunch of
unemployed people to say they were in
work in order for them to help out a
government they presumably don't
think much of.
I think my interview with Iran's former
president, Banisadr who lives in exile,
can enrich the argument. Especially the
part, which talks about the structural
problems with capitalism and the way to
overcome it:
We also need a society which meets our
psychological needs as well as our
material and environmental needs on a
sustainable basis. Thankfully the fairly
new field of positive psychology is now
showing us how to do this and there have
recently been prestigious conferences in
London and Dubai involving the OECD and
government personnel around the world
centred on adapting policies to meet
these needs. This is the missing
ingredient that can help us create a
better world. But it will require a mass
movement focussing on these three
elements to galvanise opinion formers
and the political community into taking
the necessary action.
Positive psychology, while admirable
in it's goals, has suffered from a
lack of empirical data to support
it's theories. For ages it was
focused on theories and half assed
science (admittedly it's been a while
since I visited it). They have had
the positive influence in that people
are researching topics in parallel
with positive psychology. Though many
researchers still try to distance
themselves from that field due to the
lack of empiricism* that was rife.
It has potential though, I'll say
that, and it's aims are admirable.
*I don't know if that's still the
case!! It just used to be one of it's
many criticisms. I heard a research
proposal recently investigating
resilience using fMRI, and many of
the proposal's themes resonated with
positive psychology. When I brought
that up, there were a few raised
eyebrows and a sigh of relief when I
pointed out that it was simply a
comment on the parallelism...
It basically drifts far too close to
pseudo-psychology to be taken
serious. If it could rain that in and
pull itself towards a more empirical
approach then people within the
scientific community would be more
willing to engage. Otherwise you
might as well get tips on how to fold
your arms (and what that conveys)
from Cosmopolitan, or engage in
'power stance' to feel more
'confident'... both perfect examples
of pseudo-psychology.
Again, these
are general (and fair) criticisms of
positive psychology. It does have
aspects I like, for example they try
to develop techniques for improving
mental health (or well-being as they
would maybe refer to it as) that
don't require a physician or a
psychologist. Ones that you can do on
your phone and what have you. Which
would be great if there was
sufficient evidence that their
techniques work.
I'm bemused by Mr Monbiots arguments. He
seems to be railing against the
monitizing of society, and yet moans
about the lack of money for carers? This
caring argument seems to include
housework, a lot of which is done by
women, though why or who would pay for
this type of caring is always
unexplained. I'd have thought that just
being human demands a certain level
domestic care from everyone ? Then
there's the community energy idea. It
sounds lovely and cosey, if a bit
Royston Vasey, but doesn't he wonder why
the old local authority power generators
stopped working, and a National Grid was
developed? What's called the After
Diversity Maximum Demand, on an
electrical system might give him a clue
as to why big generators and a
transmission system beats lots of little
generators hands down.
It's the irony of the modern left. On
the one hand, bemoaning the rich for
always wanting more money and on the
other, demanding more money....
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The example you give, the National
Grid, was a socialist creation,
stolen from the UK people by the
vile, despicable and fortunately very
dead Margaret Thatcher, the worst
thing to have happened to Britain
since Adolf Hitler.
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The aim of economic activity, she
argues, should be "meeting the needs
of all within the means of the
planet".
is a paraphrase of the most likely
criminal
and bankster gofer Maurice
Strong's "definition" of sustainability.
"Development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet
their own needs."
as filtered through the openly
Communist UN Bruntland Commission.
It is a Technocratic, UN-
corporatist- global governance-based
ideology that -- to nobody's surprise --
Monbiot thinks is newly-baked and right
out of the oven.
And the radical new doughnut way of
looking at global development is
straight out of UN Agenda 21/30.
The undercooked intellectual pudding
Monbiot is slopping about in and
describing as the finest chocolate
mousse since sliced bread, is just an
old and rejected 1930's version of
Technocracy, which was revised in the
1970s, and then, again in the 1990s, and
which, at its heart, is nothing but the
call for the institution of a fascistic
world government that will, we are
assured, give us more social justice
than we could ever need.
If the author of the reviewed book
hasn't made these attributions, and is
passing this global governance schematic
and MO off as her own, then she's
plagiarizing.
"Okay, step back and
absorb this one. Mr. Prasad is saying that millions of manufacturing workers in the Midwest lost
their jobs and saw their communities decimated because the Bush administration wanted to press China
to enforce Pfizer's patents on drugs, Microsoft's copyrights on Windows, and to secure better access
to China's financial markets for Goldman Sachs.
This is not a new story, in fact I say it all the time. But it's nice to have the story confirmed
by the person who occupied the International Monetary Fund's China desk at the time.
Porter then jumps in and gets his story completely 100 percent wrong:
"At the end of the day, economists argued at the time, Chinese exchange rate policies didn't cost
the United States much. After all, in 2007 the United States was operating at full employment. The
trade deficit was because of Americans' dismal savings rate and supercharged consumption, not a cheap
renminbi. After all, if Americans wanted to consume more than they created, they had to get it somewhere."
Sorry, this was the time when even very calm sensible people like Federal Reserve Board Chair
Ben Bernanke were talking about a "savings glut." The U.S. and the world had too much savings, which
lead to a serious problem of unemployment. Oh, we did eventually find a way to deal with excess savings.
Anyone remember the housing bubble?"
I don't remember Krugman or PGL saying China or trade policy was a problem at the time. They'd
just argue the Fed needs to lower rates to compensate.
Trump Isn't Wrong on China Currency Manipulation, Just Late
by Eduardo Porter
ECONOMIC SCENE APRIL 11, 2017
Has the United States mismanaged the ascent of China?
By April 15, the Treasury Department is required to present to Congress a report on the
exchange rate policies of the country's major trading partners, intended to identify manipulators
that cheapen their currency to make their exports more attractive and gain market share in
the United States, a designation that could eventually lead to retaliation.
It would be hard, these days, to find an economist who feels China fits the bill. Under
a trade law passed in 2015, a country must meet three criteria: It would have to have a "material"
trade surplus with the rest of the world, have a "significant" surplus with the United States,
and intervene persistently in foreign exchange markets to push its currency in one direction.
While China's surplus with the United States is pretty big - almost $350 billion - its global
surplus is modest, at 2.4 percent of its gross domestic product last year. Most significant,
it has been pushing its currency up, not down. Since the middle of 2014 it has sold over $1
trillion from its reserves to prop up the renminbi, under pressure from capital flight by Chinese
companies and savers.
Even President Trump - who as a candidate promised to label China a currency manipulator
on Day 1 and put a 45 percent tariff on imports of Chinese goods - seems to be backing away
from broad, immediate retaliation.
And yet the temptation remains. "When you talk about currency manipulation, when you talk
about devaluations," the Chinese "are world champions," Mr. Trump told The Financial Times,
ahead of the state visit of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to the United States last week.
For all Mr. Trump's random impulsiveness and bluster - and despite his lack of a coherent
strategy to engage with what is likely soon to become the world's biggest economy - he is not
entirely alone with his views.
Many learned economists and policy experts ruefully acknowledge that the president's intuition
is broadly right: While labeling China a currency manipulator now would look ridiculous, the
United States should have done it a long time ago.
"With the benefit of hindsight, China should have been named," said Brad Setser, an expert
on international economics and finance who worked in the Obama administration and is now at
the Council on Foreign Relations.
There were reasonable arguments against putting China on the spot and starting a process
that could eventually lead to American retaliation.
Yet by not pushing back against China's currency manipulation, and allowing China to deploy
an arsenal of trade tactics of dubious legality to increase exports to the United States, successive
administrations - Republican and Democratic - arguably contributed to the economic dislocations
that pummeled so many American workers over more than a decade. Those dislocations helped propel
Mr. Trump to power.
From 2000 to 2014 China definitely suppressed the rise of the renminbi to maintain a competitive
advantage for its exports, buying dollars hand over fist and adding $4 trillion to its foreign
reserves over the period. Until 2005, the Chinese government kept the renminbi pegged to the
dollar, following it down as the greenback slid against other major currencies starting in
2003.
American multinationals were flocking into China, taking advantage of its entry into the
World Trade Organization in December 2001, which guaranteed access to the American and other
world markets for its exports. By 2007, China's broad trade surplus hit 10 percent of its gross
domestic product - an unheard-of imbalance for an economy this large. And its surplus with
the United States amounted to a full third of the American deficit with the world.
Though the requirement that the Treasury identify currency manipulators "gaining unfair
competitive advantage in international trade" dates back to the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness
Act of 1988, China was never called out.
There were good reasons. Or at least they seemed so at the time. For one, China hands in
the administration of George W. Bush argued that putting China on the spot would make negotiations
more difficult, because even Chinese leaders who understood the need to allow their currency
to rise could not be seen to bow to American pressure.
Labeling China a manipulator could have severely hindered progress in other areas of a complex
bilateral economic relationship. And the United States had bigger fish to fry.
"There were other dimensions of China's economic policies that were seen as more important
to U.S. economic and business interests," Eswar Prasad, who headed the China desk at the International
Monetary Fund and is now a professor at Cornell, told me. These included "greater market access,
better intellectual property rights protection, easier access to investment opportunities,
etc."
At the end of the day, economists argued at the time, Chinese exchange rate policies didn't
cost the United States much. After all, in 2007 the United States was operating at full employment.
The trade deficit was because of Americans' dismal savings rate and supercharged consumption,
not a cheap renminbi. After all, if Americans wanted to consume more than they created, they
had to get it somewhere.
And the United States had a stake in China's rise. A crucial strategic goal of American
foreign policy since Mao's death had been how to peacefully incorporate China into the existing
order of free-market economies, bound by international law into the fabric of the postwar multilateral
institutions.
And the strategy even worked - a little bit. China did allow its currency to rise a little
from 2005 to 2008. And when the financial crisis hit, it took the foot off the export pedal
and deployed a giant fiscal stimulus, which bolstered internal demand.
Yet though these arguments may all be true, they omitted an important consideration: The
overhaul of the world economy imposed by China's global rise also created losers.
In a set of influential papers that have come to inform the thinking about the United States'
relations with China, David Autor, Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; Gordon Hanson from the University of California, San Diego; and David
Dorn from the University of Zurich concluded that lots of American workers, in many communities,
suffered a blow from which they never recovered.
Rising Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs, one paper
estimated. Another found that sagging wages in local labor markets exposed to Chinese competition
reduced earnings by $213 per adult per year.
Economic theory posited that a developed country like the United States would adjust to
import competition by moving workers into more advanced industries that competed successfully
in global markets. In the real world of American workers exposed to the rush of imports after
China erupted onto world markets, the adjustment didn't happen.
If mediocre job prospects and low wages didn't stop American families from consuming, it
was because the American financial system was flush with Chinese cash and willing to lend,
financing their homes and refinancing them to buy the furniture. But that equilibrium didn't
end well either, did it?
What it left was a lot of betrayed anger floating around among many Americans on the wrong
end of these dynamics. "By not following the law, the administration sent a political signal
that the U.S. wouldn't stand up to Chinese cheating," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations. "As we can see now, that hurt in terms of maintaining political
support for open trade."
If there was a winner from this dynamic, it was Mr. Trump.
Will Mr. Trump really go after China? In addition to an expected executive order to retaliate
against the dumping of Chinese steel, he has promised more. He could tinker with the definitions
of "material" and "significant" trade surpluses to justify a manipulation charge.
And yet a charge of manipulation would add irony upon irony. "It would be incredibly ironic
not to have named China a manipulator when it was manipulating, and name it when it is not,"
Mr. Setser told me. And Mr. Trump would be retaliating against the economic dynamic that handed
him the presidency.
"What it left was a lot of betrayed
anger floating around among many Americans on the wrong end of these dynamics. "By not following
the law, the administration sent a political signal that the U.S. wouldn't stand up to Chinese
cheating," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "As we can
see now, that hurt in terms of maintaining political support for open trade."
If there was
a winner from this dynamic, it was Mr. Trump."
So PGL the Facile and Krugman - the New Democrats - helped elect with their corporate free
trade.
I don't trust that Lindsey Graham any more than Obama
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Graham is a fucking asshole. The man is despicable FILTH.
Yanin Rodriguez
Disappointing questions Tucker with all due respect. Fact - Syrians support Assad up to 82%. Fact #2 - Rebels in Syria are
by most accounts not even Syrian. Follow up on "liberating the Syrians" - with that mentality what about the Saudis?????
War is profits and comprises of the highest % of employment in the US - so until we transfer that sector of the economy to
more peaceful endeavors - we will be permanently be in illegal wars. Lastly - where are any of these wars constitutional?
Why has congress relinquished this responsibility???
We know the answers but never hear the questions asked...
Josh Hempfleng
The strike in Syria really made the Military industrial complex show themselves. The media, Democrats and Rhino's all cheering
on the attack now that they see a chance to make some money off war.
Rumi900
+Josh Hemplfeng - You say '... Democrats and Rhino's all cheering ...' Why Democrats and Rhino's?
I'd be okay with you saying Democrats and Republicans, but you seem to be letting the bulk of Republicans off the hook. Or,
are you saying all the Republican elite are Rhinos? If so, I agree. The point is, surely, that much of Washington (on both sides)
is bought and paid for by the wealthiest elites, through their lobbyists.
This isn't a partisan issue. I wish people would stop making it one! Republicans and Democrats are all equally culpable.
There are Democrats and Republicans who are not just shills for the elite. And those are the politicians we should be championing.
Trump talked about it during the election - 'draining the swamp'. The 'swamp' is not some secret power, some nefarious underground
that is controlling things.
The 'swamp' is bought and paid for politicians - politicians bought and paid for by massive donations that can now hide behind
the opaque screens of the SuperPACs. It's not just politicians on the 'other' side. Both sides are equally involved.
I don't believe Trump is serious about 'draining the swamp'. If he is, he should be going after things like the Citizen's United
decision. The Supreme Court bounced that back to the House, because it's the House that makes the law. The Supreme Court is there
to say whether the law is Constitutional. They don't make law. it's up to Congress to do that.
But politicians in the house, Republicans and Democrats alike, are happy with Citizen's United and SuperPACs and the opportunities
for massive secret donations it has allowed. It's how they all get rich.
If Trump was serious about draining the swamp, he'd be tackling those issues. But he's not. Just look at his appointees! I
didn't vote for Trump. Because I didn't believe his rhetoric. I still don't.
It's you guys, his ardent supporters, who should be holding his feet to the fire! And unfortunately, I see way too much adulation,
mindless hero worship, and not enough demanding accountability.
Joanne K
They don't want us to know that ISIS is in Syria (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and that is what Assad is fighting, along
with other Islamic groups. The L in ISIL stands for Levant. Leave Syria out so that overthrowing Assad will only leave the amorphous
oppressed rebels (really ISIS or Al Nusra or Al Qaeda).
They are deceivers.
Zack Edwards
So basically the Neoconservatives haven't learned a goddamn thing!
International Trade Lessons for the New York Times
The New York Times told readers * that Mexico is preparing to "play the corn card" in its negotiations
with Donald Trump. The piece warns:
"Now corn has taken on a new role - as a powerful lever for Mexican officials in the run-up
to talks over Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"The reason: Much of the corn that Mexico consumes comes from the United States, making it
America's top agricultural export to its southern neighbor. And even though President Trump appears
to be pulling back from his vows to completely overhaul Nafta, Mexico has taken his threats to
heart and has begun flexing its own muscle.
"The Mexican government is exploring buying its corn elsewhere - including Argentina or Brazil
- as well as increasing domestic production. In a fit of political pique, a Mexican senator even
submitted a bill to eliminate corn purchases from the United States within three years."
It then warns of the potential devastation from this threat:
"The prospect that the United States could lose its largest foreign market for corn and other
key products has shaken farming communities throughout the American Midwest, where corn production
is a vital part of the economy. The threat is particularly unsettling for many residents of the
Corn Belt because much of the region voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump in the presidential election.
" 'If we lose Mexico as a customer, it will be absolutely devastating to the ag economy,' said
Philip Gordon, 68, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on a farm in Saline, Mich., that has been
in his family for 140 years."
Okay, I hate to spoil a good scare story with a dose of reality, but let's think this one through
for a moment. According to the piece, instead of buying corn from the United States, Mexico might
buy it from Argentina or Brazil. So, we'll lose our Mexican market to these two countries.
But who is buying corn from Argentina and Brazil now? If this corn had previously been going
to other countries, then presumably these other countries will be looking to buy corn from someone
else, like perhaps U.S. farmers?
It is of course possible that Argentina and Brazil will switch production away from other crops
to corn to meet Mexico's demand, but that would likely leave openings in these other crops for
U.S. farmers. The transition to new markets for corn crops or a switch from corn to the crops
vacated by Brazil and Argentina would not be costless, but it also may not imply the sort of devastation
promised by the New York Times.
See, market economies are flexible. This is something that economists know, as should reporters
who write on economic issues. This may undermine scare stories that are being told to push an
agenda, but life is tough.
Not mentioned is that Mexico is the home of corn, that thousands of farmers who used to make their
livings raising native corns lost their farms to market rate competition from the USA under NAFTA.
Nick Begich - Wikipedia
Dr. Nick Begich
is the eldest son of the late United States Congressman from Alaska, Nick Begich Sr., and political
activist Pegge Begich. He is well known in Alaska for his own political activities. He was twice
elected President of both the Alaska Federation of Teachers and the Anchorage Council of Education.
He has been pursuing independent research in the sciences and politics for most of his adult life.
Begich received Doctor of Medicine (Medicina Alternitiva), honoris causa, for independent work in
health and political science, from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines,
Colombo, Sri Lanka, in November 1994.
Yes, There Really Are Things We Can Do to Reduce the Trade Deficit
Donald Trump's bluster about imposing large tariffs and force companies to make things in America
has led to backlash where we have people saying things to the effect that we are in a global economy
and we just can't do anything about shifting from foreign produced items to domestically produced
items. Paul Krugman's blogpost * on trade can be seen in this light, although it is not exactly what
he say and he surely knows better.
The post points out that imports account for a large percentage of the cost of many of the goods
we produce here. This means that if we raise the price of imports, we also make it more expensive
to produce goods in the United States.
This is of course true, but that doesn't mean that higher import prices would not lead to a shift
towards domestic production. For example, if we take the case of transport equipment he highlights,
if all the parts that we imported cost 20 percent more, then over time we would expect car producers
in the United States to produce with a larger share of domestically produced parts than would otherwise
be the case. This doesn't mean that imported parts go to zero, or even that they necessarily fall,
but just that they would be less than would be the case if import prices were 20 percent lower. This
is pretty much basic economics -- at a higher price we buy less.
While arbitrary tariffs are not a good way to raise the relative price of imports, we do have
an obvious tool that is designed for exactly this purpose. We can reduce the value of the dollar
against the currencies of our trading partners. This is probably best done through negotiations,
** which would inevitably involve trade-offs (e.g. less pressure to enforce U.S. patents and copyrights
and less concern about access for the U.S. financial industry). Loud threats against our trading
partners are likely to prove counter-productive. (We should also remove the protectionist barriers
that keep our doctors and dentists from enjoying the full benefits of international competition.)
Anyhow, we can do something about our trade deficits if had a president who thought seriously
about the issue. As it is, the current occupant of the White House seems to not know which way is
up when it comes to trade.
The post points out that imports account for a large percentage of the cost of many of the
goods we produce here. This means that if we raise the price of imports, we also make it more
expensive to produce goods in the United States.
== end of quote ==
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones ...
The problems is that many strategically important, high technology components production
is offshored.
"... " This looks more like what you'd see in a banana republic, " says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog group. " You've got a strongman who surrounds himself with billionaires or wealthy advisers who conduct the business of government to benefit their business. " ..."
"... In the first paragraph, we're told that jobs are moving to Mexico -- as usual. It's taken for granted (and without much concern here from Krugman) that US employers are going to keep exporting manufacturing jobs. This is followed by a defense of NAFTA, an attack on protectionism, and the suggestion that there is no alternative better than the status quo. And Democrats wonder why they're losing the Rust Belt states? ..."
"... The governmental action that was probably most important in creating the rust belt was the Reagan tax cuts. Those came as the Volcker effort to end inflation was still happening. That had to be continued, so the Reagan deficit could not be paid by inflating the money supply, and the necessary US bond sales kept our interest rate up, making the US the best place in the world to park money. Foreign exchange poured in, and the dollar's value soared by 70%. That rise made foreign production cheaper to Americans, and made US production uncompetitive elsewhere. ..."
"... Isn't this the same question that the British asked in 1845. The only thing we really know is that there are millions who no longer have a role in our economy. ..."
"... Liberals and Conservatives will not emerge until after the purge. Paul Krugman and Paul Ryan are part of the same priesthood of the only acceptable theology the Church of Neoliberalism. The belong to the same Tory Party of Robert Peel the only debate is about how best to grow the economy. ..."
"... The world's financial elite all fly the same flag called the Jolly Roger and finally we have a US government not ashamed to unfurl it. ..."
"... globalization has clearly not produced the promised big boost in overall growth in this country - economists would not be talking about "secular stagnation" if it had. ..."
"... Instead of denying the obvious facts and trying to divert the discussion with false claims about robots, why don't US economist try to work through the complications of trade and aim at policies which really would benefit US workers and might reduce the ever-growing inequality? Do they need to devote all their attention to defending the Democratic political establishment and their own failed theories and assumptions? ..."
"... It is obvious to most that the huge trade surge with China disrupted many commodity industries, steel, solar cells, electronics. ..."
"... If you do not see nothing obviously wrong, when a US company , bailed out by the US taxpayer, thanks the tax payer by importing cars made at Chinese wages to the US, putting out of work US workers, you must be a macro economist. ..."
"... Nowhere on the GM website is mentioned that those cars are made in China. Check ..."
"... the effective ban on big Western internet services like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as local data storage rules for those who are allowed to operate. It's all done in the name of security ..."
Amazing how so many conservatives dismiss what Krugman as to say since he's so clearly a 'commie.'
Then they support Trump the capitalist businessman who will get things done.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Krugman is writing capitalist essays on his blog about the benefits
of Trade, and trump is running a kleptocracy that seeks to bring back a disproven form of protectionism
that would be much more at home among early 20th century socialists than with Milton Freedman
or Adam Smith.
It goes to show that the Republicans are a party without a purpose. They have given up on their
capitalist roots and instead just cater to the whims of the highest bidding campaign contributors
and the worst instincts of their bigoted base.
Paul Mathisis a trusted commenter Fairfax, Virginia
1 day ago
Nobody Knew Trade Could Be So Complicated!
Actually everybody knows that negotiating trade deals takes years of intensive efforts because
there are many moving parts that all affect each other.
Since Trump has the attention span of the average 3 year old, he has no time for anything more
complicated than banning Muslims from traveling to America. That simple "solution" did not work
out either.
So Trump is not going to do anything on trade simply because it is way too complicated and
time consuming. After all, he couldn't even spend 3 weeks on replacing Obamacare with his "fantastic"
plan. One month ago:
"We have a plan that I think is going to be fantastic. . . . I think it's going to be something
special ... I think you're going to like what you hear." --CNN
Re: "Oh, and China currency manipulation was an issue 5 years ago - but isn't now." I find
this interesting. Five years ago China was building up their reserves by purchasing US government
and agency bonds to keep their exchange rate low. Today those reserves of government and agency
bonds are falling as they are converted into US real estate and corporate assets while the trade
deficit remains at some $500 billion. This is supposed to make everything OK. What am I missing
here? http://www.rweconomics.com/htm/WDCh_2.htm
China has more than 1.3 billion people, and wages in China have risen faster for a longer period
of time than anywhere ever.
It's not a mystery why wages in China are what they are. It started as a poor country with
an enormous, mostly rural population. If anything, the surprise is that they have managed to increase
wages so strongly for so long.
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about trade and immigration, of course, but understanding
Trump requires one to abandon the notion that he is appealing to legitimate concerns.
He is appealing to spite. Anything resembling a legitimate concern is pretense, to give cover
to what would otherwise be recognized as ugly and deplorable. He says the spiteful parts loudly
and doesn't even feign competence or coherence on policy.
Once this is fully recognized, all that he says and does makes sense. It also suggests that
people interested in real substantive policy discussions should disregard Trump entirely.
Dr. K. is correct we should watch what DJT actually does, instead of what he says, though what
DJT says is designed to whip up his partisans by pointing to real issues, but instead of blaming
the ' lost factories ' and ' stripped wealth ' on the portion of economic strata DJT inhabits
- which is where the wealth stripping/lost factory hedgies and sacrosanct banker pay contract
holders also exist - DJT always points somewhere else.
Somewhere else is a moving target that can shift each time a new sun rises on the Twitter-verse.
And it's hard to see how everyone will continue to admire the Emperor's new clothes when the
stock markets reverse course, or if there is a 2011 re-dux next month over House GOP'ers raising
the debt ceiling.
Anyhoooo, the best indicator of how things are going regarding economic policies at the White
House is to see how DJT adviser Carl Icahn has benefited from specific policy carve-outs:
" This looks more like what you'd see in a banana republic, " says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen,
a liberal watchdog group. " You've got a strongman who surrounds himself with billionaires or
wealthy advisers who conduct the business of government to benefit their business. "
Though DJT may be correct there are issues with NAFTA and at WTO, those issues are preferable
to bald-faced kleptocracy.
In the first paragraph, we're told that jobs are moving to Mexico -- as usual. It's taken for
granted (and without much concern here from Krugman) that US employers are going to keep exporting
manufacturing jobs. This is followed by a defense of NAFTA, an attack on protectionism, and the
suggestion that there is no alternative better than the status quo. And Democrats wonder why they're
losing the Rust Belt states?
Trump's record low approval rating is likely to take a further hit in the near future from
deteriorating economic conditions. Measures of consumer and business confidence soared since the
election yet hard economic data continues to weaken with the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow estimate of
first quarter GDP growth falling to just 0.9%, after this morning's weak personal income and spending
report. Indeed, growth in real personal consumption expenditures peaked way back in January 2015.
While there was a mild rebound that started in March 2016 the trend has since turned negative
since the start of the 2017. See chart:
Interesting fact is the recent polarization of consumer confidence readings. Democrats are
generally pessimists while Republicans are optimistic about the economy. That suggests consumer
confidence readings will fall when Republicans get over their infatuation with Trump. And will
most likely be driven by disappointing economic growth -- actual growth and not empty promises.
Trump promised 4% growth which is impossible over the long term due to slow population growth.
Yet, that growth rate now looks far out of reach even for a single quarter and fiscal stimulus
looks less and less likely to happen even if some tax cuts for the wealthy do manage to pass Congress.
Tax cuts are not stimulative if they heavily favor the wealthy. Probably the opposite is true
considering the Bush tax cuts were so ineffective.
Krugman is an economist; he's not merely trying to sway voters. And he knows that the decline
in industrial jobs is more due to productivity gains than factories' moving abroad. In any case,
measures like Trump's scolding businessmen is not and will not be important in keeping jobs from
leaving. More important is the exchange rate.
The governmental action that was probably most important in creating the rust belt was the
Reagan tax cuts. Those came as the Volcker effort to end inflation was still happening. That had
to be continued, so the Reagan deficit could not be paid by inflating the money supply, and the
necessary US bond sales kept our interest rate up, making the US the best place in the world to
park money. Foreign exchange poured in, and the dollar's value soared by 70%. That rise made foreign
production cheaper to Americans, and made US production uncompetitive elsewhere.
But the decline in manufacturing would be happening regardless. It is the same process that
did in most US family farms throughout the 20th century. US farming is now so efficient that farmers,
once 3/4 of us, are now as small a fraction of Americans as "gardeners, groundskeepers, and growers
of ornamental plants." The same thing is now happening to factories; we're just too efficient
at making things to require the number of manufacturing workers we once did.
Ron Cohenis a trusted commenter Waltham, MA
20 hours ago
Prof. Krugman, in your column today about Coal Country, you rightfully identify it as a state
of mind. But that state of mind is not nostaglia as you argue. Rather, it is a profound cultural
resentment that motivates the voters of West Virginia.
For perspective on this subject, I urge you to read Arlie Hochschild's, widely praised, "Strangers
in Their Own Land." http://thenewpress.com/node/10362
.
All but one of the columns, below, are from The New York Times. Taken together, they form a
coda to Hochschild's book. I suggest you start with the last one, Sabrina Tavernise's piece.
Bernie Sanders Has A Plan To Win Back Trump Voters, The Huffington Post, March 9, 2017
http://tinyurl.com/zy2nzxh
Trump Budget Proposal Reflects Working-Class Resentment of the Poor, Eduardo Porter, March
7, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/ho5zkha
Thank you or the opportunity of answering your question with my question.
Isn't this the same question that the British asked in 1845. The only thing we really know
is that there are millions who no longer have a role in our economy.
Liberals and Conservatives will not emerge until after the purge. Paul Krugman and Paul
Ryan are part of the same priesthood of the only acceptable theology the Church of Neoliberalism.
The belong to the same Tory Party of Robert Peel the only debate is about how best to grow the
economy.
The question that comes to my mind is why do we want to grow an economy where production exceeds
demand every day and our ideological Dogma says we must work even harder than ever to increase
the inequality between supply and demand?
We have ceded control to the Whigs and I fear it isn't only 3 million Irish peasants who will
disappear. The conversion of dollars into real estate really struck a high note as those worthless
hovels that housed 3 million economically worthless peasants provided room for what was most important
in the Irish economy pigs and cattle. Again I feel I must repeat there was no famine in Ireland
it was a failure of potato crops and each year Ireland exported enough food to feed all of Ireland's
hungry for seven potatoless years. Then as now the bible was The Economist.
The world's financial elite all fly the same flag called the Jolly Roger and finally we
have a US government not ashamed to unfurl it.
A good start would be to insist on living wages in mexico and Asia along with humane working
conditions. That's a starting position a trump or Clinton administration would never consider,
but Sanders would have. Bringing those changes about would create more of a level playing field
for US workers. Also if China isn't controlling currency anymore why is labor still so cheap.?
It can't be fully explained by excess labor supply. Something must be going on, and we should
be trying to figure it out.
skeptonomistis a trusted commenter Tennessee
1 day ago
lt's true that modern trade is very complicated but certain things are obvious. One is that
the US runs huge trade deficits, amounting to nearly $750 billion in goods. Yes, this is obviously
bigly unfair to the United States, that is considering the majority of its citizens and especially
wage earners, who have been put into competition with those in developing countries, rather than
the capitalists whose profits have been increased by the lower wage costs. Those goods represent
a very large number of jobs that are now in other countries. Another is that globalization has
clearly not produced the promised big boost in overall growth in this country - economists would
not be talking about "secular stagnation" if it had.
Instead of denying the obvious facts and trying to divert the discussion with false claims
about robots, why don't US economist try to work through the complications of trade and aim at
policies which really would benefit US workers and might reduce the ever-growing inequality? Do
they need to devote all their attention to defending the Democratic political establishment and
their own failed theories and assumptions?
Trade is a tough policy to debate with people and come to consensus. It is obvious to most
that the huge trade surge with China disrupted many commodity industries, steel, solar cells,
electronics. More should have been done to minimize the disruption. That said we are where we
are.
Our manufacturing now is higher up the value chain. Our commodity mills now need to innovate
to take advantage of niche higher value low volume markets that big producers can't supply effectively.
Innovate to develop new materials and specialized processes that displace current materials. Innovation,
flexibility and agility is our competitive advantage. Time to make the jobs of the future, commodity
production is in the past.
"But even there it's not obvious what you would demand from a new agreement."
Let me help out the professor with an article from the NY Times 3/30/17 and provide an obvious
example
"China's Taxes on Imported Cars Feed Trade Tensions With U.S."
reporting that a Jeep retailing for $ $40,530 in the US cost in China , quote " $ $71,000,
mostly because of taxes that Beijing charges on every car, minivan and sport utility vehicle that
is made in another country"
Meanwhile , quote "General Motors started shipping the Buick Envision model from a factory
in eastern China's Shandong Province to the United States last year. That decision irritated the
United Automobile Workers union"
But that is not all. The NY Times reported on 1/29/16 that GM's Cadillac devision started to
import its " plug-in hybrid version of its new CT6 flagship sedan from China " and "A PEEK under
the hood of three new cars from Buick and Cadillac will not reveal a Made in China label"
If you do not see nothing obviously wrong, when a US company , bailed out by the US taxpayer,
thanks the tax payer by importing cars made at Chinese wages to the US, putting out of work US
workers, you must be a macro economist.
Either US consumer win (cheaper cars) or US companies (more profit for the stock holders).
Final Note
Nowhere on the GM website is mentioned that those cars are made in China. Check
Ron,
Europe's parliamentary democracies have always given the 20% an outsized role in elections and
governance because coalitions are the rule not the exception and 20% is a lot of seats.
From here on a less than 4 hour drive to Waltham it looks like your 20% has the house, the senate,
the executive and soon the courts and the Supreme Court.
Donald Trump was a wake-up call for the world's 80% as Europe like North America is over 80% urban.
If Trump had the attention span and work ethic needed to become a dictator, he would seek the
confrontation over expelling the undocumented, not over trade. Trade isn't visceral enough, not
existential enough, to sustain the fear of the Other a dictator needs.
On China, there actually are a few obvious imbalances that affect the tech industry, though
it's doubtful the US has the leverage to change them.
The first comes from the Chinese government's drive to build their domestic tech industry by
coercing technology transfer from Western firms outsourcing manufacturing in China.
The second is the effective ban on big Western internet services like Google, Facebook, and
Twitter, as well as local data storage rules for those who are allowed to operate. It's all done
in the name of security (and censorship), of course, but it's also an obvious form of protectionism. Baidu and Weibo might not exist otherwise.
The government is also investing in a Chinese variant
of Linux, no doubt with the ultimate goal of gaining complete control over all software running
inside the country.
"... What's more, the overall numbers hide serious declines in most areas of manufacturing. A 2013 paper by Susan Houseman, Timothy Bartik and Timothy Sturgeon found that strong growth in computer-related manufacturing obscured a decline in almost all other areas. "In most of manufacturing," they write, "real GDP growth has been weak or negative and productivity growth modest." ..."
"... And, more troubling, the U.S. is now losing computer manufacturing. Houseman et al. show that U.S. computer production began to fall during the Great Recession. In semiconductors, output has grown slightly, but has been far outpaced by most East Asian countries. Meanwhile, trade deficits in these areas have been climbing. ..."
"... He cites Sematech, a government-led consortium that tried to help the U.S. retain its lead in semiconductor manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s, as a successful example of high-tech industrial policy. ..."
Staying Rich
Without Manufacturing
Will Be Hard
MARCH 28, 2017 8:00
AM EDT
Discussions about
manufacturing tend to
get very contentious.
Many economists and
commentators believe
that there's nothing
inherently special
about making things
and that efforts to
restore U.S.
manufacturing to its
former glory reek of
industrial policy,
protectionism,
mercantilism and
antiquated thinking.
But in their
eagerness to guard
against the return of
these ideas,
manufacturing's
detractors often
overstate their case.
Manufacturing is in
bigger trouble than
the conventional
wisdom would have you
believe.
One common
assertion is that
while manufacturing
jobs have declined,
output has actually
risen. But this piece
of conventional wisdom
is now outdated. U.S.
manufacturing output
is almost exactly the
same as it was just
before the financial
crisis of 2008:
[chart]
In the 1990s, it
really was true that
manufacturing
production was booming
even though employment
in the sector was
falling. During that
decade, output rose by
almost half. That's
almost a 4 percent
annualized growth
rate. The expansion of
the early 2000s, in
contrast, saw
manufacturing increase
by only about 15
percent peak-to-peak
over eight years --
less than a 2 percent
annual growth rate.
And in the eight years
between 2008 and 2016,
the growth rate has
averaged zero.
But even this may
overstate U.S.
manufacturing's
performance. An
alternative measure,
called industrial
production, shows an
outright decrease from
a decade ago:
[chart]
So it isn't just
manufacturing
employment and the
sector's share of
gross domestic product
that are hurting in
the U.S. It's total
output. The U.S.
doesn't really make
more stuff than it
used to.
What's more, the
overall numbers hide
serious declines in
most areas of
manufacturing. A 2013
paper by Susan
Houseman, Timothy
Bartik and Timothy
Sturgeon found that
strong growth in
computer-related
manufacturing obscured
a decline in almost
all other areas. "In
most of
manufacturing," they
write, "real GDP
growth has been weak
or negative and
productivity growth
modest."
And, more
troubling, the U.S. is
now losing computer
manufacturing.
Houseman et al. show
that U.S. computer
production began to
fall during the Great
Recession. In
semiconductors, output
has grown slightly,
but has been far
outpaced by most East
Asian countries.
Meanwhile, trade
deficits in these
areas have been
climbing.
In other words,
Asia is still
solidifying its place
as the workshop of the
world, while the U.S.
de-industrializes. The
1990s provided a brief
respite from this
trend, as new
industries arose to
replace the ones that
had been lost. But the
years since the turn
of the century have
reversed this short
renaissance, and
manufacturing is once
more migrating
overseas.
Manufacturing
skeptics often draw
parallels to what
happened to
agriculture in the
Industrial Revolution.
But the two situations
aren't analogous. In
the 20th century, U.S.
agricultural output
soared even as it shed
jobs and shrank as a
percent of GDP.
Machines replaced most
human farmers, but the
total value of U.S.
crops kept climbing.
Meanwhile, the U.S.
to this day runs a
trade surplus in
agriculture even as it
runs a huge deficit in
manufactured products.
America pays for
computers and cars and
phones with soybeans
and corn and beef.
So U.S.
manufacturing is
hurting in ways that
U.S. agriculture never
did. The common
refrain that the
modern shift to
services parallels the
earlier shift to
industry might turn
out to be true, but
the parallels are not
encouraging.
Faced with this
evidence, many
skeptics will question
why the sector is
important at all. Why
should a country
specialize in making
things, when it can
instead specialize in
designing, marketing
and financing the
making of things?
This is a
legitimate question,
but there are reasons
to think a successful
developed nation still
needs a healthy
manufacturing sector.
Harvard University's
Kennedy School of
Government economist
Ricardo Hausmann
believes that a
country's economic
development depends
crucially on where it
lies in the so-called
product space. If a
country makes complex
products that are
linked to many other
industries -- such as
computers, cars and
chemicals -- it will
be rich. But if it
makes simple products
that don't have much
of a supply chain --
soybeans or oil -- it
will stay poor. In the
past, the U.S. was
very successful at
positioning itself at
the top of the global
value chain. But with
manufacturing's
decline, the rise of
finance, real estate
and other orphaned
service industries may
not be enough to keep
the country rich in
the long run.
More top economists
are starting to come
around to the view
that manufacturing is
important.
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology economist
David Autor, in a
recent phone
conversation, told me
he now believes that
the U.S. should focus
more on industrial
policy designed to
keep cutting-edge
manufacturing
industries in the
country. He cites Sematech, a
government-led
consortium that tried
to help the U.S.
retain its lead in
semiconductor
manufacturing in the
1980s and 1990s, as a
successful example of
high-tech industrial
policy.
The stellar
performance of
semiconductor
manufacturing in the
1990s and 2000s
relative to other
industries in the
sector, as reported by
Houseman et al., seems
like something the
U.S. should aim to
emulate with
next-generation
industries.
So U.S. leaders
should listen to
manufacturing skeptics
a little bit less, and
pay more attention to
those who say the
sector is crucial.
It's worth noting that
President Donald
Trump, who was elected
on a promise to
restore American
manufacturing, has
shown more interest in
cutting government
programs designed to
give industry a
helping hand. If
there's going to be a
U.S. industrial policy
renaissance, it might
not be his
administration that
leads it.
"... I think its best to cast Obama, to use Trotsky' phrase, 'into the dustbin of history' where
he belongs, along with the Clintons. He is a footnote and little else ..."
"... Whereas working people & small business owners just want less tax, less people competing with
them and a sense that the country they die in is not too different from the one they were born in. ..."
"... Trump got in because of the votes of the stagnated middle income bracket. ..."
"... The traditional elites in the USA have been broken. But neo-liberalism has not. The individuals,-both
actors and interests- are in the process of re-alignment. The triumph of Trump shows just how thin is
the veneer of the political liberalism that overlays neo-liberalism economy and society. ..."
"... Unless the role of Wall Street, The City of London and the gradual privatisation of economies
and societies in favour of global corporations is addressed, talk of an end of neo-liberalism is cynical
humbug. ..."
"... Meanwhile, an almost 'traditional' world of pre 1917 capitalist states is re-emerging with
states and their proxies killing and destroying in order to control territory and economies. ..."
White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic
neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens
also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated
Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process.
This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its
knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and
escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten
to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault
lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious,
we gird ourselves for a frightening future.
... ... ...
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic
gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing
inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad.
It is clear that Trump and his kind are intent on reinforcing the barricades around the wealthy
and powerful. With the 'popular' media collapsing into similar partisanship it is equally clear
that the masses have no idea of the full extent to which they are being hoodwinked and fleeced.
Neo-liberalism is a return to the exploitative capitalism of the Georgian and Victorian eras,
where the self-perpetuating 'money makes money' maxim is the driving force. The only way to break
the cycle is to install more civic-minded politicians able to recycle money back to the rest of
society. Yet the sheer expense of standing for office eliminates most from the starting gates.
Which means that a key change required (among many) is to put severe campaign spending limits
in place.
"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. "
Probably not. A defining component of Fascism (not the catch-all 'fascism' used by the generally
historical and political illiterate) was Statism - that is, a believe in central government intervention
in and control of the economy, commerce and society in general.
Perhaps Parkinson would care to detail the Republican Congress' (and Trump's) plans for a change
to 'big government' instead of relying on free-market capitalism to largely 'take care' of things
in America?
Blimey, this 'new analysis' concerning the failure of neo-liberal capitalist globalisation is
pouring out of the newspapers - and in nearly every country too. Cornel West managed to mention
the 'nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness'.
The thing is, there are still people who remember that prior to the frenzy of neo-liberalism,
the privatisation of everything, the marketisation of everything not nailed down, and every man
and his dog becoming a 'shareholder' and 'investor', there actually was some stability and rational
economic normality.
Is it any wonder then, that people hanker after that? It is actually possible to undo some of
the excesses, or at least stop them going further. Part of that voice of elitism is the one telling
everybody that the clock can't be turned back or that all change is inevitable and irreversible.
Easily said when your salary and pension are fat and you're in your twilight years.
In Trump there is merely a narrow political layer above the very same rapacious global financial
system West claims has 'crumbled'. They all sit on the same economic ideas more-or-less.
Unfortunately large swathes of the populations are voting in a blind rage or from fear. It
reflects badly on the electorate showing a complete dearth of economic knowledge. What else can
be expected from 40 years of dumbed-down culture?
Neoliberalism: 19th century Imperialism, profiting from cheap labor propelled manufacturing,
staged marketing and elimination of borders and national resistance on confiscated lands.
Neofascism: Fascism under "Neo" names.
Let's not divert ourselves from cold hard facts.
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and
symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners,
oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians
abroad
And yet his cult lives on. A heroes welcome in Berlin and barely hours after Clinton failed
democrats were petitioning for Michelle Obama to stand in the next elections. It's the cult of
personality in American politics that is so toxic, it's more like the fairytale of professional
wrestling than a search for truth, fairness and justice. No wonder the stay-at-homes cost Clinton
the election. People are fed up with the bs.
Since Washington D.C. has for decades chosen not to conciliate between the right and left political
ideologies, but instead to become polarized to either extreme, it has become virtually impossible
to govern the U.S. as the American forefathers had imagined at the foundation of the Constitution.
Polarization to either extreme is why the pendulum continues to swing from one to the other periodically,
and the wisest decision that can be made in any given instant is obviated as a result. If the
politicians refuse to conciliate, as is their right and solumn duty to behave, then the people
will have to speak to them in the only way possible to get them to understand. The government
we get is what we deserve.
Love it. See, Cornell is wise enough to recognize that the Democrat Party and Republican Party
had both participated in two great evils: a rapacious and murderous foreign policy, one, and neo-liberal
pro-elite economic policies that harmed the working and middle class, regardless of color. He
also notes that there also is racism or xenophobia, that Trump masterfully manipulated.
However,
the Democrats are not off the hook, because as he notes they didn't address the economic plight
of most Americans.
Fascist - "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist
economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and
typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism"......Seems like a pretty accurate description
of the Trump campaign to me.
The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist
billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities.
'Media-saturated lure', what a complete crock, the media were beside themselves at the result,
CNN was delaying results because they didn't want to believe them, Trump rounded on the media
towards the end and everyone thought he had blown it, but he hadn't, because the people had seen
through the paid for, and conflicted media.
Sadly, I don't think neoliberalism is over, it is just dented. But time will tell. The DNC saying
they have a big tent does not tell me that it is over.
You could not be more wrong that the neoliberal era has ended in the US.
Trump will find himself beholden to the same forces that Obama faced and will quickly lose control
as his administration tears itself apart with infighting.
As soon as he is impeached the party elites, their corporate masters and the "liberal" media
will produce a sensible centre candidate who will win comfortably by a combination of not being
Trump and the thinly veiled anti-white-male rhetoric the establishment have employed throughout
the Clinton / Obama years.
Once the establishment have the White House back the Silicon Valley and Wall St grandees will
sweep back into their places of influence and they will pursue an even more aggressive neoliberal
agenda than before, all the while singling out minority special interest groups for special treatment
to maintain the false veneer of inclusiveness so characteristic of the Obama years.
It is the neoliberalistic focus on money as a means by its own right that has been priming human
beings into becoming more and more isolated, greedy and egocentric. Thus the ground for a fascist
takeover has been prepared and history is repeating itself. Apparently, we're unable to learn
from earlier mistakes, because this development can only come as a surprise for those who only
hear and see what they wish to hear and see.
Countless rational people, experts and laymen alike, have been warning us for this to happen for
just as long as neoliberalism has lasted. But once "gold" has been cried out, nothing can stop
the rush. We're not any better than those little lemming critters, stampeding towards their untergang.
We're guilty as charged and get what we have asked for. Like always, the weak and innocent will
get the worst deal.
Wow. A Harvard Graduate and it would seem you know little about the Neoliberal socio-economic
policy model.
President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear (or not, seeing how he often changes
his mind and always allows for 'plausible deniability' e.g. no press allowed) that he will
(1)
continue to make US government smaller by privatization, in particular, private prisons;
(2) deregulation,
that is,
The Pres.-elect says for each new regulation, two must be eliminated; (3) major tax reform
that tends to redistribute wealth and inequality. No doubt you are TOO busy, but do a little superficial
research before writing these disarming essays. This makes you look really bad!
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism.
Counterpoint: Trump is the last gasp of neoliberalism.
From inception, neoliberalism has not been too far removed from neofacism. It's a set of economic
ideals that Obama proved could benefit minorities; but it's most comfortable alongside the protectionism
and jingoism of neofacism: in order to survive, the "trickle down" economy has to have something
to pull the wealth downwards; and that's harder to achieve when the lower classes are better off.
Better (from the perspective of neoliberalism) to create a new underclass of undesirables, and
what better way to use everyday markers such as skin colour and religion, and favour the white
middle- and upper-middle classes? Not enough? Okay add women into the mix. This in itself creates
more impetus for the male middles and lowers to grasp upward. Anything to distinguish themselves
from the underclasses, whether legal, criminal, or newly criminalized.
Cornel is one of the few that dares to speak the truth, but I find this particular piece of though
to be maybe be a bit incomplete.
To me Trump is the neoliberal crowd sneaking in through the back door by playing a new card:
throw out a blaze of hatred and scapegoating to satisfy the anger of the crowd, but carry on doing
exactly what you have been doing.
It's hard to see where the neoliberal age is over. Because Trump is not a populist, but rather
a neoliberal in disguise. For example, prime on on his agenda it seems is more tax cuts, trickle
down economics, the cult of individualism - and worst of all the privatisation of national infrastructure
on a scale that will make post-soviet Russia seem mild!
He might say he isn't for the so called "trade deals", but so what - domestically he is set
to roll back environmental regulation, protections that workers enjoy, you name it. So what's
the difference if he does it via an international framework or just domestic policy? It's the
same result!
The only way Trump is going to be able to do this is the age old tactics of sowing divisiveness.
Which he set out in his campaign.
The real issue is how dangerous will be situation be once "white people" realise that they
have been duped......AND this guy has already set the hounds of hell loose on the minorities in
the country.
This is all set to be a disaster of epic proportions. But lets not confuse this for the end
of neoliberalism.
What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow
suffering to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to
the suffering of poor and working people and obsessed with the spectacle of success.
On the above - all I can say is "amen", because many of us readers just went through an entire
election coverage in which right here, we were treated to a barrage of neoliberal propaganda poorly
disguised as gender politics. And the political alternatives were buried and ignored, to the point
where it was blatant and embarassing.
So please Cornel, why dont you say this one one more time to the editorial team? Please.
I believe you're wrong about Trump. Neoliberals have a long-term agenda and don't act spontaneously
and emotionally like Trump does. Trump is no neoliberal, he's just a maniac and only cares about
himself and his closest family. He will rip off the American people for what it's worth and leave
a total mess of everything.
No, Trump is them. I lived in NYC for years and there is no other way to describe him.
He worships money, he has no other values. He believes in markets - rigged ones only. Hates regulations.
Rips off the working class.
Why do the existing neoliberal top dogs (Bush clan etc) hate him then? Just that he outflanked
them by being willing to throw super explicit hatred and divisiveness around as bait for voters.
But make no mistake he is going to do exactly what they do - which is what he has done all
his life.
Anyone who thinks a 70 yr old Riche Rich can suddenly become a "populist" should go to the
movies for that fantasy, but shouldnt be allowed to vote.
In a way, that is what I meant. It is just that, so far, he has not belonged to a 'club' and has
gone on his own, money-grabbing way. He seems to reject 'the establishment'. But, from Jan 20th
he will not only be apart of the 'establishment', he will be a leading player in it. Not difficult
to see where that will end.
Donald Trump is an elite who fed lie after lie to the so called 'working class' public and they
ate it like starving dogs. Trump will destroy consumer protection groups, he will gut regulation
on Wall St, he will manipulate government institutions so his private companies will benefit....and
you allowed this to happen because you felt he wasn't a 'typical' politician. The working class
voter will pay dearly over the next 4 years.
It had to happen, read 'Is Humanity Suffering Testosterone Overload.' Neoliberalism is only one
part of the problem.... denial of Basic Living Income? Sexism? Racism? they all come under the
same umbrella of being manipulated by what can only be describes as 'Warlord' mentality that has
been around for thousands of years... it's the mindset that must be changed
"Fascism" is not very well defined tbh, but there are plenty of people that tick those boxes that
aren't fascist. Maggie Thatcher was not technically fascist. And perhaps he was right to denounce
the media because as wikileaks now tells us (and in fact Donna Brazile tells us openly) they were
colluding pretty heavily with the democrats. If they hadn't been they wouldn't have published
those ridiculously biased (democrats oversampled by 10%) polls and fooled themselves.
Trump in the Whitehouse & the UK leaving the EU represent a big kick in the balls from all those
that feel left behind/marginalised/had their legitimate concerns ignored by the - for want of
a better word - establishment.
All those who were doing well out of the status quo - actually,
strike that, they were making out like fucking bandits - are now going to have to deal with a
new set of variables, a situation that they hate.
The Remain campaign labelled anyone concerned about where the EU was headed as racist without
even trying to engage with them - for what it's worth I voted to remain & try to reform from the
inside - & reaped the whirlwind for their arrogance. Hilary Clinton's message was loud & clear
- more of the same old tired shit, things will carry on getting shittier for all you peasants
but all of my friends in big business will be fine, but on the bright side I've got ovaries y'all.
America rejected the bullshit & said here, deal with this idiot for four years, have some of our
uncertainty - we have nothing to lose. The sad thing is that whilst the Donald is gone in four
years time a Supreme Court - that's where the real power in the US lies - packed out with Nazis
will last for a very long time - & they can make your beloved constitution say anything they damn
well please.
Sleep well in the (People are waking up to the fact that having nothing equals having nothing
left to lose - may we all live in interesting times) fire.
Why the pussy footing around? For neo-liberalism read capitalism. When did Nixon go to China -
1973? In order to open a source of cheap labour for US and other western companies.
From there on it was inevitable that the Chinese would seize the opportunity for themselves and
turn it full circle. So don't blame the Chinese. It's a 40 year orgy of more for less, spawned
by global corps. that have no loyalty other than to themselves.
The author's analysis is deeply flawed. The exit polls show that people who earn less than $50,000/year
voted in a solid majority for Clinton. It was people who earn $50,000-$100,000/year that voted
overwhelmingly for Trump. Hardly a cry of help and a rejection of neoliberalism from the "dispossessed"
classes. The whole trope about Trump's campaign being the voice of the "poor, bigoted, uneducated
white voter" was simply a propaganda narrative designed to scare and mobilize black and brown
voters to support Clinton. According to Nate Silver at 538.com, the average trump supporter earn
$72,000/ year vs. the median income of $54,000/year. 44% of Trump supporters have a college degree,
vs. 29% for the population as a whole.
I think a lot of people who voted for Trump were tired of the strategy of the Democrats to
separate and polarize people based on a ruthless strategy of divisive identity politics. Even
30% of Hispanics voted for Trump -- I guess they didn't get the message that they should be afraid,
and instead responded to Trump's core message -- economic empowerment for all Americans, based
on ambition and merit. Maybe the leftist strategy of cultivating racial and class resentments
is not so powerful as they had hoped.
I doubt if neoliberalism has reached the critical threshold yet. Businesses will continue to dominate
behind the scenes through their indirect ownership of Congress so if neoliberal policies suit
them (and they mostly do), then neoliberalism it is.
I think 2020 will be the critical year after 4 years of Trump (if he survives the full term which
is a huge If). Then we might see some sweeping changes as the US electorate wakes up to the reality
of what they have done.
I believe fully in what my brother says, yet there is more to this story.
In this bleak moment, we must inspire each other driven by a democratic soulcraft of integrity,
courage, empathy and a mature sense of history – even as it seems our democracy is slipping
away.
We must, having "a mature sense of history" along with courage rejoice in the positive results
of the end of Neoliberalism. GONE are TPP and TTIP - this is a great cause for progressives to
celebrate. Rapprochement with Russia and the possible reshaping of the geopolitical post war arrangements,
the end of "The New American Century" project of aggression and empire and a possible new view
to cooperation.
These things are happening, there will be jobs programs and all sorts of positive initiatives.
The courage we need now is to work with an insurgent movement with tens of millions of supporters
to try and shape new policies, not "fight" the insurgency but fight to fully kill of Neoliberalism.
The courage is in the cooperation with ugly people and swallowing your pride in favor of helping
the people who have been so deeply betrayed. There is no left or right now there is only the insurgency
or the Neoliberal establishment and corporate rule the end of democracy lies there, not in the
insurgency - take your pick.
Neoliberalism is expiring, due to people who sleep walked into a neoliberal era, starting with
Thatcher and Reagan, waking up and smelling the BS.
There is no 'trickle down', only a 'trickle
up' of money to a ruling elite already fattened by privilege, and governments all sing from the
same neoliberal hymn sheet, with global corporations calling the tune.
There has been no choice at the ballot box, no chance for ordinary people to vote for change,
because governments no longer represent the people, they stopped doing that decades ago, now they
represent the interests of the ruling elite/global corporations. Every few years political parties
pretend to care about issues that affect all of us, then after being elected promptly turn their
backs and do sod all for the people.
Something had to give.
Of course a few short years ago many would have put good money on a people's revolution being
left-wing, nobody would have predicted that it would be far right wing. And of course this is
now the difficulty, for though far right wing leaders have been quick to capitalise on people's
fears and insecurities, promising an end to the neoliberal era, what we are in danger of doing
is jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, with easy/lazy promises made by the likes of Trump/Farage/Le
Pen, who simply say what many disillusioned people want to hear.
But delivering on those promises is not going to happen, and when it doesn't they will simply
blame the scapegoats they have already tied to the back of their band wagon, to be mercilessly
dragged along, immigrants/Muslims/Mexicans/women/Jews and sadly a lot of angry people who want
a scapegoat will resort to hate crimes.
Sanders was offering a humane counter narrative, so is Corbyn, and if people don't want a repeat
of what is happening in the US over here, then he is the only alternative, and scoff all you like
but whilst doing so remember your options here, a counter narrative that offers a fairer, kinder
politics, or one that offers the diametric opposite to this.
For me it is a no-brainer.
I agree with you here minus the Sanders bit. Sanders was a nice old grandpa but a policy wonk
he didn't make. Sanders was very much out of his depth and was essentially a nicer Trump. He would
not have won and would be as ineffective as Trump will be.
"Neo-fascism" amounts to lazy thinking. It does disservice to history and the people who suffered
under real fascism.
Where are Trump's blackshirts or SA?
Where are the political assassinations and street beatings of leftists by party-organized paramilitary
units?
People are exercising their First Amendment rights, freely assembling and protesting without violent
reprisals.
"Neo-fascism" is hyperbolic blather.
With overreaching rhetoric, West writes of how "we must;"--and how we must with "justice" and
"truth telling."
He even invokes the magic name of Dr. Martin Luther King; a serious guy who can be counted on
to sanctify any argument in the cloak of transcendental solemnity.
Here's his main assumption though:
West says that a "lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism
to its knees."
Is that true?
Might it be that economic insecurity brought neoliberalism to its knees, despite cultural scapegoating?
Could it be that a lot of the people who voted for Trump see through the rhetoric, lies, inflammatory
speech and overheated moralizing that lately pass for news, commentary and political discourse?
And, after careful consideration, they voted for economic policies that might improve their lives,
rather than simply settling for more of the same.
Trump's policies might improve their lives.
Then again, they might not.
Clinton's certainly would not.
So is voting for Trump a knee-jerk reaction to fearful uncertainty--or a rational decision made
by people who see through the seemingly all-pervasive rhetorical B.S.?
Maybe people aren't as dumb as mass media believes they are.
Something to consider.
"Trump's neofascist rhetoric and predictable authoritarian reign is just another ugly moment
that calls forth the best of who we are and what we can do."
This line goes down well with the Hollywood & Silicon Valley party circuit set.
Trump has shown he's pretty flexible. He's showing it now as early word indicates he is tempering
his policies. So, all you worried snowflakes and oppressed maybe fretting for nothing or at best,
very little.
NeoLiberalism was the brainchild of economists Friedrich Hayak and Milton Friedman.It was picked
up by Reagan in the US (Reaganomics) and Thatcher in the UK,as well as others.
Simply put it means deregulation of big banks and corperations to give them virtually unfettered
power to do as they like.They did.It is the basis of the so-called theory of 'trickle- down'.
Basically 'trickle-down' believes that if the rich get richer a proportion of that wealth trickles
down to everyone else. It was just a theory. It was wrong,as we now well know. The rich just sat
on the money and much of it just ended up in tax havens.
As the corperations reached out for ever increasing profits they then started to 'globalise',a
nice term for saying that you will lose your job and we will emigrate it abroad. This put pressure
on the jobs market and depressed pay all over the West.
The USA had the opportunity to hit back at this with it's recent election and the UK with Brexit.
The people did so.
However,the USA has now voted in an even more right-wing government and the UK has changed the
face of it's government but not the substance and it has also taken a further lurch to the right.
Hence,NeoFacism.
The NeoLiberalists are still there, in power.
So, we now have NeoLiberalism joined with NeoFacism.
I'll leave to come to your own conclusions about the future.
Trickle down seemed to work for a while post WW2, but with Thatcher all that was destroyed. Social
policy needs State intervention and certain elements of society should be enshrined and not left
to the cleverness of the ballot box tricks. Housing, education, health/welfare and public transport
should all be kept out of the whims of new free market.
ideas
Hayek didn't realise that the logical result of his economics was oligarchy and a client state.
The Conservative party aren't conservatives either, but very much neoliberal.
Funny thing is during the last 8 years of Obama in office as President ,the Clintons via their
"Foundation " has made themselves very ,very rich .Meanwhile ISIS is supported by Obama and the
reputation of USA is dragged through the "mud", as the World wonders why a the leader of the Western
World in backing a "bunch of thugs who kill civilians ,act like they own the World.The whole of
the Middle East was about to break into a "Sunni v Shia bloodbath over Syria and Irag ,until Russia
decided the "game was over " and stopped Isis in it's tracks .
Neoliberalism is now shown up to be a "rich get richer and stuff everyone else : modus operandi,great
for California (weapons and computer based systems ) and "Manhattan " where the Bankers and Federal
Reserve broke all the rules as the National debt went up by 8 trillion US dollars under Obama
(ex federal Reserve chief of 1990's joked a few years ago "When i ran the Fed . we never mentioned
the "trillion " word when talking about the National Debt but ,now i can talk about 16 trillion
dollar debt !What a laugh !"
Let us hope that Neoliberalism is now "dead and buried " ,the Clinton's and their Middle East
autocratic backers (who must know they are soon to be history -take you pick -Saudi Arabia has
trouble fighting Yemen and now Yemen is in Saudi Arabia ,because the Saudi's cannot fight .Forget
Sanders ,too old and "did he take a backhander to go away ?.Trump does not want to be President
,he has said many times "i am not a politician " he should have said "i am your local builder
,who was hired to save you house /country after years of neglect finally brought the survival
of the house to the tipping point of no return.Personally i cannot wait for the "ex Playboy centrefold
,who has a masters degree in economics ,is married to a leading surgeon ,father was a General
in Vietnam war,mother runs one of the biggest charities in the West .She cam also waltz.tango,salsa
and plays many musical instruments.She wants to run for President because God told her to,she
has friends of every ethnic group in USA.Only joking Hilary was probably the female candidate
for President - we will never know =the rest of the women who might have run could not afford
the "price tag " on the Presidency set by Neoliberals who wanted one of their own elite as President
.
Excellent article. Neo liberalism is unfettered capitalism embraced in it's truest form in Britain
and the US. The social democracies of Europe harness the wealth created and invest in their societies
far better than both. Emasculated unions, sell off of assets, privatising as much as possible
and ignoring fiscal misbehaviour of banks and tax avoiders. Im sure the most extreme right wing
President ever with his backers, Breibart, Farage, the KKK and Pen will gallop to the rescue of
the ordinary US citizen!!!
Here are a few facts:
Democrats went along with Bush (and Hillary is no better) when it came to fighting wars...presumably
because we (our Dem politicians) get just as much a chunk of cash from the military industrial
sector as do the Republicans, and they saw the ka-ching very quickly.
We adopted a Republican(!!) Romney health care plan as the rebranded ACA, which allowed the further
flow of unlimited greed in our health/medical care system, and unsurprisingly, soon started to
leak like a sieve! (Of course, insurance, pharma, and the health care giant conglomerates are
making money hand over fist)
Obama and Hillary backing Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, the one man who came out and
said publicly he would not vote to overturn Citizen's United, which allows the rich and corporations
to flood our political system and thus our policies with money and influence.
Obama willing, unbidden, to put social security on the line...something republicans and Wall Street
always wanted.
When it came to repealing Glass Steagall, ONLY 50 Dems had the backbone to vote "no"...because
the others (almost entirely the Clinton neoliberal wing of the party) decided to collude with
the republicans , who were unanimously in favour, with Wall Street.
The Clintonite neoliberal wing of the party would like you to believe that those who are highly
suspicious of them (and rightly so) are either racist, misogynist or both.
Actually..quite a lot of us (particularly those of us who are serious about such issues) despise
the way the Clinton wing of the party use these issues as a smokescreen to hide the fact that
when it comes to selling everyone out, they are right up there with the republicans.
Although I am sure there are some racists out there, and some misogynists, I don't think the vast
majority of those who hesitated to pull a lever for Hillary were. I think they were simply people
who, while realizing that women and blacks were getting a raw deal, also realized that they would
not be getting any part of a deal...and because they had been forgotten so long, quite a few of
them voted for Trump.
I don't for a moment believe that Trump is any better than Clinton, but I do very much "get"
where many of them are coming from. The distrust of Hillary over things like Benghazi, emails
and the like was only the superficial exo-skin of a growing distrust of the Democrats going lockstep
with the republicans when it came to toadying to Wall Street and corporations.
"a growing distrust of the Democrats going lockstep with the republicans when it came to toadying
to Wall Street and corporations." Agree. The Dems and Repubs became the uni-party blob on some
key issues. Plus, they could come up with no new ideas for the problems that confront USA and
the world--immigration, global warming, poverty. Obama did not even SAY the words "climate change"
until after his re-election in 2012. That's how much Dems wanted to talk about the issue--they
did not. Hence, we get all the people in USA in denial because no one bothered to talk about it,
even with the bully pulpit.
American neoliberalism can only be on its way out if US looks for Europe to teach the alternative.
Bring back industries? How exactly, when all your businesses only care about cheap labour. I just
can't imagine America favouring a different society.Their whole culture would have to change.
Everything they do just reeks of inequality and competition to me. Not to mention the cities are
ugly and all infrastructure and planning is centred around cars. To be honest the whole country
is a mess.
Such interesting strands here in West's argument to untangle and examine. Fascism, neo-fascism:
what do these terms mean? Most definitions zero in on "authoritarianism" and "nationalism." Trump's
certainly a nationalist, but of course it's possible to nationalist and not a fascist.
Trump also
has also displayed some authoritarian symptoms: suggesting that opponents at rallies be beaten
and that libel laws be changed to tamp down criticism directed against him. Yet, so far, this
mostly seems to be bluster. Also, can a person be a fascist if he is bound by, and respects the
rules of, constitutional democracy, as Trump certainly does (at least so far)?
For these reasons,
I don't see Trump as a fascist. A racist, yes, undoubtedly. Emotionally unstable, almost certainly.
Fascist? I don't think so. West also includes all of the touchstones of identity politics: grievances
of blacks, Mexican immigrants, gays, Jews, etc. Which is ironic because another group has just
appropriated identity politics with a vengeance: working white people.
So what is it, Cornell,
Do you approve of identity politics, or don't you? Far better to my mind to think in terms of
class, and the unfairness of the current system as seen through class privileges, than to linger
on the divisive and losing concept of ethnic/racial/gender identity.
People forget, as this writer does, that fascism is not *just* about race, but about the idea
of a strong nation too. And that doesn't just include a strong military, but strong infrastructure
and strong domestic industries too. Yes, Trump won over the bigots and the racists, but that isn't
why he won. It's an awful truth, but most bigots and racists will have voted Republican anyway.
He won because he gave hope to enough people in devastated economic areas that they were willing
to put aside all the hatred and crap from Trump because they either didn't have jobs, or they
were in the middle classes who were in fear of losing their jobs.
Today's collapse was due to the introduction of an ideology put forward by Milton Freidman.
Economic liberalism / neoliberalism. From its first trial in Chile it could be seen that it enriched the few and impoverished the
many.
It was never going to work in democracies. Everyone started to notice this economics of the 1%. It was never going to work in democracies. "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and
we're winning." Warren Buffett
How many people are in your class Warren? It was never going to work in democracies. It never did work in democracies and it was obvious from its first trial that this would be
the case.
The Washington Consensus was a lesson in abject stupidity and its consequences have played
out in the way that anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have expected.
What was the economics behind neoliberalism?
Neoclassical economics/ When was it last used?
The 1920s. 1920s/2000s - high inequality, high banker pay, low regulation, low taxes for the wealthy,
robber barons (CEOs), reckless bankers, globalisation phase
1929/2008 - Wall Street crash
1930s/2010s - Global recession, currency wars, rising nationalism and extremism
Fascism rising now there's a surprise for anyone with less than two brain cells.
And the neoliberal talking heads of the guardian and New York Times and Washington post are going
to go down with him. This article gives me hope that the guardian might change but I'm not going
to hold my breath.
America and Russia/Assad carry out the bombing runs, yet the Syrian refugee families running from
drones, cruise missiles, laser targeted bunker-busters, barrel bombs, chemical weaponry (employed
by Assad) where do they go? Treck across hostile borders heading north, many to Germany.
A strange equation: the 2 countries basically responsible for the chaos and tragedy in Syria
treat Syrian refugees as possible terrorists. Obama's 8 yrs are a disaster. Putin? Well, Putin
could not care less for Syrian refugees. Russia has not taken in a single refugee family. This
crooked formula has gone on throughout Obama's presidency. Could Obama and Putin have done worse?
Not possible.
Russia had over 100.000 ex russian people/familes living in Syria, many of which have left Syria
and gone to the country Russia which you state has not taken any refugees.
It does not matter where they are - it is OUR shame that never before have so many people been
displaced due to wars. It is sickening.
"The financial elite and oligarchs despise democracy since they know that neoliberalism is the
antithesis of real democracy because it feeds on inequality; it feeds on privilege, it feeds on
massive divisiveness, and it revels in producing a theater of cruelty. All you have to do is look
at the way it enshrines a kind of rabid individualism. It believes that privatization is the essence
of all relationships. It works very hard to eliminate any investment in public values, in public
trust. It believes that democracy is something that doesn't work, and we hear and see this increasingly
from the bankers, anti-public intellectuals and other cheerleaders for neoliberal policies." ~
Henry Giroux
Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies
and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much
as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit.
Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, for the past four decades neoliberalism has
been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center and
much of the traditional left as well as the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent
the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.
- Robert W. McChesney, Harvard Educational Review
"I said in my previous article about "economic fascism"... you have a system where the government
supports the interests of "big business" at the expense of everyone else, especially the "left
wing" interests, such as the unions and employee rights in general.
Given this lifeboat by the government, this system encourages inefficiency, irresponsibility
and corruption in those corporations themselves, which are necessarily economically supported
by the government when the need arises. In other words, you have a system where profit is private,
and debt is public - the corporations take the profits, and the government (the taxpayer) absorbs
corporate losses.
This system reinforces a corporate oligarchy that is economically supported by the government;
the taxpayers/electorate can do little about this if the major parties in the country all support
this system. Corporate sponsorship of those parties also encourages political patronage, as do
the necessary "connections" (another form of corruption) that political parties need from corporations
in order to gain financial support." ~ Lee Daniel Hughes
"A lethal parasite has infected the brains of politicians and economists all over the world.
It is so invasive that it has defeated all attempts to control or eradicate it since its emergence
decades ago, and we are still far from having an effective vaccine or way to prevent its transmission.
The virus, known by its species name Neoliberalism Economicus (in lay terms, it is just called
Neoliberalism), indiscriminately latches onto the brains of both liberals and conservatives. It
turns social consciousness into ego-centrism, cooperation into unconscious greed, and it only
gets worse as it mutates and spreads."
"To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their
natural environment ...would result in the demolition of society." ~ Karl Polanyi, 1944
"In 1945 or 1950 if you had seriously proposed any of the ideas and policies in today's standard
neo-liberal toolkit, you would have been laughed off the stage or sent off to the insane asylum."
~ Susan George, political scientist
Do not confuse the economic - oikos nomia - the norms of running home and community with chrematistics
- krema atos - the accumulation of money. ~ Aristotle
'Neo' - revival of/return to.
'Liberalism' - the pre-regulation economics of the height of the Industrial Revolution.
More accurately referred to as Monetarism - an extremist political ideology completely geared
towards and absorbed by the making of money above all else. Even its adherents refer to it thus,
so it's not a perjorative term.
Key policies:
- The deliberate maintenance of a pool of unemployment to drive down wages through insecurity
and oversupply of labour.
- Privatisation of as many public services as is practicable, the reduction of the state into
what's known as the 'nightwatchman state' - minimal, merely there to oversee and step in if anything
goes really badly wrong.
- Social doctrine of 'Individualism' to combat 'Collectivism'. Promulgation of the notion that
if anything goes wrong in your life chances are it's your fault. Denial of the existence of a
supportive, co-operative society. Encouragement of Social Darwinistic theories that paint selfishness,
greed and suspicion as natural 'animal' characteristics to be accepted at the very least, and
positively encouraged. This sense that it's all 'natural' reinforces a dialogue that monetarism
is some immovable, age-old doctrine that can never and should never change.
- The legislating into irrelevance of Trade Unions and any group that promoted collectivism
and organised labour, as being fundamentally contrary to the doctrine of individualism.
- Promotion of 'traditional values' focused on family, thrift and home ownership to reinforce
the notion of the family unit, rather than society or 'community' at large, as the bedrock of
supportiveness. Hence an encouragement of nuclear family structures, an opposition to things like
gay marriage, gay adoption and single parents to the point of demonisation through the tax system,
and an inherent suspicion of the world outside of the walls of the family home (paedophiles, terrorists,
safety fears etc).
- Competition, rather than co-operation as the underpinning ethos in life. Relaxation of credit
availability and the encouragement of a debt-fuelled, comparative, competitive consumerism in
society. Accusations of 'envy' and 'jealousy' get written into the popular narrative if anyone
questions it. A sense put about that you can measure one's 'success' in life via the acquisition
of various things bought from a recognisable, marketed 'menu'.
Yes, I know it's not 'that' concise, but I think I've been to the point.
I can't get my head around this article as I no longer know what 'neoliberalism' is. OK it has
changed its meaning several times since it was first coined in the 1930s but I thought it had
settled down as describing the economic policies advocated by Hayek and Friedman including primacy
of the market and a minimalist state (as far as the economy is concerned). I think we can expect
more of that with the Republicans in control of the Presidency, the House and the senate.
Trump's an odd one (understatement of the year). His traditionalist-conservative social outlook
is very neoliberal, taken to extremes in fact. However, the economics he's suggesting are far
from neoliberal, as he's talking about massively increasing state infrastructure spending, erecting
protectionist tariff barriers and safeguarding American manufacturing jobs even when a neoliberal
would claim it wasn't 'economically efficient' to do so.
What Trump is, is an extremist conservative nationalist. Or to put it another way, a fascist
in the very definition of the term. Comparisons to Hitler are way off-kilter, but he is remarkably
similar to Mussolini.
"a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness."
I don't think this is true - the past of America actually was, in material terms at least, great.
After WW2 American manufacuring capacity was rather more than the rest of the world combined.
In the 1950s Americans were living in homes with washing machines, refrigerators and all manner
of other goods which for most Europeans at that time were out-and-out luxuries. In the 1960s they
were developing technology far ahead of most other countries (leading to putting a man on the
moon in 1969) - look at the films, the aircraft and the cars of that era.
But gradually other countries caught up, using a combination of developing education snd skills,
increasing quality and high technology. Gradually America's dominance was reduced - now Toyota
is worth ten times what GM is worth, Samsung and others make good mobile phones and everybody
makes PCs to the point where they are commodity items. As the manufacturing jobs were exported
to countries with lower labour costs, many of the jobs that had given Americans high pay in the
1960s and 1970s disappeared.
So there is, in my view, some substance to the idea that Americans now can look back to a golden
age of greatness that their parents and grandparents had. And so it is not surprising that they
are disatisfied with their lot now...
The Democrats chose a candidate that was very much part of it.
The Republicans ended up with a candidate who marketed himself as an outsider, much to the
chagrin of the party leadership.
Neo-liberalism had to end, that is a good thing, it is a pity that someone like Trump is the
one who did something about it. All he had to do was engage with a lot of voters, people that
have been ignored for decades, despised and looked down upon.
A few batty and nasty statements and the Guardian types o America railed against them, as was
his hope.
It meant a lot of voters looked at those people, who have not time or concern for them and
they voted accordingly. They took a small chance on someone who listened to them and promised
to shake things up, it is a small chance for them but a chance and it annoys the righteous who
look down on them.
The left as just the Fabian Society has no future.
Chose to have a future and chose to take this as the wake up call it is.
I think its best to cast Obama, to use Trotsky' phrase, 'into the dustbin of history' where
he belongs, along with the Clintons. He is a footnote and little else , historically the
first African-American President. Though some will take offense, I await the first Black American
president (might be Michelle ironically). The battle is afoot, that one against neo-fascism unwittingly
(and I am being kind) unleashed by Brexit, and by the Dems when they sabotaged Sanders. They are
already rebelling in the streets of America, the millennials who are protesting both neo-liberalism
and neo-fascism
Trump's election was a reaction to neoliberalism but it is not so clear what he intends to do
about it. Increasing inequality and decreasing opportunities are becoming a fact of life for a
lot of people in both the US and the U.K. How this all plays out should make for Interesting Times.
With Republican majorities in both Houses and an ostensible Republican president elect, that
would seem to be an overwhelming vote for neoliberalism, wouldn't it? After all, Republicans
are about laissez-faire economics and privatization of the public sector.
I'd bet good money that things are going to change a lot less than this author thinks.
Trump's bluster is actually an expression of the very US exceptionalism that sustains the neoliberal
order - there cannot be US military and economic hegemony without the neoliberal order. Neoliberalism
IS US global hegemony.
Agreed but they've become more deeply entrenched with the US's role as the sole superpower. The
only way they'll be undone now is by the US giving up its global power - I think even Trump will
be able to see that that's in conflict with the (perceived) national interest. Great powers don't
volunteer to resign. The European powers didn't give up their empires voluntarily, they had to
be dragged kicking and screaming.
In any case, the office of the POTUS is not that powerful any more - look at Obama: barely
achieved anything and that's not because he's some kind of weak character or a sell-out. He's
a cog in a massive machine running US global supremacy, which can't be undone other than by catastrophe
or confrontation with a superior force The only way Trump could change that would be to become
an autocrat like Putin or Erdogan and impose his partisanship on the institutions of state - that's
not going to happen.
" a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness" Here we go again, just like remainers
mocking the brexiteers; the liberals trying to paint the suffering classes as nostalgic fools
whose glory days were imaginary. It's a tempting, exculpatory idea, but it simply isn't true,
so stop peddling it. Their situation WAS better, there WAS wider employment, there WAS a future.
Stop excusing liberal blindness and selfish failures by denigrating the ones you forgot, the ones
you look down on. Therein lies your fault and guilt. -h.
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This is an example of why "post-truth" is Merriam-Webster's word of the year. The Author indicts
neo-liberalism, which was always the primary economic policy of the GOP, but was able to infect
the Democratic party over they last 40 years. Therein lies the problem, With neither party interested
in advocating for working people, the economy has been in a steady downward spiral, but make no
mistake, it has been the GOP who has been the longest and strongest champion of the policies that
have destroyed the middle class. Trump, like very right-wing demagogue before him, knew how to
tap in to that anger, but, rather than offering concrete policies to correct the inequities of
the last 40 year, like Bernie Sanders, he chose instead to scapegoat the weakest and poorest as
if THEY had the power to cause the damage that was actually caused by the wealthy and powerful.
The rank cynicism of the Trump campaign is already on display as he rushes to fill his government
with the same bankers, lobbyists and corporate cronies that crashed the economy in the first place.
From the end of WWII until 1980, America was the preeminent economic power in the world and
one one the most equal societies in terms of wealth distribution and opportunity. Unions were
strong, government actively protected the poor and middle class from corporate exploitation, and
taxes were far more progressive, recognizing that the corporate elite benefits far more from government
than anyone else. The Neo-liberals hated it, but Mr. Trump's "solution" to the extend he has any
"policy" at all, is to continue along the same economic path, but to return to the "good old days"
of Jim Crow and nativism.
"Trump's election was enabled by the policies that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable
citizens."
You are at it again aren't you ? Ignore the great majority in the middle, or even the "lower
middle" and focus on the very bottom. Because people at the very bottom can be used as kind of
economic human shields for all sorts of meddlers & do gooders & confidence tricksters, because
most of them are so inarticulate, they can't speak for themselves.
Whereas working people & small business owners just want less tax, less people competing
with them and a sense that the country they die in is not too different from the one they were
born in.
Trump got in because of the votes of the stagnated middle income bracket.
The so-called middle class, obviously, IS among the vulnerable, because their income and prospects
were dramatically injured. Also, best to not lump "do gooders" (are you including civil rights
activists, poverty law lawyers, people who feed the unemployed,honest journalists, and other who
serve the middle class and poor, in your sweeping condemnation? ) in with "confidence tricksters."
Neo-liberalism is the revival of the economic policies that led to the Great depression, it emphasized
the role of government as an enabler of privatization, corporate concentration and wage suppression.
Government regulation to ensure competition, health and safety are repealed to allow for manipulation
of markets by the largest economic actors.
"White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic
neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites." While a surprisingly
large number of ultralibs and lefties have recognized this fact in the past week - a huge number
acutally! - they will, as usual, gloss over this reality, and, like Cornel, focus on everything
else contained in his article, most of which is only marginally true. So, they will be relegated
for the foreseeable future to wondering if they can win the next election for dog catcher.
This is a dangerous juncture that is also a massive opportunity, though it's not clear that establishment
liberals-- many of whom seem to be mired in some kind of self-regarding victimology-- are ready
to accept that the system they supported is on the way out.
You live in the liberal press bubble. Trump only threatened to deport criminals illegally in the
country - Obama departed 2.5 million Mexicans in that category (more than all presidents combined)
and the wall would only be an extension of the 700 m iles Obama has already built. I suppose that
is why 30% of Latinos voted for Trump.
I know you delight in terrifying muslims but we don't have a discrimination problem with Muslims
- at least no where as much as in Britain. Trump proposed stopping immigration from countries
infested with terrorists until we can figure out what is going on. Obama temporarily stopped all
immigration from Iraq for the same reason. Besides the vetting process for immigration into the
uSA is severe already and takes many years.
A president whose kids are married to Jews (or in the case of one) are dating Jews can hardly
be called anti-semitic. As to women 45% voted for him. Trump was right that the Democrats merely
pandered to them and his policies are more likely to benefit working class blacks. Blacks did
not turn out a vote for Hillary anywhere near the numbers she needed.
THat leaves China and gays. I'm not aware of any gay bashing by Trump and there are real trading
problems with China including currency manipulations and dumping. The balance of trade with China
is so out of whack it can't be good. We don't owe China our jobs or to buy there products.
>Why is it necessary to call everyone a fascist?
>An overused word since the 00s
I don't agree that it is over used, but you are right we need to be explicit. The problem is
that often the word is used for someone that we don't like. But the concept is one we need today.
These are the things I'd look for in diagnosing fascism, and how they relate to Trump.
- Extreme and irrational nationalism: TICK
- Nationalism is often accompanied by religious fervor, however poorly grounded in spirituality:
TICK
- Identification of the 'other' as responsible for the undermining of the nation (immigrants,
LGBT, people who have the wrong colour skin...): TICK
- Undermining any coherent critique of policies (Trumps refusal or inability to engage in coherent
political debate, right wing intimidation, KKK, AltRight, attacks on the NYT): A WORK IN PROGRESS
- Use of violence to impose a view of the world (Trump's threats to reject the election result
if it went against him, calls to take up arms by the far right, vigilantes): THE MISSING PIECE,
BUT SOME WORRYING SIGNS
I'd say that fascism is an entirely relevant concept to use when discussing Trump (or Putin,
Berlusconi, Le Pen, Wilders etc.). Not to insult them, but to understand what is going on.
Parallels with 1930's Germany. Really? So in the last twenty years the US has seen or experienced
Defeat in a terrible, costly war, with a sizeable segjrnt of the population blaming established
elites for a 'stab in the back'?
The imposition of ruinous sanctions by the international community, bringing about national
humiliation and economic ruin?
The emergence of extremes on left and right committed to the overthrow of the state and revolution?
A weak tradition of liberalism, owing much to a particular path to modernity following unification,
typified by pernicious militaristic, authoritarian, nationalist traditions?
A non functioning political system in which a small feeble centre could not hold?
Paramilitaries on left and right engaged in political violence and murder?
A fascist, racist party, led by an anti democratic fascist?
A Great Depression followed by a great inflation ruining the middle classes?
Yeah. Worrying parallels...... History repeating itself.
ie ...political philosophy and movement that arose in Europe in the decades following World
War II. Like earlier fascist movements, neofascism advocated extreme nationalism, opposed liberal
individualism, attacked Marxist and other left-wing ideologies, indulged in racist and xenophobic
scapegoating, and promoted populist right-wing economic programs. Unlike the fascists, however,
neofascists placed more blame for their countries' problems on non-European immigrants than on
leftists and Jews, displayed little interest in taking lebensraum (German: "living space") through
the military conquest of other states, and made concerted efforts to portray themselves as democratic
and "mainstream."
Put simply, neoliberalism is liberalism minus the acknowledgement of social obligations. It appropriates
the vocabulary of liberalism, a product of the Enlightenment that sought to progress human emancipation,
in order to repurpose it as a rationale to justify inequality and elite privilege. It is a perversion
of liberal ideals, and a deliberate construction, the origins of which can be traced to the 1960s;
although it was not until the mid-70s that it really started to go mainstream.
One of the problems with liberally throwing the word "fascism" at policies and people with whom
you don't agree is that if the real thing comes along people won't pay attention to your warnings,
Guardian. You know, the old story of the boy who kept crying "wolf" when there were no real wolves
about. And when real wolves came people were not prepared.
"White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic
neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens
also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated
Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process. "
I agree the vote was against the "economic neglect", surely then, the vote was for hope of
jobs and improved living standards Trump declared he would bring for working people? I don't buy
into the narrative of vote for racism etc. people vote for hope of better lives fundamentally,
who doesn't? This is where we need to unite... economic issues, this crosses all divides currently
being hammered into western societies from all sides of the political spectrum.
The traditional elites in the USA have been broken. But neo-liberalism has not. The individuals,-both
actors and interests- are in the process of re-alignment. The triumph of Trump shows just how
thin is the veneer of the political liberalism that overlays neo-liberalism economy and society.
Unless the role of Wall Street, The City of London and the gradual privatisation of economies
and societies in favour of global corporations is addressed, talk of an end of neo-liberalism
is cynical humbug.
Meanwhile, an almost 'traditional' world of pre 1917 capitalist states is re-emerging with
states and their proxies killing and destroying in order to control territory and economies.
I agree that Sanders would have beaten Trump. For the lack of alternatives, the disgruntled white
population went for Trump. I don't think they elected him because of his racist and misogynist
views of the world. They wanted someone who at least voiced against the corporate owned establishment.
Sanders was doing the same. Unfortunately the establishment derailed Sanders. So the crowd went
for Trump. This election is not about racism or fascism. It is the vote against the establishment.
Unfortunately Trump has fooled himself by letting him be surrounded by the establishment agents.
So he will disappoint this crowd. Some younger politician who takes on the baton from Bernie will
win the Presidency in 2020. Bernie must launch his own campaign. Now is the time.
A great meme, but utterly bogus. Trump lost the popular vote by a huge margin, and his policies
are about increasing elite control & the exploitation of globalization to increase economic inequality.
Trumps message was simple - your angry, Im angry, I'll say the nasty things you wish you could
say, and even if your screwed economically, crucially, I'll mess up black, brown and yellow people,
women and th disabled, so you'll feel better about your place int he pecking order. Dumb white
dicks can rule again !!!
I find it odd that the Guardian writers call the economic system we have at the moment "neo-liberalism".
I mean, if it were liberal, then we wouldn't have all the central planning and socialist type
controls all over the economy. Look, current US economic/business regulations run to over 80,000
pages worth. 80,000 pages! That hardly sounds liberal (as if "free") to me. Plus and most importantly
of all, we still have central banks with their price controls (interest rate fixing), legal tender
laws and money supply fixing - again hardly liberal. More socialist that anything.
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Regulations and central banks are not socialism. Socialism is about who owns economic institutions
and in America they're still almost all owned by private wealth. That's not socialism.
What "socialist" type of controls over the economy would they be? Neoliberalism has nothing to
do with traditional liberalism and certainly zero to do with Socialist thinking or practice.
1 USA policy should look after USA businesses over those of other countries.
What is wrong with this in the President of the USA? About time we had the same in the UK.
2 The USA should not have an open border to the south and non USA citizens do not have free
right to sneak in and then stay i.e. the USA is not a free resource for anyone wanting to try
their luck
What is wrong with this? The UK has voted for the same and rightly so.
3 Islam is incompatible with western liberal democracy
Again, can't see how this is incorrect. Either Islam moves away from sexism, homophobia, theocracy
and fundamentalist view of it's own supremacy or it IS incompatible with the west and liberal
democracy.
4 The rest of NATO should start spending more to protect itself and not rely on the USA to
continually pick up the bill.
Quite right to and every member should be hitting the 2% of GDP level at the very least.
Trump's a businessman who is pro business a strong military and anti unrestricted immigration
and Islamic fundamentalism. Good for him, we need the same.
There are similarities between what is happening now and what happened in Germany in the 20's.
The political and economic chaos of the Weimar Republic led to the election of Hitler as Chancellor.
His 'brown shirts' imposed the illusion of order over competing communist, anarchist and fascist
demonstrators and were (at first) welcomed by the majority of Germans. I know comparing Trump
to Hitler is problematic but the following similarities in their policies are inescapable:
1. Hitler implemented a massive infrastructure program (autobahns), Trump has promised the
same
2. Hitler implemented a program of re-armament, Trump promises the same
3. Hitler singled-out Jews as a threat to national security, Trump chose Muslims and Mexicans
4. Hitler accused "international Jewry" and Bolshevism of attempting to destroy Germany, Trump
accuses China of destroying American manufacturing and promises to lable them a currency manipulator
I hear a lot of social-media and liberal-media preening and prating about Trump's fascism,
eeevil neoliberals, globalization and so on and so forth, and the need to speak truth to power
(which is very effective - see the Defense Department-funded rebel Noam Chomsky, who's been banging
on like this for a couple of centuries) and speak for the voiceless...
Meanwhile, how many state and Federal seats and chambers have the Democrats managed to lose
over the past few elections? How far will Trump pursue a low-tax agenda, and how far will he really
venture into the messy pick-winners-and-losers game of mercantilism?
So the question is, are you going to complain or revolt - you who have guffawed at those who
even suggest that the citizenry might ever need to be equipped to resist the government by force?
Tax protests? Your supporters have to pay a large proportion of taxes first. Mass demonstrations?
Why do you think BLM likes to block highways? (Clue: it doesn't take many people.) And you're
not allied with the Federal government against the weak economies of the mid-century South, but
trying to dismantle the constitution.
My prediction is that the people will rise up and fight the hydra-headed monsters of neoliberalism.
They will fight them on Twitter. They will fight them on Instagram. They will fight them on Facebook
until everyone except their friends blocks them. And then they'll get bored.
There is such a confusion with the use of terms - democrats, liberals, neoliberals, fascists -
are they absolutely different or can be the same? Robert Michels in his book 'Political Parties:
A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy' yet a century ago wrote
that representative democracy naturally deteriorates to olygarchy and particracy. And the next
stop can be fascism (not necessarily nazism though). The author himself (Michel) was a socialist
and later on joined Fascist Party led by Benito Mussolini. Does history repeat itself now? Goldberg
in his book 'Liberal Fascism' published in 2008 insists that fascists movements were and are lef-wing.
As an example, Henry Ford the American industrialist initially was a pacifist during World War
I but later on funded first years of Hitler's political career and was awarded by Nazis in 1938.
How it can be that democrats in the West become fascists?
This is because the hard left and hard right share many characteristics - a belief in direct democracy
which most often leads to authoritarianism, Manicheism, obsession with "the enemy within" and
"the enemy without" (which often leads to nationalism), disgusted rejection of the politics of
compromise essential within a representative democracy. Yes Mussolini was a socialist who morphed
into a Fascist, and Nazism was, of course, National Socialism. The 5 star movement in Italy, populist,
anti-establishment, yet very authoritarian, and with both solid left wing and extreme right wing
tendencies, are a good example of how left and right become melded together.
I love Cornell West, but disagree about the end of Neoliberalism. First of all, what is it exactly?
My understanding of the concept is somewhat limited to Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," which tells
us it consists of an economic idealogy that promotes deregulation, cuts in social spending, cutting
taxes for the ultra-rich, and privatization. Second, how is Neoliberalism different from Neofascism
or even Neoconservatism? I don't know, but I do know that Trump is giving the keys to the establishment,
which actively promotes deregulation, cuts in social spending, cutting taxes fro the ultra-rich,
and privatization. Essentially, Trump is bowing down to the Neoliberal establishment, and giving
them the keys to the White House. Thus, the end of Neoliberalism isn't yet apparent.
I agree that we must 'tell the truth'. But so must Cornel West and one of the truths to tell is
that being against illegal immigration has nothing whatsoever to do with racism.
Another truth is that growing income inequality is a probably inescapable consequence of international
trade. If overseas workers can do manufacturing jobs for $1/hour when Americans would need to
be paid $50/hour for the same work then consumers will prefer the products of overseas workers.
Does Cornel West think the US should withdraw from the WTO and see iPhone prices rise tenfold
or more?
You are forgetting about R's tax cuts for rich, policy of trickle down. It was always a con. Politicians
sticking to a failed policy for 30 years.
The companies are not even paying a living wage. We have people working 2 jobs and still needing
food stamps to feed their children. Tax payers subsidizing companies who have billion dollar profit(Walmart)
that also do not offer insurance. They can increase wage without increase prices if they were
not so greedy. Republicans refuse to increase min wage. No one will stand up to these greedy company's.
For jiminey's sake... Trump is a neoliberal! His policies, such as we can discern, involve lowering
taxes for the rich on the basis of trickle down and the laffer curve... neoliberal bollocks personified.
No to organised labour... because the market is the perfect arbiter already. No to human rights,
these are all economic. Etc etc etc.
Fair enough, have a go at all the others as well, but Trumps election represents nothing more
than the triumph of mass delusion and the lying that it facilitates - over reason and logic.
We've got a whole generation of people who will never own their own house, because not enough
of them have been built and the ones which were available have been bought en-masse by previous
generations in order to rent them out in a totally unregulated market. We've got a pension crisis
so massive and terrifying that no political party anywhere on the spectrum even mentions it -
not even in the run-up to elections. The same people who cannot ever buy a house, thus, are paying
into a pension system from which they will inevitably receive nothing. We've got a return to victorian
levels of wealth inequality.
A guy (slash referendum) comes along promising to change it all, and the upper-middle class
types who staff the media react with disbelief that the guy saying some dodgy things about Mexicans
and women isn't a dealbreaker?! Hitler's brain in a mechanical body could run for election and
as long as he was promising something other than the status quo which is disastrous for many and
will only continue to get worse, he would stand a chance of winning.
All I see in the outraged news coverage of Trump's win is a bunch of people living very comfortably
lecturing people living far less well about what they consider to be a dealbreaker in a political
candidate. It's like the studies on the Taliban in Afghanistan which showed that they are disproportionately
well-off and middle-class - when your main concern is basic survival needs, you don't have time
to give even a fraction of a shit about ideological bollocks like a political candidate's opinion
on women or whatever else.
Once again, it all comes down to the wealthy lecturing people about their beliefs about sex,
race, gender (and so on) and ignoring the conspicuously massive elephant with the word "wealth"
written on the side which at this point has grown so massive that it's hard to see anything else.
"...Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing
inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad."
I'm particularly impressed with those last few words. I wonder if Mr. Obama would consider
returning his Nobel Prize for Peace. The problem was not that he accepted the unearned honor,
it was that the visionless Nobel committee gave it to him in the first place.
Cornel West accusing Barack Obama of being a war criminal. Now I've seen it all. And unfortunately
I must agree. The president's legacy will be that he simply looked the other way as innocents
were (are) being murdered in the name of national security.
Compared to this abomination Gitmo is an island paradise.
That would be the same Gitmo President Obama pledged to close.
This isn't the end of neoliberalism... but.. it might be the beginning of the end. A sign that
the system itself is starting to break apart under the weight of the failings of the system to
look after the majority of society.
It's a sign that the people have stopped listening to the media. They've stopped listening
to politicians. Stopped listening to experts. And have started to think with their own minds.
That's a good sign! So a couple of elections haven't gone the left's way. Fine. But there's no
question, Brexit and the US Election results are a sign that the people are ready for a peaceful
revolution.
Don't despair, I know if you're against Trump and/or disagreed with Brexit, this seems like
a bleak time in politics, but the truth is there's more to be hopeful for now than ever before.
At least politics is in a fluid state now. No one knows what's coming. Those who were previously
in control, now feel control slipping through their fingers. It's at least possible for things to change right now, before it wasn't, that's progress even if it doesn't feel
like it.
Now is our chance to correct what has been wrong with the global political & economic system
for decades. There is much cause for optimism! The left should be right now focused on coming
up with ideas for ways to change the system, ways of helping the 99% left behind by the 1%, making
democracy more fair, increasing citizen participation, etc.
..Or we can sit on the sidelines, not participating while the world is bordering on revolution
and merely waiting for someone to lead it, because we are busy throwing a tantrum because we lost
a couple of elections.
Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that says that only the welfare of business is relevant.
Reagan and Thatcher reoriented our economies toward that. First bank bust happened almost immediately,
from the same thing, housing, 1989, including bank bailouts. And every president after that has
followed that path, including post-2008.
"Retraining for another career"? That is what the public was told to sell them China/WTO trade.
What they didn't tell people is a) part of their trade deals is employing foreign citizens in
the west for cheap. (link below, note "visa" is part of the trade deal) As for retraining, retraining
for what? "Welcome to Walmart", "Do you want fries with that?". That doesn't a) pay the mortgage
nor b) even pay for a run down apartment. The "retraining" is just to defuse public upset and
forestall riots in the streets. As someone who's worked most of my adult life in high tech., I
can attest to the incredible anti-American hiring criteria, enough to frighten the earlier immigrants,
because their children are now ... American.
"Sanders would have beat Trump"
So says national polls, early, during the primaries. But polls evidently were wrong.
Below, UK's Theresa May, talking to India's PM, who wants western jobs (visas), in exchange for
selling western goods in India.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in-india-british-leader-theresa-may-preaches-free-trade-2016-11-07
Relax, agreed Trump shoots from the hip in ways that can be distasteful but I prefer to judge
people by their actions not their bullshit.
I'm pretty sure there have been worse xenophobes in the Whitehouse, worse sexists and I certainly
know there have been more clueless Presidents.
My guess is that the liberal elite's biggest problem with Trump is that he's a low tax small
government Republican, with, horror of horrors, a real world business background.
All the things you hate with a vengeance but you dare not attack him for that so you home in
on his inability to tick all the right PC boxes, as if that makes him the spawn of the devil.
Then that is also bullshit and the kind of bullshit we've all seen through a long time past.
A good over-view of the tribulations and tributaries that made Trump's victory possible
Neoliberal globalisation has left too many too far behind; struggling just to get by
Trump offered change and the forgotten working classes of America chose to elect him
Most who voted for Trump were voting against the establishment as much as for Trump
They would have elected Sanders if he were willing to fight - he wasn't
I think it is premature to announce the end of neoliberalism, but I do begin to hear in the
responses of Western leaders to Trump's election stirrings they are beginning to realise their
mismanagement of globalisation is alienating their domestic populations and eroding their political
power base. This is why they will begin to moderate (if they have any sense)
To preserve their power base, not to alleviate the suffering of working classes
In the absence of democracy the only remedy for the populace would be revolution
The heart of the problem with neoliberal globalisation is the ideology of market fundamentalism
which preaches (it is a sort of religion and as irrational as any) the pre-eminence of markets
over communities and society; and corporate profits over people
In the natural humane order of things the function of markets is to serve people and society
The neoliberal ideology demands that people and society serve markets and profits
The tail has been wagging the dog too long
The idea that Trump is not aprt of the establishment, in its widest sense, is farcical - his path
to the final pages of Animal farm will be incredibly short.
I heard a description of UKIP as the party for people who think their life is someone else's
fault. That holds for a lot of Trump voters. There's also some truth in it, the problem being
that the people who's fault it is (say a billionaire businessman with interests in overseas businesses)
convince the mass that the person who's fault it is is not them, it's the worker in their factory.
Mixing my media but its all a bit Keyser Soze.
And will Trump really close down low cost operations overseas to bring the jobs back to the
US - or will he hide between the alleged blind trust his kids run. The most corrupt legislature?
- you ain't seen nothing yet.
(So that's book, film and music covered...got to find something to set against the anger)
Grotesque fake wordings here that show the author up to be more tabloid than socialist.
Neo-liberalism is a fake term because it is not "Neo" (new) and it is not "Liberalism" but Conservatism.
Only a fake analyst would ever say that Thatcher, Reagan and Hayek were liberals in the modern
social and democratic sense of the word. They were are arch Conservatives, trying to shrink the
state back to some kind of foul Victorian era level. Accept of course the police state, which
got full funding for the wars and the bombs and spys and the police brutality.
It is Grotesque for anyone who thinks they are Socialist to call the foul right wing Conservatives
whose policies and ideas are ultra right wing "Neo-Liberals". It is the swamp of fake analysis
from which the Far left fascists crawl out of, the Trots, the Stalinists, the Hamas and Hezbollah
and Putin Poodles like Corbyn and Milne.
Trump is rightly conceived here as not being Neo-Liberal, but he is no Fascist either. He is
classic 1970s Republican of the ilk of Nixon. He nods and winks towards the poor but is a business
man, a tax dodger, a draft dodger and a right wing clown.
Neoliberal refers to Hayak and other economic theorist like Friedman and the policies they promoted.
You confuse the post WWII U.S. centric alignment of democrats with so-called liberal social policies
like LBJ promoted and the globalist free trade regime which historically is what nineteenth century
Liberals stood for. On the other hand you are right in some ways about applying fascist to him
as he is not exactly a militarist, but you can't deny his inciting mob violence in his rallies
and that is fascist like.
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Neoliberal is not a variant of liberal. Neoliberal is economic policy of no restrictions
on businesses, perverted to no restrictions whatsoever (fraud, scams, ponzi, etc.). US ultra toxic
variant, neocon plus neoliberal: the world is my toilet, for the sake of record profits, at everyone
else's expense, figuratively and literally. Business calls this "externalizing expenses". This
is how/why the public is paying food/medical/housing assistance to ultra low wage Walmart workers
- a highly circuitous variant of corporate welfare. This is how neocon attack on Iraq, causing
chaos for plunder, is billed to the public taxes. Iraq blitz: Pizza Huts on the bases, while no
armored vehicles for the troops.
Hopefully it brings insight into the word "neoliberalism", because it is being taught in Ivy League
business schools.
If you want a look under the hood, suggested reading: The Shock Doctrine.
Why does anyone think/believe there will be actual change? Does anyone really believe Trump's
policies will be anything else other than neo or just plain liberalism? He'll cut taxes, reduce
government, cut social security programs, hold on to trade treaties even if he'll bad mouth them,
drill baby drill, further liberalise banks and financial services, and more of the same.
Does anyone really believe voting changes anything! Either way you go, the same policies and interests
will prevail.
Look at Brexit. Restore sovereignty for elected Parliament? Mrs. May is totally against that!
Give a voice to the left-behind? Since when is Carlos Ghosn in need! Give those jobs back to true
British people? Why couldn't they apply and get those jobs before? Do Polish or Spanish immigrants
know better or work better? Is that what it is?
Brexit is nothing more than a disguised way of further liberalising UK economy and guess who's
going to suffer? Those who voted for it. Exactly the same as those who voted for Trump in the
US.
But it may be a mistake to think the neo-liberal establishment is going to go away, either
in US or Britain. On the contrary, they still retain much of the working levers of power and the
evidence suggests they will be very busy making sure the globalist neo-liberal agenda prevails
in the longer term.
Trump and Trumpers may have the impression they hold all the 'authoritarian' cards, but they
do not - they will be forced to play through the Establishment. Same with Teresa May, she is going
to find herself increasingly at the mercy of the working/technocratic Establishment, which is
already geared to undermine Brexit.
Globalist neo-liberaliam (witness Obama and Merkel today) is the greatest force for evil in
our world today. Wishful thinking that it is spent.
No doubt they are still there. Trump's nationalist strategies clash with that globalist force
and we should see evidence of neoliberalism continuity.
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Well the Dems elected Schumer their Senate leader, so every indication that establishment politicos
are still enamoured of this ideology despite all evidence to the contrary that the masses are
getting progressively wise to it and wont swallow its bile. The politicos cant seem to reconcile
themselves to the fact that the devil has been named and the masses increasingly understand the
disaster it visits upon their lives
Agree wholeheartedly...with the exception of the scaremongering in the final two paragraphs.
Sadly, the Democratic Party is too far gone and too beholden to various economic interests
to change. I mean, the neoliberal identity politics platform worked so well for so long...why
scrap it after just one loss (three if you include Brexit and Corbyn)? Our social progressive
thought leaders (many of whom are wealthy neoliberals) are much more likely to try to scaremonger
their way through the next four years without addressing the coziness with Wall Street, corporations,
and the rich (as well as conservative economic policies) that actually lost them this election.
Here's to hoping I'm wrong and the the Sanders/West wing of the party somehow roots out the
95% of Democratic leaders who are neolib grifters. It worked for Corbyn/Labour in the UK...who
knows.
Identity politics is the bugbear of a stripe of reactionaries and their criticism of neoliberals.
At best one can say identity politics was a false cover of Clinton. What exactly though does identity
contribute to neoliberalsim besides as false cover of progressivism to diverse minorities? I see
no such attempt to get real or meaningful about identity. Let's be clear attacking identity is
simply a scape goat in place of real alternatives to the right's program. Especially egrigious
is the claim of these right wing critics that they have concrete policies to carry out. They sit
on their hands while Black Lives Matter. They offer nothing but platitudes when Natives protest
pipelines. They ignore women in favor of traditional male roles as the leaders. On and bankrupt
class shaped elitism on their prattle goes.
Cornel West has been one of the most powerful dissident voices coming out of America for many
years. When I have listened to his speeches/lectures on youtube, they are always as interesting
and perceptive as most media is 'analysis' is shallow and trite. He was write to warn that the
Wall Street-friendly Obama was no visionary or prophetic African-American leader in the vein of
a Martin Luther King. And now we are stuck with Trump. Prison and weapons stocks are already skyrocketing.
Trump and the populist right represent a new variant of neoliberalism. Spend some time looking
at Trump's economic policies and you'll see they're fundamentally neoliberal; huge tax cuts, including
unprecedented reductions in corporation tax; Wall Street deregulation; cuts to all areas of federal
spending. His only divergence from neoliberal orthodoxy is the sky high tariffs on Chinese and
Mexican imports. The chief purpose of this however is to make a show of deflecting blame for inequality
onto migrant workers and thus shore up his support. No doubt he will readily enter into the most
invidious free trade agreements with countries elsewhere.
The idea that Trump is a reaction against neoliberalism is one that needs to be invalidated.
It's promulgated by the left and right wing press and is utterly groundless.
Right-wing populism is a new adaption of neoliberalism. Now global markets have become dysfunctional
it constructs nativist narratives to give an illusion of sense of the world while continuing to
let markets rip.
Nationalist nostrums are not globalism. The globalist opposed trump strenuously which is undeniable.
All you point to is underlying an incompetant ignoramous trump republican neoliberals will assert
a globalist agenda which their working class stirring base used in this election to oppose Obama.
Globalism shaped by neoliberalism reasserting itself under trump will similarly point working
class anger at trump. Unlike Obama trump will use other means like racist programs and mob violence
to continue after his cover is blown against globalism.
Oh come one, the very same people that elected Trump elected the very people who implemented free
trade and the very neoliberal policies you are now yammering on about. They did it to themselves,
they are racists that think they are 'entitled' to a certain standard of living without doing
anything to deserve it. They are resentful because other people in the world are taking advantage
of opportunities by 'educating' themselves and working hard instead of sitting on their overweight
asses watching reality shows.
All these decades they've voted GOP - they didn't give a rat's ass about the sick and the poor
and in fact they were the ones who kept saying 'no welfare, no government interference - if you're
poor it's your fault so go out and get a job'. Now that the tables are turned and they aren't
get paid doctor's salaries for work a monkey could do, suddenly they want the government to force
corporations to bring back jobs that don't even exist anymore. Why aren't they being told to stop
clinging to guns and religion and to go out and get an education. The entire world now has to
cater to a bunch of inbred bigots, it's ridiculous! They're going to destroy the planet with their
stupidity and if we allow it, we are just as bad. Just like the Nazi's were taken down, this second
incarnation of them also needs to be.
Goodbye to American neoliberalism? Perhaps, but to eliminate capitalism altogether, it needs to
be goodbye to the American Dream, which was always a pack of sordid lies. Sadly, a transition
through neo-Feudalism may be necessary (in the absence of a powerful communist or other left revolutionary
presence anywhere in the world) to kill off both capitalism and its propaganda figment, the American
Dream.
This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism
to its knees.
And yet, the neoliberal adagio of deregulation (particularly of the banking sector) is set
to play a key role in Trump's policies - investment banks' stocks prices are soaring.
Neoliberalism is long from being on its knees in the US. On the contrary, it is likely to determine
the path of the US economy further, and unchecked.
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang.
Pure hyperbole. First of all I am not sure that neoliberalism has ended. It's not a footy match
where you can blow a whistle. The Senate and House is still chock full of Neoliberals. They haven't
elected a King but a President. Ask Obama how easy it is to get stuff done if Congress doesn't
play ball.
Secondly I am not sure that Trumps a Neofascist. In fact I am pretty sure he isn't. He's just
a business guy with a binary attitude to decision making. ie what is the best way to get this
done? Are there more voted in the rustbelt than the country club? Do more white working class
Americans resent illegal immigration than Hispanics worry about that kind of rhetoric. I can hear
him now. "Bring me the numbers". "Ok what's the quickest way to convince people you are serious
about immigration?" Is it
A. Start talking about increasing border security and allocating X million more dollars
(doesn't sound serious and costs us money)
B Start talking about building a sod off great wall and making the Mexicans pay for it
(sounds very serious, gets the liberals to meltdown in rage, completely unrealistic but does anyone
doubt that illegal immigration is a big issue for you. NO!)
Pure business. Simple binary decisions on how to go about winning the available votes.
Neofascist? No. Just a business brain working out how to sell the biggest number of units to
the target market.
Neofascist? No, just a business guy who hires and empowers fascists.
I also doubt the "neo" prefix.
Personally I think he's politically agnostic. I don't think he has a political philosophy.
He just wanted to be President and he's been used to getting what he wanted. He just worked out
a way to do that and it worked. He has a whole host of Jewish advisers, friends and family. He's
been in the property business in Manhattan for nearly 50 years. If he had a problem with Jews
it would have been news before now and he would have been a good deal less successful in that
Parish.
Donald Trump doesn't believe in any particular political philosophy. He just wants to know what
he needs to say to get the best result (for him) out of the next set of problems he faces. It
won't matter whether he is on record as saying the opposite last week or last year. He doesn't
care. He is into whatever works right now.
This is an excellent post, thank you. Sadly, neo-liberalism has embedded itself deep into the
system. Trump's election or Brexit will do little to root it out. In fact, the system is likely
to attempt to frustrate them aggressively, in its own nasty interests in the longer term.
People voted for Trump not to affirm any policy position, but to repudiate a broken system that
no longer represents them - he's a symptom, not a protagonist.
However, the Trump Event is positive in the sense that it significantly diminishes the prestige
and authority of the US political establishment, making it much more vulnerable to challenge.
Both the Republicans (the 'Red Team') and the Democrats (the 'Blue Team') were long ago appropriated
and repurposed to serve the interests of corporations and billionaires, but until Trump, had still
managed to retain a fig leaf of credibility, due to their historic brands. Not any more - the
fig leaves have now been blown away and its plain to all but the most partisan that the Emperor
has no clothes.
The questioning of the existing order will intensify because Trump has no solutions to the
underlying problems of economic inequality and social injustice. He will be actively resisted
and opposed from the grassroots, because it's starkly clear now that the old formal politics of
the Red and Blue teams is corrupt and broken, and no longer represents the best interests of the
people.
The recognition that the old politics is truly dead creates the conditions that will make the
emergence of a new politics possible. It's going to be a bumpy ride, but we are moving forward
again.
"People voted for Trump not to affirm any policy position, but to repudiate a broken system that
no longer represents them - he's a symptom, not a protagonist."
Spot on.
The corrupt system created over the past 40 odd years has spewed up candidates such as Clinton
and Trump... Trump may be considered fascist but Clinton and all she represents is also 'neo'
fascist... corporate fascism.
I think we live in a corporate Empire serving elites, with US at it's main enforcer, not democratic
states or republics. The elites intend to keep the massive gains they have made via neoliberal
and Globalist polices and have the wealth, spying and security apparatus to do so.
Having a righteous, hawkish, government-hating one-percenter for president seems to fit the neocon/neolib
thing pretty nicely. I mean he goes to a fancy dinner the other night and promises the other one
percenters a load of major tax cuts. He loves authority and the spectacle of wealth without apology
and despises government regulation of business and markets. Sure, he blusters about ripping up
trade deals but in his own business dealings makes use of the global economy to get his branded
goods made cheaply (neckties made in China etc). The neocons/libs were all about being revolutionary
and reactionary. They liked seeing themselves as a dynamic force sweeping in from outside the
system to utterly change everything. He may have a more overt angle on racism and social relationships
but my cat and I really think it helps greatly to understand Uber Baby Boomer Trump as a neocon/neolib.
Even if Neoliberalism is dead... the looting of the 90-99% by the 1-10% and their wars for profit
will continue. Neoliberalism/Globalism are just tools which have successfully increased the wealth
gap to obscene heights, legalized corruption and inflicted immense suffering on US and world citizens.
Structures are now in place to ensure this is not halted one jot.
The choice between Roman Empire and Roman Republic is long past... Trump and Clinton are just
symptoms of the long decline of western 'democracy' if it ever really existed. The forces/systems
of wealth transfer, looting and plundering really in charge have no morals or ethics and have
built huge spying and police states.
Greed has been the problem for a lot longer than the last 40 years. The American dream is built
on the idea that everyone can have a share of the wealth. The whole system is based on self interest
and greed. This is true for most nations on the planet.
I agree about the divide and conquer strategy. The problem for the left is the same as ever
human nature and whilst people still believe in the American dream they will never support a socialist
manifesto. Obama care is a classic example. 'Why should I pay for other peoples health care".
Like many other Brits when the NHS was described as a manifestation of socialism I was confused.
I had grown up with the idea that the NHS was a 'good' particularly if you were of a lower income
group. That is the vast majority of the UK population. Access to free health care for all seems
like a good thing.
In the USA among many lower income groups in the USA they perceive something like the NHS as being
almost communist and at the least socialist and therefore something evil.
The left is probably wasting it's time in the USA. Americans are simply not ready for rehab from
the American Dream. They need to hit rock bottom hard and stay there for a while.\
As Frank Underwood said in House Of Cards, democracy is so overrated. I imagine the US looks now
like a modern-day version of the end of the Roman Republic, just before it goes full imperial.
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As Frank Underwood said in House Of Cards, democracy is so overrated.
Real-life democracy can look tarnished when held against the light of its finest ideals. But
it is still a thousand times better than any tyranny that has ever existed.
Not only is democracy not overrated, it cannot be overrated. It is government for the people
by the people and ipso facto better than any alternative.
Also: you might want to sharpen your political knowledge by studying life for citizens under
Nazi Germany or the USSR rather than watching House Of Cards.
So Obama was a bad guy- a 'neo-liberal'. No doubt, Prof. West is now very ashamed of calling him
'a brother, a champion, a comrade' for which favor Obama called him a 'genius', a 'public intellectual'
(not then a derogatory term) a 'preacher' and 'an oracle'.
To his credit, Prof. West turned upon Obama soon enough. He was an oracle, just as Obama had said,
but one who merely confirmed that his stricture upon Black people- whom he accused of abandoning
their 'prophetic tradition' in favor of 'individualistic pursuit of wealth, health and status'-
applied only to himself.
He now says we shouldn't have a hope, but be a hope. That's sure to help. Did you know
'Africans' were 'subject to expanding US military presence' under Obama and that was a bad thing?
What sort of hope does Prof. West represent, not by virtue of any quality he possesses, or viewpoint
that he upholds, but from the simple fact of his being? It is that 'public intellectuals' come
to be recognized as public conveniences. Their existence is a good thing only because they obscure
and hygienically convey away material that would otherwise constitute a public nuisance.
"He was an oracle, just as Obama had said, but one who merely confirmed that his stricture upon
Black people- whom he accused of abandoning their 'prophetic tradition' in favor of 'individualistic
pursuit of wealth, health and status'- applied only to himself."
It's hard to listen to West address issues such as poverty and black nihilism, as undeniably
brilliant as he is, for one reason: surely a man who commands 100k a night for his speeches is
a man without an organic connection to his subject?
A rich white bully male wins, a warmonger lost.
Between a TV entertainer speaking layman English and a haughty has-been politician, the "deplorable"
have chosen. America has gotten poorer.
Corporations will run the show instead of politicians.
Society go backwards driven by the overlords towards a Feudal state. The ultimate post neoliberalism.
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The last two democratic administrations have included Wall Street within their 'triangulation'.
In this they mirrored Blair-Brown who were prepared to woo the City in return for tax receipts
to pursue siginifcant social reform. Clinton and Obama have also promoted globalisation - NAFTA,
TPP, TTIP in the hope that this will boost growth (it has but not of median incomes) and keep
inflation low . So ironically it is the extreme right that have led the charge against these twin
towers of the neoliberal consensus: financialisation and globalisation. This is a paradigm shift
in US politics (as the rise of UKIP has been in the UK). It remains to be seen whether the Republicans
become the party of de financialisation and protectionism. I very much doubt they will; in fact
I suspect it will be the GOP who are most resistant to Trump_vs_deep_state. There could be a period of extreme
chaos politically and economically. Both the Dems and Labour must get ready to offer a meaningful
alternative to the 'Washington consensus' for the next elections in 2020. They must promote investment
in the real economy; change the tax structure to penalise short termism and inequality; and be
prepared to return to a trade regime that is not the full bloodied corporation benefitting regime
of tax avoidance, investor protections, fiscal dumping....
"White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic
neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens
also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated
Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process."
Well what choice was there? The corrupt Democrat Machine did for Sanders. They thought voters
had no other choice than support corrupt neoliberal Clinton. Just look at the number of Denocrate
who failed to vote because they could not stomach either.
Just look at the number of Denocrate who failed to vote because they could not stomach either.
Don't discount the impact of voter suppression - while the turnout would still be lower, efforts
to prevent poorer folks from voting did contribute to the result.
Cornel West once critiqued Obama because "he's always had to fear being a white man in a black
skin" and included the observation that "he feels most comfortable with upper middle class white
and Jewish men who consider themselves to be very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting
what they want."
He's the last person who should be writing about building multiracial alliances.
It would seem that there is a great deal of over simplifying going on; some of the articles represent
an hysteric response and the vision of sack cloth and ashes prevails among those who could not
see that the wheels were coming off the bus. The use of the term 'liberal' has become another
buzz word - there are many different forms of liberalism and creating yet another sound byte does
little to illuminate anything.
Making appeals to restore what has been lost reflects badly upon the central political parties,
with their 30 year long rightward drift and their legacy of sucking up to corporate lobbyists,
systems managers, box tickers and consultants. You can't give away sovereign political power to
a bunch of right wing quangos who worship private wealth and its accumulation without suffering
the consequences. The article makes no contribution (and neither have many of the others of late)
to any kind of alternative to either neo-liberalism or the vacuum that has become a question mark
with the dark face of the devil behind it.
We are in uncharted waters. The conventional Left was totally discredited by1982 and all we've
had since are various forms of modifications of Thatcher's imported American vision. There has
been no opposition to this system for over 40 years - so where do we get the idea that democracy
has any real meaning? Yes, we can vote for the Greens, or one of the lesser known minority parties,
but of course people don't; they tend to go with what is portrayed as the orthodoxy and they've
been badly let down by it.
It would be a real breath of fresh air to see articles which offer some kind of analysis that
demonstrates tangible options to deal with the multiple crises we are suffering. Perhaps we might
start with a consideration that if our political institutions are prone to being haunted by the
ghost of the 1930's, the state itself could be seen as part of the problem rather than any solution.
Why is it that every other institution is considered to be past its sell by date and we still
believe in a phantom of democracy? Discuss.
I have spent hours trying to see solutions around Neo-Liberalism and find that governments have
basically signed away any control over the economy so nothing they can do. There are no solutions.
Maybe that is the starting point. The solution for workers left behind in Neo-Liberal language
is they must move. It demands labor mobility. It is not possible to dictate where jobs are created.
I see too much fiddly around the edges, the best start is to say they cannot fix the problem.
If they keep making false promises then things will just get dire as.
This excellent analysis by professor West places the current political situation in a proper historical
context.
However, I fear that neo-liberalism may not be quite "dead" as he argues.
Most of the Democratic party's "establishment" politicians, who conspired to sabotage the populist
Sanders's campaign, still dominate the party, and they, in turn, are controlled by the giant corporations
who fund their campaigns.
Democrat Chuck Schumer is now the Senate minority leader, and he is the loyal servant of the
big Wall Street investment banks.
Sanders and Warren are the only two Democratic leaders who are not neo-liberals, and I fear
that they will once again be marginalized.
Rank and file Democrats must organize at the local and state level to remove these corrupt
neo-liberals from all party leadership positions. This will take many years, and it will be very
difficult.
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and
symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners,
oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians
abroad.
Didn't Obama say to Wall Street ''I'm the only one standing between you and the lynch mob? Give
me money and I'll make it all go away''. Then came into office and went we won't prosecute the
Banks not Bush for a false war because we don't look back.
He did not ignore, he actively, willingly, knowingly protected them. At the end of the day
Obama is wolf in sheep's clothing. Exactly like HRC he has a public and a private position.He
is a gifted speaker who knows how to say all the right, progressive liberal things to get people
to go along much better than HRC ever did. But that lip service is where his progressive views
begin and stop. It's the very reason none of his promises never translated into actions and I
will argue that he was the biggest and smoothest scam artist to enter the white house who got
even though that wholly opposed centre-right policies, to flip and support them vehemently. Even
when he had the Presidency, House and Senate, he never once introduced any progressive liberal
policy. He didn't need Republican support to do it, yet he never even tried.
Obama entered the White House with the largest Congressional majorities since 1992. The Democrats
had a larger share of seats in both houses, even leaving aside the dying and incapacitated Senators,
than Bush the Younger enjoyed at any point in his presidency. What did he do with that?
The ARRA wasn't a bad idea but its effectiveness was hampered by significant giveaways to politically
connected entities. Dodd-Frank somehow manages to achieve both byzantine complexity and regulatory
ineffectiveness all at once. Its obvious benefits are so few that few people are ready to vigorously
defend it (beyond the commonsense idea that Wall St should have been more closely regulated in
the wake of the financial meltdown) while its 2,300 pages of tortured legalese inspire clarion
calls for yet more deregulation. Obama unilaterally dismissed the public option he campaigned
on in a close door meeting with 'health care' and pharma executives, giving us the failed Hillary/Romney/Dole
health care plan that he rightfully derided during the primary contest. The Republicans were largely
uninvolved in this, other than serving as useful idiots to provide the Democrats a cover for their
naked betrayal. Not once did Obama use the bully pulpit to seriously advocate for single payer
or even a public option.
And let's not forget the truly horrendous Bowles Simpson plan which would have cut Social Security
and Medicare in the name of fiscal responsibility while at the same time reducing the marginal
tax rates of the very wealthy and pushing working people into higher tax brackets with a flatter
income tax schedule. Does nobody remember how they tried to punt responsibility for what would
have been a disastrous and deeply unpopular package of 'reforms' by punting it over to an unelected
'Supercommittee'?! Does nobody remember that at all, FFS, it was barely 5 years ago!
You can say what you want about how Obama's hands were tied and he was totally helpless but
the fact that Bush was able to make such drastic changes even when he had a rather small majority
and Obama made little headway with a historically large one gives credence to the idea that the
Democrats are the Washington Generals of politics. I mean, come on, he didn't even try to move
public opinion towards a more progressive economic program: he was too busy boasting about how
we had reduced government spending to GDP to the lowest levels in 50 years or proposing privatizations
of public agencies like the Tennessee Valley Authority.
I am dismayed at the election of Donald Trump with full Republican control of Congress as most
of us are, but I simply do not think it serves us to make excuses for a president who did so little
to help those who once believed in him.
Trump's election was enabled by the policies that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable
citizens. We gird ourselves for a frightening future
No. Trump's election was secured by the hypocritical two-faced behavior of the US radical left
wing. The Obama, Kerry and many of their closest advisors, had great difficulty with the word
terrorist. Very much a parallel of Jeremy Corbyn-Milne and Momentum. And. Hilary was just too
much of a barefaced liar.
Staggering hypocritical two-faced behavior.
Enough is enough. Although The Donald does seem to be 'walking back' so much of what he was
elected on. But then, The Obama didn't close Guantanamo either.
"... Since the late 1980s and the so-called Washington Consensus, neoliberalism - essentially the idea that free trade, open markets, privatisation, deregulation, and reductions in government spending designed to increase the role of the private sector are the best ways to boost growth - has dominated the thinking of the world's biggest economies and international organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. ..."
"... "The young students are not interested in establishing that neoliberalism works - they're trying to understand where markets fail and what to do about it, with an understanding that the failures are pervasive. That's true of both micro and macroeconomics. I wouldn't say it's everywhere, but I'd say that it's dominant. ..."
"... Stiglitz went on to argue that one of the central tenets of the neoliberal ideology - the idea that markets function best when left alone and that an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth - has now been pretty much disproved. ..."
"... "We've gone from a neoliberal euphoria that 'markets work well almost all the time' and all we need to do is keep governments on course, to 'markets don't work' and the debate is now about how we get governments to function in ways that can alleviate this," he said. ..."
"... In other words, Stiglitz says: "Neoliberalism is dead in both developing and developed countries." ..."
"... The decline of neoliberalism is also evident in the UK, where austerity has reigned since the accession of the Conservative Party to government in 2010. Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne presided over a period of record fiscal-deficit reduction created through a six-year programme of austerity. ..."
"... Neoliberalism may not be completely dead, as Stiglitz argues, but it is certainly being challenged from many angles. ..."
"... I believe the Reagan Era ended when Alan Greenspan, the economic god of both parties, was completely discredited at the end of the Bush Presidency. I think this is the first article I've seen that has acknowledged it with such clarity, that was 8 years ago. We may be moving into a more progressive era, hard to tell. Naturally, Democrats are so entrenched, they can't step up to it. It does account for Sanders' surprising success. ..."
"... Yes, the 1970s were much more complicated and hardly a wonderful time. I looked up rates the year my parents bought their house it was between 10 and 11%, I guess it was considered high but it was accepted, meaning there was no concept that it could get drastically lower, maybe hope for 9%. ..."
"... It was actually shocking to hear about someone's parent getting laid off. I think there is a certain amount of morality that's been lost after so much shifted during the Reagan years. It was largely true that if you dedicated yourself to a company, you would be taken care of. Naturally much of that came out of the Labor Movement. ..."
"... Something I found interesting in this election year was Sanders saying something along the lines that his tax proposals weren't extreme at all because we used to tax the very wealthy at 90% when Eisenhower was president. ..."
"... "Johnson's War" was really Eisenhower's war. Other than the gas wars when Carter was president (brought on by opposition to his misplaced support of the deposed Shah), the major hits taken by the main street economy were fueled by Reaganomics, accounting tricks that benefited the wealthy, and Reagan's ridiculous "Star Wars" program. ..."
"... Stigliz is still a believer in global free market and the crap being fed the US by Neos. I think he is clinging to policies that screw American workers. He needs to update his ideas and get out of the bubble. ..."
"... Neoliberalism -- a maliciously clever,* deliberately deceptive name for economic fascism -- will not be "dead" until all its perpetrators are in their graves. And that will not happen until capitalism itself is buried. ..."
"... Economic fascism is no exaggeration. The TPP will IMPOSE corporate power on our representatives in government which is the 9th characteristic of fascism on steroids. ..."
"... I'm all for the death of revolving door corporatism just please don't call that Devil-made-concoction 'capitalism'. ..."
"... Can someone explain why M1 financials are no longer being reported? It's the value of actual assets that can be converted to cash. I would like to know why, either under Reagan or Bush 1, reporting it was banished. I speculate that its report exposed an unbalanced asset to debt (spending) ratio. Professor Stiglitz? ..."
Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and former adviser to US President Bill Clinton,
says the consensus surrounding neoliberal economic thought has come to an end.
Speaking with Business Insider after
the launch of his
latest book, "The Euro: How A Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe " - which argues
that the fundamental flaws with the euro and the broader European economy are causing huge problems
for the continent and risk leading to its downfall - Stiglitz argued that neoliberalism, the dominant
school of economic thinking in the West for the past 30 years or so, is on its last legs.
Since the late 1980s and the so-called Washington Consensus, neoliberalism - essentially the
idea that free trade, open markets, privatisation, deregulation, and reductions in government spending
designed to increase the role of the private sector are the best ways to boost growth - has dominated
the thinking of the world's biggest economies and international organisations like the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The policies of Ronald Reagan and Clinton in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK are often
held up as the gold standard of neoliberalism at work, while in recent years in Britain George Osborne
and David Cameron's economic policies continued the neoliberal tradition.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, however, there has been a groundswell of opinion in both economic
and political circles to suggest that the neoliberal consensus may not be the right way forward for
the world. In the past few years, with growth low and inequality rampant, that groundswell has gained
traction.
Asked by Business Insider whether he thought the economic consensus surrounding neoliberalism
was coming to an end, Stiglitz argued: "I can talk about this from the point of view of academia
or even in policy circles. In academia, I think it has pretty well become rejected.
"The young students are not interested in establishing that neoliberalism works - they're
trying to understand where markets fail and what to do about it, with an understanding that the failures
are pervasive. That's true of both micro and macroeconomics. I wouldn't say it's everywhere, but
I'd say that it's dominant.
"In policymaking circles I think it's the same thing. Of course, there are people, say on the
right in the United States who don't recognise this. But even many of the people on the right would
say markets don't work very well, but their problem is governments are unable to correct it."
Stiglitz went on to argue that one of the central tenets of the neoliberal ideology - the
idea that markets function best when left alone and that an unregulated market is the best way to
increase economic growth - has now been pretty much disproved.
"We've gone from a neoliberal euphoria that 'markets work well almost all the time' and all
we need to do is keep governments on course, to 'markets don't work' and the debate is now about
how we get governments to function in ways that can alleviate this," he said.
In other words, Stiglitz says: "Neoliberalism is dead in both developing and developed countries."
Stiglitz is not alone in his belief that neoliberalism has its problems, though his argument that
the consensus is "dead" is somewhat more forthright than those of many others. In a blog post in
May, three economists from the IMF - long one of the greatest champions of the neoliberal consensus
- questioned the efficacy of some aspects of it, particularly when it comes to the creation of inequality.
"The increase in inequality engendered by financial openness and austerity might itself undercut
growth, the very thing that the neoliberal agenda is intent on boosting,"
Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri argued . "There is now strong evidence that
inequality can significantly lower both the level and the durability of growth."
"There are a lot of people thinking the same thing at this point, that basically some aspects
of the neoliberal agenda probably need a rethink," Ostry
told the Financial Times on the day the blog was published , adding: "The crisis said: 'The way
we've been thinking can't be right.'"
The decline of neoliberalism
The decline of neoliberalism is also evident in the UK, where austerity has reigned since
the accession of the Conservative Party to government in 2010. Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor
of the Exchequer George Osborne presided over a period of record fiscal-deficit reduction created
through a six-year programme of austerity.
But since Cameron resigned following the UK's vote to leave the European Union, fiscal stimulus
in the UK has started to gain traction once again as a viable means of stimulating growth. It is
widely expected that Philip Hammond, the new chancellor under newly installed Prime Minister Theresa
May, will announce some form of fiscal easing at the Autumn Statement - which will come at some point
before the end of the year (last year's was in late November).
As Business Insider's Oscar Williams-Grut argued in mid-July, "Britain's age of austerity could be
over ."
"We are all Keynesians now, President Richard Nixon famously declared after his New Economic Plan
was unveiled in 1971. The notion seems to be echoing now, with the two major parties' presidential
candidates calling for increased government spending, notably for infrastructure projects."
Neoliberalism may not be completely dead, as Stiglitz argues, but it is certainly being challenged
from many angles.
kyzipster 2016-08-20 11:00
I believe the Reagan Era ended when Alan Greenspan, the economic god of both parties, was
completely discredited at the end of the Bush Presidency. I think this is the first article I've
seen that has acknowledged it with such clarity, that was 8 years ago. We may be moving into a
more progressive era, hard to tell. Naturally, Democrats are so entrenched, they can't step up
to it. It does account for Sanders' surprising success.
I have to wonder though, how the millennials would react to paying what I paid for a pair of Levis
in the 1970s. There was no such thing as a TJ Maxx. I'm not a fan of dirt cheap, poorly made products
but I think that many spoiled Americans, even the most liberal, don't understand the issues fully.
I also benefited from cheap college and middle class opportunity was more available. I think my
parents' mortgage was 12% which was not considered high. You could draw 6 or 7% interest by keeping
money in the bank, no need to risk the stock market. It will be very difficult to reverse course
but at least we may not continue in the same direction.
"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders'
equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief." Alan Greenspan
wwway 2016-08-20 14:32
Even Greenspan said in his bio that he made a mistake with the "free market". You know he was
a pal of Ayn Rand, right?
Is there anyone over 25 that takes Rand seriously?
guomashi 2016-08-21 06:19
that would be paul ryan who makes all his interns read Ayn Rand as part of their job requirement
NAVYVET 2016-08-22 05:56
Did you mean "under 25"? I know not one single Millennial who considers Ayn Rand anything but
a nutcase.
kyzipster 2016-08-20 15:11
For one thing, it creates another housing bubble as we're seeing right now. Values are determined
largely by the amount of a mortgage instead of actual cash value.
jdd 2016-08-20 15:50
The bubble is much larger than than housing, as the derivatives market has ballooned to over 2
quadrillion dollars worldwide. Stiglitz suggests a Keynesian solution but ignores the elephant
in the room. Therefor the first step in an economic recovery is a return to FDR's Glass-Steagall,
which will bring about an orderly banking reorganization and write down of the absurd paper value
of those contracts. A return to Glass-Steagall was adopted as a platform plank at both party's
conventions.
economagic 2016-08-20 21:27
"A return to Glass-Steagall was adopted as a platform plank at both party's conventions."
Yes, and if you believe either of them meant it you might be interested in some gorgeous ocean-front
property I have for sale in NW Georgia, CHEAP!
What is needed today is a revised version of Glass-Steagall that not only separates "commercial
banking" (aka "boring banking," taking deposits and making small loans of a few hundred grand
and EVERYTHING else), PLUS some very sophisticated and adaptive regulations on what can be done
in the "everything else" realm, as that can and will bring down the whole system even if they
are not betting with depositors' money.
jdd 2016-08-21 06:32
I am hardly suggesting it is a slam dunk, or that we can rest,as I have been agitating for its
reinstatement for the last twenty years, so spare the lecture. We do not need a "revised version,"
or Hillary's "something better," as the Warren-McCain bill repeats the language of the 1933 FDR
version, while the Republican plank calls for the exact 1933 law. Wall Street is freaked out and
will go all out to stop it and the task for patriots, no matter who wins in November, is to see
that we "sock it to 'em." Once Glass-Steagall is reinstated, (step one) the casino will loose
tax=payer backing. If the rich want to gamble on risking ventures just fine, but once the derivatives
bets are called in there will be a huge write-down, and much if not all, of Wall Street will go
under. As long as the legitimate banking ("aka ' boring boring' ") institutions are able to function
as the basis for a infusion of federal credit (step two) for a desperately needed infrastructure
upgrade. Ala FDR.
maindrains 2016-08-21 14:04
One suggestion to cover the "everything else" that occupies creative financial types the world
over is to specifically detail what IS allowed and assume everything else, even though not yet
invented is not. That would stop the financial schemes dead.
economagic 2016-08-20 21:20
# kyzipster 2016-08-20 11:00
Hold on there, with the low prices of the 1970s. The consumer price index (CPI) more than
doubled between 1972 and 1981. That means that on average, the prices of the things middle-class
Americans typically buy increased by more than 100 percent in just nine years. To put that
in context, it took until 2002 for them to double again, more than 20 years.
A 12% mortgage was considered VERY high for those who paid it (rates went above 17% at one
point, compared to 4-5% until the inflation from Johnson's War began to set in c. 1968), and
6-7% interest on bank deposits did not even begin to keep pace with inflation in any but two
of those nine years. Nothing like it has been seen before or since except in countries on the
brink of a monetary meltdown.
But that is in the domain of monetary economics, another issue completely. What millennials
might think about what you paid for jeans in the time of Moses (as far as they are concerned)
is irrelevant.
Regarding the decline of the USian economy you are basically correct, regardless of whether
the millennials know or care. The question is where we go from here. A good start would be to
ride most of the economists out of town on a rail, because they believed or pretended to that
neoliberal economic policies as described in the article actually made sense.
kyzipster 2016-08-21 00:05
Yes, the 1970s were much more complicated and hardly a wonderful time. I looked up rates the year
my parents bought their house it was between 10 and 11%, I guess it was considered high but it
was accepted, meaning there was no concept that it could get drastically lower, maybe hope for
9%.
I also remember my grandmother, a retired union factory worker, living off of the interest
of her CDs. Inflation was high and she was frugal. I knew many middle class families who got there
through union jobs, many white collar people also with very secure jobs.
It was actually shocking
to hear about someone's parent getting laid off. I think there is a certain amount of morality
that's been lost after so much shifted during the Reagan years. It was largely true that if you
dedicated yourself to a company, you would be taken care of. Naturally much of that came out of
the Labor Movement.
The relevance of the high price of jeans that were probably manufactured in California by union
labor (yes, the time of Moses for sure), is in considering tariffs to bring some manufacturing
back to the US. As Trump has suggested. Also consider the cost of a living wage for all and single
payer health care as Sanders has proposed, and I support fully. Tariffs might have to be significant
to even the playing field. People would likely go nuts with any intervention that might raise
prices at Walmart no matter how beneficial over the long term. Considering how sensational the
'news' is.
kyzipster 2016-08-21 12:46
Something I found interesting in this election year was Sanders saying something along the lines
that his tax proposals weren't extreme at all because we used to tax the very wealthy at 90% when
Eisenhower was president.
I have a younger, liberal friend who thought it was a lie, it seemed so outrageous. It just didn't
compute for him. That was partly the reaction in the media, even though it was a simple fact.
This guy was born during Reagan's first term.
Even some of the most progressive people would resist going back to a more socialist society when
it starts to impact a person personally. Paying more for energy, higher taxes, more for clothing
and electronics. Like many hippies when they took on jobs and mortgages in the 1980s and became
Reagan cheerleaders. I think we're stuck.
maindrains 2016-08-21 14:08
Its true that tax rates after WW2 were in the 90%+ range... but don't forget that would only be
for the very top bracket of very high earners. Even they would pay the same lower marginal rates
on the tranche of earnings below that 90%= rate so overall they would not be handing over actually
90%= of their total earnings. earnings
Floridatexan 2016-08-22 11:03
"Johnson's War" was really Eisenhower's war. Other than the gas wars when Carter was president
(brought on by opposition to his misplaced support of the deposed Shah), the major hits taken
by the main street economy were fueled by Reaganomics, accounting tricks that benefited the wealthy,
and Reagan's ridiculous "Star Wars" program.
Skyelav 2016-08-20 13:10
This is from the "Yeah Right file," am I right? (Puns intended.) As long as they can find ways
of getting us to buy from satelite countries like China, and invest in the neo lib's Mega Casino-on-stero
ids, Wall Street, and ignore unemployment figures, the real ones, and keep us distracted with
the Kardashians, and the NFL, there will be no change except in name alone in neo-libaral economics.
jdd 2016-08-20 19:02
You are sadly uninformed if you think that China is a "satellite" (sic) country. China's has drawn
nearly half the world into its "one belt. one road" infrastructure and development corridor policy
and is moving to integrate most of Eurasia into its plan. And there is nothing the US, short of
war, can do to stop it.
Capn Canard 2016-08-21 15:04
Yes to much of what you've posted. The one thing I like to mention is that I can't see our current
system doing anything to change it's ways. Sanders proposed remedies from the 1930s and the 1970s
and it would've worked. But look how quickly Hillary refused to accept any of what Sanders proposed.
Also, notice how the so-called liberal pundits are going to bat for Hillary despite her reluctance
to accept those effective FDR style ideas.
We are in a massive fuster-cluck and I don't think the Dems or Repugs will do anything to change
that. I just hope it doesn't turn violent.
RLF 2016-08-24 10:59
Stigliz is still a believer in global free market and the crap being fed the US by Neos. I think
he is clinging to policies that screw American workers. He needs to update his ideas and get out
of the bubble.
Inspired Citizen 2016-08-20 13:20
But the candidate of neoliberalism, #CorporateClint on, is ahead in the polls. The name of the first knife she will use to plunge into the backs of her supporters is "TPP,"
a neoliberal coup against democratic self-government Hillary called the "gold standard" of "free-trade"
agreements.
lorenbliss 2016-08-20 15:31
Neoliberalism -- a maliciously clever,* deliberately deceptive name for economic fascism --
will not be "dead" until all its perpetrators are in their graves. And that will not happen until
capitalism itself is buried.
_________
*I do not know the origin of the term "neoliberal." But as an editor and writer I do know semantics
and psycholinguisti cs, just as, as a journalist, I am familiar with the bottomless evil of the
One Percenters and their Ruling Class vassals.
Hence I cannot doubt the term "neoliberal" was coined to serve at least three objectives:
Disguising fascist economics by hiding their brutality beneath a term hitherto associated
with humanitarianism ;
Inflicting Orwellian confusion to make genuine debate difficult if not impossible (the
dialogue thus squandered by its refocus on definitions rather than consequences); and
Discrediting true liberalism, which is essentially a well-intentioned but doomed
effort to achieve humanitarian goals without the dirty work of revolution necessitated by acknowledgement
of capitalism's innate savagery.
The operational strategy, poisoning genuine (Keynesian) liberalism with the toxic associations
generated by neoliberalism, is (coincidentally or not), close kin to the strategy behind the One
Percent's placement of Obama in the White House: beyond its immediate benefits to the capitalist
agenda, discrediting African-America n political aspirations for at least a century if not forever.
Inspired Citizen 2016-08-20 15:46
Economic fascism is no exaggeration. The TPP will IMPOSE corporate power on our representatives
in government which is the 9th characteristic of fascism on steroids.
I'm all for the death of revolving door corporatism just please don't call that Devil-made-concoction
'capitalism'. Death to all government-corp oration partnerships with evil limited-to-no liability
for its misdeeds like big pharma that can kill people with impunity, like big banks that can steal
billions and pay fines of millions, like Monstranto that can poison the earth and go on poisoning
the earth (and go on ...).
Depressionborn 2016-08-24 10:42
Quoting JohnBoanerges:
I'm all for the death of revolving door corporatism just please don't call that Devil-made-concoction
'capitalism'. Death to all government-corporation partnerships with evil limited-to-no liability
for its misdeeds like big pharma that can kill people with impunity, like big banks that can
steal billions and pay fines of millions, like Monstranto that can poison the earth and go
on poisoning the earth (and go on ...).
yes, JohnBoanerges 2016-08-20 16:37
but how did it happen? when I grew up very little of it
occurred. Something change after the war. Wht was it?
Patriot 2016-08-20 17:23
Capitalism isn't the great evil, lorenbliss, any more than money is evil. (Remember, it is the
LOVE of money which is evil; not money, itself. Capitalism is the economic and political system
whereby a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than
by the state. Since I once owned and ran a business, from which I profited handsomely, I'm not
an enemy of private ownership and operation for profit.
The problem lies not with either private ownership or operation for profit, but with an owner
whose sole interests are control and profit. Once upon a time, business owners, from small to
gigantic, concerned themselves with the quality, competitive pricing, and value of their products
for the money their business earned.
There still are some--there once were many more--business owners who willingly share the profit
of their business with those who make that profit possible: its employees.
However, recent government policy--local, state, and federal--has encouraged business owners to
feel that they are entitled to keep all profit from their buinesses, pay no taxes, and pay their
employees as little as possible.
[continued]
Patriot 2016-08-20 17:24
Government's position SHOULD be to oversee competition so that it is fair among competitors; to
oversee employment so that all employees receive both a living wage and a reasonable share of
businesses' profits, work reasonable hours, and work in safe, reasonable comfortable conditions;
to oversee quality and claims of quality so that products are safe, will function as described,
will last a reasonable time, and are replaced by their maker if defective.
But government has abandoned those controls. It is the abandonment of those controls that has
been "evil", not capitalism.
Contributing to the "evil" has been the success business has met in convincing people that their
chief role in life is to be consumers--not savers; not living within their means, or their ability
to provide means; purchasers of every new gadget that comes along, without considering whether
either its cost or its actual usefulness to them make it desireable for them to purchase, own,
and maintain. People now are consumers more than earners, purchasers of vast quantities of goods
they never or seldom use--items which cram garages, attics, basements, and even rented storage
rooms, and eventually fuel yard sales or are dispatched to landfills.
[continued]
Patriot 2016-08-20 17:26
Businessmen who once took at least some thought for their employees and their communities now
claim they must look after their stockholders--a nd pay their executives outrageous sums of money,
while depriving their employees and their communities of all but the most meagre support, and,
often, while depriving their customers of all but shoddy goods and services.
Employees who once worked and saved for a house of their own, a new car, college tuition for their
children, and their old age, now both cannot afford to save, and thoughtlessly spend their earnings
for items they do not NEED, which will not enrich their lives or ensure their own or their children's
futures.
Government, which once attempted to balance the needs of a healthy business community (which provided
a living for a nation's citizens) and the needs of its citizens for an adequate income, their
hope for a better life as time went by, and their hope for a better future for their children,
now concerns itelf almost exclusively with increasing the profit of business owners, regardless
of resultant damage to society, individuals, or the land we live on, the air we breathe, and the
water we drink.
Government--at every level--sets aside nothing for emergencies, nothing with which to improve
the future of all citizens, nothing with which to keep roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, public
lands, and public buildings in good repair, good operating order, or, [continued]
Patriot 2016-08-20 17:27
in due time, with which to remodel reburbish, or rebuild, nothing with which to conduct relations
with other nations and governments, no modest amount for national security and defense.
Capitalism is not the evil: What is evil is the falure of government to balance the needs of its
citizens and communities and infrastructure with the profit of business owners--especia lly those
businesses which manufacture personal and military weapons and armaments and equipment--and the
failure of citizens to compel government to function as it should, protecting both citizens and
businesses.
Until that imbalance is corrected, the planet, societies, and billions of individual people will
continue to languish, while business corrals more and more of the planet's money.
Robbee 2016-08-20 18:24
Until that imbalance is corrected, the planet, societies, and billions of individual people will
continue to languish, while business corrals more and more of the planet's money.
- well put - where we differ is where we go from here
Inspired Citizen 2016-08-20 18:52
We need to change the rules on our One Party Planet.
@Patriot. That "imbalance," as you label it, is the quintessence of the capitalist agenda. Given
the limitless power of capitalism. what it assuredly is NOT is "the failure of government."
The historically obvious truth is no government -- no matter how well intentioned or how determinedly
powerful -- can successfully resist the capitalists' ability to corrupt, subvert and (when corruption
and subversion fail) to hire terrorists to achieve its eternally tyrannical goals and objectives.
That's because what capitalism truly is -- its core purpose -- is the formal fostering and perpetuation
of our species' most morally imbecilic impulses: greed, selfishness, imperialism, enslavement
and sadistic retaliation against its opponents and cast-offs.
Look around you -- really look with your eyes wide open -- and tell me this is not so.
vicnada 2016-08-20 20:54
While I agree with Lorenbliss that "based on results" capitalism is the evil that seems unfixable
at its core, I lay the blame for the failure exactly as Patriot indicates. Society is basically
threefold in its makeup (as are we as human beings). There is the "economic sphere" which should
be the only arena where capitalism's influence is paramount and there only insofar as it does
not interfere with two other interpenetratin g spheres...the "political" and the "cultural". (This
is a crude summation of what was elaborated originally early last century by Rudolf Steiner).
(continued)
vicnada 2016-08-20 20:57
Patriot correctly points out that the political/legis lative sphere has lost its rightful place
to secure the rights of workers against the overweaning greed of the capitalistic tendencies.
There was once a time when we had strong unions and more courageous political leaders.
vicnada 2016-08-20 21:03
Bernie Sanders is the current herald of the change that is inevitable if we are to survive. But
more and more evidence is coming from economists in the "cultural sphere" such as this article
by Stiglitz where he clearly points to the pendulum swinging against the laissez-faire free-market
zealotry cultivated in the Reagan administration and fully uncorked by Clinton's signature repealing
Glass-Steagall.
vicnada 2016-08-20 21:14
In short, capitalism--by definition--is simply the manner in which human ingenuity transforms
nature thereby releasing something more valuable which, when captured, becomes "capital". In itself,
the process is not evil. It is part of our human development. But when this activity of WILL dominates
all other human activity and over-powers the THINKING and FEELING that should be guiding it's
activity, we devolve to our animal instincts...and all that results is destructive. Again, all
of this was articulated very clearly by Rudolf Steiner as the "Threefold Social Order". Google
it.
Patriot 2016-08-21 18:58
Well put, vicnada. thanks for the butressing and clarifying argument.
Patriot 2016-08-21 19:24
Lorenbliss, it is possible to find--and magnify--evil in any human endeavor or philosphy. The
trick is to find ways to accommodate both the activity or philosophy, which may also contain or
be associated with much good, so that there's a balance between evil and good.
In the US, in this period of our national life, we've failed miserably at both identifying such
a balance--on many, many subjects--and at insisting that our government help us to create that
balance, and to keep it steadily, firmly, securely in place.
Although I am by nature an idealist, I've learned to be both a pragmatist and a realist during
the past 7 decades. You have, obviously, a very different view of the world than I do, doubtless
accountable by comparing our experiences. But you may be making yourself unnecessariy unhappy
by gloomily hunting for evil in every conversation, every facet of civilization, every study of
history.
Humans have evolved enormously since we lived in caves--and I'll be the first to admit that we
might be much better off without some of that evolution. But there is much in us that is noble,
just as there is much that is ignoble.
However, I continue to search out things that make me smile, things that inspire me, things that
give me hope. If you've passed beyond the comfort of such things, I am sad for you--not condescending
or patronizing, just sorry that contemplating the world does not any longer often give you cause
for joy or laughter or hope. Peace, my brother.
Activista 2016-08-20 22:35
"the failure of citizens to compel government to function as it should, protecting both citizens
and businesses."
yes - excellent contribution by Patriot complementing Stiglitz - we are starting new businesses,
we learn (education) to implement an idea - not to speculate on Wall Street to become millionaires.
Social Democracy and capitalism are VERY compatible - (Scandinavia) - totalitarian communism
created poverty (CCCP).
siamdave 2016-08-23 05:52
Socialism and capitalism are about as compatible as democracy and authoritarianis m - capitalism
is, more or less by definition, hierarchical decision making, whilst (real) socialism, based on
cooperation of various kinds, is fundamentally democratic. The longer version here - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/drh/12d-capitalism.html
kyzipster 2016-08-24 12:16
I think there are societies that prove that socialism and capitalism can work well together. Switzerland
is considered one of the most Libertarian countries in the world, absolute socialism as defined
by conservatives in the US, conservatives who claim to identify with Libertarian views. Germany
is the #3 exporter in the world with a high standard of living, careful government planning made
that happen. (They were #1 prior to the 2008 crash, even ahead of China)
A healthy amount of socialism can keep the excesses and abuse of corporate power in check, at
least within the borders of a nation. Globalization has created some tough issues.
It's about balance. I'm a far left liberal, even a socialist, but I have no desire to live in
a communist country.
economagic 2016-08-20 21:37
Quoting Patriot:
Capitalism is the economic and political system whereby a country's trade and industry are
controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
Yes, that is the definition I recall from 8th-grade Civics nearly 60 years ago. The real world
is not so simple, and we have learned a great deal more about it in those 60 years. It is fair
to make a firm distinction between privately owned business, at least up to some scale, and capitalISM
per se.
Historically "capital" meant "producers' goods," but economists themselves began muddying the
definition in the mid-19th century. While most card-carrying economists today will still recite
that definition, almost any time they use the word "capital" most of them mean "money," even though
they acknowledge that money is capital only in the banking/financi al industry.
Since "-ism" is usually take to mean a belief in or worship of something, defining capitalISM
in that sense sheds a good deal of light on what lorenbliss and I and myriad others are saying.
Activista 2016-08-20 22:48
capitalism allows small businesses - bakery, flower-shop, car repair - communism - alternative
state and party owns everything - and consequences are constant shortages (ex Soviet Union and
countries under its dominance).
Capitalism works fine in Scandinavia - with free education at ANY level, national healthcare,
comfortable pensions.
What these cultures do not have is greed - money culture - like we have here in the USA (and
would say that for most low middle class the money obsession is the sickens)
I believe there is tremendous greed in places like Scandinavia. The difference is that those govts
make it pretty pointless to act on it
kyzipster 2016-08-21 01:22
Greed is a universal human trait but the morality of the collective can have a big impact on an
individual.
I've seen a documentary of Scandinavians interviewed on some of these issues, it's amazing compared
to the collective mentality in the US, the lack of resentment of others, a belief in the greater
good.
Activista 2016-08-21 15:31
Compared to American "Money Culture" - where greed and poverty is common - Scandinavia is much
better place.
And statistics/valu es reflect it.
There is also much fear propaganda that controls our politics (FOX news).
Skyelav 2016-08-21 18:07
[quote name="Activista "]Compared to American "Money Culture" - where greed and poverty is common
- Scandinavia is much better place.
Yes Activista. I find in Europe people generally feel they have enough. Last night on that quiz
show where they guess what the audience says in response to a question,the question asked was
"what did the 100 people asked say when asked from one to ten how satisfied are you with what
you have?" The participants said "ten" and "seven" respectively. The number picked by the audience
was "zero".. It made my heart stop. BTW when I came back from my trip to Europe I went to Maine
for a month of study and came away thinking the people in Maine have the same attitude as the
Europeans I met. I did not find that anywhere else in the US.
Activista 2016-08-22 14:39
Sorry for generalizing to all USA. In 1968 with $20 in my pocket and 6 month old son I started
in Maine ( South Paris) in furniture factory on the night shift for $1.60 per hour. People there
were very friendly and hospitable - we did not have to lock our door.
All what we saved was spent on the child medical care - we did not need it, but my wife was
accustomed to go to the doctor when the son coughed.
There I observed that 20 year old had a car (mustang) - impossibility in Eastern Europe - but
he did have missing teeth (dental cost in the USA) - also impossibility in Europe where dental
care is free.
kyzipster 2016-08-21 01:18
They also don't have a military budget that takes 40 cents of every tax dollar by some estimates.
Skyelav 2016-08-21 18:08
Nor do they need the military budget Kyzipster. They don't seem to be imperialists or whatever
we are doing for the 1%. I bet their corporations and health care isn't dependent on the stock
market either. My how do they survive?
Patriot 2016-08-21 20:40
Economagic, your school system was more advanced than mine. My definition came from consulting
a dictionary this afternoon. (smile)
Here's another, for "ism": a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political
ideology or an artistic movement.
Somehow, I sense that you and lorenbliss think I'm unaware of the massively evil practices and
plans of at least some contemporary huge businesses. I assure that not only am I aware of them,
but also I had the misfortune to learn that even very small businesses can be run evilly.
You've written some interesting comments lately to help all of us consider the distinction between
fact and opinion--that every opinion, if properly supported by facts and sound logic--is as valid
as every other opinion, especially when none can be proven. (For example, our myriad range of
opinions about the relative merits of HRC, DJT, and Stein, especially our opinions about the sort
of presidency we might expect from them. You're correct: We're all just guessing; we'll have to
wait and see whether any of us is correct.)
I understand, far better than I can convince you I do, just how easily capitalism can become a
society's overriding evil. However, while I regard the world realistically (according to my available
information) and therefore am often skeptical, yet I'm also all too aware of a sort of self-fulfilling
-prophecy philosophy that can prevent us from seeing any glass as BOTH half full and half empty.
'corporatism' is just the current manifestation of capitalism. And it very much is the great evil
of the day, and the great problem - explained in more detail here - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/drh/12d-capitalism.html
librarian1984 2016-08-23 09:48
Gandhi said the earth has enough for everyone's need but not everyone's greed.
NAVYVET 2016-08-22 06:46
Thank you, Loren! WHO WROTE THIS?? It's brilliant.
I was raised in the Keynesian years, and have long been seething over the term "neoliberal"--a
nd also "neoconservativ e".
Genuine liberals and genuine conservatives (a word related to "conservation") are worth listening
to. "Neo" has been added to disguise the radical fascists of both, and of course to discredit
liberalism's traditional humane empathy and conservatism's wise "look before you leap" caution.
Avoid "Progressive" if you fear endless progress.
"NeoCon" actually means NeoConfederate in the US, a metaphor for the white supremacist South,
who hide behind phony "Christianity"- -the same Manichaean dualism that drummed up the Crusades.
My undergrad degree was in Linguistics and I've been a devotee of Linguistics ever since--not
a fan of Chomsky (although I do like his political views) but an admirer of George Lakoff, who
understands the twists of semantics--and warns us against the spinmeisters. It is time to drop
both Neos and call these bozos what they are: RADICAL ANARCHISTS. They are greedy fanatic oil-igarchs
who use fascist tactics, including police state murder and a Sixth Extinction of all life, to
make & keep foully-gained wealth.
PLEASE attend one of Bernie's "Our Revolution" events this Wed. evening, to start stopping the
spin doctors who have turned the United States into the Untied Snakes, and are killing us in their
snake pit.
Depressionborn 2016-08-23 19:09
mr. editor lorenb:
do you really think a farmer should not own his own farm, or that a store owner should not own
his hardware? how puzzling. Are you for real or a joke.
jdd 2016-08-20 19:53
It is more than that. The TPP is a desperate attempt to create an anti-China economic alliance
intended as a complement to the Obama-Hillary "pivot to Asia" military encirclement plan.
PeacefulGarden 2016-08-20 13:24
No way! Neoliberalism is a cranky half dead senior citizen monster that is living in a luxury
senior care center with all of its money tightly locked away as it clings to its savings account
numbers like an insect. It eats expensive lobster meals, that it cannot even taste any more, and
the rest of us pick through the scraps left in the senior care centers trash cans...
The senior citizen Neoliberalismo monster is a giant brain that is well connected, but has dementia.
It just won't fucking die....
and it has found a home in the Republican/Demo crat establishment.. . who pushes it around in
a wheel chair and wipes its ass.
velobwoy 2016-08-20 13:44
Lol!! Spot on, PG
jimmyjames 2016-08-20 13:47
Quoting PeacefulGarden:
No way! Neoliberalism is a cranky half dead senior citizen monster that is living in a luxury
senior care center with all of its money tightly locked away as it clings to its savings account
numbers like an insect. It eats expensive lobster meals, that it cannot even taste any more,
and the rest of us pick through the scraps left in the senior care centers trash cans...
The senior citizen Neoliberalismo monster is a giant brain that is well connected, but has
dementia. It just won't fucking die....
and it has found a home in the Republican/Democrat establishment... who pushes it around in
a wheel chair and wipes its ass.
I love your analogies! You are SO right on!!
goodsensecynic 2016-08-20 14:19
As a "senior citizen" (a septuagenarian "pre-boomer" who still works full-time, doesn't live expensively
and still wipes his own ... etc.), I am not now and never have been enticed by the toxic ideology
of neoliberalism.
Sorry for being hypersensitive to PeacefulGarden' s "microaggressio n," but I reject utterly the
explicit ageism in this post.
I also question the reliability of someone who accuses others of "keeping all its money tightly
locked away" while also eating "expensive lobster meals." Somehow that's just an incompetent economic
calculation on PeacefulGarden' s part.
Upon reflection, moreover, I'm willing to wager a sizeable number of table scraps that PeacefulGarden
is not half as "peaceful" and not much acquainted with the tranquility of an idyllic "garden"
as the pseudonym supposes.
In fact, the cranky tone, offensive language, and stereotyping of the previous post reminds me
that "dementia" does not automatically kick in at 65 and that older people are under no moral
obligation to "just fucking die"; but, unbridled anger and abject stupidity are hazards that can
be found in abundance in any age bracket.
Of course, PeacefulGarden may say that the attack was not aimed at ALL senior citizens or, perhaps,
that it was just intended as "sarcasm" - but I've heard too much of that crap lately from Herr
Drumpf (who seems to be PeacefulGraden' s rhetorical role model, and I ain't buying it.
PeacefulGarden 2016-08-20 15:37
I love you goodsensecynic. Don't worry. It is just a joke. I am 59. So, I see it coming over the
horizon.
Please, it really is a joke. My account name is a joke too. I keep telling accounts on this site
who expect some Zen like calmness from me, that there is nothing peaceful about a garden. As every
gardener knows, deep in the soil are creatures fighting constantly in a state of war to eat the
"plants" who in turn fight back with chemicals and evolution. Even the air contains birds who
will pummel each other for neoliberal rights to that blueberry bush.
That said, your final paragraph about my symmetrical position with "the donald", has cause me
to drop my lobster, check my bank account, and indeed, shit my pants...
A gardener is a socialist, and if you were as hypersensitive as you say you are, you would understand
my rant as nothing but a rant against Margaret Thatcher who apparently thought WWI was/is (is
she alive?) still going on in the 80s.
Neoliberalism is on its last legs, and what Stiglitz, whom I have utter respect for, will never
open the door to predicting what the next phases are- as we watch this monster cough, spit, hack,
and do every bypass surgery and transplant it can to continue its glorious exploitation of the
poor.
Remember, it is a joke.... the correlation is just a joke... it is not about you...
economagic 2016-08-20 21:52
With apologies to lorenbliss (and even to goodsensecynic) , I get it. Your initial comment defines
"neoliberalism" in terms of a cartoonish stereotype of the worst conceivable actual senior citizen,
a trope common in editorial cartooning. I can picture exactly what you describe in tomorrow morning's
paper, I should be so lucky (to have a paper with such astute cartooning).
I turned 70 this year and I know both the occasional superannuated fat cat who fits your description
(at least by reputation) and the "demented neoliberal monster" you are parodying. I suggest to
your detractors that they re-read your comment, and note that you are not characterizing senior
citizens as a group as neoliberal monsters, but rather personifying the all too real neoliberal
monster as a quasi-fictitiou s and totally unhinged senior citizen. You guys are both too smart
to miss that elegant take-down, which is funny specifically because it equates the neoliberal
monster with a fictitious person we know to be demented in ways that no human ever is.
NAVYVET 2016-08-22 07:06
If you aren't amused by Peaceful Garden, then try to develop a sense of humor. I am 80 and I'm
laughing at Peaceful Garden's satires and admiring her/his use of language.
Read Andy Borowitz. That should help. Or, as I've done, renew your subscription to MAD Magazine.
PeacefulGarden 2016-08-20 16:37
If you were in a state of bliss and 76 you would laugh at my post. Your anger is telling.
....whatever deities ?
I am lost in the storm of your upset. The post is not about you. It is about Margaret Thatcher,
who, was all about Empire.
I will repeat, I am 59, and I will be a senior pretty soon. And, I will laugh at myself... at
my utter return to infancy, and I will give every fucking penny I have to my children, immediately.
Now, you go and get me taken off this site. Please. I would love to see that happen. It would
make my day, blissful loren?
bardphile 2016-08-20 18:08
I'm 67, and I think I "got" your original tone. That said, I wonder if there might be just a tad
of guilt behind the defensiveness of "good" and "bliss." I can honestly say that I worked hard
and managed my resources carefully to get where I am, which is a lower-middle-cl ass-house-paid-
for-but-not-muc h-money existence, lower than my parents, but doing alright. Still, we three were
lucky to get in on the end of the post WWII boom as the wave that lifted our parents flattened
out and receded. Our kids have it rougher, and I hate to contemplate the world we're leaving to
our grandchildren. Some of the young folks are pissed, and they have reason. Stick around, PG.
The site needs you.
lorenbliss 2016-08-20 18:52
@PeacefulGarden : Dissemble as you like, rationalize as you choose, the breathtakingly malevolent
ageism in your initial post and the fawning approval of it by so many other posters is a perfect
example of why and how we elderly 99 Percenters are among capitalism's favorite targets for the
slow-motion genocide of austerity.
That your sociopolitical and economic understanding is so shallow you cannot grasp the manifest
hatefulness of your words is a also perfect example of why capitalist governance -- fascism whether
personified by Hillary the Horrible or Donald the Dunderhead -- inevitably triumphs in the U.
S. and indeed always will prevail.
I too damn Maggie Thatcher, an unequivocal fascist. But to use ageist imagery to damn her is like
using racist imagery to damn Barack the Betrayer, who is unquestionably the most tyrannical president
of my lifetime.
The difference -- the only significant difference -- is that racial imagery has become unacceptable,
while it remains not only acceptable but abominably praiseworthy (witness the above) to portray
elders as people who "just won't fucking die" and disabled elders as implicitly subhuman creatures
dependent on someone "who pushes it around in a wheel chair and wipes its ass."
I dwell in senior housing, am physically disabled, and I see people every day who are the wheelchaired,
incontinent victims described by your sociopathic imagery. As you will eventually learn, old age
inflicts such horrors on us all.
is where you bathe yourself in pity, is where you remain a child, and have learned nothing from
life. Look around yourself at the wonder and beauty of the care around you, the center that is
available to you, and find your bliss.
I hope you do not become the victim of you own mind-stream. The first thing you should do is laugh
at yourself. Perhaps the imagery of a dependent infant would have done better; "just won't fucking
stop crying"? and then... you could call me a Nazi for portraying infants as...
My uncle and I just went through the "just won't fucking die" thing. He, in his 70s, had leukemia,
I was the only one who really cared for him, drove him, watched golf on tv with him (barf), fed
him when he could actually eat, and yep, I cleaned him. We joked about it, because he was just
that fucking strong. He and I said no to endless blood transfusions. And, yep, I look just like
him and probably have the same gene pool. So it is coming for me, and I better laugh.
"I will repeat, I am 59, and I will be a senior pretty soon. And, I will laugh at myself... at
my utter return to infancy, and I will give every fucking penny I have to my children, immediately."
--PeacefulGarden
Just a joke, huh. And you plan to laugh at your "utter return to infancy?" What will happen if
you find yourself sharp and alert, say, but trapped in a decrepit body that just won't die, condemned
to the tender mercies of aides in a Medicaid nursing home?
I am pretty sure you will not be laughing then. Your "joke" and laughter is offensive to a huge
percentage of ordinary people, guilty of no crime, condemned to a wretched and inhumane old age.
It is not funny. You may think you have accumulated enough funds that you are sitting pretty,
but life can change on a dime.
"condemned to the tender mercies of aides in a Medicaid nursing home" ?????
I am lost in your words. Honestly. Look at your sentence.
You think I have enough funds. Life has changed on a dime for me. Sitting pretty?
At this point, I am getting angry at these posts. Perhaps another elderly account will "me too".
And, fuck you, all I can do is laugh at my penniless state. You think I am sitting pretty? You
think I am some teenager, working for the donald?
Well, now, I better get in my brand new bm fucking w, go get some plastic surgery, pull up to
my glorious mansion with priceless art in it, and call my broker to get me some more "jokes".
PeacefulGarden created a metaphor, for pete's sake. Are all of us oldsters THAT thin-skinned?
If so, shame on us!
(I have a right to take herorhis side; I'm almost 70 myself; I thought the metaphorwas pretty
good.) And Peaceful Garden has apologized for any offense. Ejection wholly uncalled-for.
[quote name="PeacefulG arden"]No way! Neoliberalism is a cranky half dead senior citizen monster
that is living in a luxury senior care center with all of its money tightly locked away as
it clings to its savings account numbers like an insect.
OMG it sounds like the retirement down the street from mine! Love the images, thanks...sort
of. LOL
Remember the "Buy American Act"? Might not be a bad time to bring that back and create some
real decent paying jobs for Americans...
Before Americans will "Buy American," the prices for goods manufactured overseas must be on
a par with goods manufactured in the USA. That they are not is why WalMart succeeds. The average
consumer thinks s/he's getting basically the same quality from WalMart's Asian goods as from
the stuff made in the US that costs twice as much.
Sadly, for most of us, at least initially, that means massive tariff increases so that EVERYTHING
is priced relative to its value instead of relative to the slave labor wages paid in some other
countries vs the somewhat fairer wages paid in the US. As soon as sticker shock sinks in, the
sheeple will see that their salaries are WAY behind the times, unions will pick up members
and contracts, and exorbitant salary increases for the top of the food chain will cease to
go unchallenged.
Yes there will be labor unrest but with the blindfolds off and the emperor's nakedness exposed,
we should be able to achieve a balance between the interests of the shareholders, the employees,
and the customers instead of the current system so grotesquely skewed to benefit the shareholders
and management.
Matter of fact, jimmyjames, I thought that government's buying things NOT made in the USA was
illegal, just as making purchases by any means other than open bidding for the contract to
supply was once illegal. I surmise that both practices no longer are bound by law.
Do we any longer make, in this country, ANYTHING we must have, should we ever need to defend
our country and ourselves against outside attack? Please, someone tell me that we're not terrorizing
the rest of the people on this planet with things they've made for US!
Diane, are we making ANYTHING here any more? Not clocks, watches, linens, tableware or kitchen
utensils--not even much of our food. (I'm an inveterate label-reader.) Do we make shoes, print
books or magazines, weave cloth or cut from it clothing?
..."We are all Keynesians now, President Richard Nixon famously declared after his New Economic
Plan was unveiled in 1971. The notion seems to be echoing now...."
In the early Reagan years, Tip O'Neill famously said something like, "I miss Richard Nixon."
Seeing how things have developed since then -- and the two people most likely to be the next
President -- Mr. O'Neill has turned out to be prescient beyond one's imagination.
A small point to make, but I'm going to make it anyway. Speaking of Nixon, I still remember
how he was going to reduce the government. What began as a way to reduce government employees
turned out to be a way to increase spending to the private sector. That philosophy continues
unabated to this day, getting worse every year. The cost of government gets more expensive
every year - not because of civil servants who work for the taxpayer, but because of private
corporations who contract with the government for profit. We are getting less services every
year, costing more money than ever before. The recent situation with private federal prisons
is just a glaring example. It is rampant all over the federal (and State) governments.
Why has it taken so long for the corruption and extreme greed of "free market fundamentalism'
to be "officially" discredited when so many of us non-economists with some common sense have
known this since the Reagan days, when we knew that supply side was just bullsh*t, when we
knew that that the system was being rigged for the wealthy elite with little to no care about
the middle class. It is truly hard to understand why so many Americans voted to screw themselves
so that the wealthy lowered their own taxes and shifted the tax burdens to those in the middle
class and to really screw those yet unborn. It is just incredible that so many choose ignorance
over using their brains (of which there is an equal distribution). Is it time to wake up yet
or shall we remain in this stupor of insanity for another decade or two?
"Neo-libralism" may be dead but the momentum from all the damage will be with us for generations.
All of the accumulated wealth afforded by the "deregulated market" bought advantages for those
who gamed the system most efficiently.
This is because all of the comments above still bend around the idea that we are consumers
living in an economy. Until we deeply understand that we are Citizens living in an Society
we will continue to be plagued with differing ideas about how to re-jigger the ways that money
flows and is distributed - without regard for the "currency" of a living society - which is
measured in terms of quality of life, not in terms of 'financial security.'
We have just begun to see the misery that awaits us - with the 'sharing' and 'gig' economies
displacing human functions. It may seem cool that you can order your dinner on an ap and pick
it up without speaking with a person, or you can order a cheap ride from someone in a new car
in just a few minutes. But the displaced cashier, or cab driver, or assembly position will
only increase the disparity in wealth - and the consequent compromise in life quality for huge
sectors of the already-struggl ing population.
This will not be very fun for a lot of people - who will all be trying whatever they can to
get food in their mouth. Neo-liberalism is dead because it really won't matter in the ensuing
chaos.
You're right about the chaos for sure and the future is unpredictable. I have a bit of hope
though with the shift in priorities of the younger generations coming up. It can go far beyond
clever ways to get a ride or some food delivered. I've seen sincere and effective efforts to
turn away from corporate dependence, mortgages, material possessions, owning a car etc. It's
not 100% for very many but many collectives are forming and they're birthing new ideas for
a better society. It's largely off the radar of the media.
The problem is that people like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Bill Gates and the irate
wannabe Herr Drumpf control the levers of business, government and the corporate media.
As long as they remain dominant, daffy "free market fundamentalism" will live on and economic
equity, social justice and authentic democracy will remain suppressed or aspirational at best.
Alas, along with Mark Twain (from a very different part of the political spectrum), neoliberal
ideologues can still say that news of their demise is exaggerated. And, if the current presidential
race between the billionaire bailouts of Herr Drumpf and the neoliberal orthodoxy of Hillary
Clinton are reliable indicators, there's life in the monster still.
Ergo, since no good can come of voting for either of them, let's ALL vote for Jill Stein and
every other progressive or moderate candidate on our ballots. We have absolutely nothing to
lose, if we'll all just stop swallowing the propaganda that a third party can't win.
The only thing that can defeat us is if our votes are stolen. Now, what shall we do about THAT??!!
No doubt that's true but there's more life in the monster on the right. Trump is campaigning
on $10 trillion in tax cuts with a belief in trickle down mythology to pay it off. He's campaigning
against the estate tax, promoting more deregulation to stimulate the economy, etc. His hot
air about tariffs has been narrowed down to renegotiating trade deals down the road, no specifics
of course.
The GOP's Holy Grail is their 'Fair Tax', eliminating income tax and the IRS and instituting
a national sales tax, shifting even more of the tax burden on to the masses. They've already
pulled it off at the state level where they dominate, the effects are very disturbing. They
will never be satisfied until they see all of their extremist ideas come to fruition. Allowing
them to dominate government will result in more destruction.
At least the Democrats might be in tune enough to not move further off the cliff even if they
are incapable of reversing course a bit.
I'll now enjoy all of my thumbs down as a badge of honor.
Please, hammer several wooden stakes into the heart of the neo-liberal economics vampire. It
has killed, tortured and destroyed more happiness than many actual wars. Which of course, it
has been complicit in creating as well. But I don't think the vested interests will take this
better-late-tha n-never discrediting with a light heart. The current corporatists are a talentless
bunch of pretenders. They wont lay down and die quietly as much as one might wish them to.
"or you can order a cheap ride from someone in a new car in just a few minutes. But the displaced
cashier, or cab driver, or assembly position will only increase the disparity in wealth - and
the consequent compromise in life quality for huge sectors of the already-struggl ing population."
I recently read that Uber is going into partnership with car manufactures to develop self driving
vehicles. It's good to know that the current "non employees" driving under the banner of Uber
will help finance this.
I remember when Democrats told Americans what the consequences of Republican economic and social
policy would be. They got slapped down when Americans voted Republican...en ter the neoliberals
to keep skin in the game. Now that Republican social and economic policies have born horrible
tasting fruit, Democrats are getting the blame. Americans aren't much wiser today. Don't know
what it will take but Bernie has gotten farther along only because Americans are waking up.
Hope Democrats keep the fire to the feet of their electeds! We need more Bernies and Warrens.
Where are they?
When you're desperate for someone to HATE, you may even scour nursing homes for seniors to
despise, usually poorly cared for, not selecting from the lobster tank. Trickle Down, Voo Doo,
Zombie "economics" can't be killed for failure because it is camouflage for concentrating wealth,
NOT promoting general growth. We need tax rates on individuals, estates, etc., that will finance
stimulation AND de-concentrate wealth-&-Power.
For that, we need another whole set of actors in Washington and in our state capitals. Throw
the bums out! Elect Greens, Progressives, and if necessary, moderates!!
That's the problem with economists, politicians and the business-class in general, they're
only concerned with what creates profits and what WORKS. Markets may work to some extent, but
no one is accounting for the human factor or the environmental factor. No one cares about the
quality of life for the WORKER.
The success and expansion of markets has been at the exploitation of the worker. People are
working longer and harder and it's more difficult to make ends-meet. That's in America, in
other countries populations are being exploited as slave and/or child labor.
Suicide is up, depression has skyrocketed, personal debt is up and career dissatisfaction is
at an all time high. On top of that, freedom is at a 50-year low.
Not to mention the fact that neoliberalism and market driven decision making is collapsing
our environment and causing the 6th mass extinction.
Is neoliberalism dead? God, I hope so. But I'll believe it when I see it.
I've always thought the greatest fallacy was the assumption that economic growth was an unassailable
goal for economies, period. (Economic growth is real growth/populati on) You can say the New
Deal didn't get us out of the Great Depression (it didn't; spending for WWII did) - but at
least it alleviated suffering. And THAT should be the FIRST goal of economic policy.
With growth as the sole measure of the value of particular economic policies, you're missing
distribution of income and wealth, unmet opportunities (in human capital, for example), environmental
impact, etc. It's okay as a first pass at "what might happen if we did this" - but it is NOT
a substitute for values.
Why the surprise? Search through Ike's comments, he foretold the take over of the party by
those who have bestowed on us these failures we now need to overcome. I find it hugely ironic
those republicans I no long call friends are republicans because their fathers and grandfathers
were Eisenhower Republicans. Their authoritarianis m extended to the name, not what it stood
for.
How can any person maintain that free trade was taking place under a tyrannical regime of top-down
regulation? Brussels controlled all - and taxed the Hell out of all to the financial benefit
of unelected uber-paid bureaucrats - and Stiglitz was handed a Nobel while not being able to
see the nose on his tax-payer paid face. F all central planners - him included - that mess
with the lives of others. I have fantasies about all control freaks and incurable diseases.
Stiglitz' Nobel (NOT!) was for other work entirely, which seriously undermines the application
of textbook market theory to the real world. He and another Nobel Laureate (Amartya Sen) also
chaired a commission a few years ago, appointed by the president of France, that concluded
that GDP is a lousy measure of anything important (with which its creator Simon Kuznets would
have agreed).
It seems obvious, now, that neo-liberalism is a scam. It's a fancy way of dressing up short-term
greed. It's going to be a very difficult train to stop but I do think it's the central problem
with our society right now.
Joseph Stiglitz has unwittingly created a new energy source. Ronald Reagan must be whirling
in his grave fast enough to be used as a dynamo. I'm sure he'd be deeply offended at being
called a liberal, "neo" or otherwise. The same, I'm sure, is true of Margaret Thatcher.
I watched a documentary where Stiglitz pointed out all of capitalism's faults, shortcomings
and the disasters that it causes. Despite the atrocities of capitalism, as the documentary
went on, Stiglitz went on to say that it's the only system that human beings should use and
is in our best interest.
That documentary told me all I need to know about Stiglizt. Even though he has some tolerance
for Marxism and socialism, he is still a capitalist apologist and reformist.
When the arguments over slavery were taking place, there three groups:
1. Regressive: Slavery is fine as it is.
2. Apologist and reformist: Slavery should remain, but we should reform it and make life better
for the slaves.
3. Abolitionist: Slavery is immoral, in-humane and wrong. We should end slavery.
Stiglitz is a neoliberal reformist, but he still supports neoliberal capitalist principles.
Nuff' said....
Sorry, the confusion lies in the failure to make the distinction between private business and
capitalISM that I outlined in my reply to Patriot near the middle of this thread. This is not
a fatuous distinction. State Socialism and State Capitalism are identical. Private capital
(in the sense of money) in control of the state is fascism, as bad or worse.
A meaningful discussion of possible alternatives can't even begin in the confines of 1500 characters,
but I am certain that Stiglitz understands this distinction even though he neglects to make
it explicit. I have not read any recent comment on policy or economic structure from him, but
I strongly suspect that he is thinking of a heavily regulated form of capitalism, with regulation
proportional to the size of the firm, strict anti-trust laws, steeply progressive taxation,
and no "too big to fail."
My preference would be an economy based on cooperative enterprise (by definition non-profit
as that term is typically used). But only rigid ideologues oppose all private ownership today,
and that does not include Stiglitz.
economagic, is the Sherman Anti-Trust law dead? If so, was it replaced by anything helpful?
I assume it must be, since--isn't it 6-people/entiti es now control virtually all news dissemination
in the US.
"That documentary told me all I need to know about Stiglizt. Even though he has some tolerance
for Marxism and socialism, he is still a capitalist apologist and reformist."
Sorry, I escaped Marxism/Sociali sm dictatorship - aka dictatura of proletariat ..
censorship, political prisoners, state like a prison with a wall around. Talking about a slavery
in large.
You don't suppose that western consumptive civilization being unsustainable has anything to
do with the failure of neolibralism or for that matter, the early onset of abrupt climate change?
I'm a simple person. I did the best I could to get through this piece and most of the comments.
Willsud24, thanks for the info on the documentary. It helped. Someone here mentioned the concept
and reality of "society" rather than "economy" which I'm getting a little tired of. Thank you,
too.
From now on, perhaps I should just avoid pieces like this.
So neoliberalism, having flown its course of ever-decreasing circles, has reached the position
that inequality hinders growth.
Well it's a start. But what will it take for neoliberals to swallow the idea that it might
just be wrong - full stop?
PROOF
In the last eight years I have had accounts in three local banks that failed. They were folded
into very large banks.
The big banks got ZIRP funds, that is, gov loans at almost zero interest rate. So the big banks
could operate at very low cost of capital.
The local banks had to get their operating funds the usual way, by paying interest to people
who deposited money. They were competing with larger banks that got free money.
So we have favoritism. The big banks were funded by the gov to gobble up the little banks.
I will know neoliberalism is dead when I can get 3% from a local bank.
I meant to type
"This" whole article is a bunch of baloney. , not "his"
I did not mean to pointedly criticize an individual.
Reid Barnes 2016-08-21 10:32
It is generally understood (even by both Republicans and Democrats) that the financial collapse
in 2008 occurred as a result of the U.S. residential real estate market collapse. Although
residential mortgage backed securities were considered the most conservative investment that
could be made by a financial institution, it was the residential real estate market collapse
that placed these investments, mortgage backed securities, at risk on a grand scale.
The size of the U.S. residential real estate market is enormous. It was probably the largest
single market in existence, ever, at the time. Money was supplied through government backed
lending, especially loans either guarantied or ultimately purchased by Fannie and Freddy. When
someone buys a house and there is a closing, the buyers pay the purchase price, but where did
all that money come from to buy the house? Demand is measured in terms of actual buyers; where
did actual buyers come from with enough money to drive the price of houses in a market as enormous
as the U.S. housing market to a tipping point followed by collapse?
When there was a buyer, it meant someone got a loan. Before a lender lends they make sure the
loan will be paid back. When the government guarantees a loan, that makes the lender sure,
and that seals the lender's decision. If a loan originator can originate a loan and sell it
to an investor, they do it. The investors that drove the housing demand to the peak were named
Fannie and Freddy.
Skyelav 2016-08-21 17:59
[quote name="goodsense cynic"] As a "senior citizen" (a septuagenarian "pre-boomer" who still
works full-time, doesn't live expensively and still wipes his own ... etc.), I am not now and
never have been enticed by the toxic ideology of neoliberalism.
Sorry for being hypersensitive to PeacefulGarden' s "microaggressio n," but I reject utterly
the explicit ageism in this post.
Good comedy comes from deep anger. As they say, "if you want to ruin a great dinner party,
invite a couple of comedy writers." I'm 75 proud to say, and have dementia in the family and
other infirmities best left unmentioned and I think Peaceful took the horrors of deep infirmity
and the terror of ageing with no money left and made a good point. She or he may come to my
dinner party any time.
Cdesignpdx 2016-08-21 22:48
Can someone explain why M1 financials are no longer being reported? It's the value of actual
assets that can be converted to cash. I would like to know why, either under Reagan or Bush
1, reporting it was banished. I speculate that its report exposed an unbalanced asset to debt
(spending) ratio. Professor Stiglitz?
NAVYVET 2016-08-22 07:17
For reasons I won't psychoanalyze since I don't know the people and am not a qualified psychiatrist,
some have taken an intended satire too literally. We need Peaceful Garden, and also need Loren
Bliss, Goodsensecynic, and all the others that chimed into this brouhaha. I like people with
firm convictions--bu t stimulating reading that becomes personally insulting sounds dogmatic
and is hurtful to all of us.
I certainly do lose my temper sometimes, and need forgiving--but so far as I know the only
ones I've ever answered with scathing remarks have been OBVIOUS trolls, or, as I prefer to
call them, "agents provocateurs", a few no doubt paid by the enemies of our 99+++%. At least
I hope they were!
It's just as obvious that these (temporary I hope) opponents are NOT trolls, but add a lot
to our conversations. I know it's hell to get old on Soc.Sec. & alone, being now closer to
81 than 80--and my former baby boy turned 45 today, far away in Cal. I woke up as usual with
atrial fibrillation, on Coumadin, bone-spur arthritis in my back, eyes blurry from pre-diabetes,
one cancer removed, with losses of memory. The corneas of my eyes & both knees are artificial
(but I brag about being a Bionic Woman). As Mom used to say, "It's tough being in your 80s,
but the alternative is a lot worse."
I love you all! Let's all stay alive as long as possible, writing and fighting for justice!
Pete Seeger, whom I was lucky to know, never quit, and he was the gentlest soul I ever met.
PCPrincess 2016-08-22 10:57
Absolutely agree with you that we should save our scorn for those who PURPOSEFULLY attempt
to antagonize or quash the discussions here. I admit to cringing at the bashing that Peaceful
Garden was taking and, I can say that I would most assuredly feel defensive if I had read posts
directed at me that said things like, "You serve no purpose".
That being said, I am urging myself to allow those people who felt discriminated against to
have those feelings, even if I may not have felt the same.
I will attempt to communicate rather than assume and I will wait and count to ten before posting.
chapdrum 2016-08-22 19:25
What is it with these bold assertions that neoliberalism is dead, or that the GOP is dead?
Appreciate Stiglitz's contributions, but really, on what grounded basis are these claims made?
The Democratic "presidential" candidate is a neoliberal, as is her chief flunky Ken Salazar.
So's Bill. So's good ol' Chelsea, and sooo many others.
The Repugs seized upon gerrymandering in such a way that even if HRC wins, the House will not
go Democratic, for a very long time.
"The decline of neoliberalism is emphatically not the decline of capitalism, so what does it
mean to say neoliberalism is past its sell-by date? Neoliberalism is not, after all, just a set
of policies that can be discontinued and replaced with something else - neoliberal capitalism has
birthed a complex global economy that isn't going to change overnight. Moreover, neoliberalism is
also an encompassing set of orienting ideas that pervades all spheres of life; its core ethos of
faith in private enterprise, ever-expanding commodification, and bootstrap individualism remains
robust" [
Jacobin
],
"The politics that prevail in America will determine whether the transition from neoliberal
capitalism to something else is a step forward or a descent into hell." Yep.
"... Clinton's time is passed. Her view of "common ground" is still based in the 20th century and the Third Way neoliberal politics she and her husband helped create. That era is over. ..."
"... Why won't she just go off and become a professor somewhere, like Dukakis did? ..."
"... Hillary like bill never feels guilt. Only ambition. They are monsters ..."
Hillary Clinton Says She's
'Ready to Come Out of the Woods' https://nyti.ms/2nCIzGS
NYT - AP - March 17
SCRANTON, Pa. - Hillary Clinton said Friday she's "ready to come out of the woods" and help
Americans find common ground.
Clinton's gradual return to the public spotlight following her presidential election loss continued
with a St. Patrick's Day speech in her late father's Pennsylvania hometown of Scranton.
"I'm like a lot of my friends right now, I have a hard time watching the news," Clinton told
an Irish women's group.
But she urged a divided country to work together to solve problems, recalling how, as first
lady, she met with female leaders working to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
"I do not believe that we can let political divides harden into personal divides. And we can't
just ignore, or turn a cold shoulder to someone because they disagree with us politically," she
said.
Friday night's speech was one of several she is to deliver in the coming months, including
a May 26 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The Democrat
also is working on a book of personal essays that will include some reflections on her loss to
Donald Trump.
Clinton, who was spotted taking a walk in the woods around her hometown of Chappaqua, New York,
two days after losing the election to Donald Trump, quipped she had wanted to stay in the woods,
"but you can only do so much of that."
She told the Society of Irish Women that it'll be up to citizens, not a deeply polarized Washington,
to bridge the political divide.
"I am ready to come out of the woods and to help shine a light on what is already happening
around kitchen tables, at dinners like this, to help draw strength that will enable everybody
to keep going," said Clinton. ...
(As you may recall HRC won the popular vote,
and also 472 counties which generate
64% of the US GDP.)
... Our observation: The less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed
a massive 64 percent of America's economic activity as measured by total output in 2015. By contrast,
the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country's
output-just a little more than one-third of the nation's economic activity. ...
Clinton's time is passed. Her view of "common ground" is still based in the 20th century and
the Third Way neoliberal politics she and her husband helped create. That era is over.
Why won't she just go off and become a professor somewhere, like Dukakis did?
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern
Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer
By Dean Baker
The Old Technology and Inequality Scam: The Story of
Patents and Copyrights
One of the amazing lines often repeated by people in
policy debates is that, as a result of technology, we are
seeing income redistributed from people who work for a living
to the people who own the technology. While the
redistribution part of the story may be mostly true, the
problem is that the technology does not determine who "owns"
the technology. The people who write the laws determine who
owns the technology.
Specifically, patents and copyrights give their holders
monopolies on technology or creative work for their duration.
If we are concerned that money is going from ordinary workers
to people who hold patents and copyrights, then one policy we
may want to consider is shortening and weakening these
monopolies. But policy has gone sharply in the opposite
direction over the last four decades, as a wide variety of
measures have been put into law that make these protections
longer and stronger. Thus, the redistribution from people who
work to people who own the technology should not be
surprising - that was the purpose of the policy.
If stronger rules on patents and copyrights produced
economic dividends in the form of more innovation and more
creative output, then this upward redistribution might be
justified. But the evidence doesn't indicate there has been
any noticeable growth dividend associated with this upward
redistribution. In fact, stronger patent protection seems to
be associated with slower growth.
Before directly considering the case, it is worth thinking
for a minute about what the world might look like if we had
alternative mechanisms to patents and copyrights, so that the
items now subject to these monopolies could be sold in a free
market just like paper cups and shovels.
The biggest impact would be in prescription drugs. The
breakthrough drugs for cancer, hepatitis C, and other
diseases, which now sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of
dollars annually, would instead sell for a few hundred
dollars. No one would have to struggle to get their insurer
to pay for drugs or scrape together the money from friends
and family. Almost every drug would be well within an
affordable price range for a middle-class family, and
covering the cost for poorer families could be easily managed
by governments and aid agencies.
The same would be the case with various medical tests and
treatments. Doctors would not have to struggle with a
decision about whether to prescribe an expensive scan, which
might be the best way to detect a cancerous growth or other
health issue, or to rely on cheaper but less reliable
technology. In the absence of patent protection even the most
cutting edge scans would be reasonably priced.
Health care is not the only area that would be transformed
by a free market in technology and creative work. Imagine
that all the textbooks needed by college students could be
downloaded at no cost over the web and printed out for the
price of the paper. Suppose that a vast amount of new books,
recorded music, and movies was freely available on the web.
People or companies who create and innovate deserve to be
compensated, but there is little reason to believe that the
current system of patent and copyright monopolies is the best
way to support their work. It's not surprising that the
people who benefit from the current system are reluctant to
have the efficiency of patents and copyrights become a topic
for public debate, but those who are serious about inequality
have no choice. These forms of property claims have been
important drivers of inequality in the last four decades.
The explicit assumption behind the steps over the last
four decades to increase the strength and duration of patent
and copyright protection is that the higher prices resulting
from increased protection will be more than offset by an
increased incentive for innovation and creative work. Patent
and copyright protection should be understood as being like
very large tariffs. These protections can often the raise the
price of protected items by several multiples of the free
market price, making them comparable to tariffs of several
hundred or even several thousand percent. The resulting
economic distortions are comparable to what they would be if
we imposed tariffs of this magnitude.
The justification for granting these monopoly protections
is that the increased innovation and creative work that is
produced as a result of these incentives exceeds the economic
costs from patent and copyright monopolies. However, there is
remarkably little evidence to support this assumption. While
the cost of patent and copyright protection in higher prices
is apparent, even if not well-measured, there is little
evidence of a substantial payoff in the form of a more rapid
pace of innovation or more and better creative work....
Looks like pendulum started to move in opposite direction
from market liberalization even if we count Trump
administration as "bastard neolibertarians".
So the last full cycle from peak to peak would be 1928 to
2008 -- 80 years. Or from 1928 to 2000 -- 72 years. Extension
from 1990 looks artificial and based on one time historic
event. so it might be around 60 years which is closer to
Kondratiev supercycles -- the theory that Western capitalist
economies have long term (50 to 60 years) cycles of boom
followed by depression.
As Edward Tilley observed "opportunity wains near the end
of a long wave cycle, deep recessions and depressions are
created which in history have resulted in either a war or
revolution in approximately 20% of cases; 80% of the time,
however, depressions were ended when inequity was reset by
government policy and wealth [re]distributions. "
The Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev (also written
Kondratieff) was the first to bring these observations to
international attention in his book The Major Economic Cycles
(1925) alongside other works written in the same
decade.[3][4] In 1939, Joseph Schumpeter suggested naming the
cycles "Kondratieff waves" in his honor.
Two Dutch economists, Jacob van Gelderen and Salomon de
Wolff, had previously argued for the existence of 50- to
60-year cycles in 1913 and 1924, respectively.
Since the inception of the theory, various studies have
expanded the range of possible cycles, finding longer or
shorter cycles in the data. The Marxist scholar Ernest Mandel
revived interest in long-wave theory with his 1964 essay
predicting the end of the long boom after five years, and in
his Alfred Marshall lectures in 1979. However, in Mandel's
theory, there are no long "cycles", only distinct epochs of
faster and slower growth spanning 20–25 years.[citation
needed]
In 1990, William Thompson at Indiana University has
published influential papers and books documenting eighteen
K-Waves dating back to 930 AD in China's Song Province;[5]
and Michael Snyder wrote "It should be noted that economic
cycle theories have enabled some analysts to correctly
predict the timing of recessions, stock market peaks and
stock market crashes over the past couple of decades.[6]"
The historian Eric Hobsbawm also wrote of the theory:
"That good predictions have proved possible on the basis of
Kondratiev Long Waves - this is not very common in
economics-has convinced many historians and even some
economists that there is something in them, even if we don't
know what." [7]
Edward Tilley, a researcher and author in Transition
Economics[8] cited the 50-year Economic Control corrections
on the Stone of Hammurabi (1763 BCE) - called "Jubilees" - as
the first Economic Controls to recognize and to also counter
these natural Longwaves in Capitalist societies.[9]
Characteristics of the cycle[edit]
Kondratiev identified three phases in the cycle:
expansion, stagnation, and recession. More common today is
the division into four periods with a turning point
(collapse) between the first and second phases. Writing in
the 1920s, Kondratiev proposed to apply the theory to the
19th century:
1790–1849 with a turning point in 1815.
1850–1896 with a turning point in 1873.
Kondratiev supposed that, in 1896, a new cycle had started.
The long cycle supposedly affects all sectors of an
economy. Kondratiev focused on prices and interest rates,
seeing the ascendant phase as characterized by an increase in
prices and low interest rates, while the other phase consists
of a decrease in prices and high interest rates. Subsequent
analysis concentrated on output.
In the GE Aviation
lobby, as Indiana
Governor Holcomb
rocked slightly in
custom-made cowboy
boots – black, pointed
toes, an outline of
Indiana on the front
of the shaft – and the
sound of the ignition
of his SUV signaling
the end of a Wednesday
afternoon at the GE
plant, Plant Manager
Matteson added one
more thing:
Immigration reform
would really help on a
number of fronts,
starting with clearing
the way for the talent
pool coming out of
Indiana Universities
and other engineering
schools.
This is the
new manufacturing that
is replacing the
factories being
shuttered. They are
run by engineers, many
of them foreign. They
hire workers who they
will train and workers
must be capable of
learning and fitting
in with the work
culture. Manufacturing
is locating in urban
areas and near
Universities where
they can find a pool
of high skill talent
and a workforce that
is accustomed to
diversity. They will
NOT go to a redneck
sundown town where the
Indian engineers are
going to be harassed
and maybe shot. The
Sundown towns are
chasing away the very
people they need to
save their
communities. The
denigrate education
and fail to teach
their children the
math skills they would
need to become high
skill engineering
talent. Low skill jobs
cannot have high pay
without unions. These
voters have voted for
politicians who have
destroyed their unions
with Right to Work
laws and other bad
policy.
They are egged on
by Trump who
understands none of
this and promises to
return their low skill
jobs. The GOP and
Trump blame trade and
immigrants, pushing
the cultural buttons
to deflect attention
to their complicity in
destroying unions,
underfunding education
and failure to invest
in the workforce
Yep. There is certainly a roach motel policy aspect to
globalization. Dependencies upon existing supply chains both
for wage and regulatory arbitrage pricing and for invested
fixed capital stock impose yuuge drags on on-shoring efforts.
The poverty economics from 40 acres and mule all the way to
single parent eligibility requirements and subsequent
"reforms" for family financial aid were also roach motel
economics. Now we have the irony of the sharing economy
further suppressing wages.
It's as if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates
our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be rewarded with a shrug.
Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do
you know what it is?
Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable
variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007-8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the
Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent
child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But
we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been
either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has-or had-a name.
What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?
Well...yes and no. First the first paragraph:
I
have
heard of "neoliberalism" (since a
long
time, also) and so has George Monbiot,
and so have quite a few of his readers. Then again - I don't know, but he
might
be correct -
it is possible Monbiot is correct in saying that "most of us" (presumably: Westerners, living in Europe
or the USA) do either not know the term at all, or find it difficult to say what it stands for (though
the first of these strains my credulity).
In fact, I
certainly
have heard of it since the 1970ies, and so have many others who were
alive then. Here is the first paragraph of the item "
neoliberalism
"
on Wikipedia (without note numbers):
There is a lot more in the Wikipedia article, but this first sum-up is fair.
Next, the second paragraph: I think Monbiot is correct in attributing "a major role" to "neoliberalism"
"in a remarkable variety of crises", but he makes
no
distinction
at all
between the several
"we"s he makes attributions to.
The least he should have done is distinguishing between (i)
the masses of quite ordinary people
,
without a university education, and often with little real education (which is not their fault: education
is
lousy) and (ii)
the politicians and governments who lead them
.
[1]
For the latter group knows
very
well what neoliberalism is, and why nearly every professional
politician these days seems to
love
it: it strengthens their own ideology, it increases their
powers, and it increases their incomes.
But here is a description of neoliberalism:
So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear
to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind
of biological law, like Darwin's theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt
to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines
citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process
that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that
could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised,
public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade
unions are portrayed as market distortions, that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners
and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which
trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counter-productive
and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
Again I object to the thesis that "we seldom even recognise it as an ideology": Who are "we"? But Monbiot
is quite correct in saying that it is an
ideology
(I am a philosopher, and I think that to say it is a
philosophy
is to praise it too much), and he would have been correct in saying it arose in
1938
, and was
adopted by people like
Hayek
and
Friedman
.
The description
of it is fairly correct, although it should be said that "liberty" does
not
mean what it
seems
to mean (in my Shorter OED
that
sense is defined as: "Freedom from arbitrary, despotic, or autocratic
rule or control") for the neoliberals
only
protest the restrictions on their
personal
"liberty" to do as
they
please from the state or government, but
favor
"arbitrary, despotic,
or autocratic rule or control" by the multi- national corporations, that is by
non-elected non-governments
.
Here is a point by point outline of "
neoliberalism
":
while neoliberalism fake deacration are that it is against the
state
and
governments
in reaqlity it fuly uses state power to installe neoliberal order on the society,
if nessesary by force: it objects to rule laws for top 1%, and insists unrestrained personal freedoms
for them (the rich and the powerful can to do as
they
please, without
any
legal restrictions
whatsoever);
neoliberalism sees only one source of freedom: the freedoms delivered by the markets, which give
consumers the right to choose from 32 different kinds of bagels or 40 kinds of car;
neoliberalism insists that taxes are bad and should be minimal; that all legal regulations should
be minimal; and that public services should be privatized (so that people can make a
profit
from "caring for the poor and the ill and the mad");
neoliberalism is against trade unions, labor organizations or collective bargaining: all of these
destroy
the liberties of the rich
(in their opinion);
neoliberalism insists that all
inequalities
are fair and deserved, and should be furthered,
and promises that the riches given to the few (e.g. by cutting their
taxes) will "trickle down to the many" (which is a lie);
neoliberalism insist that
only
the markets and
only
profits will deliver
whatever
is fair for anyone, and that
poverty
is a
just
punishment for laziness, and that whoever
is poor owes it to themselves.
In other words,
neoliberalism is the
ideology
of the rich careerists, the immoral profiteers, the sadistic exploiters, and the egoistic and greedy
speculators
, and indeed a
far
better term for it then "neoliberalism" or even "neoconservatism"
is neofascism:
Neoliberalism = Neofascism
Fundamentally it is an
ideology
of the rich and of
careerists
who would like to be extremely rich, and who disregard or damn all legal or moral restraints on
their
desires and
their
decisions to make them rich. It
is
a kind of fascism, because it
explicitly sides with the rich against everybody else
, and because
it denies all morality and
all moral restraints in the fights
("the competition")
for a greater size of the markets and
for a greater net profit
. Besides,
it denies the values of democracy, equality, science
and
freedom for all
(rather than just the freedom of the rich and their lawyers to do as they please:
these
"freedoms" are much admired and much craved by the "neoliberals").
It is an ideology of the rich for the rich, that
pretends
to be for "liberty for all" in order
to make
the rich
as free as possible, while damning everybody else as lazy loosers.
Back to Monbiot:
We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth
through merit, ignoring the advantages-such as education, inheritance and class-that may have helped
to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little
to change their circumstances.
Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's because you are unenterprising.
Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you're feckless and
improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat,
it's your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined
as losers.
Again yes and no: Yes, the second paragraph is mostly correct (alternatively phrased as:
the poor,
the ill and the badly educated can die, and the sooner the better
), but the first paragraph
falsely
accuses
everybody
of accepting this utterly egoistic, greedy, a-moral, and extremely selfish,
anti-democratic, and authoritarian
bullshit
.
So no, the first paragraph simply is
false
, because there are
many
more than just George
Monbiot who know what neoliberalism is, and who disagree with it, and who also did
not
"internalise
and reproduce its creeds".
And in fact George Monbiot
does
see that, for he also wrote:
After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive
tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and
competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World
Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed - often without democratic consent - on much
of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour
and the Democrats, for example.
Yes, quite so - but I was 29 or 30 when Thatcher and Reagan took power, and therefore I remember there
were quite a few, then indeed especially in Labour and other leftist parties and in the trade unions,
who
did
protest.
As to the adoption of neoliberalism aka neofascism by Labour and the Democrats (which I
agree
did happen, and was initialized by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Wim Kok, all
professional
politicians):
Yes, it
did
happen, but - I think - an important part of the reason that this
could
happen is that this was done by explicit
professional
politicians, who made careers by their
capacities to
lie
, to
mislead and to
deceive
,
and thus to grow personally rich, and who
never
had any other job than as lying, careerist, professional
politicians, fundamentally motivated by getting rich
themselves
. (For more on these conscious
and degenerate professional liars see
Third Way
, that did make Clinton
and Blair multi- millionaires, and was
designed
to do so
[2]
)
Then there is this, which is
quite
correct, and also shows how fundamentally
anti-democratic
the neoliberal neofascists are in their means to further their
own
riches:
Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through
trade treaties incorporating "investor-state dispute settlement": offshore tribunals in which corporations
can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to
restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or
prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully.
Democracy is reduced to theatre.
Precisely - and as I have warned again and again: For
me
the acceptance of the TTIP = the acceptance
of neofascism = the reduction of Europe to a minor state of the USA (also
not
"Exceptional",
and
fit to be
exploited
as well as possible).
In case you object here that I am argueing fast and abuse identities: Possibly so, but I
have
explained this several times already, and yes: this
is
what I see happening for a
long
time now. (You may not see it, and if you don't, I recommend that you read some more
politics
.)
Here is a final bit, which is also correct (and shows one of my reasons to insist that neoliberalism
is the
ideological
propaganda
-name
for what is in fact - quite consciously also, for a considerable part -
neofascism
:
Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining
public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens.
And again one reason why "governments"
do
so is that they are run by
professional
politicians,
who anyway are the
best liars in the country
, who only
very
rarely are
really
interested in anyone but their
own
and their families riches, and who - if propagandizing
that they are "leftists", "liberals", "progressives" or "social democrats" - are simply
deceiving
their electorates.
But in spite of my criticisms (which are in part inspired by 45 years of reading), this is a fine
article and it is recommended you read all of it.
2. New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship
The second item is by Glenn Greenwald on The Intercept:
A
newly
published study
from Oxford's Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long
made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear and conformity
and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study, t
he Washington Post
this morning
described this phenomenon
: "If we think that authorities are watching our online actions,
we might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious."
The new study documents how, in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations (of which 87% of Americans
were aware), there was "a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism,
including those that mentioned 'al-Qaeda,' "car bomb' or 'Taliban.'" People were afraid to read
articles about those topics because of fear that doing so would bring them under a cloud of suspicion.
The dangers of that dynamic were expressed well by Penney: "If people are spooked or deterred
from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real
threat to proper democratic debate."
Quite so, and I have paid attention to this is in
yesterday's
Nederlog
. And this is indeed a
quite
frightening finding, precisely
because
these
were surveys of what are nominally "democratic states".
Then there is this, which I found a little
misleading (though no doubt unintentionally):
The fear that causes self-censorship is well beyond the realm of theory. Ample evidence demonstrates
that it's real – and rational. A study from PEN America writers
found
that 1 in 6 writers had curbed
their content out of fear of surveillance and showed that writers are "not only overwhelmingly
worried about government surveillance, but are engaging in self-censorship as a result." Scholars
in Europe have been
accused of being terrorist supporters
by virtue of possessing research materials on extremist
groups, while British libraries
refuse to
house any material on the Taliban
for fear of being prosecuted for material support for terrorism.
It is a little misleading (at least), for the simple reason that self-censorship
is (or ought to be)
very
well-known from the histories of the Soviet-Union and
Communist China, where
hundreds of millions
for
tens of years
did
not
speak
about
very
many things that
did
upset their lives and chances, all for
the - quite correct - fear that they might be arrested for "criticizing the state".
Again, this
is also true of the beginning of the following bit: I think it would
have been
more
apt to mention the GDR or the Soviet Union, rather than Bentham (although I
agree Bentham's idea was horrible and cruel
[3]
). Then
again, the reference to and quotation of Orwell are fully justified:
That same realization served centuries ago as the
foundation of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon
: that behaviors of large groups of people can be
effectively controlled through architectural structures that make it
possible
for them
to be watched at any given movement even though they can never know if they are, in fact, being
monitored, thus forcing them to act
as if
they always are being watched. This same self-censorsing,
chilling effect of the
potential
of being surveilled was also the crux of the tyranny
about which Orwell
warned
in
1984
:
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.
How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.
It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could
plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You have to live – did live, from habit that became
instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness,
every movement scrutinized.
These days it seems most people
are
being watched all the time by various
secret services
,
by many
data-miners
, by
hundreds or tenthousands of cameras that are everywhere in the
street
and watched by policemen, or by
helicopters
(soon drones?) that keep flying overhead
"to protect the people".
But the vast majority indeed either doesn't know or doesn't care (and in case
they think about it, tend to say "I didn't do anything harmful, so I am safe").
Here is the real moral of this story, which is quite correct:
There is a reason governments, corporations, and multiple other entities of authority crave surveillance.
It's precisely because the possibility of being monitored radically changes individual and collective
behavior. Specifically, that possibility breeds fear and fosters collective conformity. That's
always been intuitively clear. Now, there is mounting empirical evidence proving it.
Again I remark there are
heaps
of empirical evidence to prove that
the simple threat
that you
may
be watched by the secret police
does
work: See e.g. Robert Conquest's
"
The Great Terror
" (about
the Soviet Union) and Jung Chang's "
Wild
Swans
" (about Communist China), and there are many more similar if less well-known books.
But
yes: The reason "governments, corporations, and multiple other entities of authority crave surveillance"
is that it gives them
absolute control over nearly everyone
. And most of the people running
such institutions
do
want a great amount of personal power, and like to be quite rich.
This is a recommended article.
3. Letter Details FBI Plan for Secretive Anti-Radicalization Committees
The third item is by Cora Currier and Murtaza Hussain on The Intercept:
Of the plans put forward by the federal government to identify and stop budding terrorists, among
the least understood are the FBI's "Shared Responsibility Committees."
The idea of the committees
is to enlist counselors, social workers, religious figures, and other community members to intervene
with people the FBI thinks are in danger of radicalizing - the sort of alternative to prosecution
and jail time many experts have been clamoring for. But civil liberties groups worry the committees
could become just a ruse to expand the FBI's network of informants, and the government has refused
to provide details about the program.
The Intercept
has
obtained a letter
addressed to potential committee members from the FBI, outlining how the
process would work. While the letter claims that committees will not be used "as a means to gather
intelligence," it also makes clear that information from the committees may be shared widely by
the FBI, including with spy agencies and foreign governments, and that committee members can be
subpoenaed for documents or called to testify in cases against the people they are trying to help.
At the same time, committee members are forbidden even from seeking advice from outside experts
without permission from the FBI.
For me, this is
just
like the Soviet Union or Communist China:
The
police
is quite ready, and indeed
insists
it
should
cooperate with any
civilan who may influence a considerable number of people, to find out, in
secret
of course,
which
individuals of the number of those served by such a civilian,
might
have
ideas, or values, or plans, or desires that are
not
like
what the police or the government desires.
Not only that:
Any
of the civilians whose help the FBI is seeking are "forbidden even from
seeking advice from outside experts without permission from the FBI" in the
very
best
totalitarian
traditions.
Here is some more on the plans the American police has for civilians whose help they seek "in
order to find terrorists": There is a definite
enormous
gap between the "rights" these civilians
have, and the powers the police assigns to themselves. And in the following quotation "SRC" refers
to the "Shared Responsibility Committees" that the FBI expects the civilians they seek help from
to form (if they are not there already):
According to the letter, the FBI "may or may not" inform the committee of any ongoing investigation,
and law enforcement could also decide to arrest or charge the referred individual without telling
the SRC. If committee members give information to the FBI, "the FBI may share any information
the SRC provides with other law enforcement agencies, members of the U.S. intelligence community,
and foreign government agencies as needed."
SRC members, in contrast, must sign confidentiality agreements, and cannot consult outside
experts on treatment plans. The committee members get no special legal protection, raising concerns
they could be held liable if an individual they are helping turns violent as feared.
That is: Members of the SRC are
the legal menials
of the police, that has
very
many
more powers and rights than the members of the SRC. For
the police
can do as it pleases, whereas
the members of the SRC
"must sign confidentiality agreements, and cannot consult outside experts
on treatment plans."
Here is a conclusion a former FBI agent draws:
"Our society has established a number of protective zones where you're allowed to be candid: with
your doctor, your religious clergy, even to a certain extent within a school system, with student
privacy laws," said Mike German, a former FBI agent who is now a fellow at the Brennan Center
for Justice. "This program that the FBI is setting up seems not to acknowledge those privileges,
and in fact, seems to be intent on undermining them."
Quite so, though in fact it seems to me that the FBI is going further:
The American police
explicitly demands
that it
will
be involved, mostly
in secret
,
in
all
manner of committees, by enlisting "civilians" who lead such committees, and by making
them
responsible for the safety of their groups, while
denying
them any legal protection,
and
insisting
these civilians whom they "asked to help them" (!) "must sign confidentiality
agreements, and cannot consult outside experts on treatment plans".
I
only
know
this
kind of police activity from the Soviet Union, the German Democratic
Republic, Communist China, and Hitler's Germany.
Congratulations, America!! And this is a recommended article.
We speak with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis about the refugee crisis in Europe,
and so-called hot spots that are registration centers for refugees in his country. "George Orwell
would be very proud of Europe and our capacity for doublespeak and creating new terms by which
to hide the awful reality," Varoufakis says. "When you see the word 'hot spots,' just translate
it to 'concentration camps.'" He says the Greek government has been pressured to intern the refugees
fleeing war and famine, and notes the growth of right-wing parties in Europe, such as Golden Dawn.
I should start this review by saying that, while I more or less agree to the above, I don't admire
Yanis Varoufakis.
I don't especially because I have seen him insist that
he
is "a communist" because his
quite rich father was once a communist in his twenties; I have seen him insist that he was something
like "a
marxist
"
as a professor, while being
very
well paid and having a luxurious big house, and it reminds
me all
far
too much of the many Dutch "social democrats" who were professors, and who made
similar
false
pretences from the 1970ies till the 1990ies.
Besides, my father and my mother were communists for
more than 40 years
each;
my father and my
grandfather were locked up as "political terrorists" in
German concentration camps
(which my grandfather did not survive); my mother's parents were anarchists;
and
all
were quite poor
all
their lives, and were
always
proletarians (i.e.
they really "owned"
very
little other than their children) but nevertheless were radicals
and in the resistance against the Nazis, which
extremely
few Dutchmen had the courage for
(i.a. because
6
times more Dutchmen went into the SS than into the resistance during WW II:
The Dutch are a noble people (and managed to collaborate in murdering over 100,000 of their fellow
Dutchmen, because they were "of the wrong race"
[4]
)).
Anyway - I think this needed saying, and I think my leftist, marxist, communist and socialist
background is a lot better than his, and I also
never
made
one
cent for expressing
anything
I did, again
quite
unlike Varoufakis.
But here is the background, and that is serious enough:
SYRIAN
REFUGEE
:
[translated]
We run from the death, to the death. We find death at each step in our way. We ran from the
death in our country to find death in the sea, and when we ran from the death in the sea, to
find it here in the camp.
NERMEEN
SHAIKH
:
But at
the time, the town officials said they were unable to address the situation, especially amid the
country's financial turmoil. This is the mayor of Mytilene speaking last July.
MAYOR
SPYROS
GALINOS
:
[translated] It's as if the international community,
the European Union, the Red Cross, the U.N. have given me a bomb to hold in my hands, and the
fuse is burning very slowly. And I am desperately crying for help to blow out the fuse, but
they are waiting for the bomb to explode before coming to our aid.
I think I agree with the Syrian and with the Greek mayor, at least to the extent both must have
been leading extremely difficult lives, and through no faults of their own.
That was the background. Here is Varoufakis:
AMY
GOODMAN
:
So, Yanis,
can you talk about the refugee crisis in Greece and also the so-called hot spots, the registration
centers for refugees there, which you've talked about?
YANIS
VAROUFAKIS
:
Well, George
Orwell would be very, very proud of Europe and our capacity for doublespeak and creating new terms
by which to hide the awful reality. When you see the word "hot spots," just translate it to "concentration
camps." It's very simple. The Greek government has been steadily pressurized by the European Union
to, effectively, intern the refugees. Instead of treating them like human beings in need of support,
in need of food, in need of medicine, in need of psychological assistance, they are going to be
treated, according to Brussels, as illegals, aliens, that are going to be enclosed in those hot
spots, concentration camps. And I have it on good authority from within the Greek government that
the pressure is tremendous. The Greek government, which is, of course, fiscally completely and
utterly impecunious, is being told, "The only way you are going to get money is if you intern
them. So if you let them free and loose, even within Greece, you're getting not a penny in order
to help feed them."
In fact, George Orwell would be extremely
sickened
by the present Europe, although I accept
that Varoufakis very probably spoke in irony. Again, I am
much less well-informed about Greece than Varoufakis is, but I accept what
he is saying. And he is quite right in being extremely critical of the European Union.
And here
is Varoufakis on the rise of neofascist political parties (which - to clarify, with
item 1
in mind - is
different
from the neofascists who
pose
as
neoliberals and head many states now, but who do
not
come from neofascistic
parties):
YANIS
VAROUFAKIS
:
It's
not just Golden Dawn. It's everywhere in Europe. We have a neofascist government in Hungary. We
have Marine Le Pen, who's going to top the presidential race next year in France. I mean, you
just have to state this to panic. You have
UKIP
, the United Kingdom
Independence Party, in Britain. You've got Austria; in Vienna, the beautiful city of Vienna, 42
percent voted for a neofascist party in the last municipal election-and last week, in the presidential-
NERMEEN
SHAIKH
:
We have
30 seconds, so, quick, please.
YANIS
VAROUFAKIS
:
Very
simple. Great Depression, national humiliation-put them together, like in the 1920s and '30s in
Germany, and you end up with the serpent's egg hatching.
Again I mostly agree, though I wish to add an
additional
reason for the present rise of
neofascist parties:
The
lack
, in many countries,
of a credible social democratic, a credible socialist or
a credible leftist party
, for the simple reason that
these have been taken over mostly by
"neoliberalism"
, of the specific variety that
strongly
appealed to the desires to get
rich of their professional foremen (and -women).
Thus, those who disagree with "politics" and with standard political parties often have no plausible
way to express their disappointment other than support parties of the right. It's a great pity, but
it seems to be happening a lot.
And this is also a recommended article.
--------------------------
Notes
[1] I think this is quite obvious once stated, but I should also like to make a brief remark about
"we": I find it (as a philosopher, a logician, and a philosopher) rather sickening to have to
point out - time and again, and since 50 years at least - that "we" is very often very misleading,
simply because not everybody is like the "we" that someone blandly assumes and addresses. (You
really
ought
to ask yourselves whether you even
know
what
percentage
of the
"we" you universally address as if this covers everybody
does
in fact have the attributes
you assigned to everybody.)
[2] Incidentally, because I checked: The "Third Way" lemma has been
altered. I don't have the time to read it through and compare it with the previous version (which
I have), but it looks as if it may have been made more
palatable to "Third Way" proponents by some "Third Way" adherents.
[3] I know this also since the 1970ies, but I also know
very
few read Bentham, and indeed
he also was a bad writer. Incidentally (and this is a reason for this note): Bentham very probably
did not see that his panopticon was a horrible and cruel idea, though it was.
[4] You may protest, but if you did not read Jacques Presser's "Ondergang - De vervolging en
verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom 1940-1945" it is rather senseless. (And Presser was a
quite different and very much better historian and writer than Lou de Jong, who was Holland's
"official historian" of WW II - which he did
not
know from his
own
experience, because
he lived relatively safely in England then.)
.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent
review of Polanyi and excellent critique of the modern economy
By
B.
Brinker
on
May 10, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
|
Verified
Purchase
This book deserves to be a part of the national
discussion, as do Polanyi's thoughts. I read Polanyi some
years ago and was looking for a refresher when I came
across this book. This book not only reviews Polanyi's
work and places it in the context of modern economic and
sociological research, but also adapts many of his
theories to the current times. Along the way the authors
offer useful insights into Polanyi's life and how his
experiences shaped his thoughts.
Pros- Well written, clear, and concise for an academic
book. Does an excellent job of bringing Polanyi's thoughts
up to date.
Cons- The authors (two highly regarded professors) appear
to have a very leftist bent. This isn't a bad thing, in my
opinion, but some readers may be turned off by that.
UPDATED: I wanted to write a longer review on this book
once I had time to reflect on it. I intended to write the
typical academic style "summarize and critique" review but
realized I can add more value to potential readers by
explaining why this book is an important read.
Have you been noticing how politics is becoming
increasingly polarized? If you hop over to look at the
reviews for Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century" you'll
notice that literally 100's of ideological zealots have
been attacking the book. Not reading and critiquing, but
posting bad reviews even though they've never read it.
Ever wonder why people act like this? Why Market
Fundamentalism has become so strong? This book will help
you think on and answer these questions.
Isn't it odd that we have been pursuing neo-liberal
policies for 30 years, even though they have already
proven to be a failure? Debt is rising, health care costs
are spiraling out of control, college is unaffordable, the
gap between rich and poor is widening. Despite the fact
that we live in an age of failed neoliberalism, rolling
back such policies isn't the answer, oh no what we need is
more neoliberalism.
This book will help you understand the appeal of
neoliberalism and its emergence as a utopian ideal that
can never be achieved. The book also explains the
historical context of market fundamentalism and the
decline of Keynesian economics to show why the one serious
challenge to neoliberalism was eventually marginalized.
out of 5 stars
The
best analysis and summation of Polanyi's thought to date!!!
By
Claudio
Dionigi
on
January 6, 2015
Format: Hardcover
I have read most of Polanyi's work, as well as books and
articles about his work (including Gareth Dale's text),
and while doing so I have tried to keep in mind what the
spirit of Polanyi's work is. I believe that Fred Block and
Margaret Somers have captured that spirit in this text.
This book is an excellent summation and update to
Polanyi's critique of free-market fundamentalism,
highlighting the reasons for the resurgence of his ideas
in recent years. It is a must read for anyone who is
interested in Polanyi's work or is at all concerned about
the current state of affairs in political-economy. It
draws on a wide variety of other texts to pull the threads
of Polanyi's thoughts together and contextualise them
within a broader discourse. It relates Polanyi's work
nicely to the crises induced by neoliberalism in recent
years (more to come, no doubt). It is well laid out, in
accessible language and a pleasant style. Whether you are
from the left or the right, do yourself a favour and read
this book.
A Lefty Legend Pleads for a Return to a New Deal Ethos
By JONATHAN MARTIN
MARCH 7, 2017
WASHINGTON - Charles Peters, the renowned Washington
Monthly editor, is going on 91, does not get around very
easily and was disgusted enough by President Trump's address
to Congress to let loose a few profanities in his gentle West
Virginia drawl.
But Mr. Peters remains an optimist, believing that
salvation is still possible if the country returns to the
true faith of his New Deal youth.
"Maybe I'm old," he said in an interview in his living
room here last week, "but I'm forever hopeful about the
Democratic Party."
Mr. Peters has spent much of his life in and around
politics. He was once a young state legislator who thought he
wanted to be governor. Then he felt the tug to the nation's
capital, where he was one of the first executives of the
Peace Corps.
Eventually he founded and ran a feisty, liberal-leaning
policy magazine perhaps best known for launching the careers
of dozens of prominent journalists, including James Fallows,
Jon Meacham, David Ignatius and Katherine Boo. Now he has
written a book that some of those old charges think amounts
to a last testament.
To hear Mr. Peters himself tell it, though, the book, "We
Do Our Part," is a desperate plea to his country and party to
resist the temptations of greed, materialism and elitism -
vices he believes have corroded the civic culture and led to
the Democrats' failure last year.
"I'm trying to grab people by the lapels and say, 'We've
got to change,'" he said. "And I feel that there is a realism
to that hope because of the shock of this election."
Mr. Peters's book - the title is taken from the motto of
the New Deal's National Recovery Administration - is not a
memoir. But his own formative experiences are at the core of
his cri de coeur.
Democrats, Washington and too much of the country, he
argues, have drifted from the sense of shared purpose that
lifted America out of the Depression, created the will to win
World War II and fostered the rise of a more egalitarian, if
still inequitable, society.
Mr. Peters saw it firsthand. As a child, he witnessed his
parents hand food to hungry strangers who came to the back
door of their Charleston, W.Va., home.
Later, as a young lawyer, he oversaw the local
presidential campaign of a Catholic senator hoping to win
over a largely Protestant state. The success of John F.
Kennedy in the 1960 Democratic primary there helped forge a
conviction that Mr. Peters feels his party must not lose
sight of today, even as more working-class whites drift from
what was the party of their class.
"The better angels of the state's voters had won out,
engraving on me the lesson that prejudice can be overcome,"
he writes.
Mr. Peters's idealism is undiminished: He thinks that the
sort of blue-collar white voters who just rejected Hillary
Clinton in his native state, where she lost by 42 percentage
points, can be won back if Democrats are again seen as the
party of the common man rather than the liberal professional
class. But he spends much of 274 pages outlining why that may
prove so difficult.
Through a series of anecdotes, statistics and other
plucked-from-the-news items that will be familiar to anyone
who read his "Tilting at Windmills" column in Washington
Monthly, Mr. Peters recounts how liberals were once
invigorated with the public-spirited fervor of the New Deal
and New Frontier, but sold out. Race-baiting conservatives
then swooped in, he says, and the country was left the worse
for it.
"Our national problem is that too many of our cultural
winds are blowing us in the direction of self-absorption,
self-promotion, and making a barrel of money," he writes.
He piles up the evidence, reserving most of his scorn for
the liberal meritocratic class that he believes has allowed
Democrats to be depicted as out of touch.
Thought-provoking, wide-ranging blog post by Jared* on
international trade. I guess PGL only had time to read Timmy
Taylor in his rush to post first.
He disagrees with
Navarro** about trade deficits always being a problem and
notes that there are two sides or aspects to the equation.
"As long as the world's excess global savings continue to
flow to our shores, our trade deficit will persist, and going
after bilateral deficits one at a time becomes a game of
whack-a-mole that we can't win."
Jared notes how Brad Setser suggests a solution: "As Brad
Setser convincingly argues, encouraging countries with large
surpluses (which must show up as deficits somewhere else) to
engage in more internal investment is a far preferable way to
reduce our own imbalances than tariffs and trade barriers."
Too bad we don't have a WTO that could force surplus
nations like Germany and China to do this.
But Jared admits Navarro isn't always wrong (something PGL
can't bring himself to do given his hateful nature.)
"Second, Navarro is not wrong to worry about the drag on
demand from negative net exports, but only when there's
nothing in the pipeline to offset it. The Federal Reserve can
lower interest rates to offset the drag, but not if they're
near zero, or in "normalization" mode (raising rates), both
of which are operative today. Fiscal policy can pick up the
slack, but not if Congress refuses to step up.
So yeah, today's trade deficits are a problem. They've not
been large enough to keep the economy from growing and
unemployment from falling, but remember, it's year eight of
an economic expansion and we've still not fully closed the
GDP output gap (and that's even the case as potential GDP has
been lowered). In the absence of offsets, we could have used
that extra demand."
This is what the neoliberals like PGL and Sanjait don't
understand or can't admit. Why? Because of politics and how
Democrats like Bill Clinton and Obama pushed corporate free
trade deals and trade policy. Because critics like Navarro
and Bernie Sanders have struck a cord with populist voters
concerned about corporate trade.
Jared Bernstein wraps up with a plea for infrastructure
spending given the threat of the SecStags.
"But given the existential threat of climate change, or
for that matter, the general state of our public goods, I
find it awfully hard to accept the contention that there's
nothing productive in which to invest the excess savings
surplus countries continue to send our way."
Compare with Hillary' modest fiscal action which Alan
Blinder said wouldn't effect the Fed's reaction function.
DeLong still backed her over Sanders despite the threat of
the Secstags. Critics of Fed policy like Sanjait and PGL
still backed Hillary even though she had no criticisms of the
Fed or plans to reform its policy.
* like PGL, I pretend to know the write to give myself the
appearance more authority.
** PGL's bete noir.
Washington Post Lies to Readers Again: Job Loss in
Manufacturing Due to Trade, not Automation
The Washington Post must think that U.S. trade policy
is really awful. Why else would they continually lie to
their readers * and claim that the cause of the sharp job
loss in manufacturing in recent years was automation?
For fans of data rather than myths, the basic story is
that manufacturing has been declining as a share of total
employment since 1970. However there was relatively little
change in the number of jobs until the trade deficit
exploded in the last decade. Here's the graph.
[Manufacturing Employment, 1970-2017]
And, there was no great uptick in productivity **
coinciding with the plunge in employment at the start of
the last decade. It would be nice if the Washington Post
could discuss trade honestly. This sort of reporting gives
fuel to the Donald Trumps of the world.
In this context it is probably worth once again
mentioning that the Washington Post still refuses to
correct its pro-NAFTA editorial in which it made the
absurd claim *** that Mexico's GDP quadrupled from 1987 to
2007. The actual figure was 83 percent, according to the
International Monetary Fund.
Two years on from the Arab Spring, I'm clearer about what it was that it inaugurated: it is
a revolution. In some ways it parallels the revolutions of before - 1848, 1830, 1789 - and there
are also echoes of the Prague spring, the US civil rights movement, the Russian 'mad summer of
1874' ... but in other ways it is unique. Above all, the relationship between the physical and
the mental, the political and the cultural, seems to be inverted. There is a change in consciousness,
the intuition that something big is possible, that a great change in the world's priorities is
within people's grasp.
What is underpinning the unrest that has swept the globe? In reality it's reducible to three
factors. Firstly, the neoliberal economic model has collapsed, and this has then been compounded
by persistent attempts to go on making neoliberalism work: to ram the square peg into the round
hole, thereby turning a slump into what looks like being a ten year global depression. Secondly
there has been a revolution in technology that has made horizontal networks the default mode of
activism and protest; this has destroyed the traditional means of disseminating ideology that
persisted through two hundred years of industrial capitalism, and has made social media the irreversible
norm. Thirdly, there has been a change in human consciousness: the emergence of what Manuel Castells
calls 'the networked individual' - an expansion of the space and power of individual human beings
and a change in the way they think; a change in the rate of change of ideas; an expansion of available
knowledge; and a massive, almost unrecordable, revolution in culture.
"... He was elected not for his personal qualities, but despite them, as a symbol of anti-neoliberal movement. As the only candidate that intuitively felt the need for the new policy due to crisis of neoliberalism ("secular stagnation" to be exact) impoverishment of lower 80% and "appropriated" anti-neoliberal sentiments. ..."
"... And he is expected to accomplish at least two goals: ..."
"... Stop the wars of expansion of neoliberal empire fought by previous administration. Achieve détente with Russia as Russia is more ally then foe in the current international situation and hostility engineered by Obama administration was based on Russia resistance to neoliberalism ..."
"... Reverse or at least stem destruction of jobs and the standard of living of lower 80% on Americans due to globalization and, possibly, slow down or reverse the process of globalization itself. ..."
"... "And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place," ..."
"... This is anathema for neoliberalism and it is neoliberals who ruled the country since 1980. So it is not surprising that they now are trying to stage a color revolution in the USA to return to power. See also pretty interesting analysis at ..."
The important mission has been accomplished - Trump has become president. What would motivate
many people to go out for weekend rallies now?
libezkova -> cm... , -1
"The important mission has been accomplished - Trump has become president."
You are absolutely wrong. Mission is not accomplished. It is not even started.
Trump IMHO was just a symbol of resistance against neoliberalism that is growing in the USA.
He was elected not for his personal qualities, but despite them, as a symbol of anti-neoliberal
movement. As the only candidate that intuitively felt the need for the new policy due to crisis
of neoliberalism ("secular stagnation" to be exact) impoverishment of lower 80% and "appropriated"
anti-neoliberal sentiments.
And he is expected to accomplish at least two goals:
Stop the wars of expansion of neoliberal empire fought by previous administration. Achieve
détente with Russia as Russia is more ally then foe in the current international situation and
hostility engineered by Obama administration was based on Russia resistance to neoliberalism
(despite
being neoliberal country with neoliberal President -- Putin is probably somewhat similar to Trump
"bastard neoliberal" a strange mixture of neoliberal in domestic politics with "economic nationalist"
on international arena that rejects neoliberal globalization, on term favorable to multinational
corporations).
Reverse or at least stem destruction of jobs and the standard of living of lower 80% on
Americans due to globalization and, possibly, slow down or reverse the process of globalization
itself.
The problem is there is extremely powerful and influential "fifth column" of globalization
within the country and they can't allow Trump to go this path. As Senator Dick Durbin said about
banks and the US Congress
== quote ==
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has been battling the banks the last few weeks in an effort to
get 60 votes lined up for bankruptcy reform. He's losing.
On Monday night in an interview with a radio host back home, he came to a stark conclusion:
the banks own the Senate.
"And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many
of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly
own the place,"
== end of the quote ==
This is anathema for neoliberalism and it is neoliberals who ruled the country since 1980.
So it is not surprising that they now are trying to stage a color revolution in the USA to
return to power. See also pretty interesting analysis at
"... Neoliberalism should be understood as a new phase in the evolution of capitalism. As such, it can be described intrinsically-its basic mechanisms and contradictions. ..."
Neoliberalism is a new stage of capitalism that emerged in the wake of the structural crisis of
the 1970s. It expresses the strategy of the capitalist classes in alliance with upper management,
specifically financial managers, intending to strengthen their hegemony and to expand it globally.
As of 2004, when our book Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution was published by
Harvard University Press, this strategy appeared successful, based on its own objectives, the income
and wealth of a privileged minority, and the dominance of a country.
The contemporary crisis is an outcome of the contradictions inherent in that strategy. The crisis
revealed the strategy's unsustainable character, leading to what can be denoted as the "crisis of
neoliberalism." Neoliberal trends ultimately unsettled the foundations of the economy of the "secure
base" of the upper classes-the capability of the United States to grow, maintain the leadership of
its financial institutions worldwide, and ensure the dominance of its currency-a class and imperial
strategy that resulted in a stalemate.
A New Social Order-A Multipolar World
The crisis of neoliberalism is the fourth structural crisis in capitalism since the late nineteenth
century. Each of these earthquakes introduced the establishment of a new social order and deeply
altered international relations. The contemporary crisis marks the beginning of a similar process
of transition. Not only is financial regulation involved, but a new corporate governance, the rebuilding
of the financial sector, and new policies are now required. The basic tenets and practices of neolibcral
globalization will be questioned, and production has to be "re-territorialized" in the United States
to a significant extent. Accordingly, countries such as China, India, or Brazil will become gradually
less dependent on their relationship to the United States. It will be, in particular, quite difficult
to correct for the macro trajectory of declining trends of accumulation and cumulative disequilibria
of the U.S. economy once the present Great Contraction is stopped.
In any event, the new world order will be more multipolar than at present. Further, if such
changes are not realized successfully in the United States, the decline of U.S. international
hegemony could be sharp. None of the urgently required tasks in the coming decades to slow down
the comparative decline of the U.S. economy can be realized under the same class leadership and
unchecked globalizing trends. The unquenchable quest for high income on the part of the upper
classes must be halted. Much will depend on the pressure exerted by the popular classes and the
peoples of the world, but the "national factor," that is, the national commitment in favor of the
preservation of U.S. preeminence worldwide, could play a crucial role. The necessary adjustment can be realized in the context of
a new social arrangement to the Right or to the Left, although, as of the last months of 2009, the
chances of a Left alternative appear slim.
It is important to understand that the contemporary crisis is only the initial step in a longer
process of rectification. How long this process will last depends on the severity of the crisis,
and national and international political strife. The capability of the U.S. upper classes to perform
the much needed adjustment and the willingness of China to соllaborate will be crucial factors. A
crisis of the dollar could precipitate a sequence of events that would alter the basic features of
the process.
In the coming decades, the new social and global orders will have to confront the emergency situation
created by global warming. These issues lie beyond the limits of the present study, whose focus is
on the crisis. Stronger government intervention and international cooperation will also be required
in these respects that add to the necessity of the establishment of renewed configurations beyond
the wild dynamics of neoliberal capitalism. Abstracting from the updating of some of the series,
the last changes to the present text were made in October 2009, and there is obviously more to come.
It would be unrealistic, however, to expect a final outcome in the near future. The book covers the
causes of the crisis, its outbreak, and the first phase of the contraction of output around the globe,
as well as the perspectives for the coining decades. The viewpoint is analytical, not normative.
The Strategy of the U.S. Upper Classes in Neoliberalism: The Success and Failure of a Bold Endeavor
Two very distinct categories of phenomena are involved in the analysis of the contemporary
crisis: the historical dynamics of capitalism, on the one hand, and financial and macro
mechanisms, on the other hand. The interpretation of the crisis lies at the intersection of these two sets of processes,
and the difficulty is to do justice to both and account for their reciprocal relationships.
Neoliberalism should be understood as a new phase in the evolution of capitalism. As such, it
can be described intrinsically-its basic mechanisms and contradictions. The reference to a most
recent phase raises, however, the issue of previous phases. The comparison with earlier periods reveals
the traits proper to the new period. The analysis of the social, political, and economic trends that
led to the establishment of neoliberalism is also telling of the nature and fate of this social order.
Symmetrically, the notion of a crisis of neoliberalism implies a possible transition to a new phase,
and the nature of the society that will prevail in the wake of the contemporary crisis is a major
component of the investigation here.
Thus, some preliminary questions must be answered. What is a phase of capitalism? How are such
phases established? How do they disappear? What are the specific features of neoliberalism as such?
This book can be highly
recommended as a book on the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, and a book of politics, political economy,
class analysis, sociology, and history. Very impressive accomplishment.
The strength of this book on the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 is that Dumenil and Levy place the
crisis in a larger historical perspective. They maintain it is a mistake to isolate it merely in
the context of the financial innovation and deregulation occurring from the late 1990s. Instead,
capitalism has particular historical tendencies and specific class relations.
This is a very impressive volume published by Harvard University Press. It offers a play by play
of the Great Financial Recession of 2008, beginning from 2000 in chapters 12 - 17, the political
response and the continued stagnation in domestic economies and instability within the international
economic order in chapters 18 - 20, along with very interesting historical policy observations and
recommendations for this current crisis in chapters 21 - 25. Nonetheless the real power of this book
occurs in its historical analysis of capitalist development since 1970s described in great detail
in chapters 1 - 11.
According to Dumenil and Levy the historical tendencies of capitalism are radically mediated by politics
and social class configurations (i.e. alliances). They argue capitalistic development, since 1880s,
has gone through four primary stages and corresponding crises. They emphasize these developments
are not historically necessary, but contingent on politics and social class configurations. Moreover,
their analysis is particular to the capitalistic development in the United States and Western Europe,
they are able to generalize or internationalize their analysis because of the U.S. global hegemony
(although they certainly accept there are modes of resisting this hegemony (e.g. Iran, Venezuela,
Cuba, China, etc.)).
Dumenil and Levy have demonstrated in previous work the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in
capitalistic economies. However, because politics and social class alliances can change, so can the
profitability. The current crisis was not caused by falling rates of profits, but by financial innovation,
credit overextension, and the particular social class alliances facilitating these activities. There
is no single cause of the crisis, but broader social political mechanisms at work and in the process
of transformation.
The basic story goes like this: following the Great Depression of 1930 a strong social political
alliance emerged between the management class and "popular classes" (this popular class includes
blue and white collar workers, including quasi-management, clerical, and professional, which cannot
be reduced to the traditional "working-class"). In the 1970s there was a severe profitability crisis,
the legislative and institutional response to this crisis caused a fracture between management and
popular classes, and a re-alliance between management and capitalist classes (which includes ownership
and financial classes).
Once the alliance between capitalist classes and management had been forged in late 1970s and 1980s,
profitability returned and financial incentives and financial innovation reconfigured personal incentives
and corporate motivations. Most important according to Dumenil and Levy is that these historical
transformations manifested a "divorce" between ownership/finance and the domestic economy and its
actual production process. The political system did nothing to reconcile this disconnect, indeed
expedited the divorce via deregulation and financial innovation, what the economic literature calls
"financialization" (although, to repeat in several countries the response was radically different
and in specific opposition to U.S. hegemony and the neo-liberalism which the U.S. Treasury, IMF,
World Bank, and WTO exported to the rest of the world).
This is a very tightly and elegantly argued book. It has a huge advantage over other books on the
Great Financial Crisis of neoliberalism in that it places the crisis in both an historical and socio-political
perspective. Further they provide the political implications, or what is to be done.
Dumenil and Levy maintain the current system, especially the "divorce" between the ownership/financial
and the domestic economy, is not economically sustainable. Hence is also not political sustainable.
Thus, they suggest several political possibilities that could manifest. However, they advocate an
alliance between the "popular classes" and management (reminiscent of the New Deal/Fair Deal alliances).
Nonetheless, it does not yet appear management has the political incentives to agree to forge such
an alliance.
This book will have a hard time finding its audience. Mainstream audiences will charge Dumenil and
Levy with being overly Marxist, while Marxists will complain they deviate too far from classical
Marxism. Nonetheless this is political economy at its best. This book deserves a wide audience and
Dumenil and Levy deserve credit for the construction of a unique and stimulating account of the Great
Financial Recession of 2008.
Not every globalist is a (((globalist))), but an important globalist is usually a (((globalist))).
Thank you if you are really fighting globalism and not being just another controlled opposition.
+Jake Coughlin People like Clinton and Merkel don't truly believe in globalism either, they
are just opportunists. I like to look at them as just pawns in this game. Clinton could never
be an independent politician, since she is receiving so much money from very controversial sources.
I really like Ron Paul too, he is awesome and he is addressing some very important subjects.
Thanks to globalism, The Rebel has media outlets that can transmit to other countries. Thanks
to globalism, they can buy high performance cameras to film their anti-globalism videos.
Thanks to globalism, you can buy a vast variety of products at a cheap price. Globalism is
what makes free markets possible.
In other words globalism is the very definition of freedom of businesses. Thanks to globalism,
you don't have to live in a primitive, nationalist, isolated, 1800s society where you have Kings
and Queens who rule like conservative tyrants and keep the population ignorant as peasants. Globalism
is capitalism, the very value that made America so notorious.
Nationalism is feeling that one's country is superior to another. That's not pride in one's
country, don't get it twisted. Patriotism is pride in one's country and its values. Don't let
the nationalist confuse you with their twisted definitions of globalism.
Nationalism is what tyrants during WW1 and WW2 fed to the people in order to make them sign
up for a war that would only benefit those monarchies. Nationalism appeals to a very primitive
feeling of pride instead of logic and progress. Nationalism goes hand in hand with isolationism
which prevents small businesses to grow and limits the country to a very small group of overpriced
home products. Nationalism is regressive thinking. It opposes development and growth.
Technological progress is not globalism. Trade agreements between countries are not globalism.
You don't have to destroy all independent countries to have free markets. Poor kid... this is
how severe case of globalist brainwashing looks like.
Looks like Donald Trump did not win because he is great
politician, but because of previous 30 years of dominance of
neoliberalism. Blame Margaret Thatcher.
A utopian ideology that failed to deliver on its promise
ia "in a long run"
(it can very long run like Flat Eath theory) is
unsustainable.
People who now do not consider Milton Friedman to be a sad
joke are very rare. "Free market" ideology is devalued
considerably from late 60th. Probably more then dollar.
Neoliberal Jesuits (aka academic economists who still
adhere to neoliberal ideology) still are trying to stem or
reverse the slide. We see their efforts in this blog too.
Much like the previous generation of Jesuits tried to
defend flat Earth hypothesis. IMHO modern neoliberal Jesuits
nave even less chances to persuade the audience now. At least
17 years of neoliberal bubbles and neoliberal excesses like
outsourcing and offshoring speak for themselves. And lemmings
no longer want to march tot he cliff under the banners of
this failed religion.
After let's say of 30 years of complete dominance they also
lost control of the language (with at the peak was comparable
with the Bolshevism dominance in language in the USSR). With
all those pseudo-religious terms like NAIRU, GDP, U3, core
inflation and such.
Look at fiasco of neoliberal MSM during recent
Presidential elections. The fact the sitting president openly
calls neoliberal MSM "fake news" tells that neoliberalism is
in trouble.
And all those very emotional laments against Trump (Trump
this, Trump that) is just the result of failure to understand
what the problems, that the US society faces due to collapse
of neoliberalism and its promises.
Desperation of defenders of ideology (like Jesuits fight
with heretics ) is just another sign that the time for
neoliberal dominance is probably over.
And that it was neoliberal politicians like Bill Clinton and
Obama who hatched Trump. Much like Roman republic hatched its
own transition to Julius Caesar.
So instead or along with the silly indignation, we should
ask yourself a simple question: how neoliberalism created
Trump_vs_deep_state.
BTW Neoliberalism has very little to do with classic
liberalism (being, in reality, a flavor of corporatism) much
like Neoconservatism has almost nothing to do with
Conservatism (being a flavor Trotskyism).
Bolshevism proved that discredited utopian ideology can
exist in zombie state for a couple of decades; so we might
have 10-20 years or so in which some new ideology will emerge
that will replace neoliberalism. I hope that it will not be
neofascism.
Trump was not an accident (in the sense of
confluence-of-random-events freak accident).
I wouldn't
blame Ms. Thatcher for it either. Her ascendancy was likewise
an expression of (the same) social dynamics. Her
perhaps-counterpart was Reagan, but the situation and the
general dynamics in the US were different at the time, so it
(he) didn't lead to the same outcomes.
With the US still "the" technology leader (perhaps not in
*all* aspects academically but in most, and certainly
commercially and thus dominating academia) - and also
probably because of "less (or more favorable?) regulation"
and more easily available VC money in the US (USD hegemony?),
the new technology industries took off in the US
predominantly.
This has (in part) carried the US economy for about 2-3
decades, but a reversion to mean is plausible even if I don't
really see it yet.
The US is still a formidable, capable, and yes,
meritorious entity, if it doesn't "collectively" (or rather
by elite misjudgment?) undermines itself.
"Debs was arrested and sentenced to ten years in Atlanta
Penitentiary. He was still in prison when as the presidential
candidate of the Socialist Party, he received 919,799 votes
in 1920. His program included proposals for improved labour
conditions, housing and welfare legislation and an increase
in the number of people who could vote in elections.
President Warren G. Harding pardoned Debs in December, 1921."
Fred Block discusses his book "The Power of Market Fundamentalism," which extends the work of
the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why free market dogma recovered from
disrepute after the Great Depression and World War II to become the dominant economic ideology of
our time.
"... According to Dumenil, neoliberalism is a social order, a new form of capitalism, that can be explained by recognising that there are now three classes or "social orders" in contemporary capitalism: the capitalists; ..."
The financial crisis of 2008 was not a run of the mill recession. In the words of Gerard
Dumenil, a Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, it
reflected a "structural crisis," such as those affecting the course of capitalism about every
forty years, namely the late 19th century, the Great Depression, and the 1970. Above all else, it
reflects a crisis in the prevailing neo-liberal paradigm, which has dominated policy-making for
the past 40 years.
According to Dumenil, neoliberalism is a social order, a new form of capitalism, that can
be explained by recognising that there are now three classes or "social orders" in contemporary
capitalism: the capitalists; the "popular class" made up of wage workers and lower-level
salaried employees; and in between there is what Dumenil describes as the "managerial class". The
social order changes when the managerial class sides with one or other of the other two. Thus in
the 1930s and in the post war period, the managerial class sided with the popular class against
the capitalist class and we had the welfare state etc. In the neoliberal era, the managerial
class has sided with the capitalist financial class and the popular class has been on the back
foot. With the crisis of neoliberalism, we could look to a new realignment of this 'social
order', with the managers swinging back again toward the popular class as their position
continues to be eroded and their standards of living threatened.
Repairing our economy will require a dramatic reversal of the free market ethos that's
enveloped most of the world over the past few decades. Most importantly, it will require a
downsizing of the financial sector, as the financialization of the economy has meant that finance
has become central to the daily operations of the economic system. More precisely, the private
nonfinancial sectors of the economy have become more dependent on the smooth functioning of the
financial sector in order to maintain the liquidity and solvency of their balance sheet, and to
improve and maintain their economic welfare. For example, households have increased their use of
debt to fund education, healthcare, housing, transportation, and leisure, and they have become
more dependent on interest, dividends and capital gains as a means to maintain and grow their
standard of living.
But simply reviving the discredited policies of the last 40 years will not lead to a lasting
recovery; free markets cannot turn worthless lead into gold. In addition, as the experience of
the early 1930s tells us, if left alone to deal with the current problems, market mechanisms will
lead to massive deflation, massive bankruptcies, massive destructions of physical assets, and
enormous unemployment. This will continue until the debt structure is simplified and the
underlying structure of the economy is radically changed. In the process, social unrest will grow
to the point that the entire socio-economic system will be threatened.
For those of you who are interested in a brief, but quite penetrating introduction to Marx's overall
project (I realize this may seem like an acquired taste), as understood and elaborated upon by Harvey,
might I suggest watching this lecture? It includes a (newly developed) visualization of how capital
circulates through its various moments (resources, labor power, commodities that then have to be
sold, etc.), analogous to how water goes through the various stages listed in the water cycle: David
Harvey, Visualizing Capital
.
Main problem with it: 'taxes funds govt spending' - he should really talk to Michael Hudson about
this.
"... US companies were always able to offshore work. Before commodity internet, telecom, and international transport (OK in good part enabled by international trade/etc. deals), that was much more costly. ..."
"... IT has made it possible to effectively manage larger business/institutional aggregate than before on an industrial scale and using industrial management paradigms. Others and I have made that case before. ..."
"... Put yourself in 1980, though. Think about the coordination you can organize. Think about sending components to a low labor cost jurisdiction for assembly. Perhaps paying a tariff and transportation to get there, then a tariff and transportation to get back. The labor is essentially free, but the other is real money. Ten years later the tariffs start to disappear. Containerization continues to drive down transport per unit. ..."
"... Sure, by now the best manufacturers are often foreign. They did not get there without our help. ..."
"... In the case of subsidiaries, this requires international legal frameworks allowing US companies to operate foreign subsidiaries, or buying foreign companies, with low enough overheads ("compliance" etc.) to make distributing work worthwhile. ..."
"... The general sentiment seems to be that people in "low cost geographies" are of lesser quality at least as concerns the subject matter. This is not my experience. What used to lack (as of today I would doubt even that) is years of experience, as the offshoring industry branches hadn't existed in the remote locations, so all you could hire was freshers; or a lag in access to bleeding edge Western technology and research literature. This is no longer the case, and hasn't been the case for about a decade. ..."
"... That IN THEORY, the exchange rate and other prices should adjust to any change in tax or regulatory regime to at least partly offset it. A lot of the practical problems arise, because price adjustments do not actually seem to happen to the extent predicted, and large financial imbalances are seen to become secular features of the economic landscape. ..."
"Revoking Trade Deals Will Not Help American Middle Classes."
Brad lives in a world with jump discontinuities in the distribution of expected returns from
labor arbitrage. That changing the cost of doing a deal will not reduce or unwind deals because
the gains from trade individually exceed any costs that could be imposed. So he can say, elsewhere,
the jobs ain't coming back, full stop.
"If the United States had imposed barriers to the construction of intercontinental value chains
would the semi-skilled and skilled manufacturing workers of the U.S. be better off?"
Brad does not find any relation between "imposing barriers" and "removing subsidy". Or in establishing
the older trade deals, between "removing barriers" and "subsidizing foreign labor". Where the
foreign labor operated in a low environmental protection environment, a low labor protection environment,
and probably others, it seems enabling US firms to invest in foreign operations to reap the savings
of less protection should be seen as subsidy.
US companies were always able to offshore work. Before commodity internet, telecom, and
international transport (OK in good part enabled by international trade/etc. deals), that was
much more costly.
IMO, offshoring has largely been an automation and IT story.
Likewise domestic/national level business consolidation.
IT has made it possible to effectively manage larger business/institutional aggregate than
before on an industrial scale and using industrial management paradigms. Others and I have made
that case before.
This is not a new insight, but probably still not an obvious one.
Put yourself in 1980, though. Think about the coordination you can organize. Think about sending
components to a low labor cost jurisdiction for assembly. Perhaps paying a tariff and transportation
to get there, then a tariff and transportation to get back. The labor is essentially free, but
the other is real money. Ten years later the tariffs start to disappear. Containerization continues
to drive down transport per unit.
Point one is that Brad assumes there is no one doing this now who is near break-even and would
go upside down with any change in tariff regime, so there is no one to relocate to the USA.
Point two is that we import environmental degradation and below market labor when we allow/encourage
these to be part of the ROI calculation through tariff policy.
Sure, by now the best manufacturers are often foreign. They did not get there without our help.
Well, one can argue that environmental improvements credited to regulation were in part exporting
environmental degradation, simply by moving polluting production facilities "over there".
E.g. I have seen it in my own work and with many others: companies can farm out any work to foreign
subsidiaries or contractors they don't want to keep stateside for some reason. In the case of
subsidiaries, this requires international legal frameworks allowing US companies to operate foreign
subsidiaries, or buying foreign companies, with low enough overheads ("compliance" etc.) to make
distributing work worthwhile.
Considering the case of US vs. Asia - depending on where you are in the US, Asia/PAC (India/Far
East/Pacific) business hours are off by about a half day because of time zone effects. To a lesser
but similar degree this applies to Europe and the Middle East.
The general sentiment seems to be that people in "low cost geographies" are of lesser quality
at least as concerns the subject matter. This is not my experience. What used to lack (as of today
I would doubt even that) is years of experience, as the offshoring industry branches hadn't existed
in the remote locations, so all you could hire was freshers; or a lag in access to bleeding edge
Western technology and research literature. This is no longer the case, and hasn't been the case
for about a decade.
Then there is the aspect that people in "some" geographies are more habituated to top-down
management styles, talking back less, etc. which may be an advantage or liability depending on
what the business requires of them.
I think one thing that is forgotten almost always in such discussions is that the arguments for
or against trade start with barter not so much with monetary exchange.
That IN THEORY, the exchange
rate and other prices should adjust to any change in tax or regulatory regime to at least partly
offset it. A lot of the practical problems arise, because price adjustments do not actually seem
to happen to the extent predicted, and large financial imbalances are seen to become secular features
of the economic landscape.
This is why I'm inclined to say that trade barriers are a bit of red
herring, the really big issues are financial (including the need for finding ways to repair damaged
middle class balance sheets). We need to stop seeing redistribution as a dirty word. It is what
democratic governments worth the name should be doing.
"... "Now the new order that Roosevelt created is the Old Order, and it is in crisis, much as the Old Order at the time of FDR's emergence was in crisis. The status quo, like the status quo in Roosevelt's time, cannot hold. We are living in a time of transition.'' ..."
"... As for Clinton, she not only couldn't speak in a political idiom that showed an understanding of the underlying realities of America's crisis politics. She actually put herself forward as a champion of the status quo and, through some unfathomable utterances, a scourge of that working-class contingent that once had been such an integral part of her party. That helped open the way for Bernie Sanders, who spoke to the realities of our time and thus resonated with large numbers of liberal Democrats deeply concerned about the plight of the working class and the growing income and wealth disparities bedeviling the country. ..."
"... of all the presidential candidates vying for attention at the start of the campaign season, only Trump demonstrated a clear understanding of the country's status quo crisis. ..."
The startling nature of Donald Trump's political
ascendancy is probably best illuminated through a sojourn back in time to early June
2015, in the days and weeks before the billionaire developer descended that now-famous
Trump Tower escalator and announced his bid for the presidency. At that time, throughout
official Washington and across much of the country, a conventional narrative prevailed
as to what was likely to happen in the looming campaign year. Nothing particularly
surprising or startling was anticipated.
When the country casts aside conventional thinking and
charts out new directions, few linger over what was left behind. It seems axiomatic
that, if the conventional view was wrong, it had little to teach us in the first place.
And history, after all, doesn't stop and wait for such ruminations as it moves forward
with its crushing force. In such circumstances, the country naturally casts its
attention forward.
But discarded conventional narratives often can teach us
a lot about the state of the nation, particularly when they reveal wide gaps in thinking
and perception between the political elites and the electorate at large. That was the
state of American politics in early 2015, though few understood it fully at the time.
Among Republican officials and operatives, the
conventional thinking went something like this: it is difficult to see how the GOP
nomination can be denied to Jeb Bush. He has a famous name, widespread family
connections, impressive money-raising prowess, and a pleasant demeanor. Moreover he's
well-positioned on the issues to appeal to the party's conservative wing as well as to
its moderate center. But it might be too late for the party in any event because
demographic trends-fewer Republican whites in the electorate and more Democratic
minorities-seem to be rendering the party obsolete. Unless Republicans can find a way to
appeal to non-whites, and particularly to new immigrants put off by the party's
anti-immigrant tendencies, they will not likely elect another president. The Democrats
will maintain a lock on the Electoral College.
And that meant, according to this conventional outlook,
that Hillary Clinton likely would be the next president. She was smart, tested,
universally known, a whiz at fundraising, and generally respected (her old reputation as
a "congenital liar'' having dissipated significantly by this time, though of course it
was to reemerge later). On paper, she looked nearly unbeatable.
Thus did the elites and analysts and seers of both
parties anticipate another Bush-Clinton battle, harking back to the last such battle in
1992 and keeping the country anchored in the politics that had prevailed in America
throughout the 1990s and into the first two decades of the 21st century. Of course,
subsequent history proved that narrative to be utterly wrong. But looking back, perhaps
more interesting is what we now can see as its fundamental flaw-a failure to recognize
that America was in crisis, and crisis times yield crisis politics. The campaign year of
2016 turned out to be a year of crisis politics writ large, manifest not just in Trump's
rise but also in the remarkable run, in the Democratic primaries, of
democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator.
As the surprise-laden year unfolded, more and more
analysts cast their thinking toward the angers and frustrations within the electorate
that were driving the country in entirely unanticipated directions. Elements of the
crisis now were seen and probed. But few captured its full magnitude.
It was nothing less than a crisis of the old order, a
crisis of the crumbling status quo. Its most significant manifestation was the political
deadlock that gripped official Washington and rendered it incapable of political action.
Many saw this as a problem in itself, but in reality it was merely a stark manifestation
of the status quo crisis. As the old order of American politics began to disintegrate,
the two parties clung ever more tenaciously to their familiar and time-tested positions,
defaulting to an increasingly rigid groupthink stubbornness and shunning any thought of
political compromise. Far from grappling with the crisis of the old order that had
descended upon America and the world, the party elites couldn't even acknowledge its
existence.
But the country was at an inflection point. It
desperately needed a new brand of politics that could break the deadlock and set it upon
a new course toward its future and destiny. In such times, a gap inevitably emerges
between the political establishment, guided by the lessons of the past (increasingly
irrelevant lessons, as it happens), and the electorate, always ahead of the
establishment in seeing the need for new political paradigms, new dialectical thinking,
and new coalitions designed to bust up political logjams and set the country upon a new
course.
Back in the spring of 2012,
The National Interest
magazine published a special issue entitled: "Crisis of the Old Order: The Crumbling
Status Quo at Home and Abroad.'' (I note here, by way of disclosure, that I was
National Interest
editor at the time.) In an unsigned editorial, the magazine
likened the gathering crisis to the turmoil that gripped America at the beginning of the
Great Depression, captured by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the first volume of his "Age of
Roosevelt'' series. Entitled
The Crisis of the Old Order
, Schlesinger's book
included chapters with such titles as: "The Politics of Frustration,'' "Protest on the
Countryside,'' "The Stirrings of Labor,'' "The Struggle for Public Power,'' and "The
Revolt of the Intellectuals.'' Schlesinger portrayed a domestic status quo that could
not hold. Thus, under Franklin Roosevelt, a new order emerged in American politics based
on a far greater concentration of power in the federal government than the country had
ever before seriously contemplated.
During this same time, the global status quo also buckled
under a similarly severe strain. The Old Order-based on Europe's global preeminence,
British naval superiority and financial dominance, and a balance of military force on
the European continent-had been destroyed with World War I, and no new structure of
stability had emerged to replace it. The result was a period of flux culminating in
World War II, which yielded a new order based on America's global military reach, the
strength of the dollar, and a balance of power between the U.S.-led West and an
expansionist Soviet Union positioned in the ashes of war to threaten Western Europe.
The National Interest
identified Franklin
Roosevelt as "one of the most powerful figures in his country's history'' and said he
essentially remade the American political structure. And then he remade the world. The
result was a new order of U.S. global leadership, relative stability, Western
prosperity, and global development. It was called
Pax Americana
, and it lasted
nearly 70 years. The magazine added:
"Now the new order that Roosevelt created is
the Old Order, and it is in crisis, much as the Old Order at the time of FDR's emergence
was in crisis. The status quo, like the status quo in Roosevelt's time, cannot hold. We
are living in a time of transition.''
Consider some of the domestic elements of the current
crisis. FDR's power consolidation has created over time a collection of elites that has
restrained the body politic in tethers of favoritism and self-serving maneuver. Wall
Street dominates the government's levers of financial decision-making. Public-employee
unions utilize their power (they can fire their bosses) to capture greater and greater
shares of the public fisc. Corporations foster tax-code provisions that allow them to
game the system. "Crony capitalism'' runs rampant. Members of Congress tilt the
political system to favor incumbency. A national-debt burden threatens the country's
financial health. Uncontrolled immigration threatens the country's sense of security
and, for many, its sense of nationhood. The nation's industrial base has been hollowed
out, and the vast American working class-the bedrock of the FDR coalition-is squeezed to
the point of desperation.
Overseas, challenges to U.S. global preeminence are
emerging from a host of quarters, most notably from China, which wants to expunge
American military power from Asia. The Middle East is aflame, largely as a result of
mindless U.S. interventions there. Western civilization's European heartland is
threatened from within by mass immigration and from within by waves of populist
nationalism bent on destroying the postwar experiment in political consolidation.
Tensions are on the rise everywhere-between Sunnis and Shia in the Middle East, between
the United States and Russia, between China and its neighbors, between southern and
northern Europe over currency issues, between the United States and Iran. To say the
world is operating today under an umbrella of
Pax Americana
defies any realistic
conception of America in our time or the definition of peace in any time.
What seems remarkable now, thinking back to the early
months of the presidential campaign season, is how seemingly oblivious nearly all the
candidates were to the extent and depth of the crises gripping America and the world.
Consider once again poor Jeb Bush. The media and the political class made much of his
initial inability, when asked about his brother George's invasion of Iraq, to deliver a
coherent answer that incorporated any lessons to be learned from that far-reaching
misadventure. But that was the least of his problems. Throughout his ill-planned and
ill-fated political foray, he campaigned as if he thought he still operated in the day
of his father. He spoke without force, which held him back in a time of potent political
turmoil, but, more importantly, without any apparent sense of urgency, without any
discernible recognition of the calamitous forces swirling around his ears.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz did speak in forceful terms, but his
answer was to double down on his party's hard-right attitudes and demands-to resurrect
Ronald Reagan and then move boldly beyond him to galvanize a majority within party and
country. It couldn't be done. Reagan, a highly successful president, probably deserves a
"near great'' ranking from history. But he ran the country in an era far different from
today. More problematic for Cruz, the country didn't want the same old ossified
positions of right or left that contributed so much to the country's political logjams.
It wanted fresh thinking, a new cluster of ideas and positions, a new dialectic of
politics capable of pulling together new coalitions that could break the country's
deadlock crisis.
As for Clinton, she not only couldn't speak in a
political idiom that showed an understanding of the underlying realities of America's
crisis politics. She actually put herself forward as a champion of the status quo and,
through some unfathomable utterances, a scourge of that working-class contingent that
once had been such an integral part of her party. That helped open the way for Bernie
Sanders, who spoke to the realities of our time and thus resonated with large numbers of
liberal Democrats deeply concerned about the plight of the working class and the growing
income and wealth disparities bedeviling the country.
But
of all the presidential candidates vying for
attention at the start of the campaign season, only Trump demonstrated a clear
understanding of the country's status quo crisis.
Only Trump busted out of the old
paradigms of partisan politics and fashioned a new cluster of issues and positions. He
was the only candidate whose forcefulness of expression, as crude and unsettling as it
often was, reflected an appreciation for the magnitude of the crisis confronting the
nation. He projected himself as a man who wouldn't trim and wouldn't bow or scrape to
anyone-not the big-money boys who own the other politicians, not the special interests
taking their financial cut at every turn, not the industrialists (like himself in the
past, he would state frankly) exploiting the system of crony capitalism and pay-to-play
politics, and certainly not foreign leaders taking advantage of America's soft and
accommodating national temperament. Trump became the Willie Stark of 2016, the champion
of ordinary Americans-Americans who saw that the game was rigged and who hungered for a
politician ready to retrieve the wayward system and return it to the people.
Further, he shunned the rigid political thinking of
either party and crafted an advocacy that cut across partisan lines in various ways. He
embraced traditional GOP positions in calling for drastically reduced taxes, advocating
school choice, questioning climate change as a product of human activity, and urging big
increases in defense spending. But he also embraced positions that went against the
Republican grain-including a rejection of budget balancing through austerity economics;
a call to protect entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, that are
generating huge unfunded liabilities; a promise to use tariffs and other barriers to
counter what he considersed unfair trading practices by other countries; and a resolve
to increase taxes on hedge-fund profits. None of this comported with standard Republican
orthodoxy; indeed, some of it sounded a bit like Bernie Sanders.
It was this distinctive mix of policies that gave Trump
his political propulsion in the GOP primaries and through the general election. But
there was another factor-his often harsh, mean-spirited rhetoric that, while distasteful
to many, gave others the sense of a man bent on charging through all impediments to
implement his policies. Consider, for example, immigration, perhaps the most
high-voltage issue of the campaign.
The problem, of course, was the large number of illegal
immigrants already well-established in the country-some 11 million, according to
estimates. This reality constituted a blot on the country's political establishment,
which had allowed U.S. borders to be breached on such a scale with nary a finger raised
to stem it. And the political establishment had no answer for the resulting civic
challenge, except to provide some form of amnesty as part of a "comprehensive solution''
that promised secure borders as a trade-off. But this was incendiary to millions of
Americans who remembered the last time this trade-off was put forward-and promptly
flouted as the flow of illegal immigrants accelerated following a major amnesty program.
Thus, none of the presidential candidates wanted to engage the issue in any kind of
frontal way during the campaign. They would finesse it pending their election and then
deal with it in a more controlled legislative environment.
Except Trump. "When do we beat Mexico at the border?'' he
asked during his campaign announcement speech, then added, "They're laughing at us, at
our stupidity. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're
sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems.
They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are
good people.'' This now-famous peroration was so stark and brutal that many considered
it politically disqualifying, a sign that this crude figure would flame out quickly on
the campaign trail. But for many, tired of political elites talking endlessly about the
border problem without any discernible intent on actually attacking it, Trump seemed to
be the only politician who actually took it seriously. When he said, during the first
debate, that the issue wouldn't have received serious attention at that forum except for
his having forced it into the campaign discourse, he was probably correct.
That's the view, at least, of Harvard's George J. Borjas,
one of the country's leading immigration economists. "A really good question to ask,''
Borjas said in an interview presented in
TAC
's last issue, " is would he have
gotten traction if he hadn't shocked the system that way so early on? What he said, you
can disagree with it strongly. But it really provided an incredible shock by
introducing into the debate something people don't usually talk about very often.''
We know now that Trump's willingness to grab hold of the
immigration issue in his bold, even nasty, way resonated with white working-class voters
in states that previously had been considered Democratic strongholds-particularly
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which provided his Electoral College victory
margin. It was this kind of rhetoric, combined with his eclectic mix of issues and
positions, that rendered feckless the conventional wisdom back in early June of 2015
that said inexorable demographic trends favored the Democrats in 2016 and would continue
to do so indefinitely into the future.
But running for president is not the same as being
president, and now Donald Trump faces a governing challenge that he may or may not be
capable of meeting. The New York billionaire emerged the winner in the crisis politics
of 2016 by convincing just enough voters in just the right states that he would be a
bold and effective manager, willing and able to take on entrenched political elites
throughout the political system to break the deadlock of democracy and create a winning
new status quo for America. This will not be an easy task, and Trump manifests some
traits of personality and temperament that could impede his chances for success.
One is his tendency to advocate often contradictory
policies that seem to reflect a disjointed and incoherent worldview. He says he would
like to foster a two-state agreement between Israel and the Palestinians but nominates
as ambassador to Israel a man whose vocal support of Israeli settlements on the West
Bank would preclude any such agreement. He says the United States should cease getting
into Middle Eastern wars but brings into his inner circle men who seem to be spoiling
for a fight with Iran. He says that, in Syria, we should concentrate first and foremost
on defeating the Islamic State, or ISIS, but he seems bent on introducing tensions into
U.S. relations with Iran, which also is fighting ISIS. He even suggested that, had he
been president when Iranian naval forces detained American sailors who had drifted
illegally into Iranian waters, he would have shot the Iranians out of the water within
their own territorial seas. He decries the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the country's
actions in bringing down Libya's Muammar Qaddafi but suggests we should have seized the
oil of both countries-that is, from countries that, by his lights, we should have left
alone.
Second, Trump seems to lack a facility for getting below
the surface of things. On the campaign trail, he often was sharp and crisp in attacking
policies he didn't like or in carving out his primary policy positions. But he seemed to
lack the political vocabulary to get below the surface in ways that would allow him to
engage in what might be called explanatory political discourse, the kind that provides
narrative to the political conversation. Though often brilliant in operating upon the
political surface-in seeing more clearly than most, for example, the nature of the
American crisis or in crafting a provocatively effective message for the times-he often
seemed incapable of giving meaning and context to his political positions. That wasn't a
problem on the political stump; in fighting for legislation, however, it could prove
limiting. As scholar Aaron David Miller writes in his book on the presidency,
The End
of Greatness
, "The notion that the president's job is to create a story or a
compelling narrative in order to teach and inspire is absolutely on target.'' Certainly,
the president's rollout of his initial executive orders on refugees and immigration
reflected his inability, or disinclination, to explain his actions to the American
people as he proceeds. There was no compelling narrative here at all.
And, third, it isn't clear that Trump possesses the
political temperament to deal effectively with the kind of politics that inevitably
emerge when the country struggles to move from an established era to a new and often
frightening new day. The country is split down the middle-between those clinging to the
era of globalism and those who despise it; between those who want to control immigration
and those who think such efforts are tantamount to racism; between those who believe
that radical Islamist fundamentalism emanates out of Islam itself and those who think
such thinking is bigotry or Islamophobia; between those who view Trump's election as
necessary and those who consider it a threat to the common weal. These divisions, and
many more, will complicate Trump's effort to break the nation's deadlock crisis and move
the U.S. into a new era of consensus and internal stability. This will require an
appreciation for the holdouts, those disinclined to buy Trump's message or join his
cause. Trump, after all, is a minority president; he captured only 46 percent of the
popular vote, 2 percentage points below Clinton's total. He can't forge any kind of
effective governing coalition with just those who voted for him. He will need to build
on his base, and that will require more than just the political will and swagger he
demonstrated in the campaign. It will require also large amounts of guile, persistence,
deviousness, cajolery, and an appreciation for the sensibilities of the collective
electorate-all applied in just the right doses at just the right time. So far, some of
those traits have been notably lacking.
Trump's
mandate, defined by himself as well as events, is to generate economic growth at
traditional levels, expand jobs sufficiently to bring discouraged workers back into the
workforce, defeat ISIS and then bring America home from endless Middle Eastern wars,
foster peace and relative global stability through strength mixed with creative
diplomacy, establish an American consensus on the national direction, and maintain a
civic calm within the American polity.
That's a tall order. He might succeed. He might fail.
Either way, the American people, in their collective judgment, will maintain an
unsentimental view of it all. If he succeeds, they will reward him with their votes, and
a new coalition might emerge. If he fails, they will fire him. And then the crisis of
the old order will continue and deepen until, somehow, at some point, the voters manage
to select a president who can get the job done.
Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing
executive, is editor of
The American Conservative
. His next book, due out from
Simon & Schuster in September, is
President McKinley: Architect of the American
Century
.
If this boosterism seems out of character for a primetime populist like Carlson, he doesn't seem to mind
the dissonance. He speaks glowingly of his Northwest Washington neighborhood, a tony enclave of liberal affluence where,
he tells me, he is surrounded by diplomats, lawyers, world bankers, and well-paid media types. They are reliably
"wonderful"; unfailingly "nice"; "some of my favorite people in the world." If you've watched Carlson on TV lately, you
know they are also wrong about virtually everything.
Indeed, throughout the 2016 election cycle Carlson routinely deployed his anonymous neighbors as a device
in his political punditry -- pointing to them as emblems of the educated elite's insular thinking. He scoffed at their
affection for Marco Rubio in the primaries, and he ridiculed their self-righteous reactions to the Republican nominee in
the general. "On my street," he
wrote
in
Politico Magazine
, "there's never been anyone as unpopular as Trump."
This shtick worked brilliantly for Carlson, catapulting him from a weekend hosting gig to the coveted 9
p.m. slot in Fox's primetime lineup. He now regularly pulls in more than 3 million viewers a night -- a marked improvement
on the program he replaced -- and he counts the commander in chief among his loyal fans. Just this past weekend, President
Trump set off a minor international firestorm when he suggested Sweden was experiencing an immigrant-fueled spike in
crime -- a (
dubious
)
claim he picked up by watching
Tucker Carlson Tonight
.
In an era when TV talking heads are more influential than ever, Carlson has suddenly -- and rather
improbably -- emerged as one of the most powerful people in media. The question now is what he wants to do with that perch.
To the extent that Carlson's on-air commentary these days is guided by any kind of animating idea, it is
perhaps best summarized as a staunch aversion to whatever his right-minded neighbors believe. The country has reached a
point, he tells me, where the elite consensus on any given issue should be "reflexively distrusted."
"Look, it's really simple," Carlson says. "The SAT 50 years ago pulled a lot of smart people out of every
little town in America and funneled them into a small number of elite institutions, where they married each other, had
kids, and moved to an even smaller number of elite neighborhoods. We created the most effective meritocracy ever."
"But the problem with the meritocracy," he continues, is that it "leeches all the empathy out of your
society The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental,
lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid -- I mean all the stuff that our ruling class is."
Carlson recounts, with some amusement, how he saw these attitudes surface in his neighbors' response to
Trump's victory. He recalls receiving a text message on election night from a stunned Democratic friend declaring his
intention to flee the country with his family. Carlson replied by asking if he could use their pool while they were
gone.
"I mean people were, like, traumatized," he says. And yet, in the months since then, "no one I know has
learned anything. There's been no moment of reflection It's just, 'This is what happens when you let dumb people
vote.'" Carlson finds this brand of snobbery particularly offensive: "Intelligence is not a moral category. That's what
I find a lot of people in my life assume. It's not. God doesn't care how smart you are, actually."
McKay Coppins
is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party.
Our situation with neoliberalism reminds me lines from the "Hotel California " ;-)
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eagles/hotelcalifornia.html
== quote ==
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "
We can agree that all politico-economic
systems tried thus far by man have fatal flaws. Ours just works better, or has, for longer than any
other, so far that is.
Out situation with neoliberalism
reminds me lines from "Hotel California ;-)
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eagles/hotelcalifornia.html
== quote ==
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "
It has worked for longer than
its contemporary contenders. E.g. the Roman empire could point to more centuries of existence.
When would you say "this system" started? E.g. is the current US a smooth continuation of the
late 1700's version, or were there "reboots" in between? How about a continuation of British
capitalism (also 1700s or earlier)?
I think his point was that the
USA (1776 - current)=="USA capitalism" which is around 200 years old outlasted Bolshevism which
lasted for only 74 years.
Of course, British capitalism is as long existing as the US capitalism (probably slightly
longer, as we can view period of slave ownership as "imperfect" or mixed capitalism).
In other words capitalism in its various forms is a relatively long term social system.
Which experienced several, often dramatic, transformations along the way. Probably all post
Napoleonic years can be viewed as years of existence of capitalism. So the USA is as old as
capitalism itself.
Of course various forms of capitalism are short lived:
New Deal capitalism (1933-1980) lasted around 47 years.
neoliberalism (around 1980-current) is approximately 37 years old.
In this sense Bolshevism (which Chinese viewed as a form of imperialism ;-) which lasted
74 years or so outlasted them.
"... Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers', and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation. ..."
"... From an energy point of view globalisation is a disaster. The insane level of fossil fuels that this current world requires for transportation of necessities (food and clothing) is making this world an unstable world. Ipso Facto. ..."
"... Those who believe that globalisation is bringing value to the world should reconsider their views. The current globalisation has created both monopolies on a geopolitical ground, ie TV make or shipbuilding in Asia. ..."
"... Do you seriously believe that these new geographical and corporate monopolies does not create the kind bad outcomes that traditional – country-centric ones – monopolies have in the past? ..."
"... Then there is the practical issue of workers having next to no bargaining power under globalization. Do people really suppose that Mexican workers would be willing to strike so that their US counterparts, already making ficew times as much money, would get a raise? ..."
"... Basically our elite sold us a bill of goods is why we lost manufacturing. Greed. Nothing else. ..."
"... So proof is required to rollback globalization, but no proof was required to launch it or continue dishing it out? It's good to be the King, eh? ..."
"... America hasn't just gotten rid of the low level jobs. It has also gotten rid of supervisors and factory managers. Those are skills you can't get back overnight. For US plants in Mexico, you might have US managers there or be able to get special visas to let those managers come to the US. But US companies have shifted a ton, and I meant a ton, to foreign subcontractors. Some would put operations in the US to preserve access to US customers, but their managers won't speak English. How do you make this work? ..."
"... The real issue is commitment. Very little manufacturing will be re-shored unless companies are convinced that it is in their longterm interest to do so. ..."
"... There is also what I've heard referred to as the "next bench" phenomenon, in which products arise because someone designs a new product/process to solve a manufacturing problem. Unless one has great foresight, the designer of the new product must be aware there is a problem to solve. ..."
"... When a country is involved in manufacturing, the citizens employed will have exposure to production problems and issues. ..."
"... After his speech he took questions. I asked "Would Toyota ever separate design from manufacturing?" as HP had done, shipping all manufacturing to Asia. "No" was his answer. ..."
"... In my experience, it is way too useful to have the line be able to easily call the designer in question and have him come take a look at what his design is doing. HP tried to get around that by sending part of the design team to Asia to watch the startup. Didn't work as well. And when problems emerged later, it was always difficult to debug by remote control. ..."
"... How about mass imports of cheap workers into western countries in the guise of emigrants to push down worker's pay and gut things like unions. That factor played a decisive factor in both the Brexit referendum and the US 2016 elections. Or the subsidized exportation of western countries industrial equipment to third world countries, leaving local workers swinging in the wind. ..."
"... The data sets do not capture some of the most important factors in what they are saying. It is like putting together a paper on how and why white men voted in the 2016 US elections as they did – and forgetting to mention the effect of the rest of the voters involved. ..."
"... I had a similar reaction. This research was reinforcing info about everyone's resentment over really bad distribution of wealth, as far as it went, but it was so unsatisfying ..."
"... "Right to work" is nothing other than a way to undercut quality of work for "run-to-the-bottom competitive pay." ..."
"... I've noticed that the only people in favor of globalization are those whose jobs are not under threat from it. ..."
"... First off, economic nationalism is not necessarily right wing. I would certainly classify Bernie Sanders as an economic nationalist (against open borders and against "free" trade). Syriza and Podemos could arguably be called rather ineffective economic nationalist parties. I would say the whole ideology of social democracy is based on the Swedish nationalist concept of a "folkhem", where the nation is the home and the citizens are the folk. ..."
"... So China is Turmpism on steroids. Israel obviously is as well. Why do some nations get to be blatantly Trumpist while for others these policies are strictly forbidden? ..."
"... One way to look at Globalization is as an updated version of the post WW1 Versailles Treaty which imposed reparations on a defeated Germany for all the harm they caused during the Great War. The Globalized Versailles Treaty is aimed at the American and European working classes for the crimes of colonialism, racism, slavery and any other bad things the 1st world has done to the 3rd in the past. ..."
"... And yes, this applies to Bernie Sanders as well. During that iconic interview where Sanders denounced open borders and pushed economic nationalism, the Neoliberal interviewer immediately played the global guilt card in response. ..."
"... During colonialism the 3rd world had a form of open borders imposed on it by the colonial powers, where the 3rd world lost control of who what crossed their borders while the 1st world themselves maintained a closed border mercantilist regime of strict filters. So the anti-colonialist movement was a form of Trumpist economic nationalism where the evil foreigners were given the boot and the nascent nations applied filters to their borders. ..."
"... Nationalism (my opinion) can do this – economic nationalism. And of course other people think oh gawd, not that again – it's so inefficient for my investments- I can't get fast returns that way but that's just the point. ..."
"... China was not a significant exporter until the 2001 inclusion in WTO: it cannot possibly have caused populist uprisings in Italy and Belgium in the 1990s. It was probably too early even for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, who was killed in 2002, Le Pen's electoral success in the same year, Austria's FPOE in 1999, and so on. ..."
"... In the 1930s Keynes realized, income was just as important as profit as this produced a sustainable system that does not rely on debt to maintain demand. ..."
"... "Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive banking system." ..."
"... The Romans are the basis. Patricians, Equites and Plebs. Most of us here are clearly plebeian. Time to go place some bets, watch the chariot races and gladiatorial fights, and get my bread subsidy. Ciao. ..."
"... 80-90% of Bonds and Equities ( at least in USA) are owned by top 10 %. 0.7% own 45% of global wealth. 8 billionaires own more than 50% of wealth than that of bottom 50% in our Country! ..."
"... Globalisation has caused a surge in support for nationalist and radical right political platforms. ..."
"... Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be a move in that direction. ..."
"... Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers' ..."
"... and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. ..."
"... The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation. ..."
Definitely a pleasant read but IMHO wrong conclusion: Yet, a return to protectionism is
not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate
compensation of its 'losers', and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. The
world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation.
From an energy point of view globalisation is a disaster. The insane level of fossil fuels
that this current world requires for transportation of necessities (food and clothing) is making
this world an unstable world. Ipso Facto.
We need a world where goods move little as possible (yep!) when smart ideas and technology
(medical, science, industry, yep that's essential) move as much as possible. Internet makes this
possible. This is no dream but a XXIth century reality.
Work – the big one – is required and done where and when it occurs. That is on all continents
if not in every country. Not in an insanely remote suburbs of Asia.
Those who believe that globalisation is bringing value to the world should reconsider their
views. The current globalisation has created both monopolies on a geopolitical ground, ie TV make
or shipbuilding in Asia.
Do you seriously believe that these new geographical and corporate monopolies does not
create the kind bad outcomes that traditional – country-centric ones – monopolies have in the
past?
Yves Smith can have nasty words when it comes to discussing massive trade surplus and policies
that supports them. That's my single most important motivation for reading this challenging blog,
by the way.
Another thing is that reliance on complex supply chains is risky. The book 1177 B.C.: The Year
Civilization Collapsed describes how the ancient Mediterranian civilization collapsed when the
supply chains stopped working.
Then there is the practical issue of workers having next to no bargaining power under globalization.
Do people really suppose that Mexican workers would be willing to strike so that their US counterparts,
already making ficew times as much money, would get a raise?
Is Finland somehow supposed to force the US and China to adopt similar worker rights and environmental
protections? No, globalization, no matter how you slice it,is a race to the bottom.
I do not agree with the article's conclusion either.
Reshoring would have 1 of 2 outcomes:
Lots of manufacturing jobs and a solid middle class. We may be looking at more than 20
percent total employment in manufacturing and more than 30 percent of our GDP in manufacturing.
If the robots take over, we still have a lot of manufacturing jobs. Japan for example has
the most robots per capita, yet they still maintain very large amounts of manufacturing employment.
It does not mean the end of manufacturing at all, having worked in manufacturing before.
Basically our elite sold us a bill of goods is why we lost manufacturing. Greed. Nothing
else.
The conclusion is the least important thing. Conclusions are just interpretations, afterthoughts,
divagations (which btw are often just sneaky ways to get your work published by TPTB, surreptitiously
inserting radical stuff under the noses of the guardians of orthodoxy).
The value of these reports is in providing hardcore statistical evidence and quantification
for something for which so many people have a gut feeling but just cann't prove it (although many
seem to think that just having a strong opinion is sufficient).
Yes, correct. Intuition is great for coming up with hypotheses, but it is important to test
them. And while a correlation isn't causation, it at least says the hypothesis isn't nuts on its
face.
In addition, studies like this are helpful in challenging the oft-made claim, particularly
in the US, that people who vote for nationalist policies are bigots of some stripe.
You are missing the transition costs, which will take ten years, maybe a generation.
America hasn't just gotten rid of the low level jobs. It has also gotten rid of supervisors
and factory managers. Those are skills you can't get back overnight. For US plants in Mexico,
you might have US managers there or be able to get special visas to let those managers come to
the US. But US companies have shifted a ton, and I meant a ton, to foreign subcontractors. Some
would put operations in the US to preserve access to US customers, but their managers won't speak
English. How do you make this work?
The only culture with demonstrated success in working with supposedly hopeless US workers is
the Japanese, who proved that with the NUMMI joint venture with GM in one of its very worst factories
(in terms of the alleged caliber of the workforce, as in many would show up for work drunk). Toyota
got the plant to function at better than average (as in lower) defect levels and comparable productivity
to its plants in Japan, which was light years better than Big Three norms.
I'm not sure any other foreign managers are as sensitive to detail and the fine points of working
conditions as the Japanese (having worked with them extensively, the Japanese hear frequencies
of power dynamics that are lost on Westerners. And the Chinese do not even begin to have that
capability, as much as they have other valuable cultural attributes).
That is really interesting about the Japanese sensitivity to detail and power dynamics. If
anyone has managed to describe this in any detail, I would love to read more, though I suppose
if their ability is alien to most Westerners the task of describing it might also be too much
to handle.
I lean more to ten years than a generation. And in the grand scheme of things, 10 years is
nothing.
The real issue is commitment. Very little manufacturing will be re-shored unless companies
are convinced that it is in their longterm interest to do so. Which means having a sense
that the US government is serious, and will continue to be serious, about penalizing off-shoring.
Regardless of Trump's bluster, which has so far only resulted in a handful of companies halting
future offshoring decisions (all to the good), we are nowhere close to that yet.
There is also what I've heard referred to as the "next bench" phenomenon, in which products
arise because someone designs a new product/process to solve a manufacturing problem. Unless one
has great foresight, the designer of the new product must be aware there is a problem to solve.
When a country is involved in manufacturing, the citizens employed will have exposure to
production problems and issues.
Sometimes the solution to these problems can lead to new products outside of one's main
business, for example the USA's Kingsford Charcoal arose from a scrap wood disposal problem that
Henry Ford had.
If one googles for "patent applications by countries" one gets these numbers, which could be
an indirect indication of some of the manufacturing shift from the USA to Asia.
Patent applications for the top 10 offices, 2014
1. China 928,177
2. US 578,802
3. Japan 325,989
4. South Korea 210,292
What is not captured in these numbers are manufacturing processes known as "trade secrets"
that are not disclosed in a patent. The idea that the USA can move move much of its manufacturing
overseas without long term harming its workforce and economy seems implausible to me.
While a design EE at HP, they brought in an author who had written about Toyota's lean design
method, which was currently the management hot button du jour. After his speech he took questions.
I asked "Would Toyota ever separate design from manufacturing?" as HP had done, shipping all manufacturing
to Asia. "No" was his answer.
In my experience, it is way too useful to have the line be able to easily call the designer
in question and have him come take a look at what his design is doing. HP tried to get around
that by sending part of the design team to Asia to watch the startup. Didn't work as well. And
when problems emerged later, it was always difficult to debug by remote control.
And BTW, after manufacturing went overseas, management told us for costing to assume "Labor
is free". Some level playing field.
Oh gawd! The man talks about the effects of globalization and says that the solution is a "a
more inclusive model of globalization"? Seriously? Furthermore he singles out Chinese imports
as the cause of people being pushed to the right. Yeah, right.
How about mass imports of cheap workers into western countries in the guise of emigrants
to push down worker's pay and gut things like unions. That factor played a decisive factor in
both the Brexit referendum and the US 2016 elections. Or the subsidized exportation of western
countries industrial equipment to third world countries, leaving local workers swinging in the
wind.
This study is so incomplete it is almost useless. The only thing that comes to mind to say
about this study is the phrase "Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" And what form
of appropriate compensation of its 'losers' would they suggest? Training for non-existent jobs?
Free moving fees to the east or west coast for Americans in flyover country? Subsidized emigration
fees to third world countries where life is cheaper for workers with no future where they are?
Nice try fellas but time to redo your work again until it is fit for a passing grade.
Aw jeez, mate – you've just hurt my feelings here. Take a look at the actual article again.
The data sets do not capture some of the most important factors in what they are saying. It
is like putting together a paper on how and why white men voted in the 2016 US elections as they
did – and forgetting to mention the effect of the rest of the voters involved.
Hey, here is an interesting thought experiment for you. How about we apply the scientific method
to the past 40 years of economic theory since models with actual data strike your fancy. If we
find that the empirical data does not support a theory such as the theory of economic neoliberalism,
we can junk it then and replace it with something that actually works then. So far as I know,
modern economics seems to be immune to scientific rigour in their methods unlike the real sciences.
Not all relevant factors need to be included for a statistical analysis to be valid, as long
as relevant ignored factors are randomized amongst the sampling units, but you know that of course.
Thanks for you kind words about the real sciences, we work hard to keep it real, but once again,
in all fairness, between you and me mate, is not all rigour, it is a lot more Feyerabend than
Popper.
What you say is entirely true. The trouble has always been to make sure that that statistical
analysis actually reflects the real world enough to make it valid. An example of where it all
falls apart can be seen in the political world when the pundits, media and all the pollsters assured
America that Clinton had it in the bag. It was only after the dust had settled that it was revealed
how bodgy the methodology used had been.
By the way, Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend sound very interesting so thanks for the heads
up. Have you heard of some of the material of another bloke called Mark Blyth at all? He has some
interesting observations to make on modern economic practices.
I had a similar reaction. This research was reinforcing info about everyone's resentment
over really bad distribution of wealth, as far as it went, but it was so unsatisfying and
I immediately thought of Blyth who laments the whole phylogeny of economics as more or less serving
the rich.
The one solution he offered up a while ago was (paraphrasing) 'don't sweat the deficit spending
because it is all 6s in the end' which is true if distribution doesn't stagnate. So as it stands
now, offshoring arms, legs and firstborns is like 'nothing to see here, please move on'. The suggestion
that we need a more inclusive form of global trade kind of begs the question. Made me uneasy too.
"Gut things like unions." How so? In my recent interaction with my apartment agency's preferred
contractors, random contractors not unionized, I experienced a 6 month-long disaster.
These construction workers bragged that in 2 weeks they would have the complete job done -
a reconstructed deck and sunroom. Verbatim quote: "Union workers complete the job and tear it
down to keep everyone paying." Ha Ha! What a laugh!
Only to have these same dudes keep saying "next week", "next week", "next week", "next week".
The work began in August and only was finished (not completely!) in late January. Sloppy crap!
Even the apartment agency head maintenance guy who I finally bitched at said "I guess good work
is hard to come by these days."
Of the non-union guys he hired.
My state just elected a republican governor who promised "right to work." This was just signed
into law.
Immigrants and Mexicans had nothing to do with it. They're not an impact in my city. "Right
to work" is nothing other than a way to undercut quality of work for "run-to-the-bottom competitive
pay."
Now I await whether my rent goes up to pay for this nonsense.
They look at the labor cost, assume someone can do it cheaper. They don't think it's that difficult.
Maybe it's not. The hard part of any and all construction work is getting it finished. Getting
started is easy. Getting it finished on time? Nah, you can't afford that.
I've noticed that the only people in favor of globalization are those whose jobs are not
under threat from it. Beyond that, I think the flood of cheap Chinese goods is actually helping
suppress populist anger by allowing workers whose wages are dropping in real value terms to maintain
the illusion of prosperity. To me, a more "inclusive" form of globalization would include replacing
every economist with a Chinese immigrant earning minimum wage. That way they'd get to "experience"
how awesome it is and the value of future economic analysis would be just as good.
I'm going to question a few of the author's assumptions.
First off, economic nationalism is not necessarily right wing. I would certainly classify
Bernie Sanders as an economic nationalist (against open borders and against "free" trade). Syriza
and Podemos could arguably be called rather ineffective economic nationalist parties. I would
say the whole ideology of social democracy is based on the Swedish nationalist concept of a "folkhem",
where the nation is the home and the citizens are the folk.
Secondly, when discussing the concept of economic nationalism and the nation of China, it would
be interesting to discuss how these two things go together. China has more billionaires than refugees
accepted in the past 20 years. Also it is practically impossible for a non Han Chinese person
to become a naturalized Chinese citizen. And when China buys Boeing aircraft, they wisely insist
on the production being done in China. A close look at Japan would yield similar results.
So China is Turmpism on steroids. Israel obviously is as well. Why do some nations get
to be blatantly Trumpist while for others these policies are strictly forbidden?
One way to look at Globalization is as an updated version of the post WW1 Versailles Treaty
which imposed reparations on a defeated Germany for all the harm they caused during the Great
War. The Globalized Versailles Treaty is aimed at the American and European working classes for
the crimes of colonialism, racism, slavery and any other bad things the 1st world has done to
the 3rd in the past.
Of course during colonialism the costs were socialized within colonizing states and so it was
the people of the colonial power who paid those costs that weren't borne by the colonial subjects
themselves, who of course paid dearly, and it was the oligarchic class that privatized the colonial
profits. But the 1st world oligarchs and their urban bourgeoisie are in strong agreement that
the deplorable working classes are to blame for systems that hurt working classes but powerfully
enriched the wealthy!
And so with the recent rebellions against Globalization, the 1st and 3rd world oligarchs are
convinced these are nothing more than the 1st world working classes attempting to shirk their
historic guilt debt by refusing to pay the rightful reparations in terms of standard of living
that workers deserve to pay for the crimes committed in the past by their wealthy co-nationals.
And yes, this applies to Bernie Sanders as well. During that iconic interview where Sanders
denounced open borders and pushed economic nationalism, the Neoliberal interviewer immediately
played the global guilt card in response.
Interesting. Another way to look at it is from the point of view of entropy and closed vs open
systems. Before globalisation the 1st world working classes enjoyed a high standard of living
which was possible because their system was relatively closed to the rest of the world. It was
a high entropy, strongly structured socio-economic arrangement, with a large difference in standard
of living between 1st world and 3rd world working classes. Once their system became more open
by virtue (or vice) of globalisation, entropy increased as commanded by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
so the 1st world and 3rd world working classes became more equalised. The socio-economic arrangements
became less structured. This means for the Trumpening kind of politicians it is a steep uphill
battle, to increase entropy again.
Yes, I agree, but if we step back in history a bit we can see the colonial period as a sort
of reverse globalization which perhaps portends a bit of optimism for the Trumpening.
I use the term open and closed borders but these are not precise. What I am really saying is
that open borders does not allow a country to filter out negative flows across their border. Closed
borders does allow a nation to impose a filter. So currently the US has more open borders (filters
are frowned upon) and China has closed borders (they can filter out what they don't want) despite
the fact that obviously China has plenty of things crossing its border.
During colonialism the 3rd world had a form of open borders imposed on it by the colonial
powers, where the 3rd world lost control of who what crossed their borders while the 1st world
themselves maintained a closed border mercantilist regime of strict filters. So the anti-colonialist
movement was a form of Trumpist economic nationalism where the evil foreigners were given the
boot and the nascent nations applied filters to their borders.
So the 3rd world to some extent (certainly in China at least) was able to overcome entropy
and regain control of their borders. You are correct in that it will be an uphill struggle for
the 1st world to repeat this trick. In the ideal world both forms of globalization (colonialism
and the current form) would be sidelined and all nations would be allowed to use the border filters
they think would best protect the prosperity of their citizens.
Another good option would be a version of the current globalization but where the losers are
the wealthy oligarchs themselves and the winners are the working classes. It's hard to imagine
it's easy if you try!
What's interesting about the concept of entropy is that it stands in contradiction to the concept
of perpetual progress. I'm sure there is some sort of thesis, antithesis, synthesis solution to
these conflicting concepts.
To overcome an entropy current requires superb skill commanding a large magnitude of work applied
densely on a small substratum (think of the evolution of the DNA, the internal combustion engine).
I believe the Trumpening laudable effort and persuasion would have a chance of success in a country
the size of The Netherlands, or even France, but the USA, the largest State machinery in the world,
hardly. When the entropy current flooded the Soviet system the solution came firstly in the form
of shrinkage.
We need to think more about it, a lot more, in order to succeed in this 1st world uphill struggle
to repeat the trick. I am pretty sure that as Pierre de Fermat famously claimed about his alleged
proof, the solution "is too large to fit in the margins of this book".
My little entropy epiphany goes like this: it's like boxes – containers, if you will, of energy
or money, or trade goods, the flow of which is best slowed down so everybody can grab some. Break
it all down, decentralize it and force it into containers which slow the pace and share the wealth.
Nationalism (my opinion) can do this – economic nationalism. And of course other
people think oh gawd, not that again – it's so inefficient for my investments- I can't get fast
returns that way but that's just the point.
Don't you mean "It was a LOWER entropy (as in "more ordered"), strongly structured socio-economic
arrangement, with a large difference in standard of living between 1st world"?
The entropy increased as a consequence of human guided globalization.
Of course, from a thermodynamic standpoint, the earth is not a closed system as it is continually
flooded with new energy in the form of solar radiation.
The Globalized Versailles Treaty -- Permit me a short laughter . The terms of the crippling
treaty were dictated by the victors largely on insecurities of France.
The crimes of the 1st against the 3rd go on even now- the only difference is that some of the
South like China and India are major nuclear powers now.
The racist crimes in the US are even more flagrant- the Blacks whose labour as slaves allowed
for cotton revolution enabling US capitalists to ride the industrial horse are yet to be rehabilitated
, Obama or no Obama. It is a matter of profound shame.
The benefits of Globalization have gone only to the cartel of 1st and 3rd World Capitalists.
And they are very happy as the lower classes keep fighting. Very happy indeed.
The gorgon cry of the past is all over the present , including in " unsuspecting" paying folks
of today! Blacks being brought to US as slave agricultural labour was Globalisation. Their energy
vibrated the machinery of Economics subsequently. What Nationalism and where is it hiding pray?
Bogus analysis here , yes.
The reigning social democratic parties in Europe today are not the Swedish traditional parties
of yesteryear they have morphed into neoliberal austerians committed to globalization and export
driven economic models at any cost (CETA vote recently) and most responsible for the economic
collapse in the EU
I wonder they chose Chinese imports as the cause of the right-wing shift, when they themselves
admit that the shift started in the 1990s. At that time, there were few Chinese imports and China
was not even part of the WHO.
If they are thinking of movements like the Lega Nord and Vlaams Blok, the reasons are clearly
not to be found in imports, but in immigration, the welfare state and lack of national homogeneity,
perceived or not.
And the beginnings of the precariat.
So it is not really the globalization of commerce that did it, but the loss of relevance of
national and local identities.
Correlation does not imply causation, but lack of correlation definitely excludes it.
The Lega was formed in the 1980s, Vlaams Blok at the end of the '70s. They both had their best
days in the 1990s. Chinese imports at the time were insignificant.
I cannot find the breakdown of Chinese imports per EU country, but here are the total Chinese
exports since 1983:
China was not a significant exporter until the 2001 inclusion in WTO: it cannot possibly
have caused populist uprisings in Italy and Belgium in the 1990s. It was probably too early even
for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, who was killed in 2002, Le Pen's electoral success in the
same year, Austria's FPOE in 1999, and so on.
The timescales just do not match. Whatever was causing "populism", it was not Chinese imports,
and I can think of half a dozen other, more likely causes.
Furthermore, the 1980s and 1990s were something of an industrial renaissance for Lombardy and
Flanders: hardly the time to worry about Chinese imports.
And if you look at the map. the country least affected by the import shock (France) is the
one with the strongest populist movement (Le Pen).
People try to conflate Trump_vs_deep_state and Brexit with each other, then try to conflate this "anglo-saxon"
populism with previous populisms in Europe, and try to deduce something from the whole exercise.
That "something" is just not there and the exercise is pointless. IMHO at least.
European regionalism is often the result of the rise of the EU as a new, alternative national
government in the eyes of the disgruntled regions. Typically there are three levels of government,
local, regional (states) and national. With the rise of the EU we have a fourth level, supra-national.
But to the Flemish, Scottish, Catalans, etc, they see the EU as a potential replacement for the
National-level governments they currently are unhappy being under the authority of.
Capitalism should be evolving but it went backwards. Keynesian capitalism evolved from the
free market capitalism that preceded it. The absolute faith in markets had been laid low by 1929
and the Great Depression.
After the Keynesian era we went back to the old free market capitalism of neoclassical economics.
Instead of evolving, capitalism went backwards. We had another Wall Street Crash that has laid
low the once vibrant global economy and we have entered into the new normal of secular stagnation.
In the 1930s, Irving Fisher studied the debt deflation caused by debt saturated economies. Today
only a few economists outside the mainstream realise this is the problem today.
In the 1930s, Keynes realized only fiscal stimulus would pull the US out of the Great Depression,
eventually the US implemented the New Deal and it started to recover. Today we use monetary policy
that keeps asset prices up but cannot overcome the drag of all that debt in the system and its
associated repayments.
In the 1920s, they relied on debt based consumption, not realizing how consumers will eventually
become saturated with debt and demand will fail. Today we rely on debt based consumption again,
Greece consumed on debt. until it maxed out on debt and collapsed.
In the 1930s Keynes realized, income was just as important as profit as this produced a
sustainable system that does not rely on debt to maintain demand. Keynes was involved with
the Bretton-Woods agreement after the Second World War and recycled the US surplus to Europe to
restore trade when Europe lay in ruins. Europe could rebuild itself and consume US products, everyone
benefitted.
Today there are no direct fiscal transfers within the Euro-zone and it is polarizing. No one
can see the benefits of rebuilding Greece, to allow it to carry on consuming the goods from surplus
nations and it just sinks further and further into the mire. There is a lot to be said for capitalism
going forwards rather than backwards and making the same old mistakes a second time.
The ECB didn't listen and killed Greece with austerity and is laying low the Club-Med nations.
Someone who knows what they are doing, after studying the Great Depression and Japan after 1989.
Let's keep him out of the limelight; he has no place on the ship of fools running the show.
DEBT on Debt with QEs+ ZRP ( borrowing from future) was the 'solution' by Bernanke to mask
the 2008 crisis and NOT address the underlying structural reforms in the Banking and the Financial
industry. He was part of the problem for housing problem and occurred under his watch! He just
kicked the can with explosive credit growth ( but no corresponding growth in the productive Economy!)and
easy money!
We have a 'Mother of all bubbles' at our door step. Just matter of time when it will BLOW and
NOT if! There is record levels of DEBT ( both sovereign, public and private) in the history of
mankind, all over the World.
DEBT has been used as a panacea for all the financial problems by CBers including Bernanke!
Fed's balance sheet was than less 1 Trillion in 2008 ( for all the years of existence of our Country!)
but now over 3.5 Trillions and climbing!
Kicking the can down the road is like passing the buck to some one (future generations!). And
you call that solution by Mr. Bernanke? Wow!
Will they say again " No one saw this coming'? when next one descends?
The independent Central Banks that don't know what they are doing as can be seen from their
track record.
The FED presided over the dot.com bust and 2008, unaware that they were happening and of their
consequences. Alan Greenspan spots irrational exuberance in the markets in 1996 and passes comment.
As the subsequent dot.com boom and housing booms run away with themselves he says nothing.
The money supply is flat in the recession of the early 1990s.
Then it really starts to take off as the dot.com boom gets going which rapidly morphs into
the US housing boom, courtesy of Alan Greenspan's loose monetary policy.
When M3 gets closer to the vertical, the black swan is coming and you have an out of control
credit bubble on your hands (money = debt).
We can only presume the FED wasn't looking at the US money supply, what on earth were they
doing?
The BoE is aware of how money is created from debt and destroyed by repayments of that debt.
"Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without
limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive
banking system."
The BoE's statement was true, but is not true now as banks can securitize bad loans and get
them off their books. Before 2008, banks were securitising all the garbage sub-prime mortgages,
e.g. NINJA mortgages, and getting them off their books. Money is being created freely and without
limit, M3 is going exponential before 2008.
Bad debt is entering the system and no one is taking any responsibility for it. The credit
bubble is reflected in the money supply that should be obvious to anyone that cares to look.
Ben Bernanke studied the Great Depression and doesn't appear to have learnt very much.
Irving Fisher studied the Great Depression in the 1930s and comes up with a theory of debt
deflation. A debt inflated asset bubble collapses and the debt saturated economy sinks into debt
deflation. 2008 is the same as 1929 except a different asset class is involved.
1929 – Margin lending into US stocks
2008 – Mortgage lending into US housing
Hyman Minsky carried on with his work and came up with the "Financial Instability Hypothesis"
in 1974.
Steve Keen carried on with their work and spotted 2008 coming in 2005. We can see what Steve
Keen saw in 2005 in the US money supply graph above.
The independent Central Banks that don't know what they are doing as can be seen from their
track record.
Good to see studies confirming what was already known.
This apparently surprised:
On the contrary, as globalisation threatens the success and survival of entire industrial
districts, the affected communities seem to have voted in a homogeneous way, regardless of
each voter's personal situation.
It is only surprising for people not part of communities, those who are part of communities
see how it affects people around them and solidarity with the so called 'losers' is then shown.
Seems like radical right is the preferred term, it does make it more difficult to sympathize
with someone branded as radical right . The difference seems to be between the radical liberals
vs the conservative. The radical liberals are too cowardly to propose the laws they want, they
prefer to selectively apply the laws as they see fit. Either enforce the laws or change the laws,
anything else is plain wrong.
Socialism for the upper classes, capitalism for the lower classes? That will turn out well.
Debt slaves and wage slaves will revolt. That is all the analysis the OP requires. The upper class
will respond with suppression, not policy reversal every time. Socialism = making everyone equally
poor (obviously not for the upper classes who benefit from the arrangement).
Regrettably today we have socialism for the wealthy, with all the benefits of gov regulations,
sympathetic courts and legislatures etc. etc.
Workers are supposed to take care for themselves and the devil take the hind most. How many
workers get fired vs the 1%, when there is a failure in the company plan?
The Romans are the basis. Patricians, Equites and Plebs. Most of us here are clearly plebeian.
Time to go place some bets, watch the chariot races and gladiatorial fights, and get my bread
subsidy. Ciao.
Globalization created winners and losers throughout the world. The winners liked it, the losers
didn't. Democracy is based on the support of the majority.
The majority in the East were winners. The majority in the West were losers.
The Left has maintained its support of neoliberal globalisation in the West. The Right has
moved on. There has been a shift to the Right. Democracy is all about winners and losers and whether
the majority are winning or losing. It hasn't changed.
Globalization( along with communication -internet and transportation) made the Labor wage arbitration,
easy in favor of capital ( Multi-Nationals). Most of the jobs gone overseas will NEVER come back.
Robotic revolution will render the remaining jobs, less and less!
The 'new' Economy by passed the majority of lower 80-90% and favored the top 10%. The Losers
and the Winners!
80-90% of Bonds and Equities ( at least in USA) are owned by top 10 %. 0.7% own 45% of
global wealth. 8 billionaires own more than 50% of wealth than that of bottom 50% in our Country!
The Rich became richer!
The tension between Have and Have -Nots has just begun, as Marx predicted!
I think it's about time that we stopped referring to opposition to globalization as a product
or policy of the "extreme right". It would be truer to say that globalization represents a temporary,
and now fading, triumph of certain ideas about trade and movement of people and capital which
have always existed, but were not dominant in the past. Fifty years ago, most mainstream political
parties were "protectionist" in the sense the word is used today. Thirty years ago, protectionism
was often seen as a left)wing idea, to preserve standards of living and conditions of employment
(Wynne Godley and co). Today, all establishment political parties in the West have swallowed neoliberal
dogma, so the voters turn elsewhere, to parties outside the mainstream. Often, it's convenient
politically to label them "extreme right", although in Europe some left-wing parties take basically
the same position. If you ignore peoples' interests, they won't vote for you. Quelle surprise!
as Yves would say.
Yes, there are many reasons to be skeptical of too much globalization such as energy considerations.
I think another interesting one is exchange rates.
One of the important concepts of MMT is the importance of having a flexible exchange rate to
have full power over your currency. This is fine as far as it goes but tends to put hard currencies
against soft currencies where a hard currency can be defined as one that has international authority/acceptance.
Having flexible exchange rates also opens up massive amounts of financial speculation relative
to fluctuations of these currencies against each other and trying to protect against these fluctuations.
""Keynes' proposal of the bancor was to put a barrier between national currencies, that is
to have a currency of account at the global level. Keynes warned that free trade, flexible exchange
rates and free movement of capital globally were incompatible with maintaining full employment
at the local level""
""Sufficiency provisioning also means that trade would be discouraged rather than encouraged.""
Local currencies can work very well locally to promote employment but can have trouble when
they reach out to get resources outside of their currency space especially if they have a soft
currency. Global sustainability programs need to take a closer look at how to overcome this sort
of social injustice. (Debt or Democracy)
As has already been pointed out so eloquently here in the comments section, economic nationalism
is not necessarily the preserve of the right, nor is it necessarily the same thing as nationalism.
In the UK the original, most vociferous objectors to EEC membership in the 70s (now the EU)
were traditionally the Left, on the basis that it would gradually erode labour rights and devalue
the cost of labour in the longer term. Got that completely wrong obviously .
In the same way that global trade has become synonymous with globalisation, the immigration
debate has been hijacked and cynically conflated with free movement of (mainly low cost, unskilled)
labour and race when they are all VERY different divisive issues.
The other point alluded to in the comments above is the nature of free trade generally. The
accepted (neoliberal) wisdom being that 'collateral damage' is unfortunate but inevitable, but
it is pretty much an unstoppable or uncontrollable force for the greater global good, and the
false dichotomy persists that you either embrace it fully or pull up all the drawbridges with
nothing in between.
One of the primary reasons that some competing sectors of some Western economies have done
so badly out of globalisation is that they have adhered to 'free market principles' whilst other
countries, particularly China, clearly have not with currency controls, domestic barriers to trade,
massive state subsidies, wage suppression etc
The China aspect is also fascinating when developed nations look at the uncomfortable 'morality
of global wealth distribution' often cited by proponents of globalisation as one of their wider
philanthropic goals. Bless 'em. What is clear is that highly populated China and most of its people,
from the bottom to the top, has been the primary beneficiaries of this global wealth redistribution,
but the rest of the developing world's poor clearly not quite so much.
The map on it's own, in terms of the English one time industrial Midlands & North West being
shown as an almost black hole, is in itself a kind of " Nuff Said ".
It is also apart from London, where the vast bulk of immigrants have settled.
The upcoming bye-election in Stoke, which could lead to U-Kip taking a once traditionally always
strong Labour seat, is right in the middle of that dark cloud.
The problem from the UK 's position, I suggest, is that autarky is not a viable proposition
so economic nationalism becomes a two-edged sword. Yes, of course, the UK can place restrictions
on imports and immigration but there will inevitably be retaliation and they will enter a game
of beggar my neighbour. The current government talks of becoming a beacon for free trade. If we
are heading to a more protectionist world, that can only end badly IMHO.
Unless we get some meaningful change in thinking on a global scale, I think we are heading
somewhere very dark whatever the relative tinkering with an essentially broken system.
The horse is long gone, leaving a huge pile of shit in it's stable.
As for what might happen, I do not know, but I have the impression that we are at the end of
a cycle.
This is quite interesting, but only part of the story. Interestingly the districts/provinces
suffering the most from the chinese import shock are usually densely populated industrial regions
of Europe. The electoral systems in Europe (I think all, but I did not check) usually do not weight
equally each district, favouring those less populated, more rural (which by the way tend to be
very conservative but not so nationalistic). These differences in vote weigthing may have somehow
masked the effect seen in this study if radical nationalistic rigth wing votes concentrate in
areas with lower weigthed value of votes. For instance, in Spain, the province of Soria is mostly
rural and certainly less impacted by chinese imports compared with, for instance, Madrid. But
1 vote in Soria weigths the same as 4 votes in Madrid in number of representatives in the congress.
This migth, in part, explain why in Spain, the radical rigth does not have the same power as in
Austria or the Netherlands. It intuitively fits the hypothesis of this study.
Nevertheless, similar processes can occur in rural areas. For instance, when Spain entered
the EU, french rural areas turned nationalistic against what they thougth could be a wave of agricultural
imports from Spain. Ok, agricultural globalization may have less impact in terms of vote numbers
in a given country but it still can be politically very influential. In fact spanish entry more
that 30 years ago could still be one of the forces behind Le Penism.
All this statistical math and yada yada to explain a rise in vote for radical right from 3%
in 1985 to 5% now on average? And only a 0.7% marginal boost if your the place really getting
hammmered by imports from China? If I'm reading it right, that is, while focusing on Figure 2.
The real "shock" no pun intended, is the vote totals arent a lot higher everywhere.
Then the Post concludes with reference to a "surge in support" - 3% to 5% or so over 30 years
is a surge? The line looks like a pretty steady rise over 3 decades.
Maybe I'm missing sommething here.
Also what is this thing they're callling an "Open World" of the past 30 years? And why is that
in danger from more balanced trade? It makes no sense. Even back in the 60s and 70s people could
go alll over the world for vacations. Or at least most places they coould go. If theh spent their
money they'd make friends. Greece even used to be a goood place people went and had fun on a beach.
I think this one is a situation of math runing amuck. Math running like a thousand horses over
a hill trampling every blade of grass into mud.
I bet the China factor is just a referent for an entire constellatio of forces that probably
don't lend themselves (no pun intended) partiicularly well to social science and principal component
analysis - as interesting as that is for those who are interested in that kind of thing (which
I am acctually).
Also, I wouldn't call this "free trade". Not that the authors do either, but trade means reciprocity
not having your livelihood smashed the like a pinata at Christmas with all your candy eaten by
your "fellow countrymen". I wouldn't call that "trade". It's something else.
Regarding your first point, it is a small effect but it is all due to the China imports impact,
you have to add the growth of these parties due to other reasons such as immigration to get the
full picture of their growth. Also I think the recent USA election was decided by smaller percentage
advantages in three States?
Globalisation is nothing but free trade extended to the entire world. Free trade is a tool
used to prevent competition. By flooding countries with our cheaper exports, they do not develop
the capacity to compete with us by making their own widgets. So, why are we shocked when those
other countries return the favor and when they get the upper hand, we respond in a protectionist
way? It looks to me that those countries who are now competing with us in electronics, automobiles,
etc. only got to develop those industries in their countries because of protectionism.
Refugees in great numbers are a symptom of globalization, especially economic refugees but
also political and environmental ones. This has strained the social order in many countries that
have accepted them in and it's one of the central issues that the so-called "right" is highlighting.
It is no surprise there has been an uproar over immigration policy in the US which is an issue
of class as much as foreign policy because of the disenfranchisement of large numbers of workers
on both sides of the equation - those who lost their jobs to outsourcing and those who emigrated
due to the lack of decent employment opportunities in their own countries.
We're seeing the tip of the iceberg. What will happen when the coming multiple environmental
calamities cause mass starvation and dislocation of coastal populations? Walls and military forces
can't deter hungry, desperate, and angry people.
The total reliance and gorging on fossil energy by western countries, especially the US, has
mandated military aggression to force compliance in many areas of the world. This has brought
a backlash of perpetual terrorism. We are living under a dysfunctional system ruled by sociopaths
whose extreme greed is leading to world war and environmental collapse.
Who created the REFUGEE PROBLEMS in the ME – WEST including USA,UK++
Obama's DRONE program kept BOMBING in SEVEN Countries killing innocents – children and women!
All in the name of fighting Terrorism. Billions of arms to sale Saudi Arabia! Wow!
Where were the Democrats and the Resistance and Women's march? Hypocrites!
Globalisation has caused a surge in support for nationalist and radical right political
platforms.
Just a reminder that nationalism doesn't have to be associated with the radical right. The left
is not required to reject it, especially when it can be understood as basically patriotism, expressed
as solidarity with all of your fellow citizens.
Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be a move in that direction.
Well, that may be true as far as Trump's motivations are concerned, but a major component (the
most important?) of the TPP was strong restraint of trade, a protectionist measure, by intellectual
property owners.
Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost
ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers'
Japan has long been 'smart' protectionist, and this has helped prevent the 'loser' problem, in
part because Japan, being nationalist, makes it a very high priority to create/maintain a society
in which almost all Japanese are more or less middle class. So, it is a fact that protectionism
has been and can be associated with more egalitarian societies, in which there are few 'losers'
like we see in the West. But the U.S. and most Western countries have a long way to go if they
decide to make the effort to be more egalitarian. And, of course, protectionism alone is not enough
to make most of the losers into winners again. You'll need smart skills training, better education
all around, fewer low-skill immigrants, time, and, most of all strong and long-term commitment
to making full employment at good wages national priority number one.
and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies.
Growth has been week since the 2008, even though markets are as free as they've ever been. Growth
requires a lot more consumers with willingness and cash to spend on expensive, high-value-added
goods. So, besides the world finally escaping the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, exporting
countries need prosperous consumers either at home or abroad, and greater economic security. And
if a little bit of protectionism generates more consumer prosperity and economic stability, exporting
countries might benefit overall.
The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation.
Well, yes, the world needs more inclusivity, but globalization doesn't need to be part of the
picture. Keep your eyes on the prize: inclusivity/equality, whether latched onto nationally, regionally,
'internationally' or globally, any which way is fine! But prioritization of globalization over
those two is likely a victory for more inequality, for more shoveling of our wealth up to the
ruling top 1%.
"... In the conclusion, he says "I argued that it is the roach motel of currencies. Like the Hotel
California of the song: you can check in, but you can't check out." To be precise, that's true of the
Roach Motel (see here , if you don't know what that's all about), but, according to the Eagles, you
can actually check out of the Hotel California, though you can never leave (hmm... sounds kind of like
"Brexit"...). ..."
"... In any case, the fact it hangs together because eurozone members feel trapped by the costs
of exit is hardly an affirmative case for the single currency. ..."
Barry Eichengreen column headlined "Don't Sell the Euro Short. It's Here to Stay"
He writes:
Two forms of glue hold the euro together. First, the economic costs of break-up would be great.
The minute investors heard that Greece was seriously contemplating reintroducing the drachma with
the purpose of depreciating it against the euro, or against a "new Deutsche mark," they would
wire all their money to Frankfurt. Greece would experience the mother of all banking crises. The
"new Deutsche mark" would then shoot through the roof, destroying Germany's export industry.
More generally, those predicting, or advocating, the euro's demise tend to underestimate the
technical difficulties of reintroducing national currencies.
In the conclusion, he says "I argued that it is the roach motel of currencies. Like the Hotel
California of the song: you can check in, but you can't check out." To be precise, that's true of
the Roach Motel (see here
, if you don't know what that's all about), but,
according to the Eagles,
you can actually check out of the Hotel California, though you can never leave (hmm... sounds
kind of like "Brexit"...).
In any case, the fact it hangs together because eurozone members feel trapped by the costs
of exit is hardly an affirmative case for the single currency. In Greece's case, its hard to
believe that the costs of exit really would have been higher than the costs of staying; this
FT Alphablog post by Matthew Klein pointed out this figure from the
IMF's Article IV report :
The fact that the eurozone rolls on with no sign that a depression in one of its smaller constituent
economies is enough to bring about a fundamental change is disturbing. It wouldn't be able to ignore
an election of Marine LePen as President of France -
Gavyn Davies
considers the consequences of that.
"The fact that the eurozone rolls on with no sign that a depression in one of its smaller
constituent economies is enough to bring about a fundamental change is disturbing."
Why so? Isn't it in fact encouraging, a sign that the eurozone can withstand such problems
(especially a problem in one of its smaller economies)? There's scant reason to think it would
be a good thing if the eurozone opted for "fundamental change" every time one of its constituent
nations experienced a problem.
Fair enough - it is true that the Greek crisis didn't cause the euro to break up at least.
But I think what happened in Greece (and Ireland to an extent) is more than a local problem; it
revealed a fundamental design flaw which they haven't fully confronted - the lack of a "banking
union". From the outset, economists doubted whether the euro area met the traditional criteria
for an optimum currency area (OCA), and those issues are relevant, but I think Greece shows that
a banking union (i.e., shared lender of last resort, banking regulation and deposit insurance)
is necessary to make it work. I.e., if Greek banks were european banks, the bank-sovereign "doom
loop" could be circumvented. The euro area needs a way for countries to go bankrupt without bringing
their banks down with them.
I tend to agree with you regarding the necessity for a "banking union"; not having one is
indeed a design flaw, and no, it hasn't been confronted. Does that mean the eurozone's days are
numbered? Could be, but of course we won't know for certain-sure until the breakup does (or doesn't)
happen. So it goes.
...So my question for the degrowth community is whether declining investment is an occasion
for celebration? Does this mean that economic policy is actually getting something right?
Here's one answer I won't accept: we don't care about growth in general, just growth of bad
stuff, like fossil fuels, accumulation of waste, destruction of coastlines, etc. That isn't a
degrowth position. Everyone wants more of the good and less of the bad, however they define it.
I'm in favor of only toothsome pizza crusts and I'm dead set against the soggy kind, but that's
not the same as being on a diet.
This is a practical, policy-relevant question. There are many smart economists trying to understand
the investment slump so they can devise policies to turn it around. You'll notice this concern
is prominent in the writing on increasing industrial concentration, the shareholder value obsession,
globalization and outsourcing, and other topics. The goal of these researchers is to reform corporate
and market structure in order to restore a higher rate of investment, among other things. That
of course would tend to accelerate economic growth. So what's the degrowth position on all this?
Should economists be looking for additional measures to discourage investment?
Again, please don't tell me that it's just investment in "bads" that needs to be discouraged.
That's a given across the entire spectrum of economic rationality (which is admittedly somewhat
narrower than the political spectrum). In the aggregate, is it good that investment is trending
down?
My own view, as readers of this blog will know (see here and here), is that degrowth is a suicide
cult masquerading as a political position. I'm pretty sure that radically transforming our economy
to make it sustainable will involve a tremendous amount of investment and new production, and
it seems clear to me that boosting living standards through more and better consumption is both
politically and ethically essential. But I could be wrong. I would sincerely appreciate intelligent
arguments from the degrowth side.
[Asked and answered, sort of. Degrowth or beneficial degrowth is relative to what metrics (i.e.,
resources rather than capital) and realistically a far enough ways from where we are now to be
moot.]
I think this is too simplistic. There is (and has always been) a growing realization that more
is not always better. This insight is not uniform for any given geographic or socioeconomic population
group, but often informed by how one relates to the economic process (which correlates with age),
individually as well as at the peer group level.
When a larger group is exposed to a situation where the trappings of success are hard to obtain
(e.g. younger people coming out of school/college into a bad job market), or where there is an
appearance that new technology/gadgets may be initially exciting but don't really translate into
better quality of life or better effectiveness of work/activities ("productivity"), or even degrade
either (more typical for older people who are not seeing new gadgets/technologies for the first
time?), then rejection of whatever is proclaimed as "improvement" can become socially acceptable.
I'm also at the point where I don't really want new stuff, because my impression is that it
is generally not better than the previous edition, or if better, then not better in a write-home-about-it
way. And the realization many acquisitions create more liabilities than benefits in the long term
(for one thing, accumulation of junk and need to throw out "something" - which I may not really
want to throw out).
A problem with today's views about globalization is that they look backward rather than forward.
The future's globalization is much different from the past's globalization. In particular, growing
nationalism is the future in the places, such as China, that have benefited from globalization.
By that I mean China is beginning to produce goods for China firms rather than for western firms
to compete with goods produced for western (American) firms including goods produced in China
for western firms.
It's a much different dynamic than what we have experienced in the past 30 years. And the response
to the new globalization should (and will) be much different.
Ironically, Trump's views about globalization come closer to what will be the response as western
firms adjust to the new globalization. Is Trump that smart? No, it's just that everybody else
is that dumb.
1) Mexican workers are paid ~$1 an
hour and US workers doing the same work are paid ~$13 hour
and US plants are closing and moving to Mexico
and
2) ..."But some companies that produce goods in Mexico say
there's no going back to the U.S. That includes Delphi.
The company just announced a plan for more layoffs in
Warren, where only 1,500 employees remain.
Speaking at Barclay's Global Automotive Conference in New
York in December, Delphi's chief financial officer Joe
Massaro explained what he thought would happen to Delphi
under several Trump trade scenarios.
If Trump were to close the border with Mexico outright,
"in less than a week, all the people who voted for him in
Michigan and Ohio would be out of work," Massaro argued,
underscoring the fact that many factories in the U.S.,
including car makers in Detroit, depend on parts made in
Mexico.
If the United States were to withdraw from NAFTA and start
taxing imports from Mexico again, Delphi would continue doing
business in Mexico, he said. The company would pass on the
extra cost to its suppliers or to consumers, or would find a
way to reduce its production costs - which could mean layoffs
or salary cuts in Mexico."...
Trump can't fix that discrepancy in worker pay. Reagan's
so-called Free Trade began a race to the bottom for US
workers. It was known and discussed at the time. Reagan and
the Republican Party did not stand up for US workers and
neither did the Democrats in the day. Workers pay was
bartered off for cheaper goods to be bought at our stores.
That's the bargain made by Wall Street and D.C. and accepted
by American Workers who liked paying less at the store, not
realizing it meant they would be paid less - eventually.
And they certainly never dreamed it meant that in 20+
years their jobs would disappear overseas too.
"... Blackmailing Russia can probably be viewed as just an attempt to avoid asking uncomfortable questions (Like who is guilty and who should go to jail ;-) , and to distract the attention from the real problems. As if the return us to the good old Obama days of universal deceit (aka "change we can believe in") , can solve the problems the country faces. ..."
"... As Galbright put it: "People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." -- John Kenneth Galbraith ..."
"... Neoliberal economists often talk about "flexible labor markets" as desirable but I don't think Krugman ever has. Maybe he has in a roundabout, indirect way. ..."
At risk of being flamed by everybody else with an opinion on this matter, I can see both sides
of the issue:
You are correct if Trump is not selling out to Russia.
You are also correct if (1) Trump *is* selling out to Russia, *AND* (2) his voters were aware
that he is selling out to Russia, but voted for him with eyes wide open on that issue.
In either of those two cases the Intelligence Community leakers are trying to subvert the democratic
will of the people in elected Trump president.
You are wrong if: (1) Trump is selling out to Russia, *AND* (2) his voters did not believe
it when they voted for him. In this case the Intelligence Community leakers, in my opinion, are
patriotic heroes.
Just because the Intellligence Community is not laying the sources of its intelligence out
in the open on the table does not mean that the leakers are wrong. My suspicion is that they are
correct (see, e.g., Josh Marshall today. Google is your friend.) The deeper problem is that I
suspect Trump's voters simply don't care, even if the Intelligence Community is correct.
I did a mini max regret: More regret with Clinton sold out to neoliberal profiteering war mongers
who care only for perpetual war, the max regret I see is unneeded nuclear war over a few hundred
thousand Estonians who hate Russia since the Hanseatic league was suppressed by Ivan the Terrible.
Lesser regret with Trump sold out to Russia* that would only bring China I against both US
and Russia in about 50 years.
*Trump sold to Russia is Clintonista/Stalinist fantasia sold by the yellow press.
I disagree. It is not enough that Trump voters were aware of Trump selling out to Russia and didn't
care; if there had been conclusive proof of that before the election, other people might have
come out to vote against him.
Besides, some of his voters might not care and some might.
In any case, whether the leakers are patriots or traitors does not have to do with subverting
"the will of the people". At the most extreme, leaks could lead to, say, impeachment, which is
another way to express the will of the people. (Or actually, the will of the plutocrats and their
Republican and Democratic running dogs, but that's another discussion).
New Deal democrat and couple of other Hillary enthusiasts here used to sing quite a different
song as for Hillary bathroom email server ;-).
Russia bogeyman (or "ruse" as Trump aptly defined it) is now used to swipe under the carpet
the crisis of neoliberal ideology and the collapse of Democratic Party which is still dominated
by Clinton wing of soft neoliberals). Chickhawks like a couple of people here (for example, im1dc),
are always want to fight another war, but using some other ("less valuable") peoples bodies as
the target of enemy fire.
Democratic Party now is playing an old and very dirty trick called "Catch the thief", when
they are the thief.
Why we are not discussing the key issue: how the redistribution of wealth up during the last
two decades destabilized the country both economically and politically?
Also it is unclear whether a simple, non-painful way out exists, or this is just something
like a pre-collapse stage as happened with Brezhnev socialism in the USSR. The Damocles sword
of "peak/plato oil" hangs over neoliberal globalization. That's an undeniable and a very important
factor. Another ten (or twenty) years of the "secular stagnation", and then what? Can the current
globalized economy function with oil prices above $100 without severe downsizing.
The economic plunder of other countries like the plunder of xUSSR economic space (which helped
to save and return to growth the USA economics in 90th, providing half a billion new customers
and huge space for "dollarization") is no longer possible as there are no any new USSR that can
disintegrate.
And "artificial disintegration" of the countries to open them to neoliberal globalization (aka
"controlled chaos") like practiced in Libya and Syria proved to be quite costly and have unforeseen
side effects.
The forces that ensured Trump victory are forces that understood at least on intuitive level
that huge problems with neoliberalism need something different that kicking the can down the road,
and that Hillary might well means the subsequent economic collapse, or WWIII, or both.
Trump might not have a solution, but he was at least courageous enough to ask uncomfortable
questions.
Blackmailing Russia can probably be viewed as just an attempt to avoid asking uncomfortable
questions (Like who is guilty and who should go to jail ;-) , and to distract the attention from
the real problems. As if the return us to the good old Obama days of universal deceit (aka "change
we can believe in") , can solve the problems the country faces.
And when neoliberal presstitutes in MSM now blackmail Trump and try to stage "purple"
color revolution, this might well be a sign of desperation, not strength.
They have no solution for the country problem, they just want to kick the can down the road
and enjoy their privileges while the country burns.
As Galbright put it: "People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather
than surrender any material part of their advantage." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
If you are peddling developed land then you want low interest rates for your customers so that
you can get the highest price for your developments. Still there might theoretically be a narrow
channel that your deal might slip through if commercial real estate were for some reason assigned
a lower risk premium than residential, but ordinarily the opposite is true.
A higher percentage of new businesses fail than new households and if more new households fail
then even more new businesses will fail right along with them.
The one possibility for Trump to have it this way would be that he crashes the US economy and
all new commercial development would be for Russian tourist to visit America while either deflation
and depression or Weimar scale inflation was suppressing prices for US goods in real ruble terms.
I expect that if you look at the pre-bellum South, there will be plenty of examples of stagnant
wages, low interest rates...
In Mexico, wages never rose regardless of monetary policy.
The point that I've been making for a while: despite a few progressive economists delusions
for rapid economic growth to tighten wages, it won't happen for the following reasons.
1) most employers will just say 'no,' probably encouraged centrally by the US Chamber of Commerce
and other industry associations. Collusion? You bet.
2) employers will just move jobs abroad, where there's plenty of slack. Flexible labor markets
has been one of the big goals of globalization, promoted by the usual suspects including 'librul'
economists like Krugman.
3) immigration, which will be temporarily constrained as Trump deports people, but will ultimately
be resumed as employers demand cheap, malleable labor.
I disagree. It happened in late 90s. The ideas you mention are factors, including the decline
of unions.
What has happened in recent decades is that asset bubbles - like the dot.com and housing bubbles
- have popped sending a high pressure economy into a low pressure one with higher unemployment.
Neoliberal economists often talk about "flexible labor markets" as desirable but I don't
think Krugman ever has. Maybe he has in a roundabout, indirect way.
Fed funds rates were consistently about double the rate of inflation.
The fact that the economy boomed and wages increased was due to the tech boom--an unrepeatable
anomaly. The Fed and Clinton administration unsuccessfully attempted to stifle it with high rates
and budget balancing.
To make sure that wages never rose again, Clinton signed China PNTR, granting China access
to WTO, ushering in the great sucking sound of jobs going to China. Krugman cheered.
If the neoliberal elite can't part with at least a small part of their privileges, the political
destabilization will continue and they might lose everything.
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any
material part of their advantage." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
BY: Right. Brexit and maybe even Trump's
victory say something about the arrogance of the elite.
Bankers say that free trade should prevail. Even we,
academics-how many of us are actually looking into
distribution and redistribution? Few. We're still spending
time on writing dynamic models to talk about the gains of
trade.
Even if old-fashioned free trade is correct, the speed of
adjustment is very important. We know that rapid adjustment
is no good. How many of us ask ourselves what should be the
adjustment in trade? We rarely talk about that.
The world may have changed. I gave you my conjecture. But we
are also arrogant. We hold on to our old beliefs on the gains
of trade.
----
Very Dani Rodrick, I thought. Interesting stuff.
Also, this is something that I think you'll like. I have not
read all of it yet but here is the link and an excerpt:
http://evonomics.com/time-new-economic-thinking-based-best-science-available-not-ideology/
"Some will cling on to the idea that the consensus can be
revived. They will say we just need to defend it more
vigorously, the facts will eventually prevail, the populist
wave is exaggerated, it's really just about immigration,
Brexit will be a compromise, Clinton won more votes than
Trump, and so on. But this is wishful thinking. Large swathes
of the electorate have lost faith in the neoliberal
consensus, the political parties that backed it, and the
institutions that promoted it. This has created an
ideological vacuum being filled by bad old ideas, most
notably a revival of nationalism in the US and a number of
European countries, as well as a revival of the hard
socialist left in some countries."
I think Peter K has been making similar points for a long
time now. Interesting stuff.
Consensus among whom? The economic-political elite? Maybe;
but certainly not among the general electorate. Most voters
were voting for parties out of habit, or on cultural issues
(for or against diversity and civil rights), or bread &
butter economic issues ("the Republicans will cut my taxes
and the regulation of my business" versus "the Democrats will
preserve my Medicare and Social Security"). I don't think
most voters had/have any clue of what neoliberalism is.
Well, you raise an excellent point. I don't have a solid
rejoinder but I will note that if even 5% of the electorate
changes its mind an election result can flip one way or the
other. But, yes, I agree with you that most voters are not
selecting a candidate based on which candidate's economic
philosophy is most closely aligned with theirs. Still,
especially in the primaries, where the voters are a different
population than the general, it could make a difference. I
would argue that it was just this difference that made
Sanders surprisingly popular among the Democratic primary
voters.
The question is to what extent people were voting FOR a
candidate, as AGAINST a candidate or the status quo. That's
the only point I was trying to make.
Most voters have neither the time, energy, inclination, or
knowledge base to delve into the issues to make an informed
decision on which candidate/platform most reflects their
values and aspirations. They subcontract out that vetting of
individual candidates to parties that they believe are
broadly reflective of their views.
This past general election, and its preceding primaries,
was the result of a broad revolt against the candidates
anointed by the parties' elites, indicating deep
dissatisfaction with the status quo.
"I think Peter K has been making similar points for a long
time now. Interesting stuff."
Yes I liked the as well.
Luigi Zingales is a member of the editorial board for Pro
Market and he had some piece published in the New York Times
about economics and politics (specifically Italian I think).
He was the first I read who compared Trump with Silvio
Berlusconi. Zingales discussed how Berlusconi was brought
down, by being treated as an ordinary conservative
politician. Perhaps the same will work with Trump.
Yes, I had read the evonomics piece and thought it was good.
Thanks. Eric Beinhocker makes some good points. I liked his
optimism as far as some forms of populism were concerned, and
had a slight hope that Donald Trump might turn into a
Theodore Roosevelt type of populist. That hope has
disappeared completely and now we face the realization that
we are truly completely screwed.
asymmetric information, and the recent illuminating example
of Wells Fargo's excellence in pushing products that
customers did not want nor need.
BY: Some financial "innovation" is faddish. It does not
create value.
GR: Approximately 9 percent of U.S. GDP is finance. Some
economists argue that probably 3-5 percent is useful for
allocating capital, storing value, smoothing consumptions,
and creating competition, and the rest is preying on
asymmetric information
"
~~Guy Roinik~
Do you see how this asymmetric information
plays out?
It is the retail vendor who keeps better information than
the retail customer. It is the vendor's expectations of
disinflation vs inflation rather than the customer's
expectations that control the change in M2V. Got it?
When vendor expects deflation he dumps inventory, but when
he expects inflation he holds on to inventory as he waits for
higher profit margins to arrive. He holds onto merchandise by
simply raising prices. But why do economists advertise the
reverse mechanism? Why does the status quo have a need for
distorting truth?
Inflation is offered to the proles as a substitute for tax
relief to the impoverished. Do you see how it works?
"
Tax relief for the wealthy will give you delicious inflation.
Now jump for it!
"
~~The Yea Sayers~
... A 2015 survey by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation
found there are more than 450 structurally deficient bridges
in the state, although the number is down from previous
years. Every working day, nearly 10 million cars, trucks, and
school buses cross these deteriorating overpasses. And then
there's the nation's rail system and airports, which lag far
behind other nations in speed, efficiency, and modernization.
...
Bridgework and a partial plate! Should we shift gears on
our interstate construction?
By building our long haul interstates as one-way roads
interleaved with roads going in other direction, we could
have twice as many roads but intersections could be much
simpler, efficient, and less confusing. Freeflow
overpass/underpass with turning ramps will save fuel thus
environment. Sure!
We waste lot of traffic control man hours and squad cars
that could be otherwise deployed towards solving crime and
crushing the mob. By proper design and construction of speed
bumps some of this highway patrol could be eliminated. Ceu!
Rather that short 2 foot bumps in the road, build smooth
slow and long valley and knoll that will not rattle your
frame and bill you for steering realignment but instead send
an 18 wheeler up into the air for a half gainer. This kind of
speed trap could eliminate lot of bad
The US neoliberal society is facing a lot of serious
problems, in many different domains, energy,
financial, political, moral. Looks like we live in
the society the is either close or is entering the
stage of the "perma crises" not just "secular
stagnation" as before in "golden years" of Bush II
and Obama.
But our problem is not called Donald Trump. It is
much deeper. He is just a symptom, an apt
manifestation of our problems, if you wish.
That's what Professor Krugman and his neoliberal
friends in NYT are missing in their jeremiad against
him.
Trump at least noticed 70,000 factories were lost;
robots ate homework story total nonsense :
,
February 10, 2017 at 09:37 PM
Trump is more reality based than free trade
enthusiast and corporate shills who helped destroy
the US by cheering on free trade
de-industrialization.
Krugman et al. not aware
Africa is devoid of industry while East Asia is
PACKED with manufacturing and where 90% of robots
are produced and used.
Trump is about the only sentient policymaker left
in America. GOD BLESS HIM AND HIS NOBLE WORK TO
RESTORE THE NATION ECONOMISTS WORKED SO HARD TO
DESTROY
libezkova -> Trump at least noticed
70,000 factories were lost; robots ate homework
story total nonsense...
,
February 11, 2017 at 05:04 AM
What has happened to "hope and change" is very
straightforward: it buried Democratic Party with its
lies and militarism and there is no way back.
That's why Trump. Obama said all the right things
and did the opposite. He has gutted the country and
obliterated the middle class while continuing
fighting wars of neoliberal expansion and conquest.
Dismissing Trump and Trump's voters as "deplorables"
gives Democrats like Krugman an excuse to avoid any
self examination about how the neoliberal policies
they advocated failed the majority of population of
the country and have alienated electorate.
The last two democrat presidents destroyed as
much of the New Deal as their Republican
counterparts and couldn't wait to gut the remnants
such as SS. That's undeniable.
As a result the key tenets of neoliberal ideology
are now as dead as the key postulated of Bolshevism
were in 1945. The rule of financial oligarchy
disguised as "Liberal democracy", globalization and
free trade, free markets as a substitute for
government, deregulation, de-industrialization,
letting market forces determine the characteristics
of employment, etc.
Does anybody here believes this sh*t? I doubt it.
Even those who advocate it, have doubts.
Still as a result of 36 years of brainwashing
large swathes of US society accept without
questioning the core tenets of neoliberalism much
like Soviet population assepted the key postulated
on Bolshevism. They believe that "the market" trumps
all other forms of organization of activities of the
society, that everything works better that way, that
markets are virtuous. As a result, they believe in
the false notion that the government is always and
ever getting in the way of markets and therefore
needs to be made as small and weak as possible.
If you read Michael Mann's, The Sources of Social
Power you will notice that he places Ideological
Power first in his four component model of social
power: ideological, economic, military, and
political.
Each of them create different but complementary
sources of power within a given society:
-- Ideological Power derives from the human need
to find ultimate meaning in life, to share norms and
values, and to participate in aesthetic and ritual
practices with others.
-- Economic Power derives from the human need to
extract, transform, distribute, and consume the
products of nature. Economic relations are powerful
because they combine the intensive mobilization of
labor with use of capital, trade, and production
chains
-- Military Power is based on refined,
concentrated and lethal violence.
-- Political Power is the centralized and
territorial regulation of social life. The basic
function of government is the provision of order
using this type of power.
The main tenets of neoliberalism are still very
powerfully embedded in people minds. But ideology is
dead and that spells troubles the same way as death
of Bolshevism spelled troubles for the USSR.
If by bolshevism you mean Soviet communism (the
party ideology), I don't know why you say it was
dead in 1945. The SU had just won a major war (OK,
not entirely on its own), and social development
undoubtedly trended up until at least the 70's.
Likewise in most other "communist" nations. It was
the transition from a largely agrarian society to
one based predominantly on industry and technology
(powered by fossil fuels, mostly), and much expanded
motor vehicle based transportation, like in the
West.
And the SU along with all other "communist" nations
stagnated and declined in the 80's, maybe late 70's.
The reasons are manifold, but part was corruption
and ineffectiveness of the decision making apparatus
by elites insulating themselves from problems and
feedback, and self-dealing (at least the top
echelons of the elites provided themselves access to
Western consumer goods). At the same time they clung
on to an increasingly ineffective central planning
regime that probably worked better in the early
stages, but was overwhelmed by complexity it
couldn't handle, aside from corruption. Heavy handed
oppression by a pervasive security apparatus could
not compensate for nor remove the underlying issues.
What you are missing is the "fish rots from the
head". After 1945 or somewhat later the ideology was
discredited. The idea that Bolshevism can produce
faster economic and technological growth at this
time was clearly seen by both the elite and "Russian
Intelligentsia" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligentsia
)
as false. And that fact was intuitively felt as
"something went wrong" by Soviet white-collar and
blue collar workers.
The same happens with neoliberalism in 2008.
Suddenly people see that the king is naked. That
redistribution of wealth up via "market mechanisms"
does not bring prosperity for everybody, just to the
top 10 or 20% of population. And top 1% becomes
filthy rich at the expense of everybody else. That's
the net result.
Like in the USSR brainwashing is so strong that
this zombie stage will last decades, but I do think
neoliberalism is doomed for the same reason that
Bolshevism was doomed if not in 1945, then in 70th.
It failed to deliver on its promises.
And if in the past people like Krugman were
viewed as gurus and their math perversions were
considered as some hidden revelation of truth about
the economics of modern society, now they are viewed
as corrupt academic stooges of financial oligarchy
they always were.
And their math exercises as another smoke screen
of charlatans who are pretending to be scientists.
Modern snake oil salesmen if you wish.
Krugman now can print his math equations
(especially differential equations, of which he was
so proud of ;-) shred them and eat them with borsch
to demonstrate some repentance...
If you said nothing as the US deindustrialized and became a
third world country, please be quiet now :
,
February 11, 2017 at 11:26
PM
Economists who cheered on de-industrialization and the
destruction of the US industrial base really don't have the
moral right to say much at this point.
You did nothing while the country burned to the ground and
now half of the US is a ghetto, and the other half is not a
ghetto only because of credit cards and exploding debt
levels.
Pres. Trump should invite free trade economists on a tour
of the destroyed cities: Gary, Camden, E. St. Louis etc.
"... More than any other economist of his century, Marx tied together the three major kinds of crisis that were occurring. His Theories of Surplus Value explained the two main forms of crises his classical predecessors had pointed to, and which the bourgeois revolutions of 1848 were fought over. These crises were the result of survivals from Europe's feudal epoch of landed aristocracy and banking fortunes. ..."
"... Financially, Marx pointed to the tendency of debts to grow exponentially, independently of the economy's ability to pay, and indeed faster than the economy itself. The rise in debt and accrual of interest was autonomous from the industrial capital and wage labor dynamics on which Volume I of Capital focused. Debts are self-expanding by purely mathematical rules – the "magic of compound interest." ..."
"... Industrial companies profit from labor not only by employing it, but by lending to customers. General Motors made most of its profits for many years by its credit arm, GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corp.), as did General Electric through its financial arm. Profits made by Macy's and other retailers on their credit card lending sometimes accounted for their entire earnings. ..."
"... This privatization of rents and their transformation into a flow of interest payments (shifting the tax burden onto wage income and corporate profits) represents a failure of industrial capitalism to free society from the legacies of feudalism. ..."
"... Marx expected economies to act in their long-term interest to increase the means of production and avoid unproductive rentier income, underconsumption and debt deflation. Believing that every mode of production was shaped by the technological, political and social needs of economies to advance, he expected banking and finance to become subordinate to these dynamics. ..."
"... It seemed that the banking system's role as allocator of credit would pave the way for a socialist organization of economies. Marx endorsed free trade on the ground that industrial capitalism would transform and modernize the world's backward countries. Instead, it has brought Western rentier finance and privatization of the land and natural resources, and even brought the right to use these country's currencies and financial systems as casinos. And in the advanced creditor nations, failure of the U.S. and European economies to recover from their 2008 financial crisis stems from leaving in place the reckless "junk mortgage" debts, whose carrying charges are absorbing income. Banks were saved instead of industrial economies, whose debts were left in place. ..."
"... No observer of Marx's epoch was so pessimistic as to expect finance capital to overpower industrial capitalism, engulfing economies as the world is seeing today. Discussing the 1857 financial crisis, Marx showed how unthinkable anything like the 2008-09 Bush-Obama bailout of financial speculators seemed to be in his day. "The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the reproduction process cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the Bank of England, give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values." [6] ..."
"... Marx wrote this reductio ad absurdum not dreaming that it would become the Federal Reserve's policy in autumn 2008. The U.S. Treasury paid off all of A.I.G.'s gambles and other counterparty "casino capitalist" losses at taxpayer expense, followed by the Federal Reserve buying junk mortgage packages at par. ..."
"... The failure to socialize banking (or even to complete its industrialization) has become the most glaring economic tragedy of Western industrial capitalism. It became the tragedy of post-Soviet Russia after 1991, letting its natural resources and industrial economy be financialized while failing to tax land and natural resource rent. The commanding heights were sold to domestic oligarchs and Western investors buying on credit with their own banks or in association with Western banks. This bank credit was simply created on computer keyboards. Such credit creation should be a public utility, but it has broken free from public regulation in the West. That credit is now reaching out to China and the post-Soviet economies as a means of appropriating their resources. ..."
"... Note: Marx described productive capital investment by the formula M–C–M´, signifying money (M) invested to produce commodities (C) that sell for yet more money (M´). But the growth of "usury capital" – government bond financing for war deficits, and consumer lending (mortgages, personal loans and credit card debt) – consist of the disembodied M–M´, making money simply from money in a sterile operation. ..."
The Paradox of Financialized Industrialization
By Michael Friday, October 16, 2015
These remarks were made at the World Congress on Marxism, 2015, at the School of Marxism, Peking
University, October 10, 2015. The presentation was part of a debate with Bertell Ollman (NYU).
I was honored to be made a permanent Guest Professor at China's most prestigious university.
When I lectured here at the Marxist School six years ago, someone asked me whether Marx was
right or wrong. I didn't know how to answer this question at the time, because the answer is so
complex. But at least today I can focus on his view of crises.
More than any other economist of his century, Marx tied together the three major kinds
of crisis that were occurring. His Theories of Surplus Value explained the two main forms of crises
his classical predecessors had pointed to, and which the bourgeois revolutions of 1848 were fought
over. These crises were the result of survivals from Europe's feudal epoch of landed aristocracy
and banking fortunes.
Financially, Marx pointed to the tendency of debts to grow exponentially, independently
of the economy's ability to pay, and indeed faster than the economy itself. The rise in debt and
accrual of interest was autonomous from the industrial capital and wage labor dynamics on which
Volume I of Capital focused. Debts are self-expanding by purely mathematical rules – the "magic
of compound interest."
We can see in America and Europe how interest charges, stock buybacks, debt leveraging and
other financial maneuverings eat into profits, deterring investment in plant and equipment by
diverting revenue to economically empty financial operations. Marx called finance capital "imaginary"
or "fictitious" to the extent that it does not stem from within the industrial economy, and because
– in the end – its demands for payment cannot be met. Calling this financial accrual a "void form
of capital."
[1] It was fictitious because it consisted of bonds, mortgages, bank loans and other rentier
claims on the means of production and the flow of wages, profit and tangible capital investment.
The second factor leading to economic crisis was more long-term: Ricardian land rent. Landlords
and monopolists levied an "ownership tax" on the economy by extracting rent as a result of privileges
that (like interest) were independent of the mode of production. Land rent would rise as economies
became larger and more prosperous. More and more of the economic surplus (profits and surplus
value) would be diverted to owners of land, natural resources and monopolies. These forms of economic
rent were the result of privileges that had no intrinsic value or cost of production. Ultimately,
they would push up wage levels and leave no room for profit. Marx described this as Ricardo's
Armageddon.
These two contributing forces to crisis, Marx pointed out, were legacies of Europe's feudal
origins: landlords conquering the land and appropriating natural resources and infrastructure;
and banks, which remained largely usurious and predatory, making war loans to governments and
exploiting consumers in petty usury. Rent and interest were in large part the products of wars.
As such, they were external to the means of production and its direct cost (that is, the value
of products).
Most of all, of course, Marx pointed to the form of exploitation of wage labor by its employers.
That did indeed stem from the capitalist production process. Bertell Ollman has just explained
that dynamic so well that I need not repeat it here.
Today's economic crisis in the West: financial and rent extraction, leading to debt deflation
Bertell Ollman has described how Marx analyzed economic crisis stemming from the inability of
wage labor to buy what it produces. That is the inner contradiction specific to industrial capitalism.
As described in Volume I of Capital, employers seek to maximize profits by paying workers as little
as possible. This leads to excessive exploitation of wage labor, causing underconsumption and
a market glut.
I will focus here on the extent to which today's financial crisis is largely independent of
the industrial mode of production. As Marx noted in Volumes II and III of Capital and Theories
of Surplus Value, banking and rent extraction are in many ways adverse to industrial capitalism.
Our debate is over how to analyze the crisis the Western economies are in today. To me, it
is first and foremost a financial crisis. The banking crisis and indebtedness stems mainly from
real estate mortgage loans – and also from the kind of massive fraud that Marx found characteristic
of the high finance of his day, especially in canal and railroad financing.
So to answer the question that I was asked about whether Marx was right or wrong, Marx certainly
provided the tools needed to analyze the crises that the industrial capitalist economies have
been suffering for the past two hundred years.
But history has not worked out the way Marx expected. He expected every class to act in its
own class interest. That is the only way to reasonably project the future. The historical task
and destiny of industrial capitalism, Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, was to free society
from the "excrescences" of interest and rent (mainly land and natural resource rent, along with
monopoly rent) that industrial capitalism had inherited from medieval and even ancient society.
These useless rentier charges on production are faux frais, costs that slow the accumulation of
industrial capital. They do not stem from the production process, but are a legacy of the feudal
warlords who conquered England and other European realms to found hereditary landed aristocracies.
Financial overhead in the form of usury-capital is, to Marx, a legacy of the banking families
that built up fortunes by war lending and usury.
Marx's concept of national income differs radically from today's National Income and Product
Accounts (NIPA). Every Western economy measures "output" as Gross National Product (GNP). This
accounting format includes the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector as part of the
economy's output. It does this because it treats rent and interest as "earnings," on the same
plane as wages and industrial profits – as if privatized finance, insurance and real estate are
part of the production process. Marx treated them as external to it. Their income was not "earned,"
but was "unearned." This concept was shared by the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and
other major classical economists. Marx was simply pressing classical economics to its logical
conclusion.
The interest of the rising class of industrial capitalists was to free economies from this
legacy of feudalism, from the unnecessary faux frais of production – prices in excess of real
cost-value. The destiny of industrial capitalism, Marx believed, was to rationalize economies
by getting rid of the idle landlord and banking class – by socializing land, nationalizing natural
resources and basic infrastructure, and industrializing the banking system – to fund industrial
expansion instead of unproductive usury.
If capitalism had achieved this destiny, it would have been left primarily with the crisis
between industrial employers and workers discussed in Volume I of Capital: exploiting wage labor
to a point where labor could not buy its products. But at the same time, industrial capitalism
would be preparing the way for socialism, because industrialists needed to conquer the political
stranglehold of the landed aristocracy and the financial power of banking. It needed to promote
democratic political reform to overcome the vested interests in control of Parliaments and hence
the tax system. Labor's organization and voting power would press its own self-interest and turn
capitalism into socialism.
China has indeed exemplified this path. But it has not occurred in the West.
All three kinds of crisis that Marx described are occurring. But the West is now in a chronic
depression – what has been called Debt Deflation. Instead of banking being industrialized as Marx
expected, industry is being financialized. Instead of democracy freeing economies from land rent,
natural resource rent and monopoly rent, the rentiers have fought back and taken control of Western
governments, legal systems and tax policy. The result is that we are seeing a lapse back to the
pre-capitalist problems that Marx described in Volumes II and III of Capital and Theories of Surplus
Value.
This is where the debate between Bertell Ollman and myself centers. My focus is on finance
and rent overwhelming industrial capitalism to impose a depression stemming from debt deflation.
This over-indebtedness is making the labor/capital problem worse, by weakening labor's political
and economic position. To make matters worse, labor parties in the West no longer are fighting
over economic issues, as they were prior to World War I.
My differences with Ollman and Roemer: I focus on non-production costs
Bertell follows Marx in focusing on the production sector: hiring labor to produce products, but
trying to get as much markup as possible – while underselling rivals. This is Marx's great contribution
to the analysis of capitalism and its mode of production – employing wage labor at a profit. I
agree with this analysis.
However, my focus is on the causes of today's crisis that are independent and autonomous from
production: rentier claims for economic rent, for income without work – "empty" pricing without
value. This focus on rent and interest is where I differ from that of Ollman, and also of course
from that of Roemer. Any model of the crisis must tie together finance, real estate (and other
rent-seeking) as well as industry and employment.
The rising debt overhead can be traced mathematically, as can the symbiosis of the Finance,
Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector. But the interactions are too complex to be made into
a single economic "model." I am especially worried that Roemer's model might be followed here
in China, because it overlooks the most dangerous tendencies threatening China today: Western
financial practice and its pro-rentier tax policy.
China has spent the last half-century solving Marx's "Volume I" problem: the relations between
labor and its employers, recycling the economic surplus into new means of production to provide
more output, higher living standards, and most obviously, more infrastructure (roads, railways,
airlines) and housing.
But right now, it is experiencing financial problems from credit creation going into the stock
market instead of into tangible capital formation and rising consumption standards. And of course,
China has experienced a large real estate boom. Land prices are rising in China, much as they
are in the West.
What would Marx have said about this? I think that he would have warned China not to relapse
into the pre-capitalist problems of finance funding real estate – turning the rising land rent
into interest – and into permitting housing prices to rise without taxing them away.
Soviet planning failed to take the rent-of-location into account when planning where to build
housing and factories. But at least the Soviet era did not force labor or industry to pay interest
or for rising housing prices. Government banks simply created credit where it was needed to expand
the means of production, to build factories, machinery and equipment, homes and office buildings.
What worries me about the political consequences of Roemer's model is that it focuses only
on what Marx said about the production sector and employer-labor relations. It does not ask how
"endowments" come into being – or how China has changed so radically in the past generation. It
therefore neglects the danger of industrial capitalism lapsing back into a rent-and-interest economy.
And by the same token, it underplays the threat to China and other socialist economies of adopting
the West's surviving pre-feudal practices of predatory Bubble Finance (debt leveraging to raise
prices) and wealth in the form of land-rent charges.
These two dynamics – interest and rent – represent a privatization of banking and land that
rightly are public utilities. Marx expected industrial capitalism to achieve this transition.
Certainly socialist economies must achieve it!
China has no need of foreign bank credit – except to cover the cost of imports and the foreign-exchange
cost of investment in other countries. But China's foreign exchange reserves already are large
enough to be basically independent of the U.S. dollar and euro. Meanwhile, the American and European
economies are suffering from chronic debt deflation and depression that will reduce their ability
to serve as markets – for their own producers as well as for China.
Today's debt-wracked economies throw into question just what kind of crisis the capitalist
countries are experiencing. Marx's analysis provides the tools to analyze its financial, banking
and rent-extraction problems. However, most Marxists still view the 2008 financial and junk mortgage
crash as resulting ultimately from industrial employers squeezing wage labor. Finance capital
is viewed as a derivative of this exploitation, not as the autonomous dynamic Marx described.
The costs of carrying the rising debt burden (interest, amortization and penalties) deflate
the market for commodities by absorbing a growing wedge of disposable business and personal income.
This leaves less to be spent on goods and services, causing gluts that lead to crises in which
businesses scramble for money. Banks fail as bankruptcy spreads. By depleting markets, finance
capital is antithetical to the expansion of profits and tangible physical capital investment.
Despite this sterility, finance capital has achieved dominance over industrial capital. Transfers
of property from debtors to creditors – even privatizations of public assets and enterprises –
are inevitable as the growth of financial claims surpasses the ability of productive power and
earnings to keep pace. Foreclosures follow in the wake of crashes, enabling finance to take over
industrial companies and even governments.
China has largely solved the "Volume I" problem – that of expanding its internal market for
labor, investing the economic surplus in capital formation and rising living standards. It is
confronted by Western economies that have failed to solve this problem, and also have failed to
solve the "Volumes II and III" problem: finance and land rent. Yet few Western Marxists have applied
his theories to the present downturn and its rentier problem. Following Marx, they view the task
of solving this problem to be solved by industrial capitalism, starting with the bourgeois revolutions
of 1848.
Already in 1847, Marx's Poverty of Philosophy described the hatred that capitalists felt for
landlords, whose hereditary rents siphoned off income to an idle class. Upon being sent copies
of Henry George's Progress and Poverty a generation later, in 1881, he wrote to John Swinton that
taxing land rent was "a last attempt to save the capitalist regime." He dismissed the book as
falling under his 1847 critique of Proudhon: "We understand such economists as Mill, Cherbuliez,
Hilditch and others demanding that rent should be handed over to the state to serve in place of
taxes. That is a frank expression of the hatred the industrial capitalist bears towards the landed
proprietor, who seems to him a useless thing, an excrescence upon the general body of bourgeois
production."
[2]
As the program of industrial capital, the land tax movement stopped short of advocating labor's
rights and living standards. Marx criticized Proudhon and other critics of landlords by saying
that once you get rid of rent (and usurious interest by banks), you will still have the problem
of industrialists exploiting wage labor and trying to minimize their wages, drying up the market
for the goods they produce. This is to be the "final" economic problem to be solved – presumably
long after industrial capitalism has solved the rent and interest problems.
Industrial capitalism has failed to free economies from rentier interest and rent extraction
In retrospect, Marx was too optimistic about the future of industrial capitalism. As noted above,
he viewed its historical mission as being to free society from rent and usurious interest. Today's
financial system has generated an overgrowth of credit, while high rents are pricing American
labor out of world markets. Wages are stagnating, while the One Percent have monopolized the growth
in wealth and income since 1980 – and are not investing in new means of production. So we still
have the Volume II and III problems, not just a Volume I problem.
We are dealing with multiple organ failure.
Instead of funding new industrial capital formation, the stock and bond markets to transfer
ownership of companies, real estate and infrastructure already in place. About 80 percent of bank
credit is lent to buyers of real estate, inflating a mortgage bubble. Instead of taxing away the
land's rising rental and site value that John Stuart Mill described as what landlords make "in
their sleep," today's economies leave rental income "free" to be pledged to banks. The result
is that banks now play the role that landlords did in Marx's day: obtaining for themselves the
land's rising rental value. This reverses the central thrust of classical political economy by
keeping such rent away from government, along with natural resource and monopoly rents.
Industrial economies are being stifled by financial and other rentier dynamics. Rising mortgage
debt, student loans, credit card debt, automobile debt and payday loans have made workers afraid
to go on strike or even to protest working conditions. To the extent that wages do rise, they
must be paid increasingly to creditors (and now to privatized health insurance and drug monopolies),
not to buy the consumer goods they produce. Labor's debt dependency thus aggravates the "Volume
I" problem of labor's inability to purchase the products it produces. To top matters, when workers
seek to join the middle class "homeowner society" by purchasing their homes on mortgage instead
of paying rent, the price entails locking themselves into debt serfdom.
Industrial companies profit from labor not only by employing it, but by lending to customers.
General Motors made most of its profits for many years by its credit arm, GMAC (General Motors
Acceptance Corp.), as did General Electric through its financial arm. Profits made by Macy's and
other retailers on their credit card lending sometimes accounted for their entire earnings.
This privatization of rents and their transformation into a flow of interest payments (shifting
the tax burden onto wage income and corporate profits) represents a failure of industrial capitalism
to free society from the legacies of feudalism.
Marx expected industrial capitalism to act in its own self-interest by industrializing banking,
as Germany was doing along the lines that the French reformer Saint-Simon had urged. However,
industrial capitalism has failed to break free of pre-industrial usurious banking practice. And
in the sphere of tax policy, it has not shifted taxes away from land and natural resource rent.
It has inverted the classical reformers' idea of "free markets" as being free from economic rent
and predatory moneylending. The slogan now means economies free for the rentier class to extract
interest and rent.
Mode of production or mode of parasitism?
Instead of serving industrial capitalism, today's financial sector is bleeding it to death.
Instead of seeking profits by employing labor to produce goods at a markup, it doesn't even want
to hire labor or engage in the process of production and develop new markets. The epitome of this
postindustrial economics is Enron: its' managers wanted no capital at all – no employment, only
traders at a desk (and crooked accountants).
Today's characteristic mode of accumulating wealth is more by financial than industrial means:
riding the wave of debt-financed asset-price inflation to reap "capital" gains. This seemed unlikely
in Marx's era of the gold standard. Yet today, most academic Marxists still concentrate on his
"Volume I" crisis, neglecting finance capitalism's failure to free economies from the rentier
dynamics surviving from European feudalism and the colonial lands conquered by Europe.
Marxists who went into Wall Street have learned their lessons from Volumes II and III. But
academic Marxism has not focused on the FIRE sector – Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. It is
as if interest and rent extraction are secondary problems to the dynamics of wage labor.
The great question today is whether post-feudal rentier capitalism will stifle industrial capitalism
instead of serving it. The aim of finance is not merely to exploit labor, but to conquer and appropriate
industry, real estate and government. The result is a financial oligarchy, neither industrial
capitalism nor a tendency to evolve into socialism.
Marx's optimism that industrial capital would subordinate finance to serve its own needs
Having provided a compendium of historical citations describing how parasitic "usury capital"
multiplied at compound interest, Marx announced in an optimistic Darwinian tone that the destiny
of industrial capitalism was to mobilize finance capital to fund its economic expansion, rendering
usury an obsolete vestige of the "ancient" mode of production. It is as if "in the course of its
evolution, industrial capital must therefore subjugate these forms and transform them into derived
or special functions of itself." Finance capital would be subordinated to the dynamics of industrial
capital rather than growing to dominate it. "Where capitalist production has developed all its
manifold forms and has become the dominant mode of production," Marx concluded his draft notes
for Theories of Surplus Value, "interest-bearing capital is dominated by industrial capital, and
commercial capital becomes merely a form of industrial capital, derived from the circulation process."
[3]
Marx expected economies to act in their long-term interest to increase the means of production
and avoid unproductive rentier income, underconsumption and debt deflation. Believing that every
mode of production was shaped by the technological, political and social needs of economies to
advance, he expected banking and finance to become subordinate to these dynamics. "There is no
doubt," he wrote, "that the credit system will serve as a powerful lever during the transition
from the capitalist mode of production to the production by means of associated labor; but only
as one element in connection with other great organic revolutions of the mode of production itself."
[4]
The financial problem would take care of itself as industrial capitalism mobilized savings
productively, subordinating finance capital to serve its needs. This already was happening in
Germany and France.
It seemed that the banking system's role as allocator of credit would pave the way for a socialist
organization of economies. Marx endorsed free trade on the ground that industrial capitalism would
transform and modernize the world's backward countries. Instead, it has brought Western rentier
finance and privatization of the land and natural resources, and even brought the right to use
these country's currencies and financial systems as casinos. And in the advanced creditor nations,
failure of the U.S. and European economies to recover from their 2008 financial crisis stems from
leaving in place the reckless "junk mortgage" debts, whose carrying charges are absorbing income.
Banks were saved instead of industrial economies, whose debts were left in place.
Irving Fisher coined the term debt deflation in 1933. He described it as occurring when debt
service (interest and amortization) to pay banks and bondholders diverts income from being spent
on consumer goods and new business investment.
[5] Governments use their tax revenues to pay bondholders, cutting back public spending and
infrastructure investment, education, health and other social welfare.
No observer of Marx's epoch was so pessimistic as to expect finance capital to overpower industrial
capitalism, engulfing economies as the world is seeing today. Discussing the 1857 financial crisis,
Marx showed how unthinkable anything like the 2008-09 Bush-Obama bailout of financial speculators
seemed to be in his day. "The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the reproduction
process cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the Bank of England, give to
all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated
commodities at their old nominal values."
[6]
Marx wrote this reductio ad absurdum not dreaming that it would become the Federal
Reserve's policy in autumn 2008. The U.S. Treasury paid off all of A.I.G.'s gambles and other
counterparty "casino capitalist" losses at taxpayer expense, followed by the Federal Reserve buying
junk mortgage packages at par.
Socialist policy regarding financial and tax reform
Marx described the historical destiny of industrial capitalism as being to free economies from
unproductive and predatory finance – from speculation, fraud and a diversion of income to pay
interest without funding new means of production. On this logic, it should be the destiny of socialist
economies to treat bank credit creation as a public function, to be used for public purposes –
to increase prosperity and the means of production to give populations a better life. Socialist
nations have freed their economies from the internal contradictions of industrial capitalism that
stifle wage labor.
China has solved the "Volume I" problem. But it still must deal with the West's unsolved "Volume
II and III" problem of privatized finance, land rent and natural resource rent. Western economies
seek to extend these neoliberal practices to use finance as a lever to pry away the economic surplus,
to finance the transfer of property at interest, and to turn profits, rent, wages and other income
into interest.
The failure to socialize banking (or even to complete its industrialization) has become
the most glaring economic tragedy of Western industrial capitalism. It became the tragedy of post-Soviet
Russia after 1991, letting its natural resources and industrial economy be financialized while
failing to tax land and natural resource rent. The commanding heights were sold to domestic oligarchs
and Western investors buying on credit with their own banks or in association with Western banks.
This bank credit was simply created on computer keyboards. Such credit creation should be a public
utility, but it has broken free from public regulation in the West. That credit is now reaching
out to China and the post-Soviet economies as a means of appropriating their resources.
The eurozone seems incapable of saving itself from debt deflation, and the United States and
Britain likewise are limping along as they de-industrialize. That is what leads them to hope that
perhaps socialist China can save them – as long as it remains free of the financial disease. asset
stripping and debt deflation. Western neoliberal economists claim that this financialization of
erstwhile industrial capitalism is "progress," and even the end of history. Yet having watched
China grow while their economies have remained stagnant since 2008 (except for the One Percent),
their hope is that socialist China's market can save their financialized economies driven too
deeply into debt to recover on their own.
Note: Marx described productive capital investment by the formula M–C–M´, signifying money
(M) invested to produce commodities (C) that sell for yet more money (M´). But the growth of "usury
capital" – government bond financing for war deficits, and consumer lending (mortgages, personal
loans and credit card debt) – consist of the disembodied M–M´, making money simply from money
in a sterile operation.
Footnotes
[1] In Volume III of Capital (ch. xxx; Chicago 1909: p. 461) and Volume III of Theories of
Surplus Value.
[2] Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy [1847] (Moscow, Progress Publishers, n.d.): 155.
[3] Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value III: 468
[4] Capital III (Chicago, 1905), p. 713.
[5] See Irving Fisher, "The Debt-Deflation Theory of the Great Depression," Econometrica (1933),
p. 342. Online at http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/docs/meltzer/fisdeb33.pdf. He used the term to
refer to bankruptcies wiped out bank credit and spending power, and hence the ability of economies
to invest and hire new workers. I provide a technical discussion in Killing the Host (ISLET 2015),
chapter 11, and "Saving, Asset-Price Inflation and Debt Deflation," in The Bubble and Beyond,
ch. 11 (ISLET 2012), pp. 297-319.
[6] Capital III (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), p. 479.
Obama was not a progressive he was a Neo liberal puppet who just spoke the language of
progressives at the same time selling out the public
Notable quotes:
"... Still as a result of 36 years of brainwashing large swathes of US society accept without questioning the core tenets of neoliberalism much like Soviet population accepted the key postulates of Bolshevism. They believe that "the market" trumps all other forms of organization of activities of the society, that everything works better that way, that markets are virtuous. As a result, they believe in the false notion that the government is always and ever getting in the way of markets and therefore needs to be made as small and weak as possible. ..."
"... Ideological Power derives from the human need to find ultimate meaning in life, to share norms and values, and to participate in aesthetic and ritual practices with others. ..."
"... The main tenets of neoliberalism are still very powerfully embedded in people minds. But ideology is dead and that spells troubles the same way as death of Bolshevism spelled troubles for the USSR. ..."
What has happened to "hope and
change" is very straightforward: it buried Democratic Party with its lies and militarism and
there is no way back.
That's why Trump. Obama said all the right things and did the opposite. He has gutted the
country and obliterated the middle class while continuing fighting wars of neoliberal expansion
and conquest.
Dismissing Trump and Trump's voters as "deplorables" gives Democrats like Krugman an excuse to
avoid any self examination about how the neoliberal policies they advocated failed the majority
of population of the country and have alienated electorate.
The last two democrat presidents destroyed as much of the New Deal as their Republican
counterparts and couldn't wait to gut the remnants such as SS. That's undeniable.
As a result the key tenets of neoliberal ideology are now as dead as the key postulates of
Bolshevism were in 1945. The rule of financial oligarchy disguised as "Liberal democracy",
globalization and free trade, free markets as a substitute for government, deregulation,
de-industrialization, letting market forces determine the characteristics of employment, etc.
Does anybody here believes this sh*t? I doubt it. Even those who advocate it, have doubts.
Still as a result of 36 years of brainwashing large swathes of US society accept without
questioning the core tenets of neoliberalism much like Soviet population accepted the key
postulates of Bolshevism. They believe that "the market" trumps all other forms of organization
of activities of the society, that everything works better that way, that markets are virtuous.
As a result, they believe in the false notion that the government is always and ever getting in
the way of markets and therefore needs to be made as small and weak as possible.
If you read Michael Mann's, The Sources of Social Power you will notice that he places
Ideological Power first in his four component model of social power: ideological, economic,
military, and political.
Each of them create different but complementary sources of power within a given society:
Ideological Power derives from the human need to find ultimate meaning in life, to
share norms and values, and to participate in aesthetic and ritual practices with others.
Economic Power derives from the human need to extract, transform, distribute, and
consume the products of nature. Economic relations are powerful because they combine the
intensive mobilization of labor with use of capital, trade, and production chains
Military Power is based on refined, concentrated and lethal violence.
Political Power is the centralized and territorial regulation of social life. The basic
function of government is the provision of order using this type of power.
The main tenets of neoliberalism are still very powerfully embedded in people minds. But
ideology is dead and that spells troubles the same way as death of Bolshevism spelled troubles
for the USSR.
The US neoliberal society is
facing a lot of serious problems, in many different domains, energy, financial, political,
moral. Looks like we live in the society the is either close or is entering the stage of
the "perma crises" not just "secular stagnation" as before in "golden years" of Bush II and
Obama.
But our problem is not called Donald Trump. It is much deeper. He is just a symptom, an apt
manifestation of our problems, if you wish.
That's what Professor Krugman and his neoliberal friends in NYT are missing in their
jeremiad against him.
Trump at least noticed
70,000 factories were lost; robots ate homework story total nonsense :
,
February 10, 2017 at 09:37
PM
Trump is more reality based
than free trade enthusiast and corporate shills who helped destroy the US by cheering on
free trade de-industrialization.
Krugman et al. not aware Africa is devoid of industry
while East Asia is PACKED with manufacturing and where 90% of robots are produced and used.
Trump is about the only sentient policymaker left in America. GOD BLESS HIM AND HIS
NOBLE WORK TO RESTORE THE NATION ECONOMISTS WORKED SO HARD TO DESTROY
"... And I am not sure that it was neoliberal globalization as the only factor in rasining the standards of living in case of China. They have also industrialization process going on, give or take. Chinese maquiladoras were allowed under strict conditions of transferring technology. That's what distinguishes China from India or Mexico, where neoliberal administrations were much less protective of interest of their nations and allowed Western monopolies more freedom. ..."
"... On the basis of careful empirical work, Rodrik concluded that "globalization makes it difficult to sustain the postwar social bargain" of labor peace in exchange for "steadily improving worker pay and benefits." ..."
"... It's not globalization, it's "neoliberal globalization" and neoliberalism in general which killed the New Deal capitalism. As soon as the US elite realized the cookies are not enough for everybody they start withdrawing them from the table. Stagnation and the subsequent collapse of the USSR also played an important role, allowing neoliberal propagandists to claim the victory. ..."
""seem unimpressed by the fact that globalization has lifted
hundreds of millions of desperately poor people in China and
India into the global middle class. ""
Ergo enabling the savaging
of working class people in the US was worth it.
And I am not sure that it was neoliberal globalization as the
only factor in rasining the standards of living in case of China. They have also industrialization process going on, give or
take. Chinese maquiladoras were allowed under strict conditions
of transferring technology. That's what distinguishes China from
India or Mexico, where neoliberal administrations were much less
protective of interest of their nations and allowed Western monopolies
more freedom.
After all the Communist Party is still a ruling Party of China.
With a neoliberal twist yes, but they still adhere to the ideas
of Marx.
Kuttner really captures the contributions of Dani Rodrik. If
I had to pick one sentence to capture this review - it would
be this:
On the basis of careful empirical work, Rodrik concluded
that "globalization makes it difficult to sustain the postwar
social bargain" of labor peace in exchange for "steadily
improving worker pay and benefits."
libezkova -> pgl...
, -1
It's not globalization, it's "neoliberal globalization" and neoliberalism
in general which killed the New Deal capitalism. As soon as the US elite realized the cookies are not enough
for everybody they start withdrawing them from the table.
Stagnation and the subsequent collapse of the USSR also played
an important role, allowing neoliberal propagandists to claim
the victory.
"... We are loosing global power not due to military projection but, that military projection is in support of financial projection which is a plague ..."
February 7, 2017 by
Yves Smith By Arthur
MacEwan, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a co-founder
and associate of Dollars & Sense magazine. This is the final part of a three-part series on the era
of economic globalization, the distribution of power worldwide, and the current crisis. It was originally
published in the January/February issue of Dollars & Sense, commencing the magazine's year-long "Costs
of Empire" project. Parts 1 and 2 are available
here and
here . Cross
posted from Triple
Crisis
The rhetoric of free trade, in any case, is simply one of the tools that the U.S. government,
its allies, international agencies, and large firms use in shaping the world economy. Economic and
political-military power is the foundation for this shaping. Following World War II, when the U.S.
accounted for more than a quarter of world output, it had tremendous economic power-as a market,
an investment source, and a source of new technology. U.S. firms had little competition in their
global operations and were thus able to penetrate markets and control resources over a wide range
(outside of the U.S.S.R., the rest of the East Bloc, and China). Along with this economic power,
the military power of the United States was immense. In the context of the Cold War and the rise
of democratic upsurges and liberation movements in many regions, the role of the U.S. military was
welcomed in many countries-especially by elites facing threats (real or imagined) from the Soviet
Union, domestic liberation movements, or both.
This combination of economic and military power, far more than the rhetoric of free trade, allowed
the U.S. government to move other governments toward accepting openness in international commerce.
The Bretton Woods conference was a starting point in this process; U.S. representatives at the conference
were largely able to dictate the conference outcomes. In terms of international commerce, things
worked quite well for the United Sates for about 25 years. Then, however, various challenges to the
U.S. position emerged. In particular, the war in Indochina and its costs, competition from firms
based in Japan and Europe, and the rise of OPEC and increase in energy costs began to disrupt the
dominant U.S. role by the early 1970s.
Still, while the period after the 1970s saw slower economic growth, both in the United States
and in several other high-income countries, the United States continued to hold its dominant
position.
In part, this was due to the Cold War-the Soviet threat, or at least the perceived threat, providing
the glue that attached other countries to U.S. leadership. Yet, by the 1990s, the U.S.S.R. was no
more, and China was becoming a rising world power.
In spite of the changes in the world economy, the United States at first appears to have almost
the same share of world output in 2016, 24.7%, as it had in the immediate post-World War II period,
and is still considerably ahead of any other country. Yet this figure evaluates output in the rest
of the world's countries at market exchange rates. When the figures are recalculated, using the real
purchasing power of different currencies, the U.S. share drops to 15.6%, behind China's 17.9% of
world output. Of course, as China has a much larger population than the United States, even using
the purchasing power figures, per person GDP in the U.S. is almost four times greater than in China;
it would be almost 7 times greater using the market exchange rates.
The rise of China has not moved the United States off its pedestal as the world's dominant economic
power. Moreover, U.S. military strength remains dominant in world affairs. Yet the challenge is real,
even to the point that China has recently created an institution, providing development loans to
low-income countries, to be an alternative to the (U.S.-dominated) World Bank. Investment by Chinese
firms, too, is spreading worldwide. Then there are the military issues in the South China Sea.
At the same time, the United States is engaged in seemingly intractable military operations in
the Middle East, and has continued to maintain its global military presence as widely as during the
Cold War. Having long taken on the role of providing the global police force, for the U.S. government
to pull back from these operations would be to accept a decline in U.S. global power. But, further,
the extensive and far flung military presence of U.S. forces is necessary to preserve the rules of
international commerce that have been established over decades. The rules themselves need protection,
regardless of the amount of commerce directly affected. The real threat to "U.S. interests" posed
by the Islamic State and like forces in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of East Asia is not their
appalling and murderous actions. Instead, their threat lies in their disruption and disregard for
the rules of international commerce. From Honduras and Venezuela to Saudi Arabia and Iraq, if U.S.
policy were guided by an attempt to protect human rights, the role of U.S. military and diplomatic
polices would be very different.
Continuing to operate on a global level to halt threats to the "rules of the game"-in a world
were economic power is shifting away from the United States-this country is threatening itself with
imperial overreach. Attempting to preserve its role in global affairs and to maintain its favored
terms of global commerce, the U.S. government may be taking on financial and military burdens that
it cannot manage. In the Middle East in particular, the costs of military operations during the 21st
century have run into the trillions of dollars. Military bases and actions are so widespread as to
limit their effectiveness in any one theater of operations.
The potential danger in this situation is twofold. On the one hand, the costs of these operations
and the resulting strain on the U.S. government's budget can weaken the operation of the domestic
economy. On the other hand, in the context of the rising challenges to the U.S. role in global affairs
and the rising role of other powers, especially China but also Russia, U.S. forces may enter into
especially dangerous attempts to regain U.S. power in world affairs-the treacherous practice of revanchism.
Are There Alternatives?
Although globalization in the broad sense of a geographic expansion of economic, political, social,
and cultural contacts may be an inexorable process, the way in which this expansion takes place
is a matter of political choices-and political power . Both economic and political/military expansion
are contested terrain. Alternatives are possible.
The backlash against globalization that appeared in 2016, especially in the U.S. presidential
campaign, has had both progressive and reactionary components. The outcome of the election, having
had such a reactionary and xenophobic foundation, is unlikely to turn that backlash into positive
reforms, which would attenuate economic inequality and insecurity. Indeed, all indications in the
period leading up to Trump's inauguration (when this article is being written) suggest that, whatever
changes take place in the U.S. economic relations with the rest of the world, those changes will
not displace large corporations as the principal beneficiaries of the international system.
Nonetheless, the Sanders campaign demonstrated the existence of a strong progressive movement
against the current form of globalization. If that movement can be sustained, there are several reforms
that it could push that would alter the nature of globalization and lay the foundation for a more
democratic and larger changes down the road (Sanders' "revolution"). Two examples of changes that
would directly alter U.S. international agreements in ways that would reduce inequality and insecurity
are:
Changing international commercial agreements so they include strong labor rights and environmental
protections. Goods produced under conditions where workers' basic rights, to organize and to work
under reasonable health and safety conditions, are denied would not be given unfettered access to
global markets. Goods whose production or use is environmentally destructive would likewise face
trade restrictions. (One important "restriction" could include a carbon tax that would raise the
cost of transporting goods over long distances.) Effective enforcement procedures would be difficult
but possible.
Establishing effective employment support for people displaced by changes in international commerce.
Such support could include, for instance, employment insurance funds and well funded retraining programs.
Also, there would need to be provisions for continuing medical care and pensions. Moreover, there
is no good reason for such support programs to be limited to workers displaced by international commerce.
People who lose their jobs because of environmental regulations (such as coal miners), technological
change (like many workers in manufacturing), or just stupid choices by their employers should have
the same support.
Several other particular reforms would also be desirable. Obviously, the elimination of ISDS is
important, as is cessation of moves to extend U.S. intellectual property rights. The reforms would
also include: global taxation of corporations; taxation of financial transactions; altering the governance
the IMF, World Bank, and WTO to reduce their role as instruments of the United States and other high
income countries; protections for international migrants and protection of their rights as workers.
The list could surely be extended. Changes in international economic relations, however, cannot be
separated from political changes. The ability of the United States and its allies to shape economic
relations is tied up with military power. Military interventions and the threat of military interventions
have long been an essential foundation for U.S. power in the global economy. These interventions
and threats are often cloaked in democratic or humanitarian rhetoric. Yet, one need simply look at
the Middle East to recognize the importance of the interests of large U.S. firms in bringing about
these military actions. (Again, see the box on Smedley Butler.) It will be necessary to build opposition
to these military interventions in order to move the world economy in a positive direction- to say
nothing of halting the disastrous humanitarian impacts of these interventions.
No one claims that it would be easy to overcome the power of large corporations in shaping the
rules of international commerce in agreements or to reduce (let alone block) the aggressive military
practices of the U.S. government. The prospect of a Trump presidency certainly makes the prospect
of progressive change on international affairs-or on any other affairs-more difficult. There is,
however, nothing inevitable about the way these central aspects of globalization have been organized.
There are alternatives that would not undermine the U.S. economy (or other economies). Indeed, these
alternatives would strengthen the U.S. economy in terms of improving and sustaining the material
well-being of most people.
The basic issues here are who-which groups in society-are going to determine basic economic policies
and by what values those policies will be formulated.
An over extended Soviet Empire collapsed in no small part due to its obsession with winning
a war, albeit one that thankfully remained 'cold', that it never could.
A corrupt, nepotistic distant, paranoid elite that instead of dividing its efforts into looking
after its own society's well-being, as well a apparently just defending it, opted for near as
dammed bankrupting itself attempting to feed an insatiable military machine it could ill afford
(and would mostly never use) at its increasingly disaffected, divided, restive people's expense.
First, did the Soviet state "bankrupt itself damm near" mostly by trying to feed an "insatiable
military machine," or did the wealth of the Soviets get dissipated into other ratholes as well,
alongside various external pressures and effects? And what scale applied to each political-decision
"allocation"? One view, among a flood of intersecting and competing interpretations, of course:
The stunning collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989-91 has often been heralded in the
West as a triumph of capitalism and democracy, as though this event were obviously a direct
result of the policies of the Reagan and Thatcher governments. This self-congratulatory analysis
has little relation to measurable facts, circumstances, and internal political dynamics that
were the real historical causes of the deterioration of the Soviet empire and ultimately the
Soviet state itself. Fiery political speeches and tough diplomatic postures make good theater,
but they are ineffective at forcing political transformation in totalitarian nations, as is
proven by the persistence of far less powerful Communist regimes in Cuba and east Asia in the
face of punishing trade embargos. The key to understanding the reasons for the demise of the
Soviet Union is to be found not in the speeches or policies of Western politicians, but in
internal Soviet history.
1. Stagnation in the 1970s
The Soviet Union was already in decline as a world power well before 1980. Any illusions
of global Communist hegemony had evaporated with the collapse of Sino-Soviet relations in the
1960s. As the Nixon administration improved American relations with an increasingly independent
China, the Soviets saw a strategic need to scale down the nuclear arms race, which placed enormous
strains on its faltering economy. The threat of a nuclear confrontation was reduced considerably
by the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) and strategic arms limitation treaties (SALT) contracted
with the Nixon administration in 1972. This détente, or easing of tensions, allowed Leonid
Brezhnev to focus on domestic economic and social development, while boosting his political
popularity.
Around 1975, the Soviet Union entered a period of economic stagnation from which it would
never emerge. Increasingly, the USSR looked to Europe, primarily West Germany, to provide hard
currency financing through massive loans, while the U.S. became a major supplier of grain.[1]
Despite moments of anti-Communist grandstanding, the Americans and Western Europeans maintained
trade relations with the cash-strapped Soviet Union, which dipped into its Stalin-era gold
reserves to increase availability of consumer goods .
Foreign trade and mild economic reforms were not enough to overcome the inefficiencies of
the Soviet command economy, which remained technologically backward and full of corruption.
Economic planners were frequently unable to diagnose and remedy problems, since they were given
false reports by officials who only pretended to be productive. Soviet living standards remained
poor by Western standards. By 1980, only 9 percent of Soviets had automobiles, which was actually
a vast improvement under Brezhnev. Very little was computerized, due to state paranoia about
the use of telecommunications for counterrevolutionary purposes. The USSR was able to endure
this technological lag because its closed economy protected it from competition, but its ability
to maintain military superiority increasingly depended on the ability to keep pace with Western
modernization.
In his radio broadcasts during the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan complained that the capitalist
nations propped up the intrinsically flawed Soviet regime, instead of allowing it to naturally
collapse from its own inefficiency and inhumanity.[2] In contrast to his later hagiographers,
Reagan did not envision defeating the Soviet Union by forceful action, but instead he perceived
that the regime would collapse from its own failings once the West removed its financial life
support system. It is this early Reagan, far more thoughtful than he is generally credited,
who proved to be most astute in diagnosing the state of the USSR. It did not need a foreign
enemy to "defeat" it, for it was deteriorating from within. http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/histpoli/soviet.htm
And I recall the Soviet military leadership was largely (no, not exclusively of course, humans
being what they are) reacting to the clear and present danger that "the West" presented. Among
many other considerations, of course. In the Great Game of "chicken," in which we all are mostly
passengers in the speeding cars with loony drivers ya-hooing out the windows, I recall the Soviets
were the ones to veer off from that head-on collision that might have ended it all earlier than
it seems increasingly likely to end anyway. And Russian leadership seems more concerned about
the survival of the nation than our own clown-car leadership.
Seems to me that all of us ordinary people, many of whom would gladly take advantage of opportunities
to do some looting themselves, to "get ahead" in the "rat race," if only those opportunities were
presented, have insufficient collective concern about the many systems, living and political-economy,
that apparently are collapsing or running out of control. And patently the military-security monkey
that's riding our backs is doing a p!ss-poor job of "defending us" in any ordinary sense of the
term, and not even a vary good job of playing Imperial Forces. Though of course the net effects
of military and political chaos-building and destabilization do blast out a nice open-pit mine
for corporate looters to get at the extractables..
But yeah, the halls of history are full of echoes and shadows and reflections in a glass darkly
And I wonder if London bookies are running a line on when history, as recorded and debated and
acted out by humans, will REALLY end, thanks to our wonderful unbridled inventiveness and lack
of that genetic predisposition to survive as a species that ants and termites and rats and cats
and other "lesser creatures" seem to have
Training people for jobs does not create jobs for them. Training would be an organic function
of profitable businesses seeking employees. I'm old enough to remember what that was like.
The issue is JOBS pure and simple for everyone that wants or needs one.
Prosperous, secure people make progressive change possible: desperate, insecure people don't.
If you want security, make people secure.
There's the rub. Because the only way in the future to ensure enough of these jobs may be by
using tax money from the well off to at least partially fund the scarce and missing jobs that
won't be created otherwise. How willing do you think they will be to see their tax dollars funding
progressive causes? We say progressive/they say socialist.
Until we convince enough people of these ideas and they actually vote (if their vote is still
possible as suppression intensifies), this won't likely happen. If you have a better idea on how
to create these well paying secure jobs in the face of automation, etc. outside of winning elections
the old fashioned way and using policies, I'm open minded and listening.
Been down this "protections for workers" road before and the TPP (Obama, Clinton). Sorry neolib-neocon
globalist oligarchs. Rewording the messaging still has the same shit outcome for the middle class.
The potential danger in this situation is twofold. On the one hand, the costs of these operations
and the resulting strain on the U.S. government's budget can weaken the operation of the domestic
economy.
Really? When the US can just issue the dollars to pay the bills? How does this weaken the economy?
"Following World War II, when the U.S. accounted for more than a quarter of world output, it
had tremendous economic power -- as a market, an investment source, and a source of new technology.
U.S. firms had little competition in their global operations and were thus able to penetrate markets
and control resources over a wide range (outside of the U.S.S.R., the rest of the East Bloc, and
China)."
IMHO
– Of course we did because our investments were in technology, industry and production which was
tightly coupled with investment in infrastructure with a "market" much more free from economic
rent. Economic rent pushes all production costs up particularly where property prices (farm land,
indutrial land and home land use) surge or boom.
"U.S. government to pull back from these operations would be to accept a decline in U.S. global
power."
IMHO
We are loosing global power not due to military projection but, that military projection is in
support of financial projection which is a plague – responsible for global destitution in all
the plenty the planet offers – we are obviously doing something wrong? yes. Further to that, we
should not have weaponized finance and unleashed it on ourselves or anybody else. Yes, let us
cede all to private interests – look how well that goes..snarc.
"The potential danger in this situation is twofold. On the one hand, the costs of these operations
and the resulting strain on the U.S. government's budget can weaken the operation of the domestic
economy. "
IMHO
The costs of these (assume military) operations have not put a strain on US government budget
but, the biggest strain on the budget is our unjust revenue system and finacialization of our
economy where "investment" drives asset appreciation, making everything more expensive for living
and working but, in no way involves the employment of labor to produce something worth having .say
something like a habitable planet.
So the real issue is we believe our own hubris to the point of mostly extincting the planet.
Sorry for the sad rant we need to look at the basis for prosperity and of the opposite, instead
we see the results and assume it to be a natural cause when in fact it is not natural.
Below is a quote from near a hundred years ago
GETTING SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
...The/reat sore spot in our modern commercial
life is found on the speculative side. Under present
laws, which foster and encourage speculation
business life is largely a gamble, and to "get
something for nothing" is too often considered
the keynote to "success." The great fortunes of
today are nearly all speculative fortunes; and
the ambitious young man just starting out in life
thinks far less of producing or rendering service
than he does of "putting it over" on the other fellow This may seem a broad statement to
some; but thirty years of business life in the
heart of American commercial activity convinces
me that it is absolutely true.
If, however, the speculative incentive in modern
commercial life were eliminated, and no man
could become rich or successful unless he gave "value received" and rendered service for service,
then indeed a profound change would have been
brought in our whole commercial system, and it would be a change which no honest man would
regret.-John Moody, Wall Street Publisher, and
President of Moody's Investors' Service. Circa 1924
Goods produced under conditions where workers' basic rights, to organize and to work under
reasonable health and safety conditions, are denied would not be given unfettered access to global
markets.
For policy-makers, decisions made on the basis of power, prestige, and profit are far more
palatable than those made on the basis of human rights and the environment. This may seem simple,
and the right thing to do morally, but it really is difficult. Your counterparties (let's say,
the Saudis) are known to punish minor crimes severely and they routinely abuse foreign workers.
So, you want to add a few dinars to the price of oil. "Not so fast," says the sheikh. "You have
the largest prison population in the world, so we're adding a tax to the price of wheat," and
midwest farmers are up in arms.
Don't get me wrong. I happen to think that trying to even the playing field and improve the
lot of workers and the environment worldwide is a great idea. I just think it would be very hard
in reality and would create both domestic and international tensions.
In this factual and historical state of affairs, is it necessary to prove in detail that there
is no room today for any so-called political neutrality – the neutrality of the trade unions with
regard to political parties and political struggles?
There needs to be a push to reshore manufacturing into the US.
I don't agree with Trump's other policies, but he's got an important point on this one. The
US began to lose its middle class as the worst of the outsourcing happened.
"... The other is that the centre-left (aka 'soft" neoliberals) took economic growth largely for granted. New Labour believed that if it could provide stable macroeconomic policy and an attractive location for investment then growth would follow. That might have been the case in the 90s. But it isn't true in our new era of secular stagnation. We need supply-side socialism. ..."
"... Obama averaged 1.7 percent annual growth over 8 years after an epic financial crisis. ..."
"... As Dillow points out, economic stagnation causes politics to get meaner. ..."
Good post by Chris Dillow who comes out of the closet and
names the opposition (foe?) of neoliberalism which is
socialism.
"The victories of Trump and Brexit, and rise of
the National Front in France and AfD in Germany all vindicate
Ben Friedman's point that economic stagnation makes people
meaner. It causes a rise in right-wing extremism, not
leftism.
...
The other is that the centre-left (aka 'soft"
neoliberals) took economic growth largely for granted.
New Labour believed that if it could provide stable
macroeconomic policy and an attractive location for
investment then growth would follow. That might have been the
case in the 90s. But it isn't true in our new era of secular
stagnation. We need supply-side socialism.
"
This is what Krugman is missing with his discussion of
being near full employment with Trump planning fiscal
expansion. This is what the Fed is missing with its
determination to "normalize."
(I hate to be divisive and criticize Krugman.)
Maybe he's right and we won't have another major financial
crisis in a while. We'll move off of the ZLB as a mild
recession is followed by more growth and above target
inflation. It's possible. I hope he's right. But the history
is one of a shampoo economy: bubble, bust, repeat where
growth after the bust is too slow and recoveries are too
shallow. And labor gets the shaft.
Obama averaged 1.7 percent annual growth over 8 years
after an epic financial crisis.
This what we'd be
talking about if not for President Insane Clown Posse and his
Juggalos.
(It wasn't all Obama's fault of course, but in a
way it doesn't matter whose fault it was.
As Dillow
points out, economic stagnation causes politics to get
meaner.
)
"Bon courage, Benoît! As Ali said:
"Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not
a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential.
Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing."
There is a
stronger tradition of social democracy in the EU that could
coalesce around a candidate such as Benoît Hamon than there
is here in the US. FDR was a long time ago and still rather
conservative by post WWII European standards until
Thatcherism caught on there. You will note how much more
support that Sanders got from millennials than from our
generations. It will take more time here.
Good point, but in recent years it has been the populist
right who has really been the beneficiary in the U.S. and
Europe, with their scapegoating of globalization and
immigrants.
"If the national Democratic Party had more cultural appeal
to working-class whites, they might have been able to stop
the bleeding enough to hold states like Pennsylvania,
Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin or North Carolina."
Yeah you won't cultural appeal but not so much that you
abandon your principles. Calling them deplorable doesn't
help.
I feel the Democrats need to better appeal to them more on
the economic front. Instead of giving speeches at Goldman
Sachs functions, campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Instead of an infrastructure proposal of $275 billion over
5 years, go big like Bernie or the Senate Democrats with $1
trillion over 10 years. Trump went big with his rhetoric.
We'll see if he delivers anything.
"The white working class, even outside the south, has been
moving away from the Democratic Party for 20 years. Check out
the graph."
Agreed. I travel (a lot) and every hotel I stay
at has Faux News in the lobby (a large percentage don't even
have MSNBC as part of the cable in the room upstairs, every
restaurant/bar I go to has Faux News on. There are no liberal
talk radio programs (outside of Sirius), so every plumber,
sales guy driving to their next client, taxi driver, et al,
only hear a right wing message. Anyone who disagrees with
them is part of the "lame-stream media".
Undeniably, they control the messaging.
This is why they believe the economy was still bad last
qtr, that Democrats raised taxes, etc.
Of all the ways Reagan ruined our country, I'd argue the
worst thing he did (besides tripling the debt) was getting
rid of the "fairness doctrine" which required presenting both
sides of a discussion equally. This gave rise (IMO) to the
hate radio and the alt-fact universe we now live in.
And agreed re Fox news
too. When it is on, I always ask the desk clerk to change to
something nonpolitical like the Weather Channel or ESPN. I've
never had them refusse. On Inauguration Day I had to do that
at a sports bar! The bartender actually thanked me.
"The white working class, even outside the south, has been
moving away from the Democratic Party for 20 years."
Thanks
to Bill Clinton and the Democratic shift away from class
based economic programs to an exclusive focus on identity
issues. This is not an either/or choice, as Dillow points out
in his piece, and the Democrats did both successfully for
about 20 years in the 19560s-1970s. The DLC Democrats, like
the Clintons, abandoned economic justice/labor issues in the
mid-70s in order to attract more wealthy donors and overcome
the overwhelming fundraising advantage of the Republicans at
that time.
I think move to the right might continue for some time.
Clinton Democrats betrayal of working class give far right a
huge boost, to say nothing about paving way to Caesarism and
discarding the Democratic governance like used shoe box.
From comments:
"what is termed the Right is pretty much what would have
been [neoliberal] centre leftism not that long ago.
In practical terms there is nothing between the
governments of Cameron or May vs those of Blair.
"...And the likely failures of Brexit and Trumponomics might
well cause some kind of backlash.
There is, however, a more
pessimistic reading.
For one thing, we might not see the sort of backlash we
want..."
[That is what we have gotten already, backlash against
center left neoliberal mediocrity. Still with no other game
in town and a POTUS bound and determined to motivate liberal
voters any way that he can then a return to a center left
voting public and the policies that it will tolerate is not
so unlikely.]
The center left will still need to do something about low
wages, shitty jobs, and the high cost of higher education if
it wants to hang around for very long though.
"Also, there are at least two flaws in liberalism/centre
leftism that aren't so remediable, at least without
transforming its essential character.
One is that it has been managerialist. Perhaps Blair's
greatest fault – shared perhaps with US Democrats - was his
faith in top-down leaders. This had many baleful effects,
among them stagnant productivity in public services, the
legitimation of the increasing wealth and power of the 1% and
the Iraq war. It also generated a backlash against the
"liberal elite" and a demand to "take back control.""
[Blair's greatest fault - and Clinton's - was his
eagerness to sign on to the payroll of finance and the
neocons.]
This release contains updated estimates of output, inputs
and productivity for public services in the UK between 1997
and 2013, in addition to new estimates for 2014.
Productivity of public services is estimated by comparing
the growth in the total amount of output with growth in the
total amount of inputs used. Productivity will increase when
more output is being produced for each unit of input,
compared with the previous year.
Separate estimates of output, inputs and productivity are
provided for:
healthcare
education
adult social care (ASC)
children's social care (CSC)
public order and safety (POS)
social security administration (SSA)
Only inputs estimates are provided for police, defence,
and other government services, as output is not easily
measurable. It is therefore assumed that output is equal to
the inputs used to create them and therefore productivity
change in these services is zero.
Output, inputs and productivity for total public services
are estimated by combining growth rates for individual
services using their relative share of total government
expenditure as weights.
Public service productivity estimates: total public
service, UK: 2014
Main points
In 2014, total public service productivity grew by 0.2%
compared to the previous year; productivity, as measured in
this release, is at its highest since 1998
This is the fourth successive year of improving
productivity and marks the longest consecutive period of
productivity growth for total public services for which
estimates are available.
Growth in 2014 was driven by growth in output for total
public services of 1.6%, exceeding inputs which grew by 1.4%.
The annual average growth rate of total public service
productivity from 1997 to 2014 was 0.1% per year.
These ongoing studies of productivity for public services in
the United Kingdom strike me as quite important. I had no
idea such studies were being done and wonder whether they are
done in any other countries. I know of no such ongoing
productivity studies for the United States.
These facile comparisons between genuine pluralistic
democracies and the USAnian dyarchy really annoy me. Apart
from his tragic support of Shrub's crusade, Blair was
markedly to the left of the right-wing democratic party on
socioeconomic policy. A good cognate for Blair is a centrist
politician, like Warren. Sanders is a good cognate for Gordon
Brown (e.g. "nice" social democrat, but not a fighter). There
is no cognate for someone like Corbyn in US politics.
Chris Dillow tries to save "soft" neoliberalism, aka Clintolism-Blairism. But it is dead,
and resurrection only can create a bloodthirsty zombie. Just look at Obama administration drone
policies.
Notable quotes:
"... There's a precedent here. In the 1970s the combination of rising inflation and high unemployment killed off post-war social democracy in much of the west: Marglin and Schor's The Golden Age of Capitalism provides a great analysis of this. The precise date of the death varied from country to country. In France it came in Mitterrand's "austerity turn" in 1983. In the UK it perhaps came with Callaghan's claim that you can't spend your way out of recession in 1976. Whatever, the fact is that in much the of the west old-style social democracy was killed off and it took Clinton and Blair to reincarnate it in rather different form ..."
"... Does liberalism/centre-leftism today face a similar threat? ..."
"... For one thing, we might not see the sort of backlash we want. If or when immigration controls and protectionism are seen to fail to increase jobs and wages, nativists won't realize the errors of their ways and repent. Instead, they'll double-down and claim that claim that their policies didn't go far enough. ..."
"... The victories of Trump and Brexit, and rise of the National Front in France and AfD in Germany all vindicate Ben Friedman's point that economic stagnation makes people meaner. It causes a rise in right-wing extremism, not leftism. ..."
Branko Milanovic raises * a question: is liberalism (or centre-leftism) dead?
There's a precedent here. In the 1970s the combination of rising inflation and high
unemployment killed off post-war social democracy in much of the west: Marglin and Schor's The
Golden Age of Capitalism provides a great analysis of this. The precise date of the death
varied from country to country. In France it came in Mitterrand's "austerity turn" in 1983. In
the UK it perhaps came with Callaghan's claim that you can't spend your way out of recession
in 1976. Whatever, the fact is that in much the of the west old-style social democracy was
killed off and it took Clinton and Blair to reincarnate it in rather different form.
Does liberalism/centre-leftism today face a similar threat?
There are reasons to think not. It's not inconceivable that the Democrats, UK Labour party
and French Socialists will one day find electable candidates. And some of the centre-lefts
flaws – imagined or real – can be easily fixed. The identity politics and elitism that has
devalorized working class experience is remediable; class politics and identity politics are
to some extent at least complements not substitutes. It is technically possible to spread the
benefits of globalization more widely through better redistributive policies. And the likely
failures of Brexit and Trumponomics might well cause some kind of backlash.
There is, however, a more pessimistic reading.
For one thing, we might not see the sort of backlash we want. If or when immigration
controls and protectionism are seen to fail to increase jobs and wages, nativists won't
realize the errors of their ways and repent. Instead, they'll double-down and claim that claim
that their policies didn't go far enough.
And in this they might win public support. The victories of Trump and Brexit, and rise
of the National Front in France and AfD in Germany all vindicate Ben Friedman's point that
economic stagnation makes people meaner. It causes a rise in right-wing extremism, not
leftism.
By "liberalism" I mean what is considered under this term
in the US. By "to blame" I mean "for the rise of Trump and
similar nationalist-populists".
What are the arguments for seeing liberal triumphalism
which began with the collapse of Communism in the 1990s as
having produced the backlash we are witnessing today? I think
they can be divided into three parts: economics, personal
integrity, and ideology.
In economics, liberalism espoused "neo-liberalism" which
was the replacement economic ideology for social-democracy.
It championed, especially under the Clinton-Blair duo,
financial liberalization, much smaller welfare state, and
so-called "meritocracy" which essentially meant the ability
of the rich to place their kids into the best schools out of
which 90% would graduate and thus "meritocratically" claim
later in life huge wage premiums. Free trade agreement
privileged, as Dean Baker has written, * the interests of the
rich in advanced economies through protection of patents and
intellectual property rights and with scant or no attention
to labor rights. In the international arena, through the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Clintonite
neo-liberalism was associated with Washington consensus
policies. They are in many respects reasonable policies, but
were applied dogmatically and mindlessly especially with
respect to privatization and often with the principal
objective of ensuring that the debts be collected regardless
of the social effects on the population. Greece is the best
known example of such policies because it sits in the middle
of Europe and the results of "debt collections" are easiest
to see. But the same principles were applied across the
world.
Underpinning such policies was an ideology that saw
economic success as the only dimension (in addition to the
acceptance of certain liberal tropes which I will mention
below) in which worth of an individual is expressed or
measured. That ideology found broad acceptance across the
world, fanned by globalization and by what that ideology has
pleasing to the human psyche which craves acquisition of
more. It was thus consistent with human nature and probably
helped increase world output several-fold and reduce world
poverty. But it might have been pushed too hard to the
exclusion of other human characteristics and helped create
especially among those who were economically less successful
resentment and estrangement from the values promoted by
liberals....
[Our only political party has two right wings, one called
Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all
that out back in the 1890s. "We have a single system," he
wrote, and "in that system the only question is the price at
which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and
circuses.]
"For one thing, we might not see the sort of backlash we
want...Instead, they'll double-down and claim that claim that
their policies didn't go far enough."
Americans support
Trump's immigration ban by an almost 2:1 margin.
[A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online
survey finds that 57% of Likely U.S. Voters favor a temporary
ban on refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan
and Yemen until the federal government approves its ability
to screen out potential terrorists from coming here.
Thirty-three percent (33%) are opposed, while 10% are
undecided.]
"... While this act was sweeping and lacked finesse, operationally clumsy to say the least, the reaction to it was just about as dramatic, including tears. Well, that's politics in the 21st century. And I am sure we will see much more of this sort of thing over the next few years. ..."
While this act was sweeping and lacked finesse, operationally clumsy to say the least, the
reaction to it was just about as dramatic, including tears. Well, that's politics in the 21st
century. And I am sure we will see much more of this sort of thing over the next few years.
We are going to learn more about ourselves than we may have expected. There is nothing new in this;
it is the particular experience of about every other generation and their own 'rendezvous with
destiny.' How can we be content when the choices are between the 'lesser of two evils.' They are
both evil, and many including me are not happy about it- but it is what it is.
mulp said...
January 31, 2017 at 10:20 AM
Where are all the "uncertainty" Chicken Littles that were
running around during the Obama administration screaming
about all the job killing regulations mandating paying
lots more workers causing uncertainty and no job creation?
Now we have Trump uncertainty of promising job killing
deregulation in some places that will be clogged up in
court or uncertain times, plus the uncertainty of random
irrational new job killing regulations of obstacles to
international business.
Trump campaigned on unpredictable chaos to create
uncertainty.
Is it ironic that Trump is being more Obama, and
Carter, than Obama or Carter, and his supporters praise
that?
I note with amusement that Trump defenders cite their
two worst presidents ever as providing the template and
justification for Trump's executive actions. Carter and
Obama were the worst at not keeping America safe, so Trump
is doing immigration bans based on the failed policies of
Carter and Obama, polices that failed to keep America
safe. And Trump defenders point to the Bernardino shooter
coming from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as the justification
for banning immigrants from seven nations that are NOT
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. After all, Obama did not
include Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in his failed policy, so
Trump is not including them in his correction because
failed Obama excluded them.
Progressives are just so dumb.
How can they let Republicans justify policies of Obama
based on Trump or Republicans doing them?
They should be emphasizing how much Trump and
Republicans are now advocating and doing the "failed"
policies of Obama.
Peter K. said in reply to mulp...
They should treat Trump like a regular Republican whose
trickle-down economic ideas doesn't work and has never
worked. Trump promised his voters something different.
Clinton did win the popular vote.
Reply
Tuesday, January 31, 2017 at 10:33 AM
mulp said in reply to Peter K....
But she lost the Rust Belt which Obama tried to address by
failed stimulus spending on infrastructure which Clinton
doubled down on.
Trump alone can fix things because
doubling down on Clinton's doubling down on Obama's failed
infrastructure spending will work because he is a
Republican, not a radical leftist socialist Democrat doing
it.
Why, because Trump will spending a trillion dollars on
infrastructure but it won't cost a penny because he is
using tax cuts and the free market, and the free in free
market means free trillion dollar infrastructure.
Progressives are not liberals because they adopted
voodoo free lunch economics after the 80s. Obama was a
liberal who understands TANSTAAFL and called for paying
for things. Trump is the anti-Obama in that where Obama
policy and action cost, Trump can do exactly the same for
free, at no cost to anyone. Bernie was more like Trump in
promising trillions in spending at no cost, for free.
"They should treat Trump like a regular Republican
whose trickle-down economic ideas doesn't work and has
never worked." Which Republicans in the "they" believe
free lunch economics don't work? Which conservatives in
the "they" believe voodoo economics don't work?
"They" criticize/defend policies based on the identity
of the policy makers, not based on logic, fact, reason.
Republicans/conservatives justifying policies based on
Obama doing them or advocating them is just so absurd, and
so easy to eviscerate. "Are you saying Obama's policies
and selections of nations as sources of terrorist threats
were the best at keeping America safe?" "If Obama failed
to keep America safe because he picked the wrong nations,
why are you using Obama's wrong list of nations?"
Reply
Tuesday, January 31, 2017 at 11:15 AM
anne said...
Important and finely written analysis. Judging from the
politically adamant president and close advisers, the
openings for Fed executives from the beginning, there is a
significant danger of the independence of the Federal
Reserve being compromised.
Reply
Tuesday, January 31, 2017 at 10:43 AM
"... In the declining years of the British empire, some of its politicians flattered themselves that they could be "Greeks to their Romans" - providing wise and experienced counsel to the new American imperium. ..."
"... But the Emperor Nero has now taken power in Washington - and the British are having to smile and clap as he sets fires and reaches for his fiddle. ..."
"... imo, the risk of the USA becoming an oppressive authoritarian state (as opposed to an oligarchy with a veneer of democracy) is being willfully ignored by the the serfs, the bourgeoisie (e.g. EV commentators), and our oligarch lords and masters. ..."
"... spectacle of obvious lies being peddled by the White House is a tragedy for US democracy. ..."
"... While Trump immigration act was sweeping and lacked finesse that just is not important. This was what people who elected him expected from him. Be prepared for more. Trump administration can allow to be operationally clumsy the first 100 days, to say the least. Breaking things is a part of politics as Bismarck once noted: "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood." ..."
"... I am still waiting for neocons purge in the State Department and departure of Victoria Nuland. And I hope we will see much more of this sort of thing over the next few years. ..."
"... So those neoliberals who shed crocodile tears about Big, Bad Trump now should better be prepared :-) About every other generation has its own 'rendezvous with destiny.' Remember Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam War... ..."
"... "We are going to learn more about ourselves than we may have expected. There is nothing new in this; it is the particular experience of about every other generation and their own 'rendezvous with destiny.' How can we be content when the choices are between the 'lesser of two evils.' They are both evil, and many including me are not happy about it- but it is what it is." ..."
Britain cannot look to the US for support after its
divorce from the EU
Gideon Rachman
For the most ardent supporters of Brexit, the election of
Donald Trump was a mixture of vindication and salvation. The
president of the US, no less, thinks it is a great idea for
Britain to leave the EU. Even better, he seems to offer an
exciting escape route. The UK can leap off the rotting raft
of the EU and on to the gleaming battleship HMS Anglosphere.
It is an alluring vision. Unfortunately, it is precisely
wrong. The election of Mr Trump has transformed Brexit from a
risky decision into a straightforward disaster. For the past
40 years, Britain has had two central pillars to its foreign
policy: membership of the EU and a "special relationship"
with the US.
The decision to exit the EU leaves Britain much more
dependent on the US, just at a time when America has elected
an unstable president opposed to most of the central
propositions on which UK foreign policy is based.
During the brief trip to Washington by Theresa May, the UK
prime minister, this unpleasant truth was partly obscured by
trivia and trade. Mr Trump's decision to return the bust of
Winston Churchill to the Oval Office was greeted with slavish
delight by Brexiters. More substantively, the Trump
administration made it clear that it is minded to do a trade
deal with the UK just as soon as Britain's EU divorce comes
through.
... ... ...
Britain could defend free-trade far more effectively with
the EU's bulk behind it - and could also start to explore the
possibilities for more EU defence co-operation. As it is,
Britain has been thrown into the arms of an American
president that the UK's foreign secretary has called a
madman.
In the declining years of the British empire, some of
its politicians flattered themselves that they could be
"Greeks to their Romans" - providing wise and experienced
counsel to the new American imperium.
But the Emperor Nero has now taken power in Washington
- and the British are having to smile and clap as he sets
fires and reaches for his fiddle.
imo, the risk of the USA becoming an oppressive
authoritarian state (as opposed to an oligarchy with a veneer
of democracy) is being willfully ignored by the the serfs,
the bourgeoisie (e.g. EV commentators), and our oligarch
lords and masters.
You sound like Bernie
Sanders. As Bernie said if the Republicans become
increasingly successful in suppressing and limiting the vote,
we could be in trouble. And/or if they continue to corrupt
and strip away campaign finance rules like with Citizens
United. But the demographics are against them.
Falsehood cannot be the basis for US foreign policy
JANUARY 23, 2017 by: Gideon Rachman
The man from the BBC was laughing as he reported the White
House's false claims about the size of the crowd at Donald
Trump's inauguration. He should have been crying. What we are
witnessing is the destruction of the credibility of the
American government.
This
spectacle of obvious lies being peddled by the
White House is a tragedy for US democracy.
But the rest
of the world - and, in particular, America's allies - should
also be frightened. A Trump administration that is addicted
to the "big lie" has very dangerous implications for global
security.
Serious issue: true, his credibility is utterly gone in the
reality-based community, but seriously, what about the
general populace at large?
Remember the Reagan and Bush Jr.
Administrations. The presidents themselves were as oblivious
to reality as Trump appears to be, yet their credibility
wasn't totally demolished to a big portion of the populace.
Why should Trump fail where others have succeeded?
There's also mainstream media credibility, VSP
credibility, and (yes) Clinton credibility.
After all, there's the "credibility" of the Ruskie hacking
of our election.
Paul Krugman's credibility took a hit for me sometime
around a year ago, and as long as he keeps writing things
like the "Trump-Putin" regime, it's staying down.
Krugman's credibility took a bid hit from me when he started
attacking Bernie Sanders and his supporters during the
primary (which reminded me of the way he treated Obama in
2008).
Just go through his columns and blog posts on the
subject and it's amazing how brazenly awful they are.
Just me noticing, for myself, what bond investors
collectively are thinking about inflation over the coming 5
years, and thinking that inflation will be a little above 2%
or subdued.
There are two other sides to the credibility/trust issue.
Domestically there is the question of business confidence in
a cultural landscape which has shattered. Hatred and bigotry
is up; there is increasing likelihood of unrest and violence.
Business my be loathe to expand in such an unsettled,
uncertain landscape. And it may be this way for a while.
Internationally there is the question of whether foreign
consumers will find U.S. products to be attractive, and
untainted by ugly environmental and labor concerns -- and
inexpensive on world markets, if there is protectionism and
retaliation.
Trump is making the cardinal mistake of
believing that the U.S. is the indispensable nation, that
people will be forced to deal with him, that he can throw his
weight around.
While Trump immigration act was sweeping and lacked finesse
that just is not important. This was what people who elected
him expected from him. Be prepared for more.
Trump administration can allow to be operationally clumsy
the first 100 days, to say the least. Breaking things is a
part of politics as Bismarck once noted: "The great questions
of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and
majority decisions but by iron and blood."
I am still waiting for neocons purge in the State
Department and departure of Victoria Nuland. And I hope we
will see much more of this sort of thing over the next few
years.
So those neoliberals who shed crocodile tears about Big,
Bad Trump now should better be prepared :-) About every other generation has its own 'rendezvous with
destiny.' Remember Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam War...
== quote ==
"We are going to learn more about ourselves than we may
have expected. There is nothing new in this; it is the
particular experience of about every other generation and
their own 'rendezvous with destiny.' How can we be content
when the choices are between the 'lesser of two evils.' They
are both evil, and many including me are not happy about it-
but it is what it is."
The State Department has 7,600 Foreign Service officers and
11,000 civil servants.
libezkova :
"Administration officials have drafted a new executive order
aimed at overhauling, among other things, the H-1B work-visa
program that technology companies have long relied on to
bring top foreign engineering talent to their U.S.-based
locations" [USA Today]. "The order is aimed at ensuring that
"officials administer our laws in a manner that prioritizes
the interests of American workers and - to the maximum degree
possible - the jobs, wages and well-being of those workers,"
according to a copy of the document provided to USA TODAY."
"A market state, in contrast to the nation-state's focus on broad
economic prosperity and cultural integration, focuses on providing
opportunity to the individual. Finally, and most importantly to me, Trump
isn't dismantling neoliberalism to return to the old nation-state. He's
building, with the help of social networking, a new model of governance for
the US.
"The theory that Americans will blame Trump for his failures in governance ultimately assumes a
faith in government procedures and institutions that no longer exists" [
Carl
Beijer
].
libezkova said...
January 30, 2017 at 09:47 PM
Alternative view of the problem: "The theory that Americans
will blame Trump for his failures in governance ultimately
assumes a faith in government procedures and institutions
that no longer exists" [Carl Beijer].
He provides an
interesting idea of "submerged state" under neoliberalism
when the government is so hidden behind the market that it is
invisible. This is different from the idea of the "deep
state".
If nobody cares about the preservation of any policies
that actually are implemented via government like ACA it is
very difficult to defend such a policies.
So attack on neoliberal government institutions, laws and
policies can be pretty successful if performed from the
nationalistic platform (economic, cultural or some other).
that can happen because:
1. They already discredited themselves
2. Nobody cares about them other then financial oligarchy
and their Fifth Column in MSM.
3. As neoliberalism destroys human solidarity, and atomize
individuals, nobody want to sacrifices their lives defending
it.
So, in a way, the defense of neoliberalism now is more
difficult because of specific mentality that was instilled in
Americans which promotes utter individualism and thus allow
dismantling government institutions and laws that were put in
place to secure neoliberalism dominance (neoliberal coup
d'état). Who cares.
People will allow Trump to do what he wants. In a way
neoliberalism prepared the ground not only for far right
movement Renaissance, but also for the new incarnation of
Cesarism
Also neoliberals are often afraid to call themselves
neoliberals. And neoliberal MSM avoid the word neoliberalism
like a plague. If something does not exist as a clearly
defined notion, it is difficult to defend it if the attack is
carried under the nationalism (economic or other) flag.
It is more natural to let it go. Wedge policies that
neoliberal now try to use amplify any discontent for the
defense of neoliberalism (immigration) might have only
limited, or no effect.
This effect "nobody wants to die for neoliberalism" might
well be fatal for neoliberalism.
Trump is pitting Americans against the submerged state
by Carl Beijer
The consensus take on Trump's opening salvo of executive
orders is that he's overpromising by failing to take into
account basic issues of implementation and legality - and
that this, eventually, will turn into a political liability.
These "quick moves could hurt Trump down the line," according
to Politico. "Trump's aggressive pace in his first days as
president could backfire," Abigail Tracy writes for Vanity
Fair. And David Axelrod argues that these failures will
become a challenge for Trump:
Trump, he said, could face an even more difficult
challenge..."The appeal he had as a candidate is that people
clearly want someone to snap their fingers and just make
something happen, and he saw that desire and played to that
desire," Axelrod said.
This gets Trump's appeal right, but one should pause
before assuming that Trump will be blamed for any of this.
Most of the obstacles he faces are fairly bureaucratic,
technocratic and legalistic in nature, which is precisely why
so many publications are having to roll out explainers about
them. And though wonks and pundits certainly care about these
things, most Americans are far more interested in seeing
problems solved than in how we get there.
No one cares about rules
Just consider what would seem to be the most serious
objection to Trump's executive orders: the Muslim ban and the
sanctuary city defunding scheme are both illegal. Will
Americans care?
Predictably, Trump supporters aren't too concerned about
the "rules" - but here, the crucial point to consider is that
even 41% of Democrats don't harbor in-principle objections,
and the general population is even more ambivalent. There are
substantial reasons why Americans are mobilizing against
Trump, but contrary to what Chris Hayes and MoveOn.org seem
to think, rulebreaking probably isn't one of them.
No one cares about the individual mandate
Similarly, Politico notes that "key members of Congress
weren't consulted" about Trump's very first executive order,
which "could effectively gut [the] Affordable Care Act's
individual mandate"; this may very well make health insurance
unaffordable for millions of Americans, and Michael Hiltzik
argues that "Republicans will find it very difficult to evade
responsibility for the consequences, because they will emerge
in direct response to Trump's order."
But this isn't quite true. If Trump manages to destroy the
individual mandate, this will allow a lot of healthy people
to stop paying for insurance that they don't think they need.
The second-order consequence will be that insurance pools
will have fewer people, and those people will tend to be
sicker. Only then do you get to the third-order consequence,
where insurers charge higher rates to cover a smaller, sicker
pool.
In other words, Trump only gets blamed for what happens
next if you buy a fairly complicated and counterintuitive
three-step economic analysis of cascading effects that are
mostly invisible to the typical consumer. Most Americans
(63%) hate the individual mandate, in part because it doesn't
appear to have any direct relationship to the goal of
providing effective and affordable health care - so there's
no particular reason to assume that they'll blame Republicans
for any problems that emerge as Trump gets rid of it.
No one cares about the submerged state
Expect this kind of dynamic to emerge time and time again:
Trump will violate some law or destroy some government
program, and the liberal-left will have a difficult time
objecting to it because people generally aren't inclined to
defend either. This ideological pathology didn't come from
nowhere. It's a direct consequence of what Cornell professor
Suzanne Mettler calls the submerged state:
Americans often fail to recognize government's role in
society, even if they have experienced it in their own lives.
That is because so much of what government does today is
largely invisible...its benefits are channeled through the
tax code and subsidies to private organizations...The
submerged state obscures the role of government and
exaggerates that of the market.
There could be no clearer example of how this problem plays
out than Trump's attack on health care. If we had a simple,
single-payer system in which the government directly provided
insurance, the consequences of any attempt to shrink it or
eliminate it would be obvious, and Americans would have a
stronger investment in defending it. But instead, the ACA was
designed to do something far more complicated: to provide
affordable health insurance using a system "based on the
private marketplace", one that would maintain the role of
private, profit-seeking corporations as insurance providers.
This attempt to preserve capitalism made the ACA so
insanely complex, and the government's role so remote and
indirect, that today when Trump tries to dismantle Obamacare,
most people don't know what's going on - and they don't care.
This approach to policymaking, Mark Schmitt writes, has been
powerfully abetted by
Democrats enraptured by subtle, invisible social
policies...liberals moved away from large, decisive programs
such as Medicare and embraced gentler interventions that
could be seen as using market forces for social
good...liberals adopted the Delphic pronouncement that
government should "steer, not row"-that is, provide subtle
incentives to guide the private sector along the right path.
The submerged state similarly weakens the rule of law.
Consider, for example, Trump's plan to defund sanctuary
cities. Arguably, this violates a Supreme Court ruling that
"if the federal government wants to put conditions on funding
to local governments, the conditions must be reasonably
related to the purpose of the funding." If most Americans
felt some personal interest in this ruling, then it's easy to
imagine Trump's executive order turning into a political
liability.
But why suspect this will happen when 57% of the
population doesn't think they're using government social
programs at all? The government's role in providing for the
general welfare is so enormously obscured that only some
Americans will feel any stake whatsoever in defending
abstract laws regulating federal funding.
Trump is a Caesar
Critics like Axelrod suspect that the public will turn on
Trump when his dramatic promises and force-of-will politics
crash against the complexity of modern governance. For
another perspective, however, consider Gramsci:
It is the sheer complexity of civil society that
paradoxically makes such Caesarist interventions
feasible...Charismatic figures...present themselves as being
able to "get the job done" without the time-consuming need to
win over the institutions of civil society. Caesarists
figures are thus likely to be populist leaders who make
direct, personal appeals to the people. (Steven Jones)
Instead of turning against Trump, Americans may very well
turn against the government. In Trump, they will see the same
figure who they identified with during the election: an angry
voice of rebellion against an entrenched, recalcitrant
establishment. They will sympathize with his failures and
grievances, because they too have faced the merciless,
unyielding logic of late capitalist neoliberalism, with its
unconquerable institutions and its indifference to their
problems; instead of feeling betrayed by Trump, they will see
Trump as an underdog, and believe that he's being betrayed by
America.
The theory that Americans will blame Trump for his
failures in governance ultimately assumes a faith in
government procedures and institutions that no longer exists.
To defeat him, the opposition needs to abandon the submerged
state and present a vision of government that powerfully and
directly intervenes in society and gives people nice things:
Give people nice things, and make it easy. Provide things
that it is generally understood that government should
provide. Education, health care, roads, sidewalks,
supertrains. Generous unemployment benefits, easier
bankruptcy, affordable childcare that doesn't have some
absurd eligibility formula, consumer protection laws.
Everything should be universal benefits paid for by taxing
rich people more than we do. (Atrios)
Use the government to give people what they want, and
Trump loses his scapegoat. Hide the government behind the
market, and America has nowhere else to turn - it can only
get lost in the futile ambitions of messiahs and madmen.
"... In economics, liberalism espoused "neo-liberalism" which was the replacement economic ideology for social-democracy. It championed, especially under the Clinton-Blair duo, financial liberalization, much smaller welfare state, and so-called "meritocracy" which essentially meant the ability of the rich to place their kids into the best schools out of which 90% would graduate and thus "meritocratically" claim later in life huge wage premiums. Free trade agreement privileged, as Dean Baker has written, the interests of the rich in advanced economies through protection of patents and intellectual property rights and with scant or no attention to labor rights. In the international arena, through the World Bank and the IMF, Clintonite neo-liberalism was associated with Washington consensus policies. They are in many respects reasonable policies, but were applied dogmatically and mindlessly especially with respect to privatization and often with the principal objective of ensuring that the debts be collected regardless of the social effects on the population. Greece is the best known example of such policies because it sits in the middle of Europe and the results of "debt collections" are easiest to see. But the same principles were applied across the world. ..."
"... Underpinning such policies was an ideology that saw economic success as the only dimension (in addition to the acceptance of certain liberal tropes which I will mention below) in which worth of an individual is expressed or measured. ..."
"... Corruption. A corollary of this hyper-economicism in ordinary life was the corruption of the elites who espoused the same yardstick of success as everybody else: enrichment by all means. Avner Offer documents this shift in his analysis of where social-democracy went astray with "New Labour" and "New Democrats". The corruption of the political class, not only in the West but in the entire world, had a deeply corrosive and demoralizing effect on the electorates everywhere. Being politician became increasingly seen as a way to acquire personal riches, a career like any other, divorced from any real desire either to do "public service" or to try to promote own values and provide leadership. "Electoralism", that is doing anything to be elected, was liberalism's political credo. In that it presaged the populists. ..."
By "liberalism" I mean what is considered under this term in the US. By "to blame" I mean "for
the rise of Trump and similar nationalist-populists".
What are the arguments for seeing liberal triumphalism which began with the collapse of Communism
in the 1990s as having produced the backlash we are witnessing today? I think they can be divided
into three parts: economics, personal integrity, and ideology.
In economics, liberalism espoused "neo-liberalism" which was the replacement economic ideology
for social-democracy. It championed, especially under the Clinton-Blair duo, financial liberalization,
much smaller welfare state, and so-called "meritocracy" which essentially meant the ability of the
rich to place their kids into the best schools out of which 90% would graduate and thus "meritocratically"
claim later in life huge wage premiums.
Free trade agreement privileged, as
Dean Baker has written, the interests of the rich in advanced economies through protection of patents
and intellectual property rights and with scant or no attention to labor rights. In the international
arena, through the World Bank and the IMF, Clintonite neo-liberalism was associated with Washington
consensus policies. They are in many respects reasonable policies, but were applied dogmatically
and mindlessly especially with respect to privatization and often with the principal objective of
ensuring that the debts be collected regardless of the social effects on the population. Greece is
the best known example of such policies because it sits in the middle of Europe and the results of
"debt collections" are easiest to see. But the same principles were applied across the world.
Underpinning such policies was an ideology that saw economic success as the only dimension
(in addition to the acceptance of certain liberal tropes which I will mention below) in which worth
of an individual is expressed or measured.
That ideology found broad acceptance across the world,
fanned by globalization and by what that ideology has pleasing to the human psyche which craves acquisition
of more. It was thus consistent with human nature and probably helped increase world output several-fold
and reduce world poverty. But it might have been pushed too hard to the exclusion of other human
characteristics and helped create especially among those who were economically less successful resentment
and estrangement from the values promoted by liberals.
Corruption. A corollary of this hyper-economicism in ordinary life was the corruption of the
elites who espoused the same yardstick of success as everybody else: enrichment by all means. Avner
Offer documents this shift in his analysis of where social-democracy went astray with "New Labour"
and "New Democrats". The corruption of the political class, not only in the West but in the entire
world, had a deeply corrosive and demoralizing effect on the electorates everywhere. Being politician
became increasingly seen as a way to acquire personal riches, a career like any other, divorced from
any real desire either to do "public service" or to try to promote own values and provide leadership.
"Electoralism", that is doing anything to be elected, was liberalism's political credo. In that it
presaged the populists.
It is, I think, important to see the link between the economic ideology of "commercialism" which
informed economic policies since the early 1980s in the West and China, and since the 1990s in the
formerly Communist countries, and systemic and all-pervasive corruption of the elites. Since being
successful meant amassing most money, politicians could not operate in a different dimension (for
example in "ideals") nor could they get elected without being corrupt because campaigns could not
be fought without money. It is an illusion that the political space may operate according to different
rules from the rest of society.
Pensée unique. Liberalism introduced a dogmatic set of principles, "the only politically correct
way of thinking" characterized by identity politics and "horizontal equality" (no differences, on
average, in wages between men and women, different races or religions) which left actual inequality
go unchecked. A tacit hierarchy was introduced, where the acceptance of these watered-down principles
of equality combined with economic success, was the requirement to be "non-deplorable". Others, those
who did not do well economically or did not adhere to all the tenets of the mainstream thinking,
were not only failures but morally inferior.
The high priests of liberalism, ruling the media, loved to hold, at the same time, logically contradictory
beliefs which somehow were both "good". Thus they created terminological or behavioral contortions
that were either direct attacks on common sense or examples of hypocrisy as "supporting the troops"
while being "against the war" or giving enormous donations to private schools (in order to get their
names emblazoned in classrooms) while "supporting public education". They were not embarrassed by
contradictions, nor accepted trade-offs: you could support soldiers killing civilians "because soldiers
protect us" and be against the war and killing of civilians at the same time; you could send kids
to private schools and be in favor of public education; you could fret about climate change, berate
others who do not, and emit more CO2 than 99% of the mankind. It was ideologically an extremely comfortable
position. It required very little mental effort to accept five or six essential tenets (you could
just read a couple of writers who repeated ad nauseum the same ideas in the main liberal publications),
and it allowed you to do wherever you liked while claiming that every such action was ethically unimpeachable.
Everybody was a paragon of virtue and indulged all their preferences.
Others who failed to appreciate the advantages of such a position were ignored until their dissatisfaction
exploded. No one among liberals seemed to think it odd (much less to do something about it) that
the best educated country in the world with one of the highest world per capita GDPs, could have
a third of the population who believed in creationism or in aliens running our lives. It really did
not matter to the elite so long as these people existed in the Netherworld.
Those who trusted in Fukuyama, and to whom the 1990s seemed like a triumph that would keep them
at the pinnacle of human evolution forever, see today's events as a catastrophe not only because
they could indeed lead to a catastrophe but because their carefully nurtured ersatz ideology and
place in society have collapsed.
I am writing this in Vienna, in Prater, overlooking a giant Ferris Wheel which inevitably makes
one think of Harry Lime. One can see liberalism as having set the Ferris Wheel in motion, with each
car moving at first slowly and then faster and faster. The ride brought immense joy at first, but
eventually, it seems, somebody turned on the switch to super-fast, locked the control room, and most
of us are now in these cars that no one controls and no one can stop, running at break-neck speed,
and wondering how and when the crash will come.
"A corollary of this hyper-economicism
in ordinary life was the corruption of the elites who espoused the same yardstick of success
as everybody else: enrichment by all means. Avner Offer documents this shift in his analysis
of where social-democracy went astray with "New Labour" and "New Democrats". The corruption
of the political class, not only in the West but in the entire world, had a deeply corrosive
and demoralizing effect on the electorates everywhere. Being politician became increasingly
seen as a way to acquire personal riches, a career like any other, divorced from any real desire
either to do "public service" or to try to promote own values and provide leadership. "Electoralism",
that is doing anything to be elected, was liberalism's political credo. In that it presaged
the populists."
Think of Hillary's speeches to Goldman Sachs, etc, and Obama's failure to
throw bankers in jail.
As President Donald Trump prepares - in the words of his
chief of staff - "a buffet of options" for dealing with
Mexico, trade and immigration, it's time for the Texas
congressional delegation to make a strong statement in
support of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Though much of Trump's focus last week was on the border
wall (and ways to make Mexico pay for it), his focus next
week is expected to be on trade.
"President Trump has taken his first steps toward an
'America first' approach to international trade, pulling out
of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Monday and reaffirming
his intent to renegotiate NAFTA, the North American Free
Trade Agreement," the Boston Globe reports. "What does this
mean for U.S. companies and American workers? Trump's
executive order to withdraw from the TPP is anticlimactic.
That agreement was already a dead-letter, having been
disclaimed by both presidential candidates and never ratified
by Congress. But a new NAFTA could upend U.S.-Mexican
relations and disrupt whole sectors of the US economy."
And that would be disastrous for Texas.
Texas companies, big and small, export a total of $92.5
billion worth of goods to Mexico each year. That figure
dwarfs second-place California, which exports just $26.8
billion of goods.
"From the booming border city of Laredo to the bustling
trading hub of Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas has become the
nation's top exporter of goods, according to the Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Mexico is its biggest customer,"
the Wall Street Journal explains. "Some 382,000 jobs in Texas
alone depend on trade with Mexico, according to 2014 data
released this month by the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan global research group.
Goods exported from Texas help support more than a million
jobs across the U.S., according to the U.S. Commerce
Department."
Texas' top exports to Mexico are computer and electronic
products, petroleum and coal products, chemicals, machinery
and transportation equipment.
As University of Oregon economist Mark Thoma points out,
"NAFTA isn't the problem, and tariffs aren't the answer."
He says Trump believes that NAFTA is the reason the U.S.
has lost manufacturing jobs. But that's not the case, he
explains.
"Domestic manufacturing's employment decline began long
before NAFTA came along," Thoma wrote for CBS News.
"According to University of California Berkeley professor
Brad DeLong's calculations, 'A sector of the economy that
provided three out of 10 nonfarm jobs at the start of the
1950s and one in four nonfarm jobs at the start of the 1970s
now provides fewer than one in 11 nonfarm jobs today.
Proportionally, the United States has shed almost two-thirds
of relative manufacturing employment since 1971.' In
addition, much of that drop can be attributed to
technological change - the rise of robots and digital
technology - rather than globalization. Renegotiating trade
agreements can't change this."
It's time for the Texas delegation to Washington to stand
up and say they won't support Trump's short-sighted attempts
to kill NAFTA. Ditching NAFTA would be a mistake.
What is the answer? Seems to me that 'liberal' economists are
convinced that they know what we should NOT be doing, but
come up short on proposals that will actually solve the
problem.
All the focus on blaming trade for loss of manufacturing
distracts from the real conversation needed: How can we
better address the dislocation of workers due to advances in
technology?
Trump and the right blame trade and believe
that better trade policies or tariffs or "shaking up the
markets?" will miraculously bring back coal mining and
manufacturing.
The anti-NAFTA left is focusing on the ant and ignoring
the elephant. This enables Trump by placing all focus on
trade. Why focus on government programs to help the
dislocated if the dislocation problem can be fixed by
renegotiating NAFTA? Serious ideas such as green energy jobs
are dismissed in favor of fixing trade instead. The
conversation will never turn to real solutions about how
modern manufacturing jobs increasingly require computer
skills, education and training.
Most small towns have lost jobs because the manufacturers
they do have are hiring fewer workers or not net expanding
their workforce. At the same time, service sector jobs remain
low pay and much opposition to raising minimum wage or
Obamacare to provide them with health insurance.
Having the comparative data on manufacturing employment as a
percent of total employment for the United States, Canada,
United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, the Netherlands,
Australia and Japan, running from 1970 through 2012, what is
striking is the similarity of pattern.
Also striking is the
relation between gains in manufacturing productivity and
decline in percent manufacturing employment in the United
States.
Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman would appear to
be right about trade relations having fairly little to do
with the long term decline of percent of employment in
manufacturing in the United States or other developed
countries.
What Happened to Automation and Robots: WaPo Tells of
Labor Shortage in Japan
Wow, things just keep getting worse. Automation is taking
all the jobs, and the aging of the population means we won't
have any workers. Yes, these are completely contradictory
concerns, but no one ever said that our policy elite had a
clue. (No, I'm not talking about Donald Trump's gang here.)
Anyhow, the Washington Post had a front page story *
telling us how older people are now working at retirement
homes in Japan as a result of the aging of its population.
The piece includes this great line:
"That means authorities need to think about ways to keep
seniors healthy and active for longer, but also about how to
augment the workforce to cope with labor shortages."
You sort of have to love the first part, since folks might
have thought authorities would have always been trying to
think about ways to keep seniors healthy and active longer.
After all, isn't this a main focus of public health policy?
The part about labor shortages is also interesting. When
there is a shortage of oil or wheat the price rises. If there
were a labor shortage in Japan then we should be seeing
rapidly rising wages. We aren't. Wages have been virtually
flat in recent years. That would seem to indicate that Japan
doesn't have a labor shortage -- or alternatively it has
economically ignorant managers who don't realize that the way
to attract workers is to offer higher pay.
"... most reports on Mexican employment aggregate manufacturing jobs with "industry", which would include oil gas drilling and construction...i did find one graph that shows a 20%, 5 million job jump in Mexican industrial employment in the first six years after NAFTA, but they never reached their prior peak, and i find the rest of the period inconclusive, not knowing much about Mexican business cycles: ..."
The percentage of employees working in manufacturing in the
US fell in a long surprisingly straight line from the late
1960s. The big drop in employee count in 2000 was a result of
the collapse of the dot-com boom. There has been a long,
steady downward pressure on manufacturing jobs, but we see
big drops in their absolute numbers in just about every
recession.
I do know that the 1990s were a big decade for increased
manufacturing efficiency. Supercomputers and
micro-controllers changed the way we designed and built cars,
cans and washing machines, for example. I know Silicon Valley
was rapidly changing the way computers were assembled as
design rules made chip design easier and new techniques made
chip placement and connection simpler. Does anyone even use a
wire wrap gun anymore? There was also the impact of the
Japanese challenge of the 1980s which made manufacturers
rethink their supply chain and encouraging robotics and
continuous inspection.
The official story is that the adoption of computers
didn't show up in productivity figures, but if you looked at
manufacturing, their impact was pervasive. Not every industry
is going to advance at the same time, and improvements that
helped one often lower costs and help others.
If you look at the chart, the big drop in 2000 rivals the
drop in the early 1980s and the similar drop during the most
recent crash. It's like a strong gust of wind knocking down
an old tree trunk. The trunk was rotting and weakening for
years, but it was the wind storm that knocked it down.
Nope. As you say, "the 1990s were a big decade for increased
manufacturing efficiency."
And yet the number of jobs in
manufacturing in the U.S. Actually *increased* slightly. And
the increase was worldwide.
"In November 1999, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene
Barshefsky and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji made a trade deal
that led to China's admission into the World Trade
Organization (WTO) on November 10, 2001."
Offshoring intensified, according to the official
statistics of the U.S. Trade Representative. Here's the link,
showing that offshoring doubled by 2001:
http://www.trivisonno.com/offshoring
What happened that caused the decline in employment in the
U.S. To be so much more severe than in any other
industrialized country was China.
most reports on Mexican employment aggregate manufacturing
jobs with "industry", which would include oil gas drilling
and construction...i did find one graph that shows a 20%, 5
million job jump in Mexican industrial employment in the
first six years after NAFTA, but they never reached their
prior peak, and i find the rest of the period inconclusive,
not knowing much about Mexican business cycles:
Increases in productivity (technology is a broad term)
likely explain the bulk of the massive decrease in
manufacturing in both the USA and Japan. Furriners certainly
make good scapegoats, however.
"... Loss of one business is OK, two -- the same. But at some point quantity turns into quality and you get entirely new situation. Point of no return. ..."
"... If too many business close you not only lose the whole sector and but you suffer additional loses from the destruction of vertically integrated suppliers. You might lose the whole chain. ..."
"... And your "more technologically advanced facilities" will close too. I saw such a chain of event in chemical industry. And then you will get polluted ingredients from China and lose your customers to Germany. ..."
"... Looks like you do not understand the complexity of of manufacturing chains and thinking in very simplistic terms. ..."
"... And remember that your "high technological sector" is not immune. IT can be and is outsourced to India. Computers for Dell are now assembled in Taiwan. Gradually the design will move too as the best design is when you are close to production facility and understand complex processes involved in production. ..."
The problem is that you don't have the ability to compare what would have happened without NAFTA.
There is no doubt that the pain is real in those communities that saw their factory shut down
and the product being produced in Mexico instead. But would that factory have been shut down anyway
if NAFTA had not been? We know that a lot of manufacturing related to cars moved from the north
to the south within US - and from solid middle class salaries to $10-14/hour. Efficiencies and
hunts for lower cost would have continued regardless of NAFTA. So even though we know some effects
are real we don't know how much they count in the bigger picture of change.
Good point
Carrier will keep jobs here (for now) Will automate later
Try this scenario:
American businesses under pressure from shareholders and corporate raiders underinvest in their
manufacturing facilities and milk the profits. Meanwhile, new more productive competitors are
built incorporating technological advances many of them in developing countries that have strong
growth.
Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more technologically
advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss of jobs to foreign
competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not trade deals.
"Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more
technologically advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss
of jobs to foreign competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not
trade deals."
That't pure neoliberal baloney. Free market propaganda.
Loss of one business is OK, two -- the same. But at some point quantity turns into quality
and you get entirely new situation. Point of no return.
If too many business close you not only lose the whole sector and but you suffer additional
loses from the destruction of vertically integrated suppliers. You might lose the whole chain.
And your "more technologically advanced facilities" will close too. I saw such a chain
of event in chemical industry. And then you will get polluted ingredients from China and lose
your customers to Germany.
Looks like you do not understand the complexity of of manufacturing chains and thinking
in very simplistic terms.
And remember that your "high technological sector" is not immune. IT can be and is outsourced
to India. Computers for Dell are now assembled in Taiwan. Gradually the design will move too as
the best design is when you are close to production facility and understand complex processes
involved in production.
There was recently a story how Intel lost serious money just trying to move the process from
one place to another.
Another factor that outsourcing of manufacturing radically changes the balance of power between
the capital and the labor. It helped to decimate the power of organized labor, which was the explicit
goal of neoliberalism: atomization of labor force and conversion of them into autonomous "self-enhancing"
(via education and training at your own expense) units, competing with each other in the (pretty
unfair) "labor market".
It's simply amazing how many factors played in hand for neoliberal coup d'état of 1980th: computer
revolution, Internet and related communication revolution, financialization ( 401(k) plans were
enacted into law in 1978), dissolution of the USSR, outsourcing and related decimation on trade
unions power. And then came Clinton and officially buried the New Deal.
"... "[T]he decline in manufacturing employment ... is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving technological progress." At this point I call nonsense. Until somebody shows me the "technological progress" that hit precisely like a tsunami in the year 2000, The argument made by DeLong and Rodrick is nonsense. I already debunked the "but, Germany!" Argument the other day, so don't even try that. ..."
"... The U.S. went from 30% of its nonfarm employees in manufacturing to 12% because of rapid growth in manufacturing productivity and limited demand, yes? The U.S. went from 12% to 9% because of stupid and destructive macro policies--the Reagan deficits, the strong-dollar policy pushed well past its sell-by date, too-tight monetary policy--that diverted it from its proper role as a net exporter of capital and finance to economies that need to be net sinks rather than net sources of the global flow of funds for investment, yes? The U.S. went from 9% to 8.7% because of the extraordinarily rapid rise of China, yes? The U.S. went from 8.7% to 8.6% because of NAFTA, yes? ..."
"... And yet the American political system right now is blaming all, 100%, every piece of that decline from 30% to 8.6% and every problem that can be laid its door on brown people from Mexico. ..."
"... Sanders addressed the issue too and for that he's insulted by the likes of Sanjait and other progressive neoliberals. ..."
What did NAFTA really do? : Brad De Long has written a
lengthy essay that defends NAFTA (and other trade deals) from the charge that they are responsible
for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. I agree with much that he says – in particular
with the points that the decline in manufacturing employment has been a long-term process that
predates NAFTA and the China shock and that it is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving
technological progress. There is no way you can hold NAFTA responsible for employment de-industrialization
in the U.S. or expect that a "better" deal with Mexico will bring those jobs back.
At the same time, the essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the distributional
pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains.
So what does the evidence say on these issues? ...
A recently published academic study by Lorenzo Caliendo and Fernando Parro uses all the bells-and-whistles
of modern trade theory to produce the estimate that these overall gains amount to a "welfare"
gain of 0.08% for the U.S. That is, eight-hundredth of 1 percent! ... Trade volume impacts were
much larger: a doubling of U.S. imports from Mexico.
What is equally interesting is that fully half of the miniscule 0.08% gain for US is not an
efficiency gain, but actually a benefit due to terms-of-trade improvement. That is, Caliendo and
Parro estimate that the world prices of what the U.S. imports fell relative to what it exports.
These are not efficiency gains, but income transfers from other countries (here principally Mexico
and Canada). These gains came at the expense of other countries.
A gain, no matter how small, is still a gain. What about the distributional impacts?
The most detailed empirical analysis of the labor-market effects of NAFTA is contained in a
paper by John McLaren and Shushanik Hakobyan. They find that the aggregate effects were rather
small (in line with other work), but that impacts on directly affected communities were quite
severe. It is worth quoting John McLaren at length, from an
interview : ...
In other words, those high school dropouts who worked in industries protected by tariffs prior
to NAFTA experienced reductions in wage growth by as much as 17 percentage points relative to
wage growth in unaffected industries. I don't think anyone can argue that a 17 percentage drop
is small. As McLaren and Hakobyan emphasize, these losses were then propagated throughout the
localities in which these workers lived.
So here is the overall picture that these academic studies paint for the U.S.: NAFTA produced
large changes in trade volumes, tiny efficiency gains overall, and some very significant impacts
on adversely affected communities.
The consequences of NAFTA for Mexico are another topic which would require a separate post.
Let me just say that the great expectations the country's policy makers had for NAFTA
have not been fulfilled . ...
So is Trump deluded on NAFTA's overall impact on manufacturing jobs? Absolutely, yes.
Was he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes.
Tell me something! Who was the biggest friend NRA ever garnered?
44th President? When weapons industry was under Democratic threat of gun control did you see
lot and lot of folks rushing down to the firearms dealer for a final purchase of their favourite
hardware?
Same thing with the wall-around-USA? Under threat, consumers are now buying up all the running-shoes
in China and considering the purchase of all the tea in China-cups.
Even the wholesalers are filling their warehouse with new products from Pacific avenue in hopes
of avoiding the import duty about to befall us. Is that why all the consumer non-cyclical stocks
have shown such a splendid performance? From the expected profit on warehoused products that avoided
the new tariff If, will same trend boost same equities until the rumour becomes yesterday's news?
"[T]he decline in manufacturing employment ... is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving
technological progress." At this point I call nonsense. Until somebody shows me the "technological
progress" that hit precisely like a tsunami in the year 2000, The argument made by DeLong and
Rodrick is nonsense. I already debunked the "but, Germany!" Argument the other day, so don't even
try that.
Let's try again with this fact: "the decline in manufacturing employment has been a long-term
process that predates NAFTA and the China shock". Did manufacturing employment peak exactly in
2000?
It seems manufacturing peaked during the Carter years. And then came Reagan and his toxic macroeconomic
mix which led to a massive dollar appreciation. What Krugman just wrote.
Good point. Manufacturing employment fell when Reagan came into power and it fell again after
2000. I guess the NAFTA bashers have some weird lag and lead model.
Yep. A new President Bush looking backward from the early '00s probably said, "Man, technology
is wreaking havoc on the working man. If this continues it's going to be real bad."
No, let's try again with THIS fact: manufacturing employment fell 12% during the 1980-82 recesions,
then remained stable until 2000.
Then it fell by over 30% in 10 years.
Please tell me exactly what technology improvement washed over manufacturing employment *precisely*
in the year 2000 to make it fall off a cliff exactly then? Oh and by the way, during that decade
the US$ declined in value on a trade weighted basis.
And while I am at it, Japan, Canada, France and Italy had far smaller % declines than the U.S.
C.mon, tell me what happened in the year 2000 that has made the decline in U.S. manufacturing
employment such a big outlier since then. Surely the free trade apologists here can name the productivity
improvement in the year 2000. What was it?
using the 2000 bubble is some nice cherry picking. if ones chooses the two previous recessions
the trends are very similar. there was also a distinct change in the slope of productivity per
hour starting in the late 80s so i think this is a more appropriate starting point
The U.S. Was not the only country that had a recession in 2001. Why the collapse *only* in the
U.S.?
I will move on when people admit that collapse was not due to an overnight spike in productivity.
We have double the loss of nearly any other industrialised country.
Was there possibly something else that happened in the year 2000?
ironically, i'm probably more opposed to so-called "free trade" deals than NDD. i've been gassed,
shot at, and even voted for perot despite his *repugnant* social conservatism. imo, the decimation
of labor rights and deregulation were major contributors to the ratification of trade agreements
that harmed working class people while benefiting the rich. i also believe the irrational black-white
position of many sanders social democrats on trade only helps trumpists promote america first
nationalism. union-busters, deregulators, and "job-creating" CEOs should not get a get-out-of-jail-free
card!
The percentage of employees working in manufacturing in the US fell in a long surprisingly straight
line from the late 1960s. The big drop in employee count in 2000 was a result of the collapse
of the dot-com boom. There has been a long, steady downward pressure on manufacturing jobs, but
we see big drops in their absolute numbers in just about every recession.
I do know that the 1990s were a big decade for increased manufacturing efficiency. Supercomputers
and micro-controllers changed the way we designed and built cars, cans and washing machines, for
example. I know Silicon Valley was rapidly changing the way computers were assembled as design
rules made chip design easier and new techniques made chip placement and connection simpler. Does
anyone even use a wire wrap gun anymore? There was also the impact of the Japanese challenge of
the 1980s which made manufacturers rethink their supply chain and encouraging robotics and continuous
inspection.
The official story is that the adoption of computers didn't show up in productivity figures,
but if you looked at manufacturing, their impact was pervasive. Not every industry is going to
advance at the same time, and improvements that helped one often lower costs and help others.
If you look at the chart, the big drop in 2000 rivals the drop in the early 1980s and the similar
drop during the most recent crash. It's like a strong gust of wind knocking down an old tree trunk.
The trunk was rotting and weakening for years, but it was the wind storm that knocked it down.
Nope. As you say, "the 1990s were a big decade for increased manufacturing efficiency."
And yet the number of jobs in manufacturing in the U.S. Actually *increased* slightly. And
the increase was worldwide.
"In November 1999, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji
made a trade deal that led to China's admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) on November
10, 2001."
Offshoring intensified, according to the official statistics of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Here's the link, showing that offshoring doubled by 2001:
http://www.trivisonno.com/offshoring
What happened that caused the decline in employment in the U.S. To be so much more severe than
in any other industrialized country was China.
Increases in productivity (technology is a broad term) likely explain the bulk of the massive
decrease in manufacturing in both the USA and Japan. Furriners certainly make good scapegoats,
however.
"So here is the overall picture that these academic studies paint for the U.S.: NAFTA produced
large changes in trade volumes, tiny efficiency gains overall, and some very significant impacts
on adversely affected communities."
Yes the free trade cheerleaders always miss the distributional impacts. But I do remember a
few international economists when NAFTA first passed saying the efficiency gains would be only
modest. I guess they were not heard over the cheerleading.
But one should also note that shot across the bow of Team Trump that Dani took. As always -
one of the best on the issue of globalization.
Technological advances also have uneven distributional pain
Job losses to strong dollar policy have uneven distributional pain
Trump tells the lie that better Trade agreements will fix the distributional pain.
It won't because trade agreements only create a small fraction of that pain.
The elephant in the room is Technological advances. It is unwise and undesirable to fight progress
(as in Luddite)
The question obscured by scapegoating NAFTA is what policies will address dislocation? Clinton
proposed shifting dislocated miners to clean energy jobs. Dislocated miners rejected that idea
in favor of an empty promise to return mining jobs. The conversation will return to square one,
"What policies will address dislocation?" only after Trump trade policy upheaval fails because
it addresses the wrong problem
I'm not a Luddite but we could and should address those distributional consequences that you properly
note. And you are spot on - Trump is creating more dislocations with his stupid bluster.
I agree. The march of technology is responsible for the productivity gains, and those gains led
to the majority of the job losses.
But it is an economic argument that simply will not win elections when we say "only 5% of the
folks lost their jobs in manufacturing due to trade, so our recommended trade policy to you, the
American people, is to keep doing what we have been doing for the last 25 years, because it only
substantially harms a small number of Americans."
To the extent Americans vote based on trade considerations in the first place (which is unclear
to me), to win elections we need to be proposing plans for trade surpluses or balanced trade.
(My preference is to seek balanced trade.).
This is why I have been beating a drum about the Buffett plan
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf
trying to get you smart folks here to critique it and try to get some energy behind it, in
my own small (and ineffective way).
It is kind of hard to talk about a 13 year old plan when the updated numbers for today are much
more in favor of US. Today, if we just balanced our trade with China we would no longer have a
trade deficit.
This is a fair point. But it could be that 10 years from now we have some other cause of concern.
I seem to recall in the late 80's the concern was Japan taking over and a huge trade deficit with
Japan. That concern has receded but now the lion's share of the imbalance is with China. Can we
fix it once and for all? Also, what sort of policy proposals should people get behind that are
(A) winners politically/ help win elections, (B) economically sound, and (C) good for US workers
/ reduce inequality?
It would be great if some small group of smart folks like those who comment here could develop
such a policy prescription in the coming months by arguing and discussing amongst ourselves. If
we could do that then we could try to infect some unsuspecting politicians with the ideas, and
who knows, maybe in 4 years it could make a difference for our world.
The trade deficit is actually not that important nor is manufacturing. We are moving towards a
"Star Trek" like future where food and things can be delivered on demand without people having
to do anything. If we continue to want people to acquire those things using money, we have to
find ways to provide people with money. The reason we provide people with money via a job is that
we think there is a societal value to connecting work with getting money (to acquire stuff). I
am not sure how we can get out of that primitive mindset of "deserving" and spend our time on
something more meaningful.
"So is Trump deluded on NAFTA's overall impact on manufacturing jobs? Absolutely, yes. Was
he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced in
certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
I guess Trump is not going to invite Dani to work for his CEA. Which is a loss for the nation.
"[H]igh school dropouts who worked in industries protected by tariffs prior to NAFTA experienced
reductions in wage growth by as much as 17 percentage points relative to wage growth in unaffected
industries."
And those high school drop outs all voted for Trump. So the bottom line is that high school
drop outs rule the nation because the rest of us don't vote as a bloc.
The problem is that you don't have the ability to compare what would have happened without NAFTA.
There is no doubt that the pain is real in those communities that saw their factory shut down
and the product being produced in Mexico instead. But would that factory have been shut down anyway
if NAFTA had not been? We know that a lot of manufacturing related to cars moved from the north
to the south within US - and from solid middle class salaries to $10-14/hour. Efficiencies and
hunts for lower cost would have continued regardless of NAFTA. So even though we know some effects
are real we don't know how much they count in the bigger picture of change.
Good point
Carrier will keep jobs here (for now) Will automate later
Try this scenario:
American businesses under pressure from shareholders and corporate raiders underinvest in their
manufacturing facilities and milk the profits. Meanwhile, new more productive competitors are
built incorporating technological advances many of them in developing countries that have strong
growth.
Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more technologically
advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss of jobs to foreign
competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not trade deals.
While he is generally right, this is rather disingenuous, since offshoring jobs started long before
NAFTA. It began with the maquiladora system in Mexico and by the 1990s had largely shifted to
SE Asia (anybody remember the Asian Tigers?). Even many maquiladoras relocated there. By the late
1990s, when NAFTA was signed, most of those jobs had already gone. As I keep saying, you need
to look at the details and not just the aggregates. Most the labor intensive industries relocated
to low wag/benefit countries with no labor or environmental protections before NAFTA, leaving
only those most amenable to automation. Blaming automation only works if you ignore the first
part.
The maquiladora system did start well before NAFTA. But note China has taken business away from
those maquiladoras. Putting that 20% border tax on Mexico that Trump wants means more business
for Asia.
I remember studying a prototype computer at an MIT lab in the mid-1980s. All of the chips (mainly
7400 series) were marked with Central American country names. One guy joked that he was glad we
had the contras fighting against freedom down there so we didn't have to worry about our supply
of 7404s.
What productivity increase hit like a tsunami in the U.S. and only the U.S. Precisely in the year
2000? Not in 1999 or any other year in the 1990s, but starting precisely in the year 2000.
If you can't name it, the thick skull is not mine.
"Hey look, there Dani Rodrik saying exactly what I've been saying for a while."
LOL no he's not!!!
"At the same time, the essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the distributional
pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
"Was he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
I don't want to cause more fights, and also I don't want to be the target of ridicule, but...
what is it that Dani Rodrick is saying that agrees with what you've said? I am not disputing you,
just asking for clarification, as he says several things here.
The consequences of NAFTA for Mexico are another topic which would require a separate post. Let
me just say that the great expectations the country's policy makers had for NAFTA have not been
fulfilled....
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in any country in Central America, any country in south America save for unfortunate Venezuela
and slower than in Canada or the United States.
Between 1992 and 2014, total factor productivity for Mexico actually decreased. Mexico fared
more poorly in productivity than in any country for which there are records in Central America,
any country in South America other than Venezuela and more poorly than in Canada or the US.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in any country in Central America, any country in South America save for unfortunate Venezuela
and slower than in Canada or the United States.
Between 1992 and 2014, total factor productivity for Mexico actually decreased. Mexico fared
more poorly in productivity than in any country for which there are records in Central America,
any country in South America other than Venezuela and more poorly than in Canada or the US.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in the Dominican Republic or Trinidad. Jamaica however grew more slowly.
Between 1992 and 2013, the last year for which there are records, real per capita Gross Domestic
Product for Mexico increased slower than in Puerto Rico or Cuba, despite the US embargo of trade
with Cuba.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in language related Spain, Portugal, Angola or the Philippines.
Anne - Google processed trade. A big deal in China. And exactly what maquiladoras are. Yes they
do compete. And workers in these sectors are making around $3 an hour regardless of nation.
Google processed trade. A big deal in China. And exactly what maquiladoras are. Yes they do compete.
And workers in these sectors are making around $3 an hour regardless of nation.
Trump wants border taxes aka tariffs. Paul Ryan wants the Destination Based Cash Flow Tax aka
border adjustments. If Trump does not know they are different, his advisers are lying to him.
Of course I am no fan of that border adjustments idea Speaker Ryan is pushing. But that is a much
deeper conversation. Let's just say - Ryan is lying every time the weasel smiles.
Trump wants border taxes aka tariffs. Paul Ryan wants the Destination Based Cash Flow Tax aka
border adjustments....
[ I am only interested in understanding the difference between a tariff and a destination tax
and who pays each. The point is to understand each of the 2 possibilities and who will pay in
each case. Tariffs are paid by consumers. Who will pay a destination tax?
Yes I am sure they understand that this will reduce the value of the peso at least by 20% so in
the end US will end up paying for the wall and then some. It is just that low information voters
and low information Presidents will think we made Mexico pay for it.
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over
the distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
He's a neoliberal like PGL and Sanjait.
They don't care about the distributional pain. They're hacks defending hack centrist politicians.
The distributional pain helped elect Trump and the neoliberals can't admit it.
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the
distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
Rodrik could have substituted PGL or Krugman for DeLong.
"The distributional pain helped elect Trump and the neoliberals can't admit it."
Distributional pain aka the Stopler Samuelson theorem. I talk about this often. Krugman does
too. But then this requires a little bit of analytical ability which serial idiots like you don't
do. Rage on - troll.
All you and Krugman do is mock Bernie Sanders and his supporters, people who would actually
do something about the distributional pain Rodrik talks about.
Rodrik:
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over
the distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
Just like PGL and Krugman. That's why neoliberal Hillary lost. It's why Trump won. And the
neoliberals still won't admit it.
In short, it's complicated – not all bad, by any means, but not the pure uprising of idealists
the more enthusiastic supporters imagine.
The political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels have an illuminating discussion
of Sanders support. The key graf that will probably have Berniebros boiling is this:
Yet commentators who have been ready and willing to attribute Donald Trump's success to anger,
authoritarianism, or racism rather than policy issues have taken little note of the extent to
which Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated not among liberal ideologues but among disaffected
white men.
The point is not to demonize, but, if you like, to de-angelize. Like any political movement
(including the Democratic Party, which is, yes, a coalition of interest groups) Sandersism has
been an assemblage of people with a variety of motives, not all of them pretty. Here's a short
list based on my own encounters:
1.Genuine idealists: For sure, quite a few Sanders supporters dream of a better society, and
for whatever reason – maybe just because they're very young – are ready to dismiss practical arguments
about why all their dreams can't be accomplished in a day.
2.Romantics: This kind of idealism shades over into something that's less about changing society
than about the fun and ego gratification of being part of The Movement. (Those of us who were
students in the 60s and early 70s very much recognize the type.) For a while there – especially
for those who didn't understand delegate math – it felt like a wonderful joy ride, the scrappy
young on the march about to overthrow the villainous old. But there's a thin line between love
and hate: when reality began to set in, all too many romantics reacted by descending into bitterness,
with angry claims that they were being cheated.
3.Purists: A somewhat different strand in the movement, also familiar to those of us of a certain
age, consists of those for whom political activism is less about achieving things and more about
striking a personal pose. They are the pure, the unsullied, who reject the corruptions of this
world and all those even slightly tainted – which means anyone who actually has gotten anything
done. Quite a few Sanders surrogates were Naderites in 2000; the results of that venture don't
bother them, because it was never really about results, only about affirming personal identity.
4.CDS victims: Quite a few Sanders supporters are mainly Clinton-haters, deep in the grip of
Clinton Derangement Syndrome; they know that Hillary is corrupt and evil, because that's what
they hear all the time; they don't realize that the reason it's what they hear all the time is
that right-wing billionaires have spent more than two decades promoting that message. Sanders
has gotten a number of votes from conservative Democrats who are voting against her, not for him,
and for sure there are liberal supporters who have absorbed the same message, even if they don't
watch Fox News.
5.Salon des Refuses: This is a small group in number, but accounts for a lot of the pro-Sanders
commentary, and is of course something I see a lot. What I'm talking about here are policy intellectuals
who have for whatever reason been excluded from the inner circles of the Democratic establishment,
and saw Sanders as their ticket to the big time. They typically hold heterodox views, but those
views don't have much to do with the campaign – sorry, capital theory disputes from half a century
ago aren't relevant to the debate over health reform. What matters is their outsider status, which
gives them an interest in backing an outsider candidate – and makes them reluctant to accept it
when that candidate is no longer helping the progressive cause.
So how will this coalition of the not-always disinterested break once it's over? The genuine
idealists will probably realize that whatever their dreams, Trump would be a nightmare. Purists
and CDSers won't back Clinton, but they were never going to anyway. My guess is that disgruntled
policy intellectuals will, in the end, generally back Clinton.
The question, as I see it, involves the romantics. How many will give in to their bitterness?
A lot may depend on Sanders – and whether he himself is one of those embittered romantics, unable
to move on.
I guess I am a little confused by the way this article is laid out. The article says the overall
picture is Large trade volume change, little gain (insignificant gain) and large wage drop for
poor.
Meaning, trade has increased but it has little efficiency gain on the economy and it mainly
just depressed wages for the poor in the US. So, am I missing something here?
I thought the whole point of free trade was to lower tariffs/quotas/taxes to allow for each
country to specialize based off their advantages/cost...resulting in a lower price in the international
market. This lower price would then result in benefiting everyone that has to buy that product
ie cars. So, even though you lost your job in automobiles to Mexico you would be able to buy a
new car much cheaper because labor cost is extremely cheap in Mexico. The end result would be
short term unemployment rise but given you could find another job the medium/long run unemployment
would be in equilibrium. Thus, everyone in the medium/long run are better off because of free
trade.
Does the term, "tiny efficiency gains" mean that jobs went to mexico because it was cheaper
labor/regulations and in turn the final product came back to the U.S. virtually the same price
as it was before NAFTA? If that is the case it would make sense to scrap NAFTA.
My understanding is that the benefit of NAFTA or any free trade agreement is essentially going
to be lower cost. This is because inefficient companies or rich countries like U.S. have high
living wage causing the final product to cost more and its all protected from international prices
with quotas/tariffs/import taxes. Thats not to neglect the wage drop in the US due to free trade,
but the argument is that cheaper products is far superior than a small amount of job loss/wage
drop.
I thought the whole point of free trade was to lower tariffs/quotas/taxes to allow for each country
to specialize based off their advantages/cost...resulting in a lower price in the international
market. This lower price would then result in benefiting everyone that has to buy that product
ie cars. So, even though you lost your job in automobiles to Mexico you would be able to buy a
new car much cheaper because labor cost is extremely cheap in Mexico. The end result would be
short term unemployment rise but given you could find another job the medium/long run unemployment
would be in equilibrium. Thus, everyone in the medium/long run are better off because of free
trade....
[ I need to understand this better, but I would agree and argue the adjustment process would
have occurred had the high employment years of the Clinton presidency continued to the Bush presidency
but that was not the case. The problem of trade dislocations that were not compensated for is
found during the Bush years. ]
"The idea here is to explain why targeting the economically large and persistent US trade deficit
is a reasonable policy goal.
This view is not widely accepted among economists. Everyone gets the by identity, the trade
deficit is a drag on growth, but numerous arguments push back on the idea that it's a problem.
Dean Baker and I tackle the issue here. The punchline, as suggested above, is not that the
drag impact of the trade deficit never gets offset. It clearly does, at times. But when offsets
are less forthcoming–the Fed's run out of ammo; the fiscal authorities have gone all austere–the
demand-reducing drag from trade imbalances is a problem.
Second, even in flush times, the trade deficit, which is exclusively in manufactured goods,
affects the industrial composition of employment, and it is in this regard that Trump has been
able to so effectively tap its politics. While high-ranking democrats were running around pushing
the next trade deal, he was talking directly to those voters who clearly perceived themselves
far more hurt than helped by globalization."
The U.S. went from 30% of its nonfarm employees in manufacturing to 12% because of rapid
growth in manufacturing productivity and limited demand, yes? The U.S. went from 12% to 9% because
of stupid and destructive macro policies--the Reagan deficits, the strong-dollar policy pushed
well past its sell-by date, too-tight monetary policy--that diverted it from its proper role as
a net exporter of capital and finance to economies that need to be net sinks rather than net sources
of the global flow of funds for investment, yes? The U.S. went from 9% to 8.7% because of the
extraordinarily rapid rise of China, yes? The U.S. went from 8.7% to 8.6% because of NAFTA, yes?
And yet the American political system right now is blaming all, 100%, every piece of that
decline from 30% to 8.6% and every problem that can be laid its door on brown people from Mexico.
By not making it clear that you are talking about 0.1%-points of a 21.4%-point phenomenon,
I think you are enabling that. I don't think this is a good thing to do...
"Was Trump able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
How did he capitalize? By addressing the issue unlike the progressive neoliberals DeLong and
PGL's candidate Hillary.
Just talking about the Stopler Samuelson theorem every now and then doesn't address the issue.
"... If the American peasants were going to revolt they would have done it already. Fortunately for the rich, the peasants have been mollified by opiates, marijuana, cheap industrial calories, videogames and unlimited trash entertainment, and a fawning endless adoration for the rich and famous. And when that fails theyve got mega churches spouting hopium too. ..."
"... By the way, look around most of the country. It's designed without public squares which are necessary for protest and assembly. Look at the BLM protests, they tried to take the freeways and the whites just got furious that their fat SUVs were impeded. ..."
"... Americans are the most apathetic population on earth ..."
"... Peasants do not start revolutions. It is members of the enlightened elite who clap their hands and trigger the avalanche. Their attempts at gradual reform begin by harnessing, and thereby empowering, the threatened, desperate lower-middle class, which turns and rends their fellows and their superiors (the 90-99% in today's jargon). The breakdown of consensus in the middle orders creates chaos, which in turn empowers those who benefit from instability, especially psychopaths, who cannot last long in places with community or corporate memory, but who flourish in civil disorder. ..."
"... They are right. A french-revolution-style reckoning is coming. We will have to dismantle and redistribute their fortunes. And those that resist will not survive. ..."
"... They should be afraid, and they should know that the later the reckoning, the angrier the mob. The angrier the mob, the likelier accidents happen. ..."
"... They are mostly blind to the need to redistribute, and those that are not are blocked by the system (the neoliberal world order) from acting. ..."
"... I guess they adhere that now-old adage: He who dies with the most toys WINS. ..."
"... This very day, NYT reports that Peter Thiel has (i.e., "bought") New Zealand citizenship. And then hilariously goes on to suggest that this expedient could well be thanks to Thiel's adolescent enthusiasm for "Lord of the Rings", which is where they produced the movie, so "becoming a citizen might be the next best thing to living in Middle-earth itself ." ..."
"... The Masque of the Red Death ..."
"... And therein lies the error: they don't judge themselves by the norms they sold (or failed to sell) to us. ..."
"... I'd count the Zuck's purchase of 700 acres (similar acreage to Central Park) as a bolt-hole. And peter Thiel's in New Zealand. Guess the help will be relegated to the Blueseed floating city ..."
"... The French aristocracy was pretty surprised in 1789 how unprepared they were. I'd tend to put them in the former group. Our oligarchy? Definitely psychopaths. ..."
"... The current hedgies should watch Adam Curtis's 4 part docu "The MayFair Set". It's on utube. Or, if 4 hours is too long, they could watch just part 2, notice James Goldsmith, and then watch part 4 starting at about minute 23. Another prepper. Why all the paranoia and prepping? ..."
"... Lavish follies apparently become tiresome or expensive to maintain or lonely or in some other way unappealing after they're built. So now one can rent a villa at Goldsmith's Mexican hideaway, for a considerable sum of course. ..."
"... IF collapse came, I absolutely WOULD go on a 1%er hunt. Open season. ..."
"... Sarcasm on. Hedge fund managers anticipate They're so good at that. That's why hedge fund yields for pension funds are so much better than other fund yields for pension funds. (8^)) Sarcasm off. ..."
"... I don't understand why these pampered, self-worshipping, self-entitled rich scumbags think that New Zealanders will welcome them with open arms if SHTF. ..."
"... Yes, that's the flaw. New Zealand would be great for their purposes if not for the small problem that it's full of New Zealanders. The society is strongly egalitarian, much more so than the US, and has different core values (less about freedom and more about fairness). ..."
"... Thiel's land purchase in the South Island has been front page news lately, along with the news that he didn't have to comply with foreign investment criteria because he is a NZ citizen (which just raised the question of how and why he received citizenship). ..."
"... "What does that really tell us about our system? It's a very odd thing. You're basically seeing that the people who've been the best at reading the tea leaves-the ones with the most resources, because that's how they made their money-are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane." ..."
"... buying airstrips and farms ..."
"... Prime Minister Bill English has defended a decision to grant citizenship to American tech billionaire Peter Thiel, saying "a little bit of flexibility" is useful when it comes to citizenship laws. ..."
"... English said there needed to be a balance between giving everyone a fair chance of citizenship, and encouraging those who would make a positive difference to New Zealand. ..."
"... "If people come here and invest and get into philanthropy and are supportive of New Zealand, then we're better off for their interest in our country, and as a small country at the end of the world, that's not a bad thing. ..."
"... NZ First leader Winston Peters' suggestion that the Government was selling citizenship was "ridiculous", English said. ..."
If the American peasants were going to revolt they would have done it already. Fortunately
for the rich, the peasants have been mollified by opiates, marijuana, cheap industrial calories,
videogames and unlimited trash entertainment, and a fawning endless adoration for the rich and
famous. And when that fails theyve got mega churches spouting hopium too.
By the way, look around most of the country. It's designed without public squares which
are necessary for protest and assembly. Look at the BLM protests, they tried to take the freeways
and the whites just got furious that their fat SUVs were impeded.
If you want to see the future watch Idiocracy not the French Revolution. Americans are
the most apathetic population on earth .
Maybe they just have different priorities? Maybe they have come from countries where life looks
like "the s hit the f" is the norm, but still manage to make do?
Peasants do not start revolutions. It is members of the enlightened elite who clap their
hands and trigger the avalanche. Their attempts at gradual reform begin by harnessing, and thereby
empowering, the threatened, desperate lower-middle class, which turns and rends their fellows
and their superiors (the 90-99% in today's jargon). The breakdown of consensus in the middle orders
creates chaos, which in turn empowers those who benefit from instability, especially psychopaths,
who cannot last long in places with community or corporate memory, but who flourish in civil disorder.
Is Trump the reformer who triggers the avalanche – our Duc D'Orleans, later Philippe Egalite,
under which name he was guillotined? The looks on the faces of Louis XVI and Hillary Clinton were
probably equally dumbfounded when they found themselves stymied by their respective rivals at
the "Assembly of Notables."
They are right. A french-revolution-style reckoning is coming. We will have to dismantle and
redistribute their fortunes. And those that resist will not survive.
They should be afraid, and they should know that the later the reckoning, the angrier the mob.
The angrier the mob, the likelier accidents happen.
At this point, I do not see another option. They are mostly blind to the need to redistribute,
and those that are not are blocked by the system (the neoliberal world order) from acting.
A truly nutty non-solution from the greediest nastiest bastards on the planet. Just frickin
great. They know what they should do, but they adamantly refuse to do it in order to remain mired
in the greedy proflgate ways.
I guess they adhere that now-old adage: He who dies with the most toys WINS.
I wonder when the elites will make themselves Pyramids? Or are they planning to bury themselves
inside these damn bunkers instead? Using the bunkers as necropoli probably makes more sense than
what they're actually planning to use them for.
This very day, NYT reports that Peter Thiel has (i.e., "bought") New Zealand citizenship. And
then hilariously goes on to suggest that this expedient could well be thanks to Thiel's adolescent
enthusiasm for "Lord of the Rings", which is where they produced the movie, so "becoming a citizen
might be the next best thing to living in Middle-earth itself ."
The good news is, these guys will doubtless revert to cannibalism in short order .
I guess they haven't read The Masque of the Red Death .
The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious"
Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to
escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land.
Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and hematidrosis, and die within
half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at
large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of
their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut.
They don't subscribe to the propertarian patriarchal norms that they sold to the public, except
for appearances, which are often cited as pretexts for ejection from the halls of power. They
owe the public cultural shibboleths no real honor, especially not within their private practices.
They are not obligated to enact the stories they write or take to heart the submission they counsel
to us. They didn't get to group hegemony by competing.
I see the paralogic. They're American. Therefore, adversity and competition is the normal posture
for every interaction. Therefore, everything is a fair contest which they won fair and square
against us. Which suggests that they probably subscribe more perfectly to the same alleged social
"norms" they impose on us. And therein lies the error: they don't judge themselves by the norms
they sold (or failed to sell) to us.
If they were as crippled by someone having fun without them when there is plenty of fun to
be had, there would be no ruling class.
on the other hand they have more time and money to gain actually useful skills than wage slaves
EVER will. A variant of the rich get richer phenomena which seems to be how things usually work
out, rather than the poor getting even as mostly happens only in morality tales. Now get to work
and shut up about it!
I'd count the Zuck's purchase of 700 acres (similar acreage to Central Park) as a bolt-hole.
And peter Thiel's in New Zealand. Guess the help will be relegated to the Blueseed floating city
Jet = high time preference
Amel 64= low time preference, in fact not even so relevant to insist on staying on course to NZ.
http://www.amel.fr/en/amel-64/
W. Somerset Maugham's retelling of the tale (1933) "An Appointment in Samarra" comes to mind:
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little
while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the
marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled
me.
She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away
from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.
The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks
and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace
and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening
gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?
That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished
to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Examine the mentality of planning for a "collapse."
The hedge fund managers above all are escaping to rural areas, with clean water and air. They've
planned on how to get by with less for themselves and their families.
The article also spoke of bunkers of under ground apartment complexes, silos, etc that would be
enclaves for communities of wealthy citizens where they would ration, learn how to ration, share,
get by with less.
They all think it will be temporary while the ignorant masses destroy each other without their
surperior leadership. They imagine being able to return and begin the hard work of returning things
to the way they were, with themselves back in elite positions.
Just think. If they could imagine maybe getting by on less and used that sense of community
they expect to magically develop in their bunkers, there wouldn't be amy "collapse" to fear anyway.
If they could imagine their clean water and air natural retreats, with food, are simple things
the rest of the planet would like to enjoy and should be able to enjoy without exploitation, there
wouldn't be any collapse to fear.
So not only will their getaways be big failures, but the imagined return to the world after
the crisis is also naive.
Not only would things not be the same, you'd have to be a special kind of idoit or psycopath
to think anything would still be hunky dory with a return to the status quo..
if you survive the carnage they imagine in some kind of collapse.
"you'd have to be a special kind of idiot or psychopath"
The French aristocracy was pretty surprised in 1789 how unprepared they were. I'd tend
to put them in the former group. Our oligarchy? Definitely psychopaths.
The 0.01 percenters would much rather create doomsday bunkers than fix their own greed and
power lust. I guess they know themselves well.
I could poke so many what if holes into their daydream scenarios. Hours of fun since their
most of their scenarios depend on order and business as usual ultimately being restored. I guess
they learned nothing from what typically happens to refugees regardless of their class and they
assume that the "problem" will be localized instead of global and that their assets will be worth
more with them alive than dead.
It is impossible to convince someone afflicted with the greatest pandemic in human history
- Greed - that they are better off having a smaller % of a growing pie than a larger % of a stagnant
or shrinking pie.
The epicenters for the global pandemic are London, New York, and Washington D.C., though not
necessarily in that order.
Wait, I thought Trump was going to revoke federal funding for "sanctuary cities", as well as
the governor of Texas at the state level. Oh, wrong group?
This elite fear and their related actions have been "out there" for years. Puzzling me is what
has changed to elevate this topic in their Davos 2017 discussions?
The current hedgies should watch Adam Curtis's 4 part docu "The MayFair Set". It's on utube.
Or, if 4 hours is too long, they could watch just part 2, notice James Goldsmith, and then watch
part 4 starting at about minute 23. Another prepper. Why all the paranoia and prepping?
Maybe they should just stop destroying companies and pay taxes. They might sleep better if
they felt they were part of the country instead of pirates living apart. imo.
Lavish follies apparently become tiresome or expensive to maintain or lonely or in some other
way unappealing after they're built. So now one can rent a villa at Goldsmith's Mexican hideaway,
for a considerable sum of course.
They can never actually "go Galt" because they need us. If I remember correctly, Galt was some
sort of industrialist who built and manufactured actual things. What do most of these billionaires
provide us? It's difficult to imagine a hedge fund going very well after the apocalypse. Will
people continue updating their facebook pages when the world collapses? Can I paypal my tribal
wasteland overlord his tribute after our government has collapsed?
I suppose they'll just sitting around looking at all bank statements, bored out of their minds
waiting for the power to come back on.
It isn't just elite anxiety, this has been playing out among the lower classes as well. It's
not just prepper reality shows either; we've had almost 10 years now of zombie apocalypse themed
entertainment and a general revival of the post-apocalypse genre across multiple entertainment
platforms.
We know the empire is collapsing, we just wont acknowledge it out loud.
[Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek
out some form of community: "Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat
egotistical view that I'm a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not
a slave, when push comes to shove."
Yeah, your skills running a content aggregate site that's become a haven for the alt-right,
that's going to be the things the masses will be looking for in a leader in a post-apocalyptic
society.
What if the guy fueling the jet pours some sugar into the tank? What if the guy who drives
the fuel truck to the airstrip gets "lost" on the day of the apocalypse? What if your driver on
the way to the airport pulls a gun on you? You better get a jumbo jet to fit everyone on that
could spoil your plan. It'll be like the end of the "Jerk". It is just terrible to have to rely
on people and to need all these badges of affluence. Why can't a rich soul be a rapacious rich
jerk, in peace?
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
These stories really make me hope that the collapse that these people are preparing for is
a flu pandemic. In that case, no one is going anywhere as the first thing that will be done by
states is close the borders to slow down transmission of the virus. Good luck getting to New Zealand
then!
Also, let's not forget the Archdruid's (accurate) contention that the (presumably very well
armed) security staff will be eager to hunt down the elites after society collapses.
Charles Hugh Smith in his book Survival+ however does offer some good advice for elites who
want to survive collapse indefinitely: find a tight-knit community and immediately use all the
money and resources at your disposal to make sure that they're self-sustaining, well-armed and
grateful. Then learn some useful skills like playing musical instruments or blacksmithing and
move on in. Maybe someone should send these poor deluded bunker builders a copy!
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any
material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.
But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others,
are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing
compared with that of the rich.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"The Age of Uncertainty" 1977
If this is a true quote, it does indeed make the blood come out one's ears that Galbraith could
have said it. It is so wrong that its vast wrongness can only be explained by knowing that the
guy was an economist by training. If he had bothered to learn any history–any history at all,
whatsoever, in any way, of any kind–he would never have been able to spout that inane nugget of
anti-truth.
Let's see: August 4, 1789. Just one notable one, among about 47 bajillion counterexamples to
bonehead Galbraith's alleged quotation.
Why don't they bail on the rest of the world now? They might as well get while the getting
is good, and the rest of the world will benefit from their absence. Seems like a win/win to me.
Ahem. This is part of the reason that some rich folks (*COUGH* Elon Musk *COUGH*) is pushing
so hard for (rich) people to pony up and help pay for a one-way trip to Mars. A bunch of pampered
rich people bailing out on Earth to go to the ULTIMATE gated community on Mars where they can
claim all the land from their feet to the horizon.
A pipe dream, of course. Such an endeavor would be ABSOLUTELY dependent upon continued upkeep
and support from Earth, AND Mars is NOT hospitable, at all Nonetheless, the impulse is there
for all to see: use your accumulated (unearned) wealth to get away from the Earth you have raped
to get where you are, before it's too late! Take all your marbles and just up and leave everyone
else to cook in the sewage and heat you've left behind. But at least your pillaging made it possible
for you and a select few others to get out.
As for fancy bunkers like converted missile silos. Note: as a veteran of the cold war and all
that nuke war shit, I KNOW how those things work (and don't work). Fancy air filters on missile
silos will filter out radiation, biological, and MOST chemical agents, but they will not, they
CANNOT, filter out oxygen displacing chemicals (carbon monoxide, halon, ammonia, etc). Some cluster
of rich douchebags and their immediate families think they can hide out for up to 5 years in a
luxury converted missile silo. Well I will just pull a car up to one of your air intakes, run
a line from my exhaust pipe to your intake, and pump your luxury bunker full of carbon monoxide.
Sleep the sleep of the dead, motherf*ckers.
BTW – many of the dystopian authors of the 40s, 50s, and 60s served in the military in WW II.
It is not an accident that they wrote these types of novels and short stories. They had observed
dystopian societies and their outcomes personally. I think the current 1% think they can control
the future in the same way that many of them thought in the 1780s and 1910-1945.
In Jack Womack's Dryco novels, Dryco (a kind of uber-Walmart-cum-Raytheon that owns everything)
becomes worried about CEO safety and covertly engineers a citizen "rebellion" on Long Island,
necessitating a permanently-stationed US military in Manhattan, to protect the elite. The Dryco
inner circle begins moving operations north, to the Bronx and Westchester County, to stay ahead
of rising sea levels. Those books were written mostly in the late '80s/early '90s but still resonate.
Sarcasm on. Hedge fund managers anticipate They're so good at that. That's why hedge fund yields for pension funds are so much better
than other fund yields for pension funds. (8^)) Sarcasm off.
Perhaps they have been reading too much economic doomer porn?
Just three months ago anybody who even considered voting for Sanders, Green, or Trump was a
selfish fool who just wanted to see the world burn. For the sake of our fellow man – consider
the children! – we were encouraged to fall in line to prevent our society from collapsing into
war and economic ruin. If only we'd have know that some of the wealthiest and most influential
people in the country were literally bracing themselves for the apocalypse with absolutely no
intention of helping a single soul escape or doing a thing to prevent the disaster. I guess if
you're rich enough it's OK not to give a shit about destroying the world.
It's important that as many people as possible read the NYT article to see just how crazy and
how horrifyingly self-serving the 1% really is. The idea that anybody will need bunkers or private
airstrips is stupid as hell and straight out of a zombie movie, but it's a perfect illustration
of how little these people care about the world around them.
Spread the word. This is the time to bail. Donald Trump is President. He is at war with corporate
media moguls. Even Bloomberg published an article on America's carnage. The suicide rate of women
under 75 is increasing. The cover-up of the neoliberal looting is collapsing. The millions of
refugees flooding Europe can't be hidden. Blaming Russia doesn't work. A world war is an extinction
event.
Who will be on the last plane out of East Hampton?
I don't understand why these pampered, self-worshipping, self-entitled rich scumbags think
that New Zealanders will welcome them with open arms if SHTF.
If the US were to go tits up the
way they fear. to such an extent that they actually felt the need to flee, the entire world would
get hit hard too. These same clowns talk about globalization and how the world is, and NEEDS to
be, interconnected. Well, you don't get to have it both ways. The US is a huge economic chunk
of the world. If it bites it, then so will a LOT of other nations, and New Zealand is not some
self-sufficient paradise that would be left untouched.
The LEGITIMATE people, the LEGITIMATE citizens of New Zealand, wouldn't take these leeches
in with open arms, strewing their walking paths with flowers and candy, if they abandon the US
in a collapse THAT THEY WERE LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR. They cannot run away and escape their culpability
and the fruits of their unending greed and selfishness.
Yes, that's the flaw. New Zealand would be great for their purposes if not for the small problem
that it's full of New Zealanders. The society is strongly egalitarian, much more so than the US,
and has different core values (less about freedom and more about fairness). If these people had
what it takes to be New Zealanders they would not need to leave the USA in the first place. Failing
that, they are going to be constantly under siege if they move here, in a figurative sense and
possibly a literal one if they try to engage in the same kind of behaviour that required them
to flee the USA.
Thiel's land purchase in the South Island has been front page news lately, along with the news
that he didn't have to comply with foreign investment criteria because he is a NZ citizen (which
just raised the question of how and why he received citizenship).
deep down they know they are a bunch of grifters who have produced nothing of any real value.
some of them are deluded but many know it has all been one big debt fueled scam, involving predatory
behavior (pirate equity) and risk free gambling (hedge scum managers, you lose and they still
win) further abetted by tax avoidance and other shifty activity.
[ "What does that really tell us about our system? It's a very odd thing. You're basically
seeing that the people who've been the best at reading the tea leaves-the ones with the most resources,
because that's how they made their money-are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord
and jump out of the plane." ]
The "Peak Oil Doomers" know very well why hedge fund jack offs are " buying airstrips and
farms "
"supposedly" (so take w/salt), the entire food supply of the Northeast flows through 4 highways
(I 90/80/76/95--sounds plausible). Ain't too hard to seize those chokepoints and disrupt the entire
Northeast.
Similarly the crossings of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers also are major chokepoints for
our just-in-time way of life.
We've all seen the empty bread shelves when 12″ of snow are forecast. I imagine that would
be nothing in the 1:1,000,000 chance civilization truly goes pear-shaped.
Prime Minister Bill English has defended a decision to grant citizenship to American tech billionaire
Peter Thiel, saying "a little bit of flexibility" is useful when it comes to citizenship laws.
(he didn't meet the criteria for citizenship under the law)
English said there needed to be a balance between giving everyone a fair chance of citizenship,
and encouraging those who would make a positive difference to New Zealand.
"If people come here and invest and get into philanthropy and are supportive of New Zealand,
then we're better off for their interest in our country, and as a small country at the end of
the world, that's not a bad thing.
(but he has money and spread a lot of it around and we like that)
NZ First leader Winston Peters' suggestion that the Government was selling citizenship
was "ridiculous", English said.
(even though everything I just said appears to confirm it)
"... Krugman dislikes Trump (as do I). He seems motivated to find fault with Trump's policies. In
fuzzy things like economics and their intersection with politics it is challenging, and perhaps actually
impossible, for most of us to remain balanced. If someone as smart and knowledgeable as Paul Krugman
subconsciously decides to dislike a policy, his brain is more than clever enough to invent reasonable
economic arguments against the policy. ..."
"... Cognitive bias. Using % of jobs that are manufacturing is relative to what was happening in
other job areas: like Reagan building up the military and civil service to buy weapons a tiny part of
the growth in that sector was manufacturing. ..."
"... I understand the textbook story is the Fed raises rates when the budget deficit increases.
I am not sure if the empirical data supports that though. Perhaps the Fed cares more about inflation
than budget deficits and perhaps budget deficits do not directly result in inflation? But if that is
correct, what is the basis for Professor Krugman's assertion that Trump's budget will push up interest
rates? ..."
"... It's like how Greenspan and Rubin told Clinton he had to drop his middle class spending bill
in order to focus on deficit reduction. Greenspan was threatening to raise rates and Clinton bent the
knee to the "independent" Fed. ..."
"... Krugman should remember that "Integrity, once sold, is difficult to repurchase - even at 10x
the original sales price." ..."
Reagan, Trump, and Manufacturing : It's hard to focus on ordinary economic analysis amidst this
political apocalypse. But ... like it or not the progress of
CASE NIGHTMARE
ORANGE may depend on how the economy does. So, what is actually likely to happen to trade and
manufacturing over the next few years?
As it happens, we have what looks like an unusually good model in the Reagan years... - it's not
part of the Reagan legend, but the import quota on Japanese automobiles was one of the biggest protectionist
moves of the postwar era.
I'm a bit uncertain about the actual fiscal stance of Trumponomics: deficits will surely blow
up, but I won't believe in the infrastructure push until I see it, and given savage cuts in aid to
the poor it's not entirely clear that there will be
net stimulus . But suppose there is. Then what?
Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up interest
rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.) This led to an accelerated decline in the industrial
orientation of the U.S. economy:
And people did notice. ...
Again, this happened despite substantial protectionism.
So Trump_vs_deep_state will probably follow a similar course; it will actually shrink manufacturing despite
the big noise made about saving a few hundred jobs here and there.
On the other hand, by then the BLS may be thoroughly politicized, commanded to report good news
whatever happens.
Forced Japan to accept restraints on auto exports. The agreement set total Japanese auto exports
at 1.68 million
vehicles in 1981-82, 8 percent below 1980 exports. Two years later the level was permitted to
rise to 1.85 million.(33)
Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution found that the import limits have actually cost
jobs in the U.S. auto
industry by making it possible for the sheltered American automakers to raise prices and limit
production. In 1984,
Winston writes in Blind Intersection? Policy and the Automobile Industry, 32,000 jobs were lost,
U.S. production fell
by 300,000 units, and profits for U.S. firms increased $8.9 billion. The quotas have also made
the Japanese firms
potentially more formidable rivals because they have begun building assembly plants in the United
States.(34) They
also shifted production to larger cars, introducing to American firms competition they did not
have before the quotas
were created. In 1984, it was estimated that higher prices for domestic and imported cars cost
consumers $2.2 billion a
year.(35) At the height of the dollar's exchange rate with the yen in 1984-85, the quotas were
costing American
consumers the equivalent of $11 billion a year
The Reagan Record on Trade: Rhetoric vs. Reality
By Sheldon L. Richman
Executive Summary
When President Reagan imposed a 100 percent tariff on selected Japanese electronics in 1987,
he and the press gave the impression that this was an act of desperation. Pictured was a long-forbearing
president whose patience was exhausted by the recalcitrant and conniving Japanese. After trying
for years to elicit some fairness out of them, went the story, the usually good-natured president
had finally had enough.
When newspapers and television networks announced the tariffs, the media reminded the public
that such restraints were imposed by a staunch free trader. The less-than-subtle message was that
if "Free Trader" Ronald Reagan thought the tariff necessary, then Japan surely deserved it. After
more than seven years in office, Ronald Reagan is still widely regarded as a devoted free trader.
A typical reference is that of Mark Shields, a Washington Post columnist, to Reagan's "blind devotion
to the doctrine of free trade."
If President Reagan has a devotion to free trade, it surely must be blind, because he has been
off the mark most of the time. Only short memories and a refusal to believe one's own eyes would
account for the view that President Reagan is a free trader. Calling oneself a free trader is
not the same thing as being a free trader. Nor does a free-trade position mean that the president,
but not Congress, should have the power to impose trade sanctions. Instead, a president deserves
the title of free trader only if his efforts demonstrate an attempt to remove trade barriers at
home and prevent the imposition of new ones.
By this standard, the Reagan administration has failed to promote free trade. Ronald Reagan
by his actions has become the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover, the heavyweight
champion of protectionists.
[ I appreciate this reference, which is in turn extensively referenced. ]
This is simple. It means instead of shipping low end Toyota Corolla's that were small, manual
transmission, no A/C, etc., the Japanese started to make larger, more expensive cars, even luxury
cars like Lexis, etc.
If this helps, think of Volkswagen being limited to shipping 1,000 cars to the US. They would
probably send us only the top-end Porsches (VW owns that brand) and none of the more middle class
cars.
To Anne's point on whether this is an accurate portrayal of what happened: I have no recollection
and no knowledge about this.
What really happened is simple. The Japanese car companies got that quota rents (Menzie Chinn
documented this recently) from what was effectively a quota on the imports of Japanese cars. American
consumers instead imported European cars. Any benefits to US car manufacturing was trivial and
totally undo for the aggregate US economy by the massive dollar appreciation. All one has to do
is to look at the exchange rate back then and one gets why net exports fell dramatically.
Japanese manufacturers exported more expensive models in the 1980s due to voluntary export
restraints, negotiated by the Japanese government and U.S. trade representatives, that restricted
mainstream car sales. ...
Acura holds the distinction of being the first Japanese automotive luxury brand. ... In its
first few years of existence, Acura was among the best-selling luxury marques in the US. ...
In the late 1980s, the success of the company's first flagship vehicle, the Legend, inspired
fellow Japanese automakers Toyota and Nissan to launch their own luxury brands, Lexus and Infiniti,
respectively. ...
I am reluctant to disagree with Paul Krugman, as he has forgotten more economics than I'll ever
know. But my first thought as I read this was: motivated reasoning. It is quite interesting, and
affects all of us, and the brilliant folks seem to be more susceptible to it than the average
folks.
Krugman dislikes Trump (as do I). He seems motivated to find fault with Trump's policies.
In fuzzy things like economics and their intersection with politics it is challenging, and perhaps
actually impossible, for most of us to remain balanced. If someone as smart and knowledgeable
as Paul Krugman subconsciously decides to dislike a policy, his brain is more than clever enough
to invent reasonable economic arguments against the policy.
Of course, none of this implies that Krugman is actually wrong in this case.
One question for folks. Krugman says "the budget deficit pushed up interest rates, which caused
a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured goods (which are
still most of what's tradable.)" I am wondering why a budget deficit has to push up interest rates?
In 2009 we ran a large budget deficit at low interest rates. In WW 2 we did as well (I think,
not really sure about this). Is it well established that budget deficits push up interest rates?
Cognitive bias. Using % of jobs that are manufacturing is relative to what was happening in
other job areas: like Reagan building up the military and civil service to buy weapons a tiny
part of the growth in that sector was manufacturing.
What else was going on in late 70's early 80's... a lot of growth on service sector.
It is called cherry picking the chart to make a point with non thinkers.
Right, I think the answer is that budget deficits only push up interest rates if the Fed allows
that to happen. The Fed could keep rates low if they wanted by signaling a willingness to buy
up as much federal debt as is needed to hit some low target rate. So I think Krugman is, in effect,
predicting that they will not do that, and that they will instead counteract the fiscal expansion
with tighter monetary policy on the theory that this is needed to counteract potential "overheating".
I bought a house in 1985, I bet interest rates would go down by taking a 1 year ARM. I did quite
well each year it adjusted! I sold it in 1990 and rates were low enough to go fixed conventional
on the "trade up".
It is reputed the high rates helped cause the "Volcker" recession in the gray around 82.
Thinking about it some more. If I understand this correctly, the thought is that deficit spending
is stimulative, and the economy is already at full employment, so the Fed will raise interest
rates to prevent the economy from "overheating." The increase in rates slows the economy down
by two mechanisms:
(1) when the cost of capital is higher, fewer investments get made than when it is lower (say,
a business needs to see a higher ROI when interest rates are high than when they are low). (As
an aside, outside of the housing market, I don't think this effect is very strong. Real businesses
don't change their approach to investment if rates change by, say, 100%; from 2% to 4%. At least,
not the ones I have been exposed to, which are generally looking for ~ 15% IRR on investments.)
(2) People globally may be more inclined to hold dollars when the risk-free rate is higher,
which increases demand for the currency, which means the currency gets stronger, and exports are
less competitive and imports more competitive, counter-acting the stimulus.
The thing I don't like about this line of thought is that it is fatalist. It suggests that
fiscal policy really does not matter, it will all be offset by monetary policy. There is no real
impact to the economy whether we run huge budget deficits or surpluses. Me not liking it does
not mean it is wrong, obviously, but I just don't buy it. When I run into things like this in
economics I really start to wonder how much of macro is based on empirical observations and correlations
versus 'models.'
I think I ought to take an intro econ course and actually learn something. Or read an introductory
macro text book...
Krugman says "the budget deficit pushed up interest rates, which caused a strong dollar, which
caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured goods (which are still most of what's tradable.)"
I am wondering why a budget deficit has to push up interest rates?
In 2009 we ran a large budget deficit at low interest rates.... Is it well established that
budget deficits push up interest rates?
[ Here then is the relevant matter to be analyzed. ]
Anne, thank you. From this plot I see that during Clinton's presidency we went from a budget deficit
to a surplus. And interest rates dropped. During the George W. Bush presidency we went from a
surplus to a deficit. And interest rates dropped.
There does not appear to be any obvious correlation between the budget deficit and interest
rates.
I understand the textbook story is the Fed raises rates when the budget deficit increases.
I am not sure if the empirical data supports that though. Perhaps the Fed cares more about inflation
than budget deficits and perhaps budget deficits do not directly result in inflation? But if that
is correct, what is the basis for Professor Krugman's assertion that Trump's budget will push
up interest rates?
With war looming, it's time to be prepared. So last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage.
It means higher monthly payments, but I'm terrified about what will happen to interest rates once
financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficits.
From a fiscal point of view the impending war is a lose-lose proposition. If it goes badly,
the resulting mess will be a disaster for the budget. If it goes well, administration officials
have made it clear that they will use any bump in the polls to ram through more big tax cuts,
which will also be a disaster for the budget. Either way, the tide of red ink will keep on rising.
Last week the Congressional Budget Office marked down its estimates yet again. Just two years
ago, you may remember, the C.B.O. was projecting a 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Now it projects
a 10-year deficit of $1.8 trillion.
And that's way too optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office operates under ground rules
that force it to wear rose-colored lenses. If you take into account - as the C.B.O. cannot - the
effects of likely changes in the alternative minimum tax, include realistic estimates of future
spending and allow for the cost of war and reconstruction, it's clear that the 10-year deficit
will be at least $3 trillion.
So what? Two years ago the administration promised to run large surpluses. A year ago it said
the deficit was only temporary. Now it says deficits don't matter. But we're looking at a fiscal
crisis that will drive interest rates sky-high.
A leading economist recently summed up one reason why: "When the government reduces saving
by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises." Yes, that's from a textbook by the chief
administration economist, Gregory Mankiw.
But what's really scary - what makes a fixed-rate mortgage seem like such a good idea - is
the looming threat to the federal government's solvency.... ]
Yes, thank you for that column from 2003. Yes, Prof. K was correct about the future trend in deficits
back then, but incorrect about the future trend in interest rates.
It is certainly conceivable that he is wrong now as well.
Krugman captures very well what happened in the 1980's. He went to work for the CEA hoping to
undo this disaster. Of course the political hacks in the Reagan White House did not listen to
the CEA. Now he watches people in the Trump White House that are even more insane than these political
hacks. You draw whatever conclusion you want but his concerns strike me as real from someone who
has been there.
pgl - thank you. I am not drawing any hard and fast conclusions, just trying to learn. I appreciate
your comment that is based on both education and experience.
I am still thinking about this Buffett proposal on trade with import certificates.
http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/warren-buffett-foreign-trade/
Jared Bernstein mentioned it in passing in an opinion piece in the NY Times yesterday. I put
a comment on his website asking him to share more of his thoughts on it, and he said that he will
if/when he has time. I hope he does.
No. Budget deficits for a country such as the US do not push up interest rates. They would in
fact lower the interbank rate if not countered by Federal Reserve actions.
If budget deficits added to aggregate demand to the point that the Fed thought its inflation
target was in jeopardy, the Fed might raise its target rate of interest in the hopes of quelling
demand.
The Fed has almost complete control over the interest rate paid by the Federal government when
it decides to issue new debt. WWII is a great example of this. So is our most recent depression.
Will Fiscal Policy Really Be Expansionary?
By Paul Krugman
It's now generally accepted that Trump_vs_deep_state will finally involve the kind of fiscal stimulus
progressive economists have been pleading for ever since the financial crisis. After all, Republicans
are deeply worried about budget deficits when a Democrat is in the White House, but suddenly become
fiscal doves when in control. And there really is no question that the deficit will go up.
But will this actually amount to fiscal stimulus? Right now it looks as if Republicans are
going to ram through their whole agenda, including an end to Obamacare, privatizing Medicare and
block-granting Medicaid, sharp cuts to food stamps, and so on. These are spending cuts, which
will reduce the disposable income of lower- and middle-class Americans even as tax cuts raise
the income of the wealthy. Given the sharp distributional changes, looking just at the budget
deficit may be a poor guide to the macroeconomic impact.
Given the extent to which things are in flux, I can't put numbers on what's likely to happen.
But I was able to find matching analyses by the good folks at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
of tax * and spending ** cuts in Paul Ryan's 2014 budget, which may be a useful model of things
to come.
If you leave out the magic asterisks - closing of unspecified tax loopholes - that budget was
a deficit-hiker: $5.7 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years, versus $5 trillion in spending cuts.
The spending cuts involved cuts in discretionary spending plus huge cuts in programs that serve
the poor and middle class; the tax cuts were, of course, very targeted on high incomes.
The pluses and minuses here would have quite different effects on demand. Cutting taxes on
high incomes probably has a low multiplier: the wealthy are unlikely to be cash-constrained, and
will save a large part of their windfall. Cutting discretionary spending has a large multiplier,
because it directly cuts government purchases of goods and services; cutting programs for the
poor probably has a pretty high multiplier too, because it reduces the income of many people who
are living more or less hand to mouth.
Taking all this into account, that old Ryan plan would almost surely have been contractionary,
not expansionary.
Will Trumponomics be any different? It would matter if there really were a large infrastructure
push, but that's becoming ever less plausible. There will be big tax cuts at the top, but as I
said, the push to dismantle the safety net definitely seems to be on. Put it all together, and
it's extremely doubtful whether we're talking about net fiscal stimulus.
Now, you might think that someone will explain this to Trump, and that he'll demand a more
Keynesian plan. But I have two words for you: Larry Kudlow.
In looking at economic trends, the other issue to take into account is private lending. Individual
debt (credit cards, etc.) is already back up to the levels before the financial crisis and Trump's
appointees are determined to deregulate financial institutions, which may contribute to a return
to the predatory lending that created the last set of booms and busts. *
It's hard to focus on ordinary economic analysis amidst this political apocalypse. But getting
and spending will still consume most of peoples' energy and time; furthermore, like it or not
the progress of CASE NIGHTMARE ORANGE may depend on how the economy does. So, what is actually
likely to happen to trade and manufacturing over the next few years?
As it happens, we have what looks like an unusually good model in the Reagan years - minus
the severe recession and conveniently timed recovery, which somewhat overshadowed the trade story.
Leave aside the Volcker recession and recovery, and what you had was a large move toward budget
deficits via tax cuts and military buildup, coupled with quite a lot of protectionism - it's not
part of the Reagan legend, but the import quota on Japanese automobiles was one of the biggest
protectionist moves of the postwar era.
I'm a bit uncertain about the actual fiscal stance of Trumponomics: deficits will surely blow
up, but I won't believe in the infrastructure push until I see it, and given savage cuts in aid
to the poor it's not entirely clear that there will be net stimulus. * But suppose there is. Then
what?
Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up interest
rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.) This led to an accelerated decline in the industrial
orientation of the U.S. economy:
[Graph]
And people did notice. Using Google Ngram, we can watch the spread of terms for industrial
decline, e.g. here:
[Graph]
And here:
[Graph]
Again, this happened despite substantial protectionism.
So Trump_vs_deep_state will probably follow a similar course; it will actually shrink manufacturing despite
the big noise made about saving a few hundred jobs here and there.
On the other hand, by then the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be thoroughly politicized, commanded
to report good news whatever happens.
RMO declines sharply during recessions and the worse the downturn, the harder manufacturing
gets hit. Ergo, avoiding recessions is the absolute best policy for manufacturing. Trade and the
dollar's value don't have nearly as strong correlations.
RMWW rise strongly during sustained expansions of private industry employment.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV
Trade deficits have little correlation but the correlation with private industry employment growth
is strong: 16 million new jobs since 1Q2010.
All of this should be obvious, as Keynes said: "The ideas (about economics) . . . are extremely
simple and should be obvious."
"Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up
interest rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.)"
Deficit spending would always stimulate an economy except the Fed controls the brakes.
The Fed is especially worried about wage price inflation spirals
When inflation pops its head above target, the Fed slams on the brakes.
At the ZLB, inflation is far below target so the Fed has its foot off the brakes.
Deficit spending is stimulatory because the Fed does not apply the brakes by raising interest
rates.
This is textbook economics
The first intelligent comment here. Yes Volcker kept real interest rate very high for a while
which led to a dramatic appreciation of the dollar. But even as Volcker took off the monetary
brakes to let the economy get back to full employment, real interest rates stayed elevated and
the real appreciation was not entirely reversed. So we got a sustained trade deficit even in the
face of trade protection. That is the simple point that some here wish to duck.
Yes but historically it does not seem like it has worked that way. There does not appear to be
an obvious correlation between budget deficits and either (a) interest rates themselves, or (b)
the change in interest rates.
It seems like the Fed is acting on inflation signals. It is not so clear that (changes in)
budget deficits necessarily result in (changes in) inflation. Unless there is a direct link between
budget deficits and inflation it is hard to credibly argue that increasing the budget deficit
results in increased inflation results in Federal Reserve raising rates to choke off inflation.
The history of budget deficits and interest rates that Anne showed above don't provide much
support for Prof. Krugman's point.
Krugman is predicting that the Fed will raise rates to counter Trump's fiscal expansion and will
appreciate the dollar. That's what happened with Volcker jacking rates to fight inflation.
He doesn't spell this out exactly.
It's like how Greenspan and Rubin told Clinton he had to drop his middle class spending
bill in order to focus on deficit reduction. Greenspan was threatening to raise rates and Clinton
bent the knee to the "independent" Fed.
That's when Clinton threw a tantrum about being an "Eisenhower Republican."
The Senate Democrats like Schumer get what the populist backlash is about. That's why they're
promising $1 trillion over 10 years in government spending rather than Hillary's $275 over 5 years.
They can do the math. They know what happened in the election. It wasn't just about Comey or
the DNC hack. The election shouldn't have been that close.
"the budget deficit pushed up interest rates" We had large budget deficits during the Great Recession
and they didn't push up interest rates. In fact Obama focused too much on deficit reduction.
"... People can perceive that her ideology is founded on a conception of human beings striving relentlessly to become human capital (as her opening campaign commercial so overtly depicted), which means that those who fail to come within the purview of neoliberalism should be rigorously ostracized, punished, and excluded. ..."
"... As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market. We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface. ..."
You are wrong. Your definition of neoliberalism is formally right and we can argue along those
lines that Hillary is a neoliberal too (Her track record as a senator suggests exactly that),
it is way too narrow.
"One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings."
(see below)
"Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the
state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them."
"In the current election campaign, Hillary Clinton has been the most perfect embodiment
of neoliberalism among all the candidates, she is almost its all-time ideal avatar, and I believe
this explains, even if not articulated this way, the widespread discomfort among the populace
toward her ascendancy. People can perceive that her ideology is founded on a conception
of human beings striving relentlessly to become human capital (as her opening campaign commercial
so overtly depicted), which means that those who fail to come within the purview of neoliberalism
should be rigorously ostracized, punished, and excluded.
This is the dark side of neoliberalism's ideological arm (a multiculturalism founded on
human beings as capital), which is why this project has become increasingly associated with
suppression of free speech and intolerance of those who refuse to go along with the kind of
identity politics neoliberalism promotes.
And this explains why the 1990s saw the simultaneous and absolutely parallel rise, under
the Clintons, of both neoliberal globalization and various regimes of neoliberal disciplining,
such as the shaming and exclusion of former welfare recipients (every able-bodied person should
be able to find work, therefore under TANF welfare was converted to a performance management
system designed to enroll everyone in the workforce, even if it meant below-subsistence wages
or the loss of parental responsibilities, all of it couched in the jargon of marketplace incentives)."
In this sense Hillary Clinton is 100% dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal and neocon ("neoliberal with
the gun"). She promotes so called "neoliberal rationality" a perverted "market-based" rationality
typical for neoliberalism:
== quote ==
When Hillary Clinton frequently retorts-in response to demands for reregulation of finance,
for instance-that we have to abide by "the rule of law," this reflects a particular understanding
of the law, the law as embodying the sense of the market, the law after it has undergone a
revolution of reinterpretation in purely economic terms.
In this revolution of the law persons have no status compared to corporations, nation-states
are on their way out, and everything in turn dissolves before the abstraction called the market.
One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings.
Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic
theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and
a half centuries.
As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field
is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market.
We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface.
Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market
fundamentalism," and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation,
i.e., the market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue
that in neoliberalism there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous
ideologies.
The neoliberal state-actually, to utter the word state seems insufficient here, I would
claim that a new entity is being created, which is not the state as we have known it, but an
existence that incorporates potentially all the states in the world and is something that exceeds
their sum-is all-powerful, it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in the
way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing
to allow.
There are competing understandings of neoliberal globalization, when it comes to the question
of whether the state is strong or weak compared to the primary agent of globalization, i.e.,
the corporation, but I am taking this logic further, I am suggesting that the issue is not
how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything left
over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has become
the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the
form we have classically understood them.
Of course the word hasn't gotten around to the people yet, hence all the confusion about
whether Hillary Clinton is more neoliberal than Barack Obama, or whether Donald Trump will
be less neoliberal than Hillary Clinton.
The project of neoliberalism-i.e., the redefinition of the state, the institutions of society,
and the self-has come so far along that neoliberalism is almost beyond the need of individual
entities to make or break its case. Its penetration has gone too deep, and none of the democratic
figureheads that come forward can fundamentally question its efficacy.
"... Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against fair distribution of profits in the economy. ..."
"... The key point here is that as long as there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism, nationalism is the only game in town for the opposition forces. That's why trade union members now abandoned neoliberal (aka Clintonized ) Democratic Party. ..."
"... Traditionally, Neoliberalism espouses privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade and reduction in government spending. ..."
"... One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings. Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and a half centuries. ..."
"... As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market. We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market fundamentalism," and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation, i.e., the market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue that in neoliberalism there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous ideologies. ..."
"... it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in the way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing to allow. ..."
"... I am suggesting that the issue is not how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything left over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them. ..."
I will go with worth reading. I don't think that is controversial at all and there is way more
than an element of truth in it. But knowing is one thing and organizing politically in a manner
sufficient to bring about change is entirely another.
They are correct. We need an alternative to Nationalism and Trump.
They are not correct about mysterious elites controlling things.
The elites pursued anti-regulatory policies that allowed them to reap short term profits without
regard for stability or sustainability. It is not government control but lack of regulation that
allowed BIgF to run wild and unaccountable.
Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for
business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against
fair distribution of profits in the economy.
The plant closures are headlined and promote the mistaken belief that globalization is the
prime cause of job loss. These large closures are only 1/10th of the job losses and dislocations
due to automation and transformation from manufacturing to service economies. Wealthy elites are
allowed to greedily hoard all the profits from automation and not enough is being invested in
the service economy. Austerity is not a policy to control the masses, it is a policy to protect
the wealth accumulated by elites from fair distribution.
Trump is not going to bring manufacturing plants back to American rural backwaters. Those left
behind must build their own service economy or relocate to a sustainable region that is making
the transition.
The key point here is that as long as there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism,
nationalism is the only game in town for the opposition forces. That's why trade union members
now abandoned neoliberal (aka Clintonized ) Democratic Party.
All Western societies now, not only the USA, experience nationalist movements Renaissance.
And that's probably why Hillary lost as she represented "kick the can down the road" neoliberal
globalization agenda.
An important point also is that nationalism itself is not monolithic. There are at least two
different types of nationalism in the West now:
ethnic nationalism (old-style), where the "ethnicity" is the defining feature of belonging
to the "in-group"
cultural nationalism (new style), where the defining traits of belonging to the "in-group"
is the language and culture, not ethnicity.
As for your statement
"Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for
business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against
fair distribution of profits in the economy."
This might be true, but might be not. It is not clear what Trump actually represents. Let's
give him the benefit of doubt and wait 100 days before jumping to conclusions.
Traditionally, Neoliberalism espouses privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free
trade and reduction in government spending.
What exactly did Clinton want to privatize? What budget did she propose slashing? Did
she want to deregulate banks or environmental regulations?
She supported some trade liberalization, but also imposing sanctions. What government spending
did she want to reduce?
Fact: She supported the opposite of most of these policies.
Donald Trump promised to pursue all of these Neoliberal policies. The GOP and their propaganda
megaphone is very good at tarring the opposition as supporting the very policies they are enacting.
They made Al Gore into a liar, John Kerry into a coward with a purple band aid and Hillary into
a Wall Street shill. None of this is true. But Trump and his GOP are doing all the things you
accuse Democrats of doing.
You are wrong. Your definition of neoliberalism is formally right and we can argue along those
lines that Hillary is a neoliberal too (Her track record as a senator suggests exactly that),
it is way too narrow. There is more to it:
"One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings."
(see below)
"Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the
state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them."
"In the current election campaign, Hillary Clinton has been the most perfect embodiment
of neoliberalism among all the candidates, she is almost its all-time ideal avatar, and I believe
this explains, even if not articulated this way, the widespread discomfort among the populace
toward her ascendancy. People can perceive that her ideology is founded on a conception of
human beings striving relentlessly to become human capital (as her opening campaign commercial
so overtly depicted), which means that those who fail to come within the purview of neoliberalism
should be rigorously ostracized, punished, and excluded.
This is the dark side of neoliberalism's ideological arm (a multiculturalism founded on
human beings as capital), which is why this project has become increasingly associated with
suppression of free speech and intolerance of those who refuse to go along with the kind of
identity politics neoliberalism promotes.
And this explains why the 1990s saw the simultaneous and absolutely parallel rise, under
the Clintons, of both neoliberal globalization and various regimes of neoliberal disciplining,
such as the shaming and exclusion of former welfare recipients (every able-bodied person should
be able to find work, therefore under TANF welfare was converted to a performance management
system designed to enroll everyone in the workforce, even if it meant below-subsistence wages
or the loss of parental responsibilities, all of it couched in the jargon of marketplace incentives)."
In this sense Hillary Clinton is 100% dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal and neocon ("neoliberal with
the gun"). She promotes so called "neoliberal rationality" a perverted "market-based" rationality
typical for neoliberalism:
== quote ==
When Hillary Clinton frequently retorts-in response to demands for reregulation of finance,
for instance-that we have to abide by "the rule of law," this reflects a particular understanding
of the law, the law as embodying the sense of the market, the law after it has undergone a
revolution of reinterpretation in purely economic terms.
In this revolution of the law persons have no status compared to corporations, nation-states
are on their way out, and everything in turn dissolves before the abstraction called the market.
One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings.
Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic
theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and
a half centuries.
As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field
is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market.
We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface.
Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market fundamentalism,"
and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation, i.e., the
market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue that in neoliberalism
there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous ideologies.
The neoliberal state-actually, to utter the word state seems insufficient here, I would
claim that a new entity is being created, which is not the state as we have known it, but an
existence that incorporates potentially all the states in the world and is something that exceeds
their sum-is all-powerful, it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in
the way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing
to allow.
There are competing understandings of neoliberal globalization, when it comes to the question
of whether the state is strong or weak compared to the primary agent of globalization, i.e.,
the corporation, but I am taking this logic further, I am suggesting that the issue is
not how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything
left over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has
become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist
in the form we have classically understood them.
Of course the word hasn't gotten around to the people yet, hence all the confusion about
whether Hillary Clinton is more neoliberal than Barack Obama, or whether Donald Trump will
be less neoliberal than Hillary Clinton.
The project of neoliberalism-i.e., the redefinition of the state, the institutions of society,
and the self-has come so far along that neoliberalism is almost beyond the need of individual
entities to make or break its case. Its penetration has gone too deep, and none of the democratic
figureheads that come forward can fundamentally question its efficacy.
It came as a part of series of three separate executive actions that President Trump took on
Monday.
"The first is a withdrawal of the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership," White
House chief of staff Reince Priebus said, explaining the first executive action President Trump
was taking in the list of three. The other two were one freezing hiring of all federal employees
except in the military, and one that restores the Mexico City policy.
As President Trump signed the executive action killing the TPP, he announced for the cameras
in the oval office that it was a "great thing for the American worker, what we just did."
Trump campaigned heavily against TPP, so it's only fitting he'd crush it once and for all on
his first business day as President of the United States. It's his efforts campaigning against
it-and the efforts of failed presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)-that shook Washington's
political establishment, and eventually forced failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Rodham Clinton to come out against the deal that was supposed to be a legacy achievement of now
former President Barack Obama.
Trump hammered TPP repeatedly throughout his campaign and even leading up to it in speeches
and interviews, including many exclusive interviews with Breitbart News.
"... The era of neoliberalism ended in the autumn of 2008 with the bonfire of financialisation's illusions. The fetishisation of unfettered markets that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought to the fore in the late 1970s had been the necessary ideological cover for the unleashing of financiers to enable the capital flows essential to a new phase of globalisation in which the United States deficits provided the aggregate demand for the world's factories (whose profits flowed back to Wall Street closing the loop nicely). ..."
"... when the bottom fell out of this increasingly unstable feedback loop, neoliberalism's illusions burned down and the west's working class ended up too expensive and too indebted to be of interest to a panicking global establishment. ..."
"... Thatcher's and Reagan's neoliberalism had sought to persuade that privatisation of everything would produce a fair and efficient society unimpeded by vested interests or bureaucratic fiat. That narrative, of course, hid from public view what was really happening: a tremendous buildup of super-state bureaucracies, unaccountable supra-state institutions (World Trade Organisation, Nafta, the European Central Bank), behemoth corporations, and a global financial sector heading for the rocks. ..."
"... Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost its ambition to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to declare in writing that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika forced the Greek or Irish governments to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based bankers at the expense of their people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation. Similarly, in America the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the failed health system. ..."
"... It was against this insurgency of a cornered establishment that had given up on persuasion that Donald Trump and his European allies rose up with their own populist insurgency. They proved that it is possible to go against the establishment and win. Alas, theirs will be a pyrrhic victory which will, eventually, harm those whom they inspired. The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot be the retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of "our" people against "others" fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences. ..."
"... This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of working class jobs to emerging markets. ..."
"... Until there is a viable alternative economic philosophy, nationalism is the future, whether we like it or not. ..."
"... Enough is enough. Globalisation is now only working for the rich and powerful. The model is simple - globalisation lowers the cost for consumers of everything, because the lowest cost geography produces everything (China, India etc), which is great until nobody has a job any more, so nobody can afford anything. ..."
"... The challenge is not to stick with the status quo, it's to find an alternative to nationalism that works for everyone. ..."
"... Fine words, but we're along way from that right now. What's happening in Europe, and across the Atlantic, is really only just getting started. Our elites may well be suffering from a crisis of legitimacy, and yet they are still very much in control. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is based on the acceptance that the rich elite are deserving of their wealth and privileges. The elite have used their mouthpieces, such as tabloids and think tanks, to ram this home; but the banking crisis of 2008 helped disabuse people of this myth that justifies rampant inequality in the US and the UK in particular. ..."
"... Trump and Brexit are expressions of the paradigm shift that is underway; but up till now, rather ironically, a billionaire and a rich former stockbroker have been the voice of protest, because it is they who have the money, connections and vanity to ensure they are heard. ..."
"... These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against globalization has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to control the political process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of the global top 5 percent in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they have keen interest in its continuation. But while their use of political power has enabled the continuation of globalization, it has also hollowed out national democracies and moved many countries closer to becoming plutocracies. Thus, the choice would seem either plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to globalization. ..."
"... Some of the gains of the top 5 percent could go toward alleviating the anger of the lower- and middle-class rich world's "losers." ..."
"... the history of the last quarter century during which the top classes in the rich world have continually piled up larger and larger gains, all the while socially and mentally separating themselves from fellow citizens, does not bode well for that alternative ..."
"... Social Neoliberals (mass immigration, family breakdown, individualism etc) combine with economic Neoliberals (profit maximisation, global capital movements etc) to get their way. ..."
"... I'm fairly sure that in time it will be shown that thier is a cabal of think-tanks and supranationalists who have perverted everything to thier own benefit. How and why does a Labour Peer get free accomodation on Baron Rothschilds' estate? How and why does the royal bank Coutts get bailed out by the taxpayer with no strings attached? ..."
The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot be a retreat to barricaded nation-states and the pitting
of 'our' people against 'others' fenced off by high walls
A clash of two insurgencies is now shaping the west. Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic
are on the sidelines, unable to comprehend what they are observing. Donald Trump's inauguration marks
its pinnacle.
One of the two insurgencies shaping our world today has been analysed ad nauseum. Donald Trump,
Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and the broad Nationalist International that they are loosely connected
to have received much attention, as has their success at impressing upon the multitudes that nation-states,
borders, citizens and communities matter.
However, the other insurgency that caused the rise of this Nationalist International has remained
in the shadows: an insurrection by the global establishment's technocracy whose purpose is to
retain control at all cost. Project Fear in the UK, the troika in continental Europe and the unholy
alliance of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the surveillance apparatus in the United States are
its manifestations.
The era of neoliberalism ended in the autumn of 2008 with the bonfire of financialisation's
illusions. The fetishisation of unfettered markets that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought
to the fore in the late 1970s had been the necessary ideological cover for the unleashing of financiers
to enable the capital flows essential to a new phase of globalisation in which the United States
deficits provided the aggregate demand for the world's factories (whose profits flowed back to Wall
Street closing the loop nicely).
Meanwhile, billions of people in the "third" world were pulled out of poverty while hundreds of
millions of western workers were slowly sidelined, pushed into more precarious jobs, and forced to
financialise themselves either through their pension funds or their homes. And when the bottom
fell out of this increasingly unstable feedback loop, neoliberalism's illusions burned down and the
west's working class ended up too expensive and too indebted to be of interest to a panicking global
establishment.
Thatcher's and Reagan's neoliberalism had sought to persuade that privatisation of everything
would produce a fair and efficient society unimpeded by vested interests or bureaucratic fiat. That
narrative, of course, hid from public view what was really happening: a tremendous buildup of super-state
bureaucracies, unaccountable supra-state institutions (World Trade Organisation, Nafta, the European
Central Bank), behemoth corporations, and a global financial sector heading for the rocks.
After the events of 2008 something remarkable happened. For the first time in modern times the
establishment no longer cared to persuade the masses that its way was socially optimal. Overwhelmed
by the collapsing financial pyramids, the inexorable buildup of unsustainable debt, a eurozone in
an advanced state of disintegration and a China increasingly relying on an impossible credit boom,
the establishment's functionaries set aside the aspiration to persuade or to represent. Instead,
they concentrated on clamping down.
In the UK, more than a million benefit applicants faced punitive sanctions. In the Eurozone, the
troika ruthlessly sought to reduce the pensions of the poorest of the poor. In the United States,
both parties promised drastic cuts to social security spending. During our deflationary times none
of these policies helped stabilise capitalism at a national or at a global level. So, why were they
pursued?
Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost its ambition
to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to declare in writing
that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika forced the Greek or Irish governments
to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based
bankers at the expense of their people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation.
Similarly, in America the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the
failed health system.
It was against this insurgency of a cornered establishment that had given up on persuasion
that Donald Trump and his European allies rose up with their own populist insurgency. They proved
that it is possible to go against the establishment and win. Alas, theirs will be a pyrrhic victory
which will, eventually, harm those whom they inspired. The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot
be the retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of "our" people against "others" fenced
off by tall walls and electrified fences.
The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both sides of
the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by power. We need to
aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope throughout Europe and America
for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for social housing, for health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans can
restore to a billion people living in the west sovereignty over their lives and communities.
bag0shite
This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes
from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of
working class jobs to emerging markets.
Liberalism has created so much wealth for the west and has dramatically reduced inequality
over the last century, however it is no longer working for those on lower incomes in the west.
Until there is a viable alternative economic philosophy, nationalism is the future,
whether we like it or not.
chantaspell -> bag0shite 1d ago
nationalism is the future, whether we like it or not.
No it's not. Because what we've got, although flawed, is far superior to Nationalism's
false promises. Nationalism will, or perhaps already has, peaked.
bag0shite -> chantaspell
... go and tell that to all the families who don't have a job because their roles were
offshored to Eastern Europe or China. Got and tell that to truck drivers who earn a pittance
because there is essentially an infinite supply of Poles willing to do it for peanuts.
Enough is enough. Globalisation is now only working for the rich and powerful. The model
is simple - globalisation lowers the cost for consumers of everything, because the lowest cost
geography produces everything (China, India etc), which is great until nobody has a job any
more, so nobody can afford anything.
The challenge is not to stick with the status quo, it's to find an alternative to
nationalism that works for everyone.
MMGALIAS -> bag0shite 1d ago
This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes
from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of
working class jobs to emerging markets.
The working classes have voted against their own interests in the last 3 decades, now we
are all supposed to feel sorry for them when the neoliberal policies they have voted for have
come back to bite them?
Northman1
"The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both sides
of the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by power. We
need to aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope throughout Europe
and America for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for social housing, for
health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans
can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives and
communities".
These are fine aspirations. You precede them by saying that we cannot:
"...retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of 'our' people against 'others'
fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences".
This presumably refers to physical barriers to prevent illegal immigration and tariff barriers
to prevent free trade.
Tell me though how you can achieve the aspirations you set out whilst allowing millions of
people from the third world to flood into Europe at an enormous economic and social cost and
also trading freely with countries that don't trade fairly (e.g. China with its currency
manipulation, government subsidies, product dumping and lack of environmental/ safety/ worker
protection regulations)
greenwichite -> Northman1
He's brilliant on the problem...lame on the solution.
And wrong.
The answer is to only trade freely with countries that play by the same environmental,
currency and labour-rights rules as we do.
Otherwise, we are just allowing ourselves to be undercuts by cheats.
That's not "barricading" oneself anywhere...it's basic common sense, which has
unfortunately eluded our leaders for decades. In Thatcher's case, I think she was quite happy
for mercantilist, protectionist Asian powers to destroy our industry, for her own
party-political purposes.
MMGALIAS -> Northman1
and also trading freely with countries that don't trade fairly (e.g. China with its
currency manipulation, government subsidies, product dumping and lack of environmental/
safety/ worker protection regulations)
The West doesn't trade freely either, just ask the African farmers who are tariffed into
poverty by the EU.
Tiresius -> legalizefreedom
I agree. It's a well argued piece and I agree with the conclusion that neither the neo
liberal free trade consensus , nor its reaction , will provide an answer to the worsening
economic condition of the blue collar west. I also am convinced that in the longer term the
only real answer is a return to the principles of social democracy and equity of opportunity.
This will however be a long march. Neo liberalism has been in the ascendant for over 30
years , it has brought some significant benefits to a few in the west , and many elsewhere ,
and of course a lot of Chinese billionaires , a large number of western voters have lost or
are losing faith in a system that has failed to deliver rising living standards for them ,
incurred high levels of debt and reduced social mobility.
It is a failure of the narrative of the centre left that those people are persuaded by
increasing protectionism rather than social democracy. So now we will see where the reaction
to free trade liberalism takes us , it has to run its course before the prescriptions of
social democracy can be reformulated , hopefully with more inspiring leaders than at present.
Andrew Skidmore
'Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and
Europeans can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives
and communities.'
Fine words, but we're along way from that right now. What's happening in Europe, and
across the Atlantic, is really only just getting started. Our elites may well be suffering
from a crisis of legitimacy, and yet they are still very much in control.
From the Trump administration Whitehouse website:
'The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump
will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the
public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration
will end it.'
Hmmmmmm....?
thetowncrier -> Andrew Skidmore
As ever, a master of subtlety. I expect the American Stasi to come into being by the end of
next week, with a brand new special 'badge' to go with their black shirts.
2bveryFrank
Neoliberalism is based on the acceptance that the rich elite are deserving of their
wealth and privileges. The elite have used their mouthpieces, such as tabloids and think
tanks, to ram this home; but the banking crisis of 2008 helped disabuse people of this myth
that justifies rampant inequality in the US and the UK in particular.
Trump and Brexit are expressions of the paradigm shift that is underway; but up till
now, rather ironically, a billionaire and a rich former stockbroker have been the voice of
protest, because it is they who have the money, connections and vanity to ensure they are
heard.
They, however, are very unlikely to deliver and then true and genuine voices of the people
will emerge - voices that will target the root causes of discontent rather than convenient,
nationalistic scapegoats such as immigration.
ReasonableSoul -> 2bveryFrank
"and then true and genuine voices of the people will emerge - voices that will target
the root causes of discontent rather than convenient, nationalistic scapegoats such as
immigration."
So working class people who struggle to compete for the low wage jobs and strained welfare
services that are taken by migrants are not allowed to protest immigration policy?
Recent mass migrations (of the last 30 years) are unprecedented.
In Europe, whole towns have been transformed, particularly culturally.
Imposing huge demographic changes on a people is a form of authoritarian social
engineering.
SeenItAlready
This is covered by a report in YaleGlobal (and a similar one in the Harvard Business
Review) from 2014 which adds a few stats showing how middle-class salaries in the 'Western
World' were the only ones to stagnate in the period 1998 to 2008 (and obviously drop post
2008, but that isn't covered):
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/tale-two-middle-classes
This is the last section of that report:
The populists warn disgruntled voters that economic trends observed during the past
three decades are just the first wave of cheap labor from Asia pitted in direct competition
with workers in the rich world, and more waves are on the way from poorer lands in Asia and
Africa. The stagnation of middle-class incomes in the West may last another five decades or
more.
This calls into question either the sustainability of democracy under such conditions or
the sustainability of globalization.
If globalization is derailed, the middle classes of the West may be relieved from the
immediate pressure of cheaper Asian competition. But the longer-term costs to themselves
and their countries, let alone to the poor in Asia and Africa, will be high. Thus, the
interests and the political power of the middle classes in the rich world put them in a
direct conflict with the interests of the worldwide poor.
These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had
little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against
globalization has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to
control the political process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of
the global top 5 percent in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they
have keen interest in its continuation. But while their use of political power has enabled
the continuation of globalization, it has also hollowed out national democracies and moved
many countries closer to becoming plutocracies. Thus, the choice would seem either
plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to globalization.
Another solution, one that involves neither populism nor plutocracy, would require enormous
effort at the understanding of one's own longer-term self-interest. It would imply more
substantial redistribution policies in the rich world. Some of the gains of the top 5
percent could go toward alleviating the anger of the lower- and middle-class rich world's
"losers." These need not nor should be mere transfers of money from one group to
another.
Instead, money should come in the form of investments in public education, local
infrastructure, housing and preventive health care. But the history of the last quarter
century during which the top classes in the rich world have continually piled up larger and
larger gains, all the while socially and mentally separating themselves from fellow
citizens, does not bode well for that alternative
Personally I see the whole US election here... written a couple of years before it
happened:
Hillary as Globalisation
Trump as Populism
And Bernie (who as the report suggests wasn't even allowed by the Globalist forces to -
present himself) as Redistribution
moranet -> Rusty Woods
Just as in the 1920s early 30s, when centrist governments attempting mild redistributive
banking reforms -MacDonald, Herriot, Van Zeeland, Azańa- came up against a "Wall of Money"
when the financial markets reacted, and were overthrown in favour of orthodox liberal
governments (the 'technocratic insugency' described by Prof. Varoufakis). And when public
opinion inevitably lost its patience, propelling harder nosed reformers close to power...
that's when political and financial elites discovered rule by executive decree and the
adjournment of parliaments.
So we know very well what happens next in Europe, when liberal capitalism and
liberal-democracy find themselves on opposing teams.
anewdawn
There are two sorts of nationalism in my view. There is the nasty, evil, Nazi style that
promotes the insane social darwinism, and superiority, but a hypocritical imperialism towards
other states and countries.
There is another type of nationalism that good decent people who really care about
democracy would approve of however. It is the sort that seeks to protect the poor and the
middle classes by stopping global corporations from off shoring their jobs to sweatshops in
countries that have lower human rights records for the purpose of cheap labour and more
profit. There is the sort of nationalism that promotes local democracy as opposed to tying
countries up to TTIP and TPP which undermines the governments and laws of individual
countries. There is a type of nationalism that seeks to protect their neighbors by insisting
on fair trade and good treatment of workers in other countries.
If you listen to Trumps speech, he seems to be the second type when he promises to bring
back jobs to the rust belt, but only time will tell if he really is of the first type - it
will surface soon in his attitude to invasions of the middle east and control of the global
corporations.
ID0118186 -> anewdawn
But those same middle classes are part of the problem, they want their consumer goods,
their iPods and iPhones and iPads, but they don't want to pay the real cost of them if they
were made by well-paid and well-trained skilled workers in their own country.
You have to address the whole issue: you can't have cheap prices and protectionism, unless you
let wages fall to near the same level that they are in developing countries - also unpopular.
So if you want nationalism as you describe it, be willing to pay 50 to 100% more for many
goods and services; or buy a lot less, which kills your economy anyway.
epidavros -> anewdawn
And then there is also the phoney internationalism of the EU - which is really a turbo
charged nationalism of what will soon be 27 countries bent on protectionism, technocratic rule
and a firmly closed mindset with a firmly debunked ideology.
toadalone -> anewdawn
I like your description of the two nationalisms. I think Varoufakis' point is that that
kind of nationalism can't survive on its own, as an island in a globalised world: nationalists
of that kind have to work together with their neighbouring counterparts to make their
respective benign nationalisms function. It's a very difficult proposal to bring to fruition,
even though I think it's right.
As for Trump: I think that seasoning campaign speeches with a flavour of benign nationalism
is, sadly, little more than a well-established PR technique. I don't believe what Trump says
for an instant (partly because he constantly breaks the fourth wall by saying the complete
opposite a few days later).
Other leaders who deploy this flavour of nationalism are more complicated. Viktor Orbán, for
instance. It's very difficult to tell, with him, how much of his protectionist-nationalist
rhetoric is genuine (but impossible to implement, given Hungary's membership of the EU), and
how much of it is just more of the same
dangle-shiny-things-in-front-of-the-voters-while-doing-what-you-want. And as with Trump,
Orbán's "benign" nationalism comes as just one flavour in a dish also heavily flavoured with
demented backward-looking authoritarian nationalism, with Kulturkampf and all the other
trimmings.
The weird thing about Trump is how he turns these contradictions into a kind of conscious
performance art. It's possible to view Orbán as someone who's cracking up a bit under the
pressure of believing six impossible things before breakfast. Trump is more healthy (from the
Trump's own point of view, of course, not from ours). He's embraced the crazy completely, and
revels in it. While probably reserving some quiet time for himself, in which he can privately
drop the mask, or rather the 500 different masks.
QuayBoredWarrior -> ReubenK1
Perhaps you should read this bit again:
The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both
sides of the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by
power. We need to aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope
throughout Europe and America for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for
social housing, for health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans
can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives and
communities.
If you need to know what the New Deal involved, I suggest you Google it or buy a book about
it. If there is a library still open near you, you might able to borrow a book for free.
I think what is suggested is a new New Deal, an interventionist strategy to replace the
laissez-faire, the-market-knows-best approaches of the 80s/90s/00s. The details of which will
need to be hammered out as we progress. BTW, the New Deal was a haphazard and piecemeal
programme that was often based on hope over accepted wisdom. The aim was stabilisation and an
end to the mass impoverishment of American workers. If we have this aim, I'm sure we can work
out what needs to be done. It won't only be professors who come up with suggestions but all
those who coalesce behind these aims.
The first thing necessary is to loosen the grip of those who bang on about deficit
reduction above all else. This counter-productive approach needs to be crushed. It works for
no one and it doesn't work for the future. The services being destroyed will have to be built
up again and the deficit-above-all-else proselytisers have no strategy for this at all. It's
as if their true aim is to see them destroyed forever.
SeenItAlready
Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost
its ambition to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to
declare in writing that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika
forced the Greek or Irish governments to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from
the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based bankers at the expense of their
people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation. Similarly, in America
the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the failed health
system.
Not only that...
They also came out with the wheeze of getting the poor to fight amongst themselves
I'm convinced that is what is behind the explosion in Identity Politics we have seen over the
last few years - where different groups are encouraged to dislike each other on gender,
gender-orientation and and racial lines. Of course social class is kept well out of any of
these discussions... in spite of it being the source of most of the real repression
SeenItAlready -> SeenItAlready
different groups are encouraged to dislike each other on gender, gender-orientation and and
racial lines. Of course social class is kept well out of any of these discussions... in spite
of it being the source of most of the real repression
Likewise immigration where the immigrants themselves are made an issue of and blamed or
defended... of course in reality salary dumping and job losses have nothing to do with them
The wealthy class who encouraged the immigration of cheap labour, who did not provide any
protection for workers impacted by it and who then effectively sacked local workers in favour
of cheaper labour have again pulled-off a very neat trick by shifting the terms of the debate
to the innocent immigrants who were simply following opportunity and invitations. Likewise the
immigrants feel that they are being persecuted by the locals...
And so the rich sit back and rub their hands with glee... poor immigrants and poor locals
fighting, poor men and poor women fighting, poor whites and poor non-whites fighting. No
chance of the pitchforks arriving for quite a while, if ever...
FreddySteadyGO -> SeenItAlready
And so the rich sit back and rub their hands with glee... poor immigrants and poor
locals fighting, poor men and poor women fighting, poor whites and poor non-whites
fighting. No chance of the pitchforks arriving for quite a while, if ever...
Absolutely, its all far too convenient.
Social Neoliberals (mass immigration, family breakdown, individualism etc) combine with
economic Neoliberals (profit maximisation, global capital movements etc) to get their way.
I'm fairly sure that in time it will be shown that thier is a cabal of think-tanks and
supranationalists who have perverted everything to thier own benefit. How and why does a
Labour Peer get free accomodation on Baron Rothschilds' estate? How and why does the royal
bank Coutts get bailed out by the taxpayer with no strings attached?
SeenItAlready -> FreddySteadyGO
My reply to you got totally deleted, it seems that saying to much about this subject is not
acceptable to these people, which I guess is no surprise considering...
I said in my removed message that I didn't think there was any 'conspiracy' and that it was
the normal divide-and-conquer behaviour which people in power have applied since time
immemorial to those they would wish to control
Now I've changed my mind...
mysterycalculator
Could it be that Francis Fukuyama got it wrong with his historicist vision of liberal
democracy as the final stage in a Hegelian dialectic? Should he have gone with Marx's
interpretation of Hegel's dialectic instead, arguing that political freedom without economic
freedom is not enough? If so, then the argument for a redistributive social justice has to be
the way forward. Though as Karl Popper was keen to point out, Hegal and historicist visions
are bunk. Though interestingly Popper had much more time for Marx. A redistributive social
justice within the checks and balances of a liberal democratic internationalist social order -
that might be a way forward!
Sven Ringling
As long as this problem is seen as a left vs right, we won't address it. Trump's ideas are
in many cases very left. He wants to subsidise jobs through tarifs/trade wars/ anything that
reduces imports and therefore benefits job creation in their large market with a large trade
deficit in the short run.
Corbyn wants to subsidise the poorer part of the population directly or through public
services taking the money directly from businesses and the rich - though he is not disinclined
to isolationism either.
Both recipies work in the short run, both are likely to backfire in the long run the way
they are currently pushed.
It was Labour's big mistake to think UKIP is on the right and therefore a risk for the
Tories only.
And this Greek clown considered left is not far from that American clown. Clowny-ness is
actually their mist defining feature.
ReasonableSoul
Maintaining funcional borders is not a "retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the
pitting of 'our' people against 'others' fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences."
Even liberal Sweden became so overwhelmed by the endless stream of migrants/refugees
arriving that it had to shut the border.
ID614534 1d ago
2
3
Why does every debate about the nation state have to be economic? Peoples of the world are
often tied to their places of birth by language religion and culture. Not every song has to be
sung in an American accent and we don't all want to replace Nan's pie recipe with a Big Mac
and fries.
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epidavros 1d ago
6
7
Fine words, but the problem is that there is no progressive internationalism and there are no
real progressives. The response to the EU referendum widely seen to have been a call to end
unmanaged migration and undue interference of those very supra national, unaccountable elite
bodies you mention has been to call for the UK to be punished, to pay the price, to be treated
entirely differently from trade partners like Canada and dealt with as a pariah. Not
progressive. Not international. And very much the problem, not the cure.
The huge irony here is that with all this talk of populism and barricading behind borders the
UK and USA are seeking to tear theirs down, while the EU is erecting ideological barricades to
protect its elite and their project.
One thing is for sure - the solution is not the status quo. Either in the USA or the EU.
From amazon review of his book
In the Jaws of the Dragon "Anyone who has read "The World is Flat" should also read "In The
Jaws Of The Dragon" to understand both sides of the issues involved in offshoring. Eamon Fingleton clearly
defines the differences between the economic systems in play in China and Japan and the United States
and how those differences have damaged the United States economy. The naive position taken by both the
Republicans and the Democrats that offshoring is good for America is shown to be wrong because of a
fundamental lack of knowledge about who we are dealing with. Every member of Congress and the executive
branch should read this book before ratifying any more trade agreements. The old saying of the marketplace
applies: Take advantage of me once, shame on you. Take advantage of me twice, shame on me."
Notable quotes:
"... Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed their views to be shaped largely by the American press. ..."
"... That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003. ..."
"... Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism. ..."
"... In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. ..."
"... As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than the press makes out. ..."
"... So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability. ..."
"... In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart; number two, I'm a smart person." ..."
"... other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes from fed-up middle Americans. ..."
"... In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital evidence in the Kovaleski affair. ..."
Battlefield communications in World War I sometimes left something to be desired. Hence a famous
British anecdote of a garbled word-of-mouth message. As transmitted, the message ran, "Send reinforcements,
we are going to advance." Superior officers at the other end, however, were puzzled to be told: "Send
three and four-pence [three shillings and four-pence], we are going to a dance!"
Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for
Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed
their views to be shaped largely by the American press.
That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and
reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies
even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's
almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003.
Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are
viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that
he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone
remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades
in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter
Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism.
Now as Trump embarks on office, his true attitudes are becoming obvious – and they hardly lean
towards neo-Nazism.
In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's
husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken
partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's
highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. Trump even wants to move the American embassy
in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This position is a favourite of the most ardently pro-Israel
section of the American Jewish community but is otherwise disavowed as insensitive to Palestinians
by most American policy analysts.
Many other examples could be cited of how the press has distorted the truth. It is interesting
to revisit in particular the allegation that Trump mocked a disabled man's disability. It is an allegation
which has received particular prominence in the press in Europe. But is Trump really such a heartless
ogre? Hardly.
As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than
the press makes out. The disabled-man episode began when, in defending an erstwhile widely ridiculed
contention that Arabs in New Jersey had publicly celebrated the Twin Towers attacks, Trump unearthed
a 2001 newspaper account broadly backed him up. But the report's author, Serge Kovaleski, demurred.
Trump's talk of "thousands" of Arabs, he wrote, was an exaggeration.
Trump fired back. Flailing his arms wildly in an impersonation of an embarrassed, backtracking
reporter, he implied that Kovaleski had succumbed to political correctness.
So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no
ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are
malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York
real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they
could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability.
Trump's plea that he hadn't known that Kovaleski was handicapped was undermined when it emerged
that in the 1980s the two had not only met but Kovaleski had even interviewed Trump in Trump Tower.
That is an experience I know something about. I, like Kovaleski, once interviewed Trump in Trump
Tower. The occasion was an article I wrote for Forbes magazine in 1982. If Trump saw my by-line today,
would he remember that occasion 35 years ago? Probably not. The truth is that Trump, who has been
a celebrity since his early twenties, has been interviewed by thousands of journalists over the years.
A journalist would have to be seriously conceited – or be driven by a hidden agenda – to assume that
a VIP as busy as Trump would remember an occasion half a lifetime ago.
In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump
offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart;
number two, I'm a smart person." Setting aside point one (although to the press's chagrin, many
of Trump's acquaintances have testified that a streak of considerable private generosity underlies
his tough-guy exterior), it is hard to see how anyone can question point two. In effect Trump is
saying he had a strong self-interest in not offending the disabled lobby let alone their millions
of sympathisers.
After all it was not as if there were votes in dissing the disabled. This stands in marked contrast
to other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans
and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central
pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes
from fed-up middle Americans.
In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital
evidence in the Kovaleski affair.
For a start Trump's frenetic performance bore no resemblance to arthrogryposis. Far from frantically
flailing their arms, arthrogryposis victims are uncommonly motionlessness. This is because relevant
bones are fused together. As Catholics 4 Trump pointed out, the media should have been expected to
have been chomping at the bit to interview Kovaleski and thus clinch the point about how ruthlessly
Trump had ridiculed a disabled man's disability.
The website added: "If the media had a legitimate story, that is exactly what they would have
done and we all know it. But the media couldn't put Kovaleski in front of a camera or they'd have
no story."
Catholics 4 Trump added that, in the same speech in which Trump did his Kovaleski impression,
he offered an almost identical performance to illustrate the embarrassment of a U.S. general with
whom he had clashed. In particular Trump had the general wildly flailing his arms. It goes without
saying that this general does not suffer from arthogryposis or any other disability. The common thread
in each case was merely an embarrassed, backtracking person. To say the least, commentators in Europe
who have portrayed Trump as having mocked Kovaleski's disability stand accused of superficial, slanted
reporting.
All this is not to suggest that Trump does not come to the presidency unencumbered with baggage.
He is exceptionally crude – at least he is in his latter-day reality TV manifestation (the Trump
I remember from my interview in 1982 was a model of restraint by comparison and in particular never
used any expletives). Moreover the latter-day Trump habit of picking Twitter fights with those who
criticize him tends merely to confirm a widespread belief that he is petty and thin-skinned.
Many of his pronouncements moreover have been disturbing and his abrasive manner will clearly
prove on balance a liability in the White House. That said, the press has never worked harder or
more dishonestly to destroy a modern American leader.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, therefore, as he sets out to make America great again.
The truth is that American decline has gone much further than almost anyone outside American industry
understands. Trump's task is a daunting one.
Eamonn
Fingleton is an expert on America's trade problems and is the author of In Praise of Hard Industries:
Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity (Houghton Mifflin,
Boston). A version of this article appeared in the Dublin Ireland Sunday Business Post.
America's fate looks dicey in the showdown with the Chinese juggernaut, warns this vigorous jeremiad.
Fingleton (In Praise of Hard Industries) argues that China's "East Asian" development model of aggressive
mercantilism and a state-directed economy "effortlessly outperforms" America's fecklessly individualistic
capitalism
"... In Europe and the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass
immigration and military intervention abroad. ..."
"... Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three buttons, the importance
of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking their cue from their donors
rather than potential voters, never appreciated. ..."
"... The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa
is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important
example being the Kurds. ..."
"... Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited
in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. ..."
"... It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on
Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian leaders whose regimes were more the
symptom than the cause of division. ..."
"... Political divisions in the US are probably greater now than at any time since the American
Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity in both countries betray a deepening disunity and
alarm as people sense that they are moving in the dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible
and may no longer exist. ..."
"... Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication
of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia ..."
"... But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading for Central Europe and the
terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle East could not be contained.
They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian nationalist right and made them
real contenders for power. ..."
"... One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far he succeeds in closing down these wars,
something that is now at last becoming feasible. ..."
In the US, Europe and the Middle East there were many who saw themselves as the losers from globalisation,
but the ideological vehicle for protest differed markedly from region to region. In Europe and
the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass immigration and military
intervention abroad. The latter theme is much more resonant in the US than in Europe because
of Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three
buttons, the importance of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking
their cue from their donors rather than potential voters, never appreciated.
The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa
is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important
example being the Kurds. This is a big change from 50 years ago when revolutionaries in the
region were usually nationalists or socialists, but both beliefs were discredited by corrupt and
authoritarian nationalist dictators and by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited
in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. When Isis
forces were advancing on Baghdad after taking Mosul in June 2014, it was a fatwa from the Iraqi Shia
religious leader Ali al-Sistani that rallied the resistance. No non-religious Iraqi leader could
have successfully appealed to hundreds of thousands of people to volunteer to fight to the death
against Isis. The Middle East differs also from Europe and the US because states are more fragile
than they look and once destroyed prove impossible to recreate. This was a lesson that the foreign
policy establishments in Washington, London and Paris failed to take on board after the invasion
of Iraq in 2003, though the disastrous outcome of successful or attempted regime change has been
bloodily demonstrated again and again. It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the
troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian
leaders whose regimes were more the symptom than the cause of division.
But it is not only in the Middle East that divisions are deepening. Whatever happens in Britain
because of the Brexit vote or in the US because of the election of Trump as president, both countries
will be more divided and therefore weaker than before. Political divisions in the US are probably
greater now than at any time since the American Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity
in both countries betray a deepening disunity and alarm as people sense that they are moving in the
dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible and may no longer exist.
The mainline mass media is finding it difficult to make sense of a new world order which may or
may not be emerging. Journalists are generally more rooted in the established order of things than
they pretend and are shocked by radical change. Only two big newspapers – the Florida Times-Union
and the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed Trump before the election and few of the American
commentariat expected him to win, though this has not dented their confidence in their own judgement.
Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication
of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia, but there is also genuine uncertainty
about whether he will be a real force for change, be it good or ill.
Crises in different parts of the world are beginning to cross-infect and exacerbate each other.
Prior to 2014 European leaders, whatever their humanitarian protestations, did not care much what
happened in Iraq and Syria. But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading
for Central Europe and the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle
East could not be contained. They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian
nationalist right and made them real contenders for power.
The Middle East is always a source of instability in the world and never more so than over the
last six years. But winners and losers are emerging in Syria where Assad is succeeding with Russian
and Iranian help, while in Iraq the Baghdad government backed by US airpower is slowly fighting its
way into Mosul. Isis probably has more fight in it than its many enemies want to believe, but is
surely on the road to ultimate defeat. One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far
he succeeds in closing down these wars, something that is now at last becoming feasible.
"... The strongest advocates for bringing offshore manufacturing back to the United States acknowledge automation's effect on the workforce but say it doesn't negate the need for more domestic factories. Harry Mosser, founder of the Reshoring Institute, which encourages companies to bring manufacturing operations back to the United States, said that even a highly automated factory is better for workers than no factory at all. ..."
"... These days it is more about planned/welcomed obsolescence - the product basically works, but some critical parts may be low grade, making it break after a while so you have to buy something new. This also affects "brands that used to be good". ..."
"... The internet also has played a role - online stores could underbid brick and mortar, then the latter had to cheapen and cut their offerings, driving more customers to the internet, etc. ..."
SOUTHBRIDGE - A mainstay of Massachusetts manufacturing since
the late 1800s, the Hyde Group tool company made a big leap
overseas in 2010, when it outsourced production of its mass
market putty knives and wallpaper blades to China.
"At
heart, we're manufacturers. It was the hardest thing for us
to do, us in a fourth-generation family," said Bob Clemence,
vice president of sales at Hyde Group, and great-grandson of
the man who bought the company in the 1890s. "In order for us
to stay in business and still employ people, we had to move
our low-end business off-shore. It really was like a stab in
the heart."
But the cost advantage of China has been steadily shrinking;
it's now 40 percent cheaper to make the tools there than in
Southbridge. And if that continues to fall, then Hyde might
be able to help President Donald Trump fulfill a central
campaign promise: bringing manufacturing back to the United
States.
"Forty percent [savings] is a huge number to overcome,"
Clemence said. "We've determined that if it's 20 percent or
less, we're going to do it domestically."
As Trump cajoles American companies into returning
production to US soil, experiences like Hyde's illustrate the
complex, multifaceted decisions manufacturers face as they
choose where to build their products.
The president has talked of using lower taxes, fewer
regulations, and higher tariffs to bring about a renaissance
of American manufacturing. But for factory owners, it's not
simply about cheaper labor. The costs of energy and raw
materials, the emergence of global competitors, and the
location and demands of suppliers and customers all weigh on
these decisions, a myriad of cross currents that will make it
difficult to fix the factory economy with just a few bold
prescriptions.
"It's going to be not an easy job," said Enrico Moretti,
professor of economics at the University of California,
Berkeley, who predicted that even if factories stay in the
United States, production will be increasingly automated.
"I'm not sure there is one explicit policy, a magic switch,
that executive power in Washington can switch to retain jobs
in the US."
In the eyes of factory owners, singling them out won't
necessarily solve the problem. Some say they were forced to
move production overseas by their customers. At Hyde, it was
the retail stores that carry its tools demanding lower
prices.
"It doesn't matter what they say about made in the USA,
it's all about price," Clemence said. "They've taken some
basic items and said there are commodity products and said,
'We only buy them by price.' "
In Norwood, the Manufacturing Resource Group opened a
second factory just across the US border in Mexico in 2011
because customers demanded cheaper versions of its cable
assemblies, wire harnesses, and other electric components.
"The decision to open in Mexico wasn't ours," MRG
president Joe Prior said. "We were told that, 'You need to
have a low-cost option, or we're not going to be able to do
business with you.' "
The Norwood and Mexico factories nearly mirror one
another, each employing about 70 people, with mostly the same
equipment and capabilities. The Norwood factory still
accounts for most of its business, as MRG's local customers
are willing to pay more for quicker shipping and customer
service. But other customers simply want a cheaper product -
wages at the Mexico factory are a quarter the cost of
Norwood, while health care costs about 90 percent lower.
Prior said if Trump does impose a high tariff on imported
products, as he has threatened, then that cost would probably
be shouldered by customers of the Mexican factory.
"If there is a tax, it just has to be passed on to our
customers and they'd have to make a decision about whether it
makes sense for them anymore," he said.
Since many US companies sell to customers around the
world, a high tariff might bring some production back home -
but at a cost. For Eastern Acoustic Works, that might mean
losing international customers for its sound equipment.
The Whitinsville company is closing its factory here,
laying off 27 workers and outsourcing most production of
speaker systems and subwoofers to a contract manufacturer in
China. There were just too many competitors around the world
making similar equipment for Eastern Acoustic to justify
charging higher prices for its US-made products, general
manager TJ Smith said. Eastern Acoustic will instead
concentrate on new sales, marketing, and R&D initiatives,
creating white-collar jobs that will help it grow.
"Running a factory takes a lot of focus and energy," Smith
said. "We have to ask ourselves, what are we good at? What do
we want to call our competencies?"
Smith said Eastern Acoustic might be forced to bring
production back to the United States if the Trump tariff goes
into effect. However, that move might also prompt the company
to drop its international clients - Asia accounts for 30
percent of Eastern Acoustic's sales - because the US-made
products wouldn't be competitive in overseas markets.
"It would split my business up too much, so I couldn't
support" an overseas factory, Smith said. "For our scale, I
would lean toward [choosing] the domestic market at this
point because that's what I know and I'm closer to it."
But the higher tariffs might help Eastern Acoustic in
another way - by raising prices on products its European
competitors are selling to US customers. "So that might
increase my near-term opportunity domestically," Smith said.
Raw materials, such as steel or energy, is another area
Trump would have to address. Foreign steel, especially, is so
much cheaper that it is very difficult for manufacturers not
to use. But Trump's promise to promote more domestic oil and
gas production could be a major boon to factories.
For example, US companies are benefiting from very cheap
domestic natural gas; that's especially important in
processing industries that use a lot of chemicals in their
production. ...
President Donald Trump has spoken often about trade's
effect on US manufacturing employment but has said
comparatively little about another economic force that has
caused factories to shed jobs: high-tech machines and
automation.
At the Hyde Group's Southbridge factory, the amount of
work that 100 employees do now would have required 180
workers more than a decade ago, said Bob Clemence, the
company's vice president of sales.
While the number of blue-collar assembly-line jobs at US
factories has been dropping in huge numbers for decades,
Enrico Moretti, a professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, said the number of engineers working in factories
has about doubled. Future manufacturing jobs will probably
require engineering skills and training, Moretti said.
At Hyde, the typical factory worker might operate two or
three computerized machines at a time, and the work generally
requires an associate's degree or some college education,
Clemence said. That's a far cry from 20 years ago, when the
factory used to host night classes to help employees earn
high school degrees.
"We could still do the GED," Clemence said. "But I need
someone coming in the door that already has that degree
information. I don't need somebody that is only running a
fork truck."
In his presidential farewell address Jan. 10, President Obama
highlighted the effects of technology on the workforce,
noting "the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of
good middle-class jobs obsolete." He also called for ensuring
higher-level education, as well as stronger labor unions, to
blunt the effect.
Even if future manufacturing employees are trained to
handle robots and high-tech machines, the math is simple
enough: Machines and robots require fewer workers on factory
floors. When the appliance maker Carrier, a division of
United Technologies Corp., agreed to keep in Indiana about
800 jobs it had planned to send to Mexico, it marked an early
public relations win for Trump. Within days, however, United
Technologies' chief executive said new investments in the
Indiana factory would probably result in automation and
eventual job losses.
The strongest advocates for bringing offshore manufacturing
back to the United States acknowledge automation's effect on
the workforce but say it doesn't negate the need for more
domestic factories. Harry Mosser, founder of the Reshoring
Institute, which encourages companies to bring manufacturing
operations back to the United States, said that even a highly
automated factory is better for workers than no factory at
all.
"If you bring back any manufacturing, you bring back some
employment," he said.
"At Hyde, the typical factory
worker might operate two or three computerized machines at a
time, and the work generally requires an associate's degree
or some college education,"
What are "computerized machines," Fred? and why only two
or three?
In my personal experience (as an IT guy)
observing electronic techs in computer
manufacturing (some decades ago) monitoring
several 'computerized' testing machines at once. (Made for
interesting challenges trying to measure productivity.)
Why
only two or three? When an 'event' happens,
prompt operator response is usually called for.
No, a cnc cell will typically have 4 or 5 cnc
machines. You just need labor to feed, stack and turn one off
if there is an issue. One will do. Injection molding can be 2 to 4 presses. This is why Labor
should have been paid more as they are replacing 3 and 4
people.
We already have this environment and plants are not
crawling with engineers. They are needs for programming only
and even then an operator might be able to do it.
"We could still do the GED," Clemence said. "But I need
someone coming in the door that already has that degree
information. I don't need somebody that is only running a
fork truck."
Translation: "We will not pay for upgrading
the skills of fresh hires as long as we still have older
workers in their 50's+ with existing skills *who are not
leaving*."
And that aspect is hinted at right above - 20+ years ago,
when today's 50+ were 20/30-ish, they paid for their
education, and those people are still in the accessible labor
pool.
But they *will* age out, and then they hand wringing and
wailing about skill shortages will intensify (and you better
believe companies will *then* arrange the skill upgrades).
> In the eyes of factory owners, singling them out won't
necessarily solve the problem. Some say they were forced to
move production overseas by their customers. At Hyde, it was
the retail stores that carry its tools demanding lower
prices. "It doesn't matter what they say about made in the
USA, it's all about price," Clemence said. "They've taken
some basic items and said there are commodity products and
said, 'We only buy them by price.' "
Yup. Consumers matter.
So long as we care more about getting the lowest price than
whether the workers who made the widget were getting a fair
deal the problem will persist.
It was said elsewhere in the article that "customers"
actually meant retail chains.
With many products, including
food, the origin of the product or its ingredients is not
properly disclosed. "Made for", "distributed by", "packed
in", "packaging printed in", are not actionable.
Then with advances in manufacturing and material sciences,
it has become harder to judge the expected quality and
workmanship of a product by its external appearance - most
look well finished and spiffy, parts are fitting well, etc.
About 20+ years that wasn't the case, and it was much
easier to tell that something is cheap junk (when looking
good on the outside it may still be junk inside, but at least
there was a way of identifying the lowest category).
These days it is more about planned/welcomed obsolescence
- the product basically works, but some critical parts may be
low grade, making it break after a while so you have to buy
something new. This also affects "brands that used to be
good".
Then one can only go by price, as that's a difference that
can still be discerned. And obviously there is a feedback
dynamic - stores observe what sells, and slowly remove
variety and "mid range" products.
The internet also has played a role - online stores could
underbid brick and mortar, then the latter had to cheapen and
cut their offerings, driving more customers to the internet,
etc.
Disillusioned
in Davos : Edmund Burke famously cautioned that "the only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good men to do nothing." I have been reminded of Burke's words as I have observed
the behavior of US business leaders in Davos over the last few days. They know better but in their
public rhetoric they have embraced and enabled our new President and his policies.
I understand and sympathize with the pressures they feel. ... Businesses who get on the wrong
side of the new President have
lost billions of dollars of value in sixty seconds because of a tweet. ...
Yet I am disturbed by (i) the spectacle of financiers who three months ago were telling anyone
who would listen that they would never do business with a Trump company rushing to praise the
new Administration (ii) the unwillingness of business leaders who rightly take pride in their
corporate efforts to promote women and minorities to say anything about Presidentially
sanctioned intolerance
(iii) the failure of the leaders of global companies to say a critical word about US efforts to
encourage the breakup of European unity and more generally to step away from underwriting an open
global system (iv) the reluctance of business leaders who have a huge stake in the current global
order to criticize provocative rhetoric with regard to China, Mexico or the Middle East (v) the
willingness of too many to praise Trump nominees who advocate blatant protection merely because
they have a business background.
I have
my differences with the new Administration's
economic policies and suspect the recent market rally and run of economic statistics is a
sugar high. Reasonable people who I respect differ and time will tell. My objection is not to
disagreements over economic policy. It is to enabling if not encouraging immoral and reckless
policies in other spheres that ultimately bear on our prosperity. Burke was right. It is a lesson
of human experience whether the issue is playground bullying, Enron or Europe in the 1930s that
the worst outcomes occur when good people find reasons to accommodate themselves to what they
know is wrong. That is what I think happened much too often in Davos this week.
No man, who is not inflamed by vainglory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single,
unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and
united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they
will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
-- Edmund Burke
anne -> anne... , -1
Edmund Burke famously cautioned that "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for
good men to do nothing."
The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits
By Milton Friedman - New York Times
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in
a free-enterprise system," I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered
at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they
are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit
but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes
seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding
pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact
they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preaching pure and unadulterated
socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that
have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades....
When I used to read Delong's blog before Delong went off on Sanders because Delong thought that
Hillary Clinton would give Delongs son a job...
There was economics student that penned a response where he mentioned that the economics profession
generally dislikes models with negative externalities. But truly loath models that incorporate
positive externalities.
A positive externality is where some action on your part benefits you _and_ benefits some third
party.
One can assume Milton Friedman and his followers find that concept revolting indeed.
While I was not in Davos, I read about the proceedings and meeting in the Western European and
Chinese press and was impressed by the community emphasis placed on social justice. Possibly there
was considerable individual resistance to the public theme, and Lawrence Summers would readily
sense such resistance, but the public theme from the speech by Xi Jinping on was encouraging and
portrayed in Western Europe and China as encouraging.
Let me rephrase: Name me some Fortune 500 companies who consider potential societal impacts of
their actions and, as a result, sometimes make decisions which don't maximize their profits but
are the "right" thing to do for the community/their workers/the environment/etc.? What Fortune
500 companies are motivated by things beyond maximizing profits for shareholders?
My point is that corporate leaders who are charged to act to maximize profits will always be
cowards when it comes to moral and ethical issues. If their job is to maximize profits. If they
don't want to lose their job then that's what they'll do - act to maximize profits. Where would
Summers get the idea that they would act any differently? Do the people he's referring to have
a track record of choosing the moral high ground over profits? If they do then I could understand
surprise and disappointment that they're folding. But they've never had to face that choice before
let alone chosen moral high ground over money, have they?
My point is that corporate leaders who are charged to act to maximize profits will always be cowards
when it comes to moral and ethical issues. If their job is to maximize profits. If they don't
want to lose their job then that's what they'll do - act to maximize profits. Where would Summers
get the idea that they would act any differently? Do the people he's referring to have a track
record of choosing the moral high ground over profits? ...
I recall Summers/Romer with both houses and Obama blowing their chances to do something for the
middle/working class.
Summers/Delong said if the stimulus was too small we could always get another later, yet that
chance to do something never came and he did nothing.....
I'd like Larry to ponder whether it was he who did nothing.
From comments: "Saying Davos without Trump is like Hamlet without the prince implies a dignity
about the event which is rather far fetched. More like the Dark Side without Darth Vader ... trouble
is, Davos ain't fiction." "The biggest cabal of sociopathic criminals the world has ever
known."
Notable quotes:
"... This is not new. Klaus Schwab, the man who founded the World Economic Forum in the early 1970s, warned as long ago as 1996 that globalisation had entered a critical phase. "A mounting backlash against its effects, especially in the industrial democracies, is threatening a very disruptive impact on economic activity and social stability in many countries," he said. ..."
"... Schwab's warning was not heeded. There was no real attempt to make globalisation work for everyone. Communities affected by the export of jobs to countries where labour was cheaper were left to rot. The rewards of growth went disproportionately to a privileged few. Resentment quietly festered until there was a backlash. For Schwab, Brexit and Trump are a bitter blow, a repudiation of what he likes to call the spirit of Davos. ..."
"... It would be wrong, however, to imagine that business is terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Boardrooms rather like the idea of a big cut in US corporation tax. They favour deregulation. They purr at plans to spend more on infrastructure. Wall Street is happy because it thinks the new president will mean stronger growth and higher corporate earnings. ..."
"... 'Policy decisions-not God, nature, or the invisible hand-exposed American manufacturing workers to direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. Policymakers could have exposed more highly paid workers such as doctors and lawyers to this same competition, but a bipartisan congressional consensus, and presidents of both parties, instead chose to keep them largely protected.' ..."
"... Good article by the way. Recommend others to read. Thanks. ..."
"... Stop trying to shackle every conservative to the desperate and ugly views of the few. Deplorables and their alt-right kin, are so small in number. We ought keep an eye on the Deplorables but little else ... they're politically insignificant. I wish you'd stop trying to throw the average Republican voter into the basket of bigoted, racist rednecks. It's deplorable! ..."
"... Saying Davos without Trump is like Hamlet without the prince implies a dignity about the event which is rather far fetched. More like the Dark Side without Darth Vader ... trouble is, Davos ain't fiction. ..."
"... Why would Daniel go into the lion's den? Trump is committed to stopping the excesses of the "swamp rats" most of whom are at Davos. The world will be turned on its head in 2017; it is going to be interesting to watch the demise of those at the top of the pyramid. ..."
"... What exactly is the "Spirit of Davos" then? A bunch of fat, rich elderly men and their hangers-on troughing themselves to the point of bursting on fine wines and gourmet food, while paying lip-service to the poor? ..."
"... One question for Davos might be: how are you going to resolve differences between the vast majority of people who exist as national citizens, and the multinational elite? It's not a new question. ..."
"... Multinationals, corporate and individuals, can dodge the taxes which pay for services we all rely on but especially citizens. ..."
"... Davos is not restricting attendance to high office bearers. Trump could have gone, had he wanted to, or he could have sent one of his family/staff - that's how Davos works. ..."
"... Bilderberg is by invitation, as far as I know, Davos by application and paying a high membership, plus fee. But the fact he is not represented could be a good sign if it means that the focus is on solving domestic issues as opposed to spending so much time and resources on international ones. ..."
"... My own take on the annual Davos circus is as follows:. It is a totally useless conclave and has never achieved anything tangible since its inception. ..."
"... This gives an excellent opportunity for those who hold so-called "numbered" or other secret bank accounts in the proverbially secretive Swiss banks to have their annual tete-a-tete with their bankers and carry out whatever maintenance has to be done to their bank accounts. After all, in tiny Switzerland, it is only a hop from one town to another. No one will miss you if you are not visible for a day or two. If any nosy taxman back home asks: "What was the purpose of your visit to Switzerland?", one can say with a straight face: "Oh, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at Davos to talk about the increasing income disparity in the world and on what steps to take to mitigate it."! ..."
"... I think globalisation is inhumane. Someone calculated that if labour were to follow capital flows we would see one third of the globe move around on a constant basis. One son in Cape Town a daughter in New York and a brother in Tokyo. It's not how human societies operate we are group animals like herds of cows. We need to be firmly rooted in order to build functioning and humane societies. That is the migration aspect of globalization the other aspect is the complete destruction of diverse cultures. ..."
Trump's influence can also be felt in other ways. The manner in which he won the US election,
tapping in to deep-seated anger about the unfair distribution of the spoils of economic growth,
has been noted. There is talk in Davos of the need to ensure that globalisation works for everyone.
This is not new. Klaus Schwab, the man who founded the World Economic Forum in the early 1970s,
warned as long ago as 1996 that globalisation had entered a critical phase. "A mounting backlash
against its effects, especially in the industrial democracies, is threatening a very disruptive
impact on economic activity and social stability in many countries," he said.
Schwab's warning was not heeded. There was no real attempt to make globalisation work for everyone.
Communities affected by the export of jobs to countries where labour was cheaper were left to
rot. The rewards of growth went disproportionately to a privileged few. Resentment quietly festered
until there was a backlash. For Schwab, Brexit and Trump are a bitter blow, a repudiation of what
he likes to call the spirit of Davos.
It would be wrong, however, to imagine that business is terrified at the prospect of a Trump
presidency. Boardrooms rather like the idea of a big cut in US corporation tax. They favour deregulation.
They purr at plans to spend more on infrastructure. Wall Street is happy because it thinks the
new president will mean stronger growth and higher corporate earnings.
In Trump's absence, it has been left to two senior members of the outgoing Obama administration
– his vice-president, Joe Biden, and secretary of state John Kerry – to fly the US flag.
Just
as significantly, Xi Jinping is the first Chinese premier to attend Davos and has made it clear
that, unlike Trump, he has no plans to resile from international obligations. The sense of a changing
of the guard is palpable.
missuswatanabe
It's the way globalisation has been managed for the benefit of the richest in the developed
world that has been bad for the masses rather than globalisation itself.
I thought this was an interesting, if US-centric, perspective on things:
'Policy decisions-not God, nature, or the invisible hand-exposed American manufacturing
workers to direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. Policymakers could
have exposed more highly paid workers such as doctors and lawyers to this same competition,
but a bipartisan congressional consensus, and presidents of both parties, instead chose to
keep them largely protected.'
Good article by the way. Recommend others to read. Thanks.
Paul Paterson -> ConBrio
Decent, hardworking Americans facing social and economic insecurity, whether on the right
or left, ought to be the focus. We need to deal with the concerns of the average citizen, however
it is they vote. Fringe groups don't serve our attention given tbe very real problems the country
faces.
Stop trying to shackle every conservative to the desperate and ugly views of the few. Deplorables
and their alt-right kin, are so small in number. We ought keep an eye on the Deplorables but
little else ... they're politically insignificant. I wish you'd stop trying to throw the average
Republican voter into the basket of bigoted, racist rednecks. It's deplorable!
What we should concern ourselves with is the very real social and economic insecurity felt
by many in red states and blue states alike. Those decent and hardworking Americans, regardless
of party, are joined in much. Deplorables aren't the average Republican voter and didn't win
Trump an election - they are too few to win much of anything.
What you keep referring to as Deplorables are decent Americans seeking change and socioeconomic
justice. You are mixing up citizens who happen to vote for the GOP withbwhite nationalist scum.
How dare you tar all conservatives with the hate monger brush!
Spunky325 -> Paul Paterson
Actually, before taking office, Trump strong-armed Ford and GM into putting more money in
their American plants, instead of moving more production to Mexico. He's also questioned cost-overruns
on Air Force One and several military projects which is causing companies to back off. I can't
think of another American president who has felt it was important to keep jobs in America or
who has questioned military spending. Good for him!
Paul Paterson -> Spunky325
You've made it quite clear "you can't think" as you've bought into the ruse. The question
is why are you so boastful about it? Trump's policies are even seen by economists on the right
as creating staggering levels of debt, creating more economic inequality and unlikely to increase
jobs.
Among many flaws, they point out tax proposals that hurt the poor and middle class to such
a degree it almost seems targeted. This is the same economic plot that has failed working Americans
repeatedly. You folks are getting caught up in a time share pitch and embracing policy that
has little chance to help the average American - however it is they vote. It isn't supposed
to but y'all are asleep at the wheel.
DrBlamm0
Saying Davos without Trump is like Hamlet without the prince implies a dignity about
the event which is rather far fetched. More like the Dark Side without Darth Vader ... trouble
is, Davos ain't fiction.
johhnybgood
Why would Daniel go into the lion's den? Trump is committed to stopping the excesses
of the "swamp rats" most of whom are at Davos. The world will be turned on its head in 2017;
it is going to be interesting to watch the demise of those at the top of the pyramid.
bilyou
What exactly is the "Spirit of Davos" then? A bunch of fat, rich elderly men and their
hangers-on troughing themselves to the point of bursting on fine wines and gourmet food, while
paying lip-service to the poor?
Maybe Trump just decided to trough it at his tower and avoid hanging out with a grotesque
bunch of insufferable see you next Tuesdays.
Ricardo_K
One question for Davos might be: how are you going to resolve differences between the
vast majority of people who exist as national citizens, and the multinational elite? It's not
a new question.
Multinationals, corporate and individuals, can dodge the taxes which pay for services we
all rely on but especially citizens.
James Patterson
Xi's statements on a trade war are completely self serving. But his assertions that he is
against protectionism and unfair trading practices is laughably hypocritical. China refuses
to let any Silicon Valley Internet company one inch past the Great Firewall. Under his direction
the CCP has imposed draconian regulations, which change by the week, on American Companies
operating in China making fair competition with local Chinese companies impossible.
The business climate in China is reprehensible. The CCP has resorted to extortion, requiring
that U.S. tech companies share their most sensitive trade secrets and IP with Chinese state
enterprises or get barred from conducting business there. Sadly, U.S. companies entered China
with high expectations and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in factories, labs and
equipment. This threat has caused many CEO's to sacrifice their company's long term viability
by transferring their most closely guarded technological advances to China or face the loss
their entire investment in China. Even so, multinationals are beginning the Chinese exodus
led by those with less financial exposure soon to be followed by companies like Apple despite
significant economic ties.
True, most people believe a 'trade war' with China means America is the defacto loser because
of dishonest reporting. The truth is that America's economic exposure to China is extremely
limited. U.S. exports to China represent only 7% of America's total exports worldwide; which
in turn accounts for less than 1% of total U.S. GDP (Wells Fargo Economics Group 2015). Most
of America's exports to China are raw materials, which can be redirected to other markets with
some effort. So even if China blocked all U.S. exports tomorrow, America's economy could absorb
the blow with minimal damage. This presents the U.S. government with a wide range of options
to deal with China's many trade infractions and unfair practices as aggressively or punitively
as it wishes.
europeangrayling
Poor Davos attendees. You feel for them at their fancy alpine Bilderberg. It's like the
meeting of the mafia organizations, if the mafia became legal and respected now and ran the
world economy. And I don't think those economic royalists at Davos miss Trump, Trump was a
small fish compared to the Davos people. They make Trump look like a dishwasher.
They are just pissed Trump came out against the TPP and those globalist 'free trade' deals,
and doesn't want more regime change maybe. They like everything else about Trump's policies,
the big tax cuts, environmental and banking deregulations galore, it's like Reagan 2.0, without
the 'free trade'. But they really want that 'free trade' though, those guys are used to getting
everything. Imagine if Bernie won, they would really hate that guy, he is also against the
TPPs and trade, and for less war, and against everything else they are used to. And that's
good, if those honorable brilliant Davos gentleman don't like you, that's not a bad thing.
soundofthesuburbs -> soundofthesuburbs
With secular stagnation we should all be asking why is economics so bad?
Keynesian redistributive capitalism went out with Margaret Thatcher and inequality has been
rising ever since (there is a clue there for the economists amongst us).
How did these new ideas rise to prominence?
"There Is No Nobel Prize in Economics
It's awarded by Sweden's central bank, foisted among the five real prizewinners, often to economists
for the 1% -- and the surviving Nobel family is strongly against it."
"The award for economics came almost 70 years later-bootstrapped to the Nobel in 1968 as a
bit of a marketing ploy to celebrate the Bank of Sweden's 300th anniversary." Yes, you read
that right: "a marketing ploy."
Today's economics rose to prominence by awarding its economists Nobel Prizes that weren't Nobel
Prizes.
No wonder it's so bad.
Global elites can use all sorts of trickery to put their ideas in place, but economics is economics
and if doesn't reflect how the economy operates it won't work.
Secular stagnation – what more evidence do we need?
HauptmannGurski -> bcarey
Davos is not restricting attendance to high office bearers. Trump could have gone, had
he wanted to, or he could have sent one of his family/staff - that's how Davos works.
Bilderberg is by invitation, as far as I know, Davos by application and paying a high membership,
plus fee. But the fact he is not represented could be a good sign if it means that the focus
is on solving domestic issues as opposed to spending so much time and resources on international
ones.
Meanwhile, alibaba's Jack Ma said in Davos that the US had spent many trillions on wars in
the last 30 years and neglected their own infrastructure. Money is for people, or some such
like, he said. Just mentioning it here, because the MSM tend to dislike running this kind of
remark.
Rajanvn -> HauptmannGurski
My own take on the annual Davos circus is as follows:. It is a totally useless conclave
and has never achieved anything tangible since its inception.
Did it, in any way, with all the stars in the financial galaxy gathered in one place, warn
against the 2008 global financial meltdown? The real reason why so many moneybags congregate
at a place which would be shunned by all who have no affinity for snow sports may be, according
to my own reckoning, may not be that innocent and may even be quite sinister.
This gives an excellent opportunity for those who hold so-called "numbered" or other
secret bank accounts in the proverbially secretive Swiss banks to have their annual tete-a-tete
with their bankers and carry out whatever maintenance has to be done to their bank accounts.
After all, in tiny Switzerland, it is only a hop from one town to another. No one will miss
you if you are not visible for a day or two. If any nosy taxman back home asks: "What was the
purpose of your visit to Switzerland?", one can say with a straight face: "Oh, I was invited
to be a keynote speaker at Davos to talk about the increasing income disparity in the world
and on what steps to take to mitigate it."!
Roland33
I think globalisation is inhumane. Someone calculated that if labour were to follow capital
flows we would see one third of the globe move around on a constant basis. One son in Cape
Town a daughter in New York and a brother in Tokyo. It's not how human societies operate we
are group animals like herds of cows. We need to be firmly rooted in order to build functioning
and humane societies. That is the migration aspect of globalization the other aspect is the
complete destruction of diverse cultures.
If everyone drives Toyota and everyone drinks Starbucks
we lose the diversity of culture that people claim they find so valuable. And replaces it with
a mono-culture of Levi jeans and McDonalds. Wealth inequality is really something that can
be reduced if you look various countries score higher in this regard than others while still
being highly successful market economies but I think money is secondary to the displacement
and alienation that come with the first two aspects of globalisation. I find it strange that
it is now the right that advocates reversing these neoliberal trends and the left that seems
to champion it. I was conscious during the 90's and anti-globalisation was clearly a left wing
issue. For whatever reason the left just leaves room for the right to harvest the grapes of
wrath they warned about many years ago. Don't blame the "populist" right ask why the left left
them the space.
"... What is called "Secular Stagnation" should be properly named "Secular Stagnation of societies which accepted neoliberalism as a polito-economical model". Very similar to what happened with Marxism: broken promised, impoverishment of the majority of population, filthy enrichment, corruption and all forms of degradation at the top. ..."
"... In the USA the level of elite degradation became really visible despite attempt to mask it with jingoism as a smoke screen (look at the candidates of the last Presidential race - the choice was between horrible and terrible) ..."
"... Speaking about the level of demoralization I understand why somebody might hate Trump, but Hillary as alternative ? Give me a break. In this sense wining about Trump inauguration just signify the inability to connect the dots and understand that the last election was what in chess was called Zugzwang. ..."
"... The fact is that neoliberalism as a social system no longer is viewed favorably by the majority of the US population (like Bolshevism before them in the USSR ). In this sense I think that with Trump election "the train just left the station". ..."
So he organically can't state the main point: neoliberal ideology is bankrupt and neoliberalism
as a social system is close, or may be entered the decline stage.
That's why neoliberal MSM lost large part of their influence. Much like Soviet MSM during Brezhnev's
rule.
What is called "Secular Stagnation" should be properly named "Secular Stagnation of societies
which accepted neoliberalism as a polito-economical model". Very similar to what happened with
Marxism: broken promised, impoverishment of the majority of population, filthy enrichment, corruption
and all forms of degradation at the top.
Neoliberal elite ("masters of the universe") is split. The majority is still supporting "change
we can believe in" (the slogan courtesy of master of "bait and switch") which means "kick the
can down the road". While the other part is flirting with far right movements.
In the USA the level of elite degradation became really visible despite attempt to mask
it with jingoism as a smoke screen (look at the candidates of the last Presidential race - the
choice was between horrible and terrible)
Trump is just a symptom of a much larger problem. Look what happened when Marxist ideology
was discredited and everybody understood that Marxism can't deliver its social promises. And look
at the level of degradation of Soviet Politburo before the collapse which resulted is the election
of this naďve, "not so bright", deeply provincial, inexperienced politician (Gorbachov). who was
also determined "to make the USSR great again". The level of demoralization of the society was
pretty acute. Nobody believed the government, the MSM, the Party.
The system was unable to produce leaders of the caliber that can save it. That was one of the
reasons why it was doomed (bankruptcy of ideology means among other things that there is nobody
to defend it and nationalism works both ways). I think we see a very similar processes in
the USA now.
With CIA performing the role of KGB in their efforts to prevent or at least slow down the inevitable
changes is the system (although at the end of the day KGB brass was simply bought and stepped
aside allowing the Triumph of neoliberalism in the xUSSR space).
Speaking about the level of demoralization I understand why somebody might hate Trump,
but Hillary as alternative ? Give me a break. In this sense wining about Trump inauguration just
signify the inability to connect the dots and understand that the last election was what in chess
was called Zugzwang.
The fact is that neoliberalism as a social system no longer is viewed favorably by the
majority of the US population (like Bolshevism before them in the USSR ). In this sense I think
that with Trump election "the train just left the station".
Taking the UK out of the EU single
market would be "the greatest job-killing act in Welsh
economic history", Plaid Cymru has said.
Several of Sunday's newspapers claim Prime Minister
Theresa May will signal the move in a speech on Tuesday.
Plaid's treasury spokesman Jonathan Edwards told the BBC's
Sunday Politics Wales programme the impact on Wales would be
"devastating".
Downing Street has described the reports as "speculation".
The Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP said pulling out of the
single market and customs union would have a "huge impact on
jobs and wages in Wales".
"The reality of what we're going to hear from [Theresa
May] on Tuesday, it's going to be the greatest job-killing
act in Welsh economic history, probably in British economic
history," he added. ...
It's a shorthand reference to one possible outcome of
negotiations between the U.K. and the EU -- the U.K. giving
up its membership in Europe's single market for goods and
services in return for gaining full control over its own
budget, its own law-making, and most importantly, its own
immigration. If that happens, British leaders will be under
pressure to quickly land a new trade pact or individual
industry-by-industry deals with the EU. Otherwise, companies
will be subjected to standard World Trade Organization rules,
which would impose tariffs on them. Banks would lose the easy
access they now enjoy to the bloc.
2. How would that differ from a softer Brexit?
A softer form would see the U.K. maintain some tariff-free
access to the single market of some 450 million consumers.
The U.K. would likely still have to contribute to the EU
budget, allow some freedom of labor movement and follow some
EU rules. That's what Norway does, as a member of the
European Economic Area but not of the EU. ...
Plaid Cymru: the Party of Wales, often referred to simply as
Plaid) is a social-democratic political party in Wales
advocating for Welsh independence from the United Kingdom
within the European Union. ... (Wikipedia)
'How can the United Kingdom possibly gain economically from
completely leaving the
European Union?'
Voters decided that the UK was paying
more to be 'in the EU' than they were
receiving (in subsidies, etc.) for
*being* members. That and they were
expected by Way Too European, welcome
foreign workers, obey crazy regulations
imposed by foreigners, yada yada yada.
(Wales, BTW, gets/got lots of aid from the EU.)
Or, is the key word 'completely'?
It was said months ago by the other major
EU members that they want Britain *out*, so
that alone should be a reason for PM May
to demand a very Soft Brexit.
After these months since the vote to leave the European
Union, where the United Kingdom had special privileges to
begin with, I still find no coherent rationale to the
decision. There is no reason to think the cost of being an EU
member was anywhere near the benefits to the UK, and evidence
to the contrary that was repeatedly promised has never been
produced.
Simon Wren-Lewis has written often on Brexit and
seems as puzzled as I am by the seeming toughness as well as
the determination of Teresa May on the leaving.
It would seem UK voters were bamboozled about
the finances. They do pay a lot *in* to be
EU members, as do other large/wealthy
members, but they also got a lot back.
They were told it was costing too much.
'they were
expected (to be) Way Too European, welcome
foreign workers, obey crazy regulations
imposed by foreigners, etc.'
Britain has always had mixed feelings
about being 'European' it seems, since
the end of their empire.
No worries. There will
still be The Five Eyes,
the 'Special Relationship'.
An exclusive club: The 5 countries that don't spy on each
other
http://to.pbs.org/2iv8mNk
via @PBS NewsHour - October 25, 2013
It was born out of American and British intelligence
collaboration in World War II, a long-private club nicknamed
the "Five Eyes." The members are five English-speaking
countries who share virtually all intelligence - and pledge
not to practice their craft on one another. A former top U.S.
counter-terrorism official called it "the inner circle of our
very closest allies, who don't need to spy on each other."
This is the club that German chancellor Angela Merkel and
French President Francois Hollande say they want to join - or
at least, win a similar "no-spying" pact with the U.S.
themselves.
It all began with a secret 7-page agreement struck in 1946
between the U.S. and the U.K., the "British-US Communication
Agreement," later renamed UKUSA. At first their focus was the
Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. But after
Canada joined in 1948, and Australia and New Zealand in 1956,
the "Five Eyes" was born, and it had global reach. They
pledged to share intelligence - especially the results of
electronic surveillance of communications - and not to
conduct such surveillance on each other. Whiffs of the club's
existence appeared occasionally in the press, but it wasn't
officially acknowledged and declassified until 2010, when
Britain's General Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ,
released some of the founding documents. The benefits of
membership are immense, say intelligence experts. While the
U.S. has worldwide satellite surveillance abilities, the club
benefits from each member's regional specialty, like
Australia and New Zealand's in the Far East. "We practice
intelligence burden sharing," said one former U.S. official.
"We can say, 'that's hard for us cover, so can you?'" The
ease and rapidity of information-sharing among the five
"makes it quicker to connect the dots," said another
intelligence veteran. "You can't underestimate the importance
of the common language, legal system and culture," said
another. "Above all, there is total trust." ...
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for the United States
had by 2014 recovered from the international recession to the
level of 2007. Recovery for the United Kingdom came in 2015.
The recession and recovery obviously were socially difficult
and took an extended time.
Then too, there had been a time
of war from the US and UK extending from 2001.
An extended period of social turmoil that is difficult to
grasp or shut out.
PM May is in way over her head and does not know what she is
doing. Nor does she know what she says has meaning and
effects. She's not long for office, imo of course.
Brexit: The Story on Tariffs and Currency Fluctuations
The New York Times decided to tout the risks * that higher
tariffs could cause serious damage to industry in the UK
following Brexit:
For Mr. Magal [the CEO of an engineering company that
makes parts for the car industry], the threat of trade
tariffs is forcing him to rethink the structure of his
business. The company assembles thermostatic control units
for car manufacturers, including Jaguar Land Rover in Britain
and Daimler in Germany.
"Tariffs could add anything up to 10 percent to the price
of some of his products, an increase he can neither afford to
absorb nor pass on. 'We don't make 10 percent profit - that's
for sure,' he said, adding, 'We won't be able to increase the
price, because the customer will say, "We will buy from the
competition."' "
The problem with this story, as conveyed by Mr. Magal, is
that the British pound has already fallen by close to 10
percent against the euro since Brexit. This means that even
if the European Union places a 10 percent tariff on goods
from the UK (the highest allowable under the World Trade
Organization), his company will be in roughly the same
position as it was before Brexit. It is also worth noting
that the pound rose by roughly 10 percent against the euro
over the course of 2015. This should have seriously hurt Mr.
Magal's business in the UK if it is as sensitive to relative
prices as he claims.
[Graph]
It is likely that Brexit will be harmful to the UK economy
if it does occur, but many of the claims made before the vote
were wrong, most notably there was not an immediate
recession. It seems many of the claims being made now are
also false.
"... Davos elite faces evaporating trust in "post-trith" era ..."
"... "The most shocking statistic of this whole study is that half the people who are high-income, college-educated and well-informed also believe the system doesn't work." ..."
"... Even wealthy, well educated people understand things aren't working, which begs the question. Who does think the system is working? Well, the people attending Davos, of course. These are the folks who cheer on a world in which eight people own as much as the bottom 50%. ..."
"... The mere fact that billionaire-owned media is so hostile to populism tells you everything you need to know. Behind the idea of populism is the notion of self-government, and Davos-type elitists hate this. They believe in a technocracy in which they make all the important decisions. Populism is dangerous because populism is empowering. It implies that the people ultimately have the power. ..."
"... The global financial crisis of 2008/9 and the migrant crisis of 2015/16 exposed the impotence of politicians, deepening public disillusion and pushing people towards populists who offered simple explanations and solutions. ..."
"... Populism can be dangerous, and it's certainly messy, but it's a crucial pressure release valve for any functioning free society. If you don't allow populist movements to do their thing in the short-term, you'll get far worse outcomes in the long-term. ..."
"... Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ..."
DAVOS MAN : "A soulless man, technocratic, nationless and cultureless, severed from reality.
The modern economics that undergirded Davos capitalism is equally soulless, a managerial capitalism
that reduces economics to mathematics and separates it from human action and human creativity."
I am not a Democrat or a Republican. I do not consider myself a libertarian, progressive, socialist,
anarchist, conservative, neoconservative or neoliberal. I'm just a 38 year old guy trying to figure
it all out. Naturally, this doesn't imply that there aren't things which I hold dear. I have a strong
belief system based on key principles. It's just that I don't think it makes sense for me to self-label
and become part of a tribe. The moment you self-label, is the moment you stop thinking for yourself.
It's also the moment you stop listening. When you think you have all the answers, anyone who doesn't
think exactly as you do on all topics is either stupid or "paid opposition." I don't subscribe
to this way of thinking.
Despite my refusal to self-identify, I am comfortable stating that I'm a firm supporter of populist
movements and appreciate the instrumental role they've played historically in free societies. The
reason I like this term is because it carries very little baggage. It doesn't mean you adhere to
a specific set of policies or solutions, but that you believe above all else that the concerns of
average citizens matter and must be reflected in government policy.
Populism reaches its political potential once such concerns become so acute they translate into
popular movements, which in turn influence the levers of power. Populism is not a bug, but is a key
feature in any democratic society. It functions as a sort of pressure relief valve for free societies.
Indeed, it allows for an adjustment and recalibration of the existing order at the exact point in
the cycle when it is needed most. In our current corrupt, unethical and depraved oligarchy, populism
is exactly what is needed to restore some balance to society. Irrespective of what you think of Donald
Trump or Bernie Sanders, both political movements were undoubtably populist in nature. This doesn't
mean that Trump govern as populist once he is sworn into power, but there's little doubt that the
energy which propelled him to the Presidency was part of a populist wave.
Trump understands this, and despite having surrounded himself with an endless stream of slimy
ex-Goldman Sachs bankers and other assorted billionaires, his campaign took the following position
with regard to Davos according to
Bloomberg :
Donald Trump won't send an official representative to the annual gathering of the world's economic
elite in Davos, taking place next week in the days leading up to his inauguration, although one of
the president-elect's advisers is slated to attend.
Former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, a regular attendee in the past, told the group he would
skip 2017 after being named in December to head the National Economic Council, said people familiar
with the conference. Other top Trump appointees will also pass up the forum.
A senior member of Trump's transition team said the president-elect thought it would betray his
populist-fueled movement to have a presence at the high-powered annual gathering in the Swiss Alps.
The gathering of millionaires, billionaires, political leaders and celebrities represents the power
structure that fueled the populist anger that helped Trump win the election, said the person, who
asked for anonymity to discuss the matter.
While all of this sounds great, it's not entirely true. For example:
Hedge fund manager Anthony Scaramucci is planning to travel to Davos, though. The founder of SkyBridge
Capital and an early backer of Trump's campaign, Scaramucci was named on Thursday as an assistant
to the president.
Not that Scaramucci's presence should surprise anyone, he's the consummate banker apologist, anti-populist.
Recall what he
said last month :
"I think the cabal against the bankers is over."
This guy shouldn't be allowed within ten feet of any populist President, but Trump unfortunately
seems to have a thing for ex-Goldman Sachs bankers.
While we're on then subject, let's discuss Davos for a moment. You know, the idyllic Swiss town
where the world's most dastardly politicians, oligarchs and their fawning media servants will gather
in a technocratic orgy of panels and cocktail parties to discuss how best to manage the world's affairs
in the year ahead. Yes, that Davos.
DAVOS, Switzerland – The global economy is in better shape than it's been in years. Stock markets
are booming, oil prices are on the rise again and the risks of a rapid economic slowdown in China,
a major source of concern a year ago, have eased.
First report from Davos is in. Everything's fine.
And yet, as political leaders, CEOs and top bankers make their annual trek up the Swiss Alps to
the World Economic Forum in Davos, the mood is anything but celebratory.
Last year, the consensus here was that Trump had no chance of being elected. His victory, less
than half a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, was a slap at the principles that
elites in Davos have long held dear, from globalization and free trade to multilateralism.
Moises Naim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was even more blunt: "There is a
consensus that something huge is going on, global and in many respects unprecedented. But we don't
know what the causes are, nor how to deal with it."
Thank you for your invaluable insight, Moises.
The titles of the discussion panels at the WEF, which runs from Jan. 17-20, evoke the unsettling
new landscape. Among them are "Squeezed and Angry: How to Fix the Middle Class Crisis" , "Politics
of Fear or Rebellion of the Forgotten?", "Tolerance at the Tipping Point?" and "The Post-EU Era".
Ah, a panel on how to fix the middle class. Sounds interesting until you find out who some of
the speakers are.
You really can't make this stuff up. Now back to Reuters .
Perhaps the central question in Davos, a four-day affair of panel discussions, lunches and cocktail
parties that delve into subjects as diverse as terrorism, artificial intelligence and wellness, is
whether leaders can agree on the root causes of public anger and begin to articulate a response.
This has to be a joke. The public has been yelling and screaming about all sorts of issues they
care about from both sides of the political spectrum for a while now. Whether people identify as
on the "right" or the "left" there's general consensus (at least in U.S. populist movements) of the
following: oligarchs must be reined in, rule of law must be restored, unnecessary military adventures
overseas must be stopped, and lobbyist written phony "free trade" deals must be scrapped and reversed.
There's no secret about how strongly the various domestic populist movements feel on those topics,
but the Davos set likes to pretends that these issues don't exist. They'd rather focus on Russia
or identify politics, that way they can control the narrative and then propose their own anti-populist,
technocratic solutions.
A WEF report on global risks released before Davos highlighted "diminishing public trust in institutions"
and noted that rebuilding faith in the political process and leaders would be a "difficult task".
It's not difficult at all, what we need are new leaders with new ideas, but the people at Davos
don't want to admit that either. After all, these are the types who unanimously and enthusiastically
supported the ultimate discredited insider for U.S. President, Hillary Clinton.
Moving along, let's take a look at a separate
Reuters
article previewing Davos, starting with the title.
Davos elite faces evaporating trust in "post-trith" era
Did you see what they did there? The evaporating trust in globalist elites has nothing to do with
"post-truth," but as usual, the media insists on making excuses for the rich and powerful. The above
title implies that elites lost the public truth as a result of a post-truth world, not because they
are a bunch of disconnected, lying, corrupt thieves. Like Hillary and the Democrats, they are never
to blame for anything that happens.
With that out of the way, let's take a look at some of the text:
Trust in governments, companies and the media plunged last year as ballots from the United States
to Britain to the Philippines rocked political establishments and scandals hit business.
The majority of people now believe the economic and political system is failing them, according
to the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, released on Monday ahead of the Jan. 17-20 World Economic
Forum (WEF).
"There's a sense that the system is broken," Richard Edelman, head of the communications marketing
firm that commissioned the research, told Reuters.
"The most shocking statistic of this whole study is that half the people who are high-income,
college-educated and well-informed also believe the system doesn't work."
Even wealthy, well educated people understand things aren't working, which begs the question.
Who does think the system is working? Well, the people attending Davos, of course. These are the
folks who cheer on a world in which eight people own as much as the bottom 50%.
As can be seen fro the above excerpts, one thing that's abundantly clear to almost everyone is
that the system is broken. This is exactly where populism comes in to perform its crucial function.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, but rather an endorsement of mass popular movements generally,
and a recognition that such movements are the only way true change is ever achieved. As Frederick
Douglass
noted in 1857:
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical,
but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of
injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted
with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of
those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held
and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance,
either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly
pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must
pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by
our lives and the lives of others .
The above is an eternal truth when it comes to human struggle. The idea that the most wealthy
and powerful individuals on earth are going to get together in a Swiss chalet and figure out how
to help the world's most vulnerable and suffering is on its face preposterous. Again, this is why
popular movements are so important. They represent the only method we know of that historically yields
tangible results. This is also why the elitists and their media minions hate populism and demonize
it every chance they get. Which is really telling, particularly when you look at the various definitions
of the word. First, here's what comes up when you type the word into Google:
pop·u·lism
/ˈpäpyəˌlizəm/
noun
support for the concerns of ordinary people.
"it is clear that your populism identifies with the folks on the bottom of the
ladder"
•the quality of appealing to or being aimed at ordinary people.
"art museums did not gain bigger audiences through a new populism"
Or how about the following from Merriam-Webster:
Definition of populist
1 :
a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people; especially, often
capitalized
:
a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests
and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
2:
a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
-
populism
play \-ˌli-zəm\ noun
-
populistic
play \ˌpä-pyə-ˈlis-tik\ adjective
Aside from the 19th century historical reference, what's not to like about any of the above? The
mere fact that billionaire-owned media is so hostile to populism tells you everything you need to
know. Behind the idea of populism is the notion of self-government, and Davos-type elitists hate
this. They believe in a technocracy in which they make all the important decisions. Populism
is dangerous because populism is empowering. It implies that the people ultimately have the power.
I think a useful exercise for readers during this Davos circus laden week is to note whenever
the word "populism" is used within mainstream media articles. From my experience, it's almost always
portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative manner. Here's just one example from the first of the two
Reuters articles mentioned above.
The global financial crisis of 2008/9 and the migrant crisis of 2015/16 exposed the impotence
of politicians, deepening public disillusion and pushing people towards populists who offered simple
explanations and solutions.
The key phrase in the above is, " populists who offered simple explanations and solutions." This
betrays an incredible sense of arrogance and contempt for regular citizens. Note that it didn't offer
a critique of a specific populist leader and his or her polices, but rather presented a sweeping
dismissal of all popular movements as "simplistic." In other words, despite the fact that the people
mingling at Davos are the exact same people who set the world on fire, they somehow remain the only
ones capable enough to fix the world. How utterly ridiculous.
The good news is that most people now plainly see the absurdity of such a worldview, and understand
that the people at Davos represent a roadblock to progress, as opposed to any sort of solution. While
I don't endorse any particular populist movement at moment, I fully recognize the need for increased
populism as a facet of American political life, particularly at this moment in time.
Populism can be dangerous, and it's certainly messy, but it's a crucial pressure release valve
for any functioning free society. If you don't allow populist movements to do their thing in the
short-term, you'll get far worse outcomes in the long-term.
In the timeless words of JFK:
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
"... "It seems the initial market euphoria over a Trump fiscal stimulus has started to fade as we watch the clowns that Trump is appointing as his key economic advisors." ..."
"It seems the initial market euphoria
over a Trump fiscal stimulus has started to fade as we watch
the clowns that Trump is appointing as his key economic
advisors."
Sanjait was saying there was no initial euphoria, just a
small rise in financial equities. (which somehow translated
also into higher bond prices and dollar appreciation.)
I agree with Krugman and the financial press that there
was. No sign that it's fading yet though (Not that Krugman
said there was.)
Of course nobody here in comments cares one way or the
other.
1.THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or
private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government
(the state) no matter how much social damage this causes.
Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in
NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating
workers' rights that had been won over many years of
struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom
of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us
this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the
best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately
benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and
"trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't
trickle down very much.
2.CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like
education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE
POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply --
again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course,
they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for
business.
3.DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything
that could diminish profits, including protecting the
environment and safety on the job.
4.PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and
services to private investors. This includes banks, key
industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools,
hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the
name of greater efficiency, which is often needed,
privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating
wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay
even more for its needs.
5.ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY"
and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring
the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their
lack of health care, education and social security all by
themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as "lazy."
== end of quote ==
The term can be abused (and is abused a s negative
nickname) and here I agree with you (compare abuse of "neolib"
with the abuse of the term "racist" :-)
But still it remains a term with a distinctive meaning,
pretty much widely agreed upon and uncontroversial
definition.
The real question here is: what if a person does not
subscribe to all postulates, but still views the market as
"the best thing since sliced bread". I think yes. Your
mileage may vary.
Great Ironies of History #23,453: Supporters of China's
Entry to WTO Now Argue for TPP as Bulwark Against China
As the protectionist supporters of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) desperately try to regroup, it's
entertaining to see how they think that China-bashing is
their best hope for success. (Yes, supporters of the TPP are
protectionist. A major thrust of the deal is to impose longer
and stronger patent and copyright and related protections on
the member countries. These are by definition forms of
protectionism, even if economists and reporters tend to like
them.)
Anyhow, we got an example of the China bashing of a TPP
supporter in a Washington Post column * by Fareed Zakaria, in
which he warned readers that China would be the main
beneficiary from a decision by Donald Trump not to pursue the
TPP as president. The economists at the Peterson Institute
for International Economics are also among those making the
argument for the TPP as an obstacle to China's growing
political strength in the region. Many of these same people
argued vociferously for allowing China to enter the World
Trade Organization in 2000 without imposing conditions like
respect for human rights or labor rights, which may have
fundamentally altered China's path of political development.
It is striking that they now think the U.S. public should now
be concerned about the growing power of a country with little
respect for these rights.
"As the protectionist supporters of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) desperately try to regroup, it's
entertaining to see how they think that China-bashing is
their best hope for success"
A New York Times
article * on Robert
Lighthizer, Donald
Trump's pick to be
trade representative,
left out some
important background
information. It notes
that Lighthizer wants
to reduce the size of
the U.S. trade deficit
with China. It then
told readers that this
could lead to major
conflicts with China:
"Exports are
important for China.
It consistently sells
$4 worth of goods to
the United States for
each $1 of imports.
That mismatch has
produced a bilateral
trade surplus for
China equal to about 3
percent of the
country's entire
economy, creating tens
of millions of jobs.
"The benefits to
China from that
surplus have been
increasing rapidly in
the past few years."
It is worth noting
that China has
actually sharply
reduced its trade
surplus in prior
years. According to
the International
Monetary Fund ** it
peaked at 9.9 percent
of GDP in 2007. It
then declined sharply
to just 1.8 percent of
GDP in 2011. It has
since edged slightly
higher, but it is
still less than 3.0
percent of GDP.
Ordinarily, we
would expect that a
fast growing
developing country
like China would be
running a trade
deficit, as capital
flows into the country
to take advantage of
higher returns. This
has not happened in
China's case as the
government has offset
inflows of private
capital by buying up
trillions of dollars
of foreign assets. It
now holds more than $3
trillion in reserves
in addition to another
$1.5 trillion in
foreign assets in the
form of sovereign
wealth funds.
Reportedly China
has recently been
trying to raise the
value of its currency.
This would suggest an
obvious path of
agreement between the
U.S. and China under
which the two
countries could act
jointly to raise the
value of China's
currency against the
dollar, thereby
putting downward
pressure on the trade
deficit.
The piece also
notes Lighthizer's
advocacy of the
efforts of the Reagan
administration to
pressure Japanese
manufacturers to
"voluntarily" limit
their exports to the
United States. It
would have been worth
mentioning that these
restrictions on
exports led the
Japanese manufacturers
to begin to set up
factories in the
United States. Today,
most of the cars that
Japanese auto
companies sell in the
United States are
assembled here,
although they still do
include a substantial
amount of foreign
content.
This piece
seriously
misrepresents a
proposal for corporate
tax reform advocated
by Republicans in
Congress as a route to
tax imports. In fact,
the tax has been
developed by
economists who are
very much conventional
free traders. The
purpose is to simplify
the tax code and
eliminate the enormous
waste associated with
the gaming of current
system. The treatment
of imports and exports
is intended to make
the tax symmetric with
the treatment of
value-added taxes in
many U.S. trading
partners. It is not
intended as a
protectionist measure
to reduce the trade
deficit.
"... Excellent article by an economist who understands that economic extends beyond markets and intersects with political enlightenment. Were more economists that inclusive and divorced from self promotion the study would have more effective application. ..."
"... For many today, greatness is simply a government in the business of actively governing, as opposed to shying away from it under one excuse or the other. One example: the meteoric rise of incomes for the wealthy, which is a direct result of less financial regulation. First discovered by Reagan, then perfected by Clinton, the method involves highlighting regulation as a dirty word and overstating its link to American Capitalism, and in the bargain achieving less work for government, plus bag brownie points for patriotism. ..."
"... But what it really was, was a reluctance to govern for almost thirty years. Thank goodness Trump called it out for the fraud it was, and Obama decided he would spend his last month making a show of "governing". ..."
"... So that's what greatness means to most today: Government, please show up for work every day and just do your job. Not draw lines in sand and unlock every bathroom in sight and let illegals in. Just your job please, that's all. Yes? Grrreaat, thank you Donald. ..."
"... I doubt many think that the greatness of America is just about money and power. But many corporations are run on exactly this limited idea of the greatness of corporations. ..."
"... And, unfortunately, these same misguided bottom-line corporations now control Congress and the GOP. Corporate control of Congress should not be primarily for increasing corporate profits. Part of the profits stemming from automation should be used to mitigate the tremendous disappearance of jobs that corporations are causing by introducing AI and automation. ..."
"... I have traveled overseas enough to have an idea of life in other countries. My father shared something with other veterans--a sense of belonging to something bigger than them based on being "in the service." ..."
"... That comradeship, born of intense experience while young, is rare. In terms of the sense of belonging to a city or state, the most successful of us move around and cities have lost most of what made them unique. ..."
"... there is no central cultural core to being American--as compared to being French or British--other than technology and the meritocracy of money, a personal sense of ownership in America on the part of a majority of Americans runs contrary to contemporary experience. ..."
"... The first step on this path is real social & economic justice for all in our wonderful country. The current economic inequality in the U.S. is a disgrace to any just & civil society. We must figure out a way to fairly deal with that & our other inequalities of education, opportunity & racial injustices, if we are to achieve our potential of being that 'shining city on the hill' that the rest of the world will want to follow. ..."
"... A Great Society cannot be great in any meaningful sense unless it is determinedly honest -- not just self-relievingly frank. Thus, although I was happy to see this article, which I judge to be 'exemplarily' honest, I had disappointment that, in an age when the term post-truth is being used to describe conversation in English-speaking society, it neglects to emphasize the essentiality of honesty in any debate about what being a great society entails. Adam Smith did his best to point that out, but the rich and powerful and especially those in public office and those of capitalistic ideological bent appear these days to be letting us all down in this respect. ..."
"... This article is long overdue. Mr Trump has never explained is what MADE America great in the past. If questioned, he demurred. His shallow approach to policy and his poor understanding of American history and civics makes any answer from him questionable. ..."
"... Our current Free Trade pacts make it too easy for employers to shift jobs abroad. Other countries protect their industries. We should do the same, by again placing tariffs on any goods which have been manufactured abroad which could be made here. This would not be "forcing employers to restore or maintain jobs". It would be saying that if you want to sell your products here, then you will either make them here or pay tariffs on them. ..."
"... The Free Trade pacts have an additional problem. They allow international corporations to sue us if they think that one of our laws or regulations is keeping them from making as much money as they otherwise could. These lawsuits are conducted in special courts whose decisions cannot be appealed. This allows international corporations to interfere with our democracy. They should not be allowed to sue us for enforcing our own laws. ..."
"... The issue isn't what the definition of "great" is. It's who America is great *for.* America is outstandingly great for a very slim slice at the tip-top of the economy. ..."
"... The GOP are now proving that they are traitors to the general welfare. They are determined to make this nation's chief goal be to protect the welfare of the wealthiest and best-connected. If we are depending on a free press or the voting booth to protect us, we are fooling ourselves. The forces that have seized our democracy are going to gut both the press, and our civil liberties, so that this country can never again be "of, for and by the people." It will henceforth be for the plutocrats. ..."
"... The rest of us should just go quietly, and die on our own. ..."
"Make America Great Again," the slogan of President-elect
Donald
J. Trump 's successful election campaign, has been etched in the national consciousness. But
it is hard to know what to make of those vague words.
We don't have a clear definition of "great," for example, or of the historical moment when, presumably,
America was truly great. From an economic standpoint, we can't be talking about national wealth,
because the country is wealthier than it has ever been: Real per capita household net worth has reached
a record high, as Federal Reserve Board data shows.
But the distribution of wealth has certainly changed: Inequality has widened significantly. Including
the effects of taxes and government transfer payments, real incomes for the bottom half of the population
increased only 21 percent from 1980 to 2014. That compares with a 194 percent increase for the richest
1 percent, according to a new study
by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.
That's why it makes sense that Mr. Trump's call for a return to greatness resonated especially
well among non-college-educated workers in Rust Belt states - people who have been hurt as good jobs
in their region disappeared. But forcing employers to restore or maintain jobs isn't reasonable,
and creating sustainable new jobs is a complex endeavor.
Difficult as job creation may be, making America great surely entails more than that, and it's
worth considering just what we should be trying to accomplish. Fortunately, political leaders and
scholars have been thinking about national greatness for a very long time, and the answer clearly
goes beyond achieving high levels of wealth.
Adam Smith, perhaps the first true economist, gave some answers in "
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ." That treatise is sometimes
thought of as a capitalist bible. It is at least partly about the achieving of greatness through
the pursuit of wealth in free markets. But Smith didn't believe that money alone assured national
stature. He also wrote
disapprovingly of the single-minded impulse to secure wealth, saying it was "the most universal
cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments." Instead, he emphasized that decent people should
seek real achievement - "not only praise, but praiseworthiness."
Strikingly, national greatness was a central issue in a previous presidential election campaign:
Lyndon B. Johnson , in 1964, called for the creation of a
Great Society, not merely a rich society or a powerful society. Instead, he spoke of achieving
equal opportunity and fulfillment. "The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge
to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents," he said. "It is a place where leisure is a welcome
chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness."
President Johnson's words still ring true. Opportunity is not equal for everyone in America. Enforced
leisure has indeed become a feared cause of boredom and restlessness for those who have lost jobs,
who have lost overtime work, who hold part-time jobs when they desire full-time employment, or who
were pushed into unwanted early retirement.
But there are limits to what government can do.
Jane Jacobs , the great urbanist,
wrote
that great nations need great cities, yet they cannot easily create them. "The great capitals of
modern Europe did not become great cities because they were the capitals," Ms. Jacobs said. "Cause
and effect ran the other way. Paris was at first no more the seat of French kings than were the sites
of half a dozen other royal residences."
Cities grow organically, she said, capturing a certain dynamic, a virtuous circle, a specialized
culture of expertise, with one industry leading to another, and with a reputation that attracts motivated
and capable immigrants.
America still has cities like this, but a fact not widely remembered is that Detroit used to be
one of them. Its rise to greatness was gradual. As Ms. Jacobs wrote, milled flour in the 1820s and
1830s required boats to ship the flour on the Great Lakes, which led to steamboats, marine engines
and a proliferation of other industries, which set the stage for automobiles, which made Detroit
a global center for anyone interested in that technology.
I experienced the beauty and excitement of Detroit as a child there among relatives who had ties
to the auto industry. Today, residents of Detroit and other fading metropolises want their old cities
back, but generations of people must create the fresh ideas and industries that spawn great cities,
and they can't do it by fiat from Washington.
All of which is to say that government intervention to enhance greatness will not be a simple
matter. There is a risk that well-meaning change may make matters worse. Protectionist policies and
penalties for exporters of jobs may not increase long-term opportunities for Americans who have been
left behind. Large-scale reduction of environmental or social regulations or in health care benefits,
or in America's involvement in the wider world may increase our consumption, yet leave all of us
with a sense of deeper loss.
Greatness reflects not only prosperity, but it is also linked with an atmosphere, a social environment
that makes life meaningful. In President Johnson's words, greatness requires meeting not just "the
needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community."
Excellent article by an economist who understands that economic extends beyond markets
and intersects with political enlightenment. Were more economists that inclusive and divorced
from self promotion the study would have more effective application.
For many today, greatness is simply a government in the business of actively governing,
as opposed to shying away from it under one excuse or the other. One example: the meteoric rise
of incomes for the wealthy, which is a direct result of less financial regulation. First discovered
by Reagan, then perfected by Clinton, the method involves highlighting regulation as a dirty word
and overstating its link to American Capitalism, and in the bargain achieving less work for government,
plus bag brownie points for patriotism.
But what it really was, was a reluctance to govern for almost thirty years. Thank goodness
Trump called it out for the fraud it was, and Obama decided he would spend his last month making
a show of "governing".
But Reagan did not hesitate to govern on the international stage. That credit goes solely to
Obama, a president who's turned non-governance into something of an art. From refusing to regulate
bathroom etiquette, to egging people to have more casual sex (condoms on government, no worries,
go at it all you want), to unleashing 5 million illegals on domestic soil with a stroke of the
pen, this President has been the most ungoverning president in US history.
So that's what greatness means to most today: Government, please show up for work every
day and just do your job. Not draw lines in sand and unlock every bathroom in sight and let illegals
in. Just your job please, that's all. Yes? Grrreaat, thank you Donald.
I doubt many think that the greatness of America is just about money and power. But many
corporations are run on exactly this limited idea of the greatness of corporations.
And, unfortunately, these same misguided bottom-line corporations now control Congress
and the GOP. Corporate control of Congress should not be primarily for increasing corporate profits.
Part of the profits stemming from automation should be used to mitigate the tremendous disappearance
of jobs that corporations are causing by introducing AI and automation.
I was born in America in 1956 to native-born Americans. My father served starting right after
the Berlin Blockade, up through the Korean Conflict. My political consciousness was formed by
Vietnam, Kent State, the COINTELPRO Papers, the Pentagon Papers, the Church Committee reports.
My father had trust in the federal government, whereas I have none. I became a lawyer, and
married a lawyer. My brothers and my wife's sisters are all college-educated professionals.
Financially speaking, America has been very good to me. But as far as having any intellectual
or visceral concept of what America is, or what being an American means, I couldn't tell you.
I have traveled overseas enough to have an idea of life in other countries. My father shared
something with other veterans--a sense of belonging to something bigger than them based on being
"in the service."
That comradeship, born of intense experience while young, is rare. In terms of the
sense of belonging to a city or state, the most successful of us move around and cities have lost
most of what made them unique.
Given how very little we are expected to contribute to our city, state or country, or even
our neighbors, and as there is no central cultural core to being American--as compared to
being French or British--other than technology and the meritocracy of money, a personal sense
of ownership in America on the part of a majority of Americans runs contrary to contemporary experience.
I think this article touches on not only what will make America great, but also on how we should
act in order to show the rest of the world why liberal democracies are truly the path to prosperity
& peace in this oh so imperfect world.
How do we go about defeating ISIL & winning the smoldering economic/military contest with Russia
& China & other authoritarian regimes? By living righteously & daily demonstrating that treating
the planet & each other justly & humanely is the way to real happiness on Earth. & that we can
at the same time create plenty of wealth & life-fulfilling opportunities for all our citizens.
The first step on this path is real social & economic justice for all in our wonderful
country. The current economic inequality in the U.S. is a disgrace to any just & civil society.
We must figure out a way to fairly deal with that & our other inequalities of education, opportunity
& racial injustices, if we are to achieve our potential of being that 'shining city on the hill'
that the rest of the world will want to follow.
If the great liberal democracies of Europe & North America & the southern pacific region can
reinvigorate our optimism & our commitment to the communal values that have driven the world's
prosperity since WWII, we can surely convince the rest of the world through the awesome leverage
of 'social media' that our liberal values of education, fairness, & love for all of our fellow
humans is the true path to happiness & peace on Earth.
As a Britisher, educated at Wharton by the grace of an American-owned company, I feel gratitude
for American generosity; yet I am now a Canadian citizen, having decided that the US in the time
of Nixon could never be a place where my family could be happy. So I write this with mixed feelings.
A Great Society cannot be great in any meaningful sense unless it is determinedly honest
-- not just self-relievingly frank. Thus, although I was happy to see this article, which I judge
to be 'exemplarily' honest, I had disappointment that, in an age when the term post-truth is being
used to describe conversation in English-speaking society, it neglects to emphasize the essentiality
of honesty in any debate about what being a great society entails. Adam Smith did his best to
point that out, but the rich and powerful and especially those in public office and those of capitalistic
ideological bent appear these days to be letting us all down in this respect.
Having made a modest livelihood as an executive coach, I do not pretend that being honest (without
being self-relievingly so) is easy in high-level negotiations. Indeed it requires enormous courage,
intellect, empathy, and articulation skills. So I have enormous grief and considerable anxiety
for the state of US society today. But efforts like this one by the New York Times are certain
to be helpful. Thank you. I hope my contribution will be valuable to this fine newspaper and its
readers alike.
This article is long overdue. Mr Trump has never explained is what MADE America great in
the past. If questioned, he demurred. His shallow approach to policy and his poor understanding
of American history and civics makes any answer from him questionable.
Yet almost every policy and piece of legislation by Republicans seems aimed at making more
money for business. They assume it will trickle down to the workers (and we have seen over 30
years of how good that is working). So Republicans will ignore your plea or denigrate it. Doing
anything close to what you suggest gets in the way of making money.
"But forcing employers to restore or maintain jobs isn't reasonable, "
Our current Free Trade pacts make it too easy for employers to shift jobs abroad. Other
countries protect their industries. We should do the same, by again placing tariffs on any goods
which have been manufactured abroad which could be made here. This would not be "forcing employers
to restore or maintain jobs". It would be saying that if you want to sell your products here,
then you will either make them here or pay tariffs on them.
The Free Trade pacts have an additional problem. They allow international corporations
to sue us if they think that one of our laws or regulations is keeping them from making as much
money as they otherwise could. These lawsuits are conducted in special courts whose decisions
cannot be appealed. This allows international corporations to interfere with our democracy. They
should not be allowed to sue us for enforcing our own laws.
The issue isn't what the definition of "great" is. It's who America is great *for.* America
is outstandingly great for a very slim slice at the tip-top of the economy.
It's great for the Trumps and his cabinet members. These people have so much wealth that they
have bought our government. The gleeful look on McConnell's face last night after the GOP moved
to get rid of health care for millions, and to turn it back to the whim of the insurance companies,
said it all: America is great again for him. It's great for his owners.
The GOP are now proving that they are traitors to the general welfare. They are determined
to make this nation's chief goal be to protect the welfare of the wealthiest and best-connected.
If we are depending on a free press or the voting booth to protect us, we are fooling ourselves.
The forces that have seized our democracy are going to gut both the press, and our civil liberties,
so that this country can never again be "of, for and by the people." It will henceforth be for
the plutocrats.
The rest of us should just go quietly, and die on our own.
"... For him, the Soviet Union was once a stable, entrenched, conservative state and the majority of Russian people -- actually myself included -- thought it would last forever. But the way people employ language and read ideologies can change. That change can be undetectable at first, and then unstoppable. ..."
" In America there was once a popular but simplistic image of the Soviet Russia as the Evil
Empire destined to fall, precisely because it was unfree and therefore evil. Ronald Reagan who
advocated it also once said that the Russian people do not have a word for "freedom". Not so fast
-- says Alexei Yurchak. He was born in the Soviet Union and became a cultural anthropologist in
California. He employs linguistic structural analysis in very interesting ways. For him, the
Soviet Union was once a stable, entrenched, conservative state and the majority of Russian people
-- actually myself included -- thought it would last forever. But the way people employ language
and read ideologies can change. That change can be undetectable at first, and then unstoppable.
Yurchak's Master-idea is that the Soviet system was an example of how a state can prepare its
own demise in an invisible way. It happened in Russia through unraveling of authoritative discourse
by Gorbachev's naive but well-meaning shillyshallying undermining the Soviet system and the master
signifiers with which the Soviet society was "quilted" and held together. According to Yurchak
"In its first three or four years, perestroika was not much more than a deconstruction of Soviet
authoritative discourse". This could a cautionary tale for America as well because the Soviet
Union shared more features with American modernity than the Americans themselves are willing to
admit.
The demise of the Soviet Union was not caused by anti-modernity or backwardness of Russian
people. The Soviet experiment was a cousin of Western modernity and shared many features with
the Western democracies, in particular its roots in the Enlightenment project. The Soviet Union
wasn't "evil" in late stages 1950-1980s. The most people were decent. The Soviet system, despite
its flaws, offered a set of collective values. There were many moral and ethical aspects to Soviet
socialism, and even though those values have been betrayed by the state, they were still very
important to people themselves in their lives. These values were: solidarity, community, altruism,
education, creativity, friendship and safety. Perhaps they were incommensurable with the "Western
values" such as the rule of law and freedom, but for Russians they were the most important. For
many "socialism" was a system of human values and everyday realities which wasn't necessarily
equivalent of the official interpretation provided by the state rhetoric.
Yurchak starts with a general paradox within the ideology of modernity: the split between ideological
enunciation, which reflects the theoretical ideals of the Enlightenment, and ideological rule,
which are the practical concerns of the modern state's political authority. In Soviet Union the
paradox was "solved" by means of dogmatic political closure and elevation of Master signifier
[Lenin, Stalin, Party] but it doesn't mean the Western democracies are immune to totalitarian
temptation to which the Soviet Union had succumbed. The vast governmental bureaucracy and Quango-state
are waiting in the shadows here as well, may be ready to appropriate discourse.
It is hard to agree with everything in his book. But it is an interesting perspective. I wish
Alexei Yurchak would explore more implications of Roman Jacobson's "poetic function of language"
and its connection to Russian experiment in communism. It seems to me, as a Russian native speaker,
that Russians put stress on form, sound, and poetics. The English-language tradition prioritizes
content and meaning. Can we speak of "Hermeneutics" of the West versus "Poetics" of Russia? Perhaps
the tragedy of Russia was under-development of Hermeneutics? How does one explain the feeble attempts
to throw a light of reason into the loopy texts and theories of Marks, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin?
Perhaps the Russians read it as a kind of magical text, a poetry, a bad poetry -- not Pasternak
or Blok -- but kind of poetry nevertheless?
Just loved this -- a brilliant study of how everyday citizens (as opposed to active supporters
or dissidents) cope with living in a decadent dictatorship, through strategies of ignoring the
powerful, focusing on hyperlocal socialities, treating ritualized support for the regime as little
more than an annoying chore, and withdrawal into subcultures. Yurchak demolishes the view that
the only choices available to late Soviet citizens were either blind support (though his accounts
of those figures who chose this path are deeply chilling) or active resistance, while at the same
time showing how many of the purported values of Soviet socialism (equality, education, friendship,
community, etc) were in fact deeply held by many in the population. While his entire account is
a tacit meditation on the manifold unpleasantnesses of living under the Soviet system, Yurchak
also makes clear that it was not all unpleasantness and that indeed for some people (such as theoretical
physicists) life under Soviet socialism was in some ways freer than for their peers in the West.
All of which makes the book function (sotto voce) as an explanation for the nostalgia that many
in Russia today feel for Soviet times - something inexplicable to those who claim that Communism
was simply and nothing but an evil.
The theoretical vehicle for Yurchak's investigation is the divergence between the performative
rather than the constative dimensions of the "authoritative discourse" of the late Soviet regime.
One might say that his basic thesis is that, for most Soviet people, the attitude toward the authorities
was "They pretend to make statements that corresponded to reality, and we pretend to believe them."
Yurchak rightly observes that one can neither interpret the decision to vote in favor of an official
resolution or to display a pro-government slogan at a rally as being an unambiguous statement
of regime support, nor assume that these actions were directly coerced. People were expected to
perform these rituals, but they developed "a complexly differentiating relationship to the ideological
meanings, norms, and values" of the Soviet state. "Depending on the context, they might reject
a certain meaning, norm or value, be apathetic about another, continue actively subscribing to
a third, creatively reinterpret a fourth, and so on." (28-29)
The result was that, as the discourse of the late Soviet period ossified into completely formalist
incantations (a process that Yurchak demonstrates was increasingly routinized from the 1950s onwards),
Soviet citizens participated in these more for ritualistic reasons than because of fervent belief,
which in turn allowed citizens to fill their lives with other sources of identity and meaning.
Soviet citizens would go to cafes and talk about music and literature, join a rock band or art
collective, take silly jobs that required little effort and thus left room for them to pursue
their "interests." The very drabness of the standardizations of Soviet life therefore created
new sorts of (admittedly constrained) spaces within which people could define themselves and their
(inter)subjective meanings. All of which is to say that the book consists of a dramatic refutation
of the "totalitarianism" thesis, demonstrating that despite the totalitarian ambitions of the
regime, citizens were continually able to carve out zones of autonomy and identification that
transcended the ambitions of the Authoritative discourse.
"... Normalisation is what has historically happened in the wake of financial crises. During the booms that precede busts, low interest rates encourage people to make investments with borrowed money. However, even after all of the prudent investment opportunities have been taken, people continue borrowing to invest in projects and ideas that are unlikely to ever generate profits. ..."
"... Eventually, the precariousness of some of these later investments becomes apparent. Those that arrive at this realization early sell up, settle their debts and pocket profits, but their selling often triggers a rush for the exits that bankrupts companies and individuals and, in many cases, the banks which lent to them. ..."
"... By contrast, the responses of policy-makers to 2008's financial crisis suggest the psychology of hypernormalisation. Quantitative easing (also known as money printing) and interest rate suppression (to zero percent and, in Europe, negative interest rates) are not working and will never result in sustained increases in productivity, income and employment. However, as our leaders are unable to consider alternative policy solutions, they have to pretend that they are working. ..."
"... Statistical chicanery has helped understate unemployment and inflation while global cooperation has served to obscure the currency depreciation and loss of confidence in paper money (as opposed to 'hard money' such as gold and silver) that are to be expected from rampant money printing. ..."
"... The recent fuss over 'fake news' seems intended to remove alternative news and information sources from a population that, alarmingly for those in charge, is both ever-more aware that the system is not working and less and less willing to pretend that it is . Just this month U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act into law. United States, meet your Ministry of Truth. ..."
"... Great article. I think it does describe the USSA at the present time. Everything works until it doesn't. ..."
"... The funny thing is I had almost identical thoughts just a few days ago. But I was thinking in comparison more of East Germany's last 20 years before they imploded - peacefully, because not a single non-leading-rank person believed any of the official facts anymore (and therefore they even simply ignored orders from high command to crush the Leipzig Monday demonstrations.) ..."
"... I'm ok with a world led by Trump and Putin. ..."
"... I recall the joke from the old Soviet Union: "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work." In the USSA these last few years, Barry pretends to tell the truth. Libtards pretend to believe him. ..."
"... Wrong. They believe him. Look at the gaggle of libtard/shiteaters at Soetero's Friday night bash at the White House. ..."
"... Reagan used to quip that in the Soviet Union, the people pretend to work and the government pretends to pay them. We're not the Soviet Union, but we have become a farce. Next stop - the fall. Followed by chaos, then onto something new. The new elites will just be the old elites, well, the ones that escape the noose. ..."
"... The real ugly problem with the Soviet Union is that whatever they broke it into isn't working well either. ..."
"... Russia's problem post collapse was the good ol' USSA and its capitalist, plunderer banking mavens. ..."
"... The only way to normalize banking in a contemporary banking paradigm of QE Infinity & Beyond is to start over again without the bankers & accountants that knowingly bet the ranch for a short term gain at the expense of long term profitability. In Japan an honourable businessman/CEO would suicide for bringing this kind of devastation to the company shareholders. ..."
"... In America they don't give a shit because it is always someone else other than the CEO that takes the fall. ..."
"... This, after I'd point out his evasion and deflection every time I addressed his bias and belief in the MSM propaganda mantras of racism, misogyny, xenophobia - all the usual labeling bullshit up to insinuating Russia hacked the election ..."
"... I've been using the term Hypernormalisation to describe aspects of western society for the last 15 years, before Adam Curtis's brilliant BBC documentary Hypernormalisation , afflicting western society and particularly politics. There are lies and gross distortions everywhere in western society and it straddles/effects all races, colours, social classes and the disease is most acute in our politics. ..."
"... We all know the hypernoprmalisation in politics, as we witness stories everyday on Zerohedge of the disconnect from reality ..."
"... It is called COGNITIVE DISSONANCE .. ..."
"... "When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit with the core belief." ..."
"... During their final days as a world power, the Soviet Union allowed cognitive dissonance to rule its better judgment as so many Americans are doing in 2012. The handwriting on the wall was pretty clear for Gorbachev. The Soviet economy was failing. They did none of the necessary things to save their economy. In 2012, the handwriting on the wall is pretty clear for the American people. The economy is failing. The people and the Congress do none of the necessary things to save their economy. Why? Go re-read the definition of cognitive dissonance. That's why. We have a classic fight going on between those who want government to take care of them who will pay the price of lost freedom to get that care, and those who value freedom above all else. ..."
"... to me the PTB are "Japanifying" the u.s. (decades of no growth, near total demoralization of a generation of worker bees (as in, 'things will never get any better, be glad for what little you've got' etc... look what they've done to u.s. millenials just since '08... fooled (crushed) them TWICE already) ..."
"... But the PTB Plan B is to emulate the USSR with a crackup, replete with fire sale to oligarchs of public assets. ..."
The term comes from Alexei Yurchak's 2006 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The
Last Soviet Generation. The book argues that over the last 20 years of the Soviet Union, everyone
knew the system wasn't working, but as no one could imagine any alternative, politicians and citizens
were resigned to pretending that it was. Eventually this pretending was accepted as normal and the
fake reality thus created was accepted as real, an effect which Yurchak termed "hypernormalisation."
Looking at events over the past few years, one wonders if our own society is experiencing the
same phenomenon. A contrast with what economic policy-makers term "normalisation" is instructive.
Normalisation is what has historically happened in the wake of financial crises. During the
booms that precede busts, low interest rates encourage people to make investments with borrowed money.
However, even after all of the prudent investment opportunities have been taken, people continue
borrowing to invest in projects and ideas that are unlikely to ever generate profits.
Eventually, the precariousness of some of these later investments becomes apparent. Those
that arrive at this realization early sell up, settle their debts and pocket profits, but their selling
often triggers a rush for the exits that bankrupts companies and individuals and, in many cases,
the banks which lent to them.
In the normalisation which follows (usually held during 'special' bank holidays) auditors and
accountants go through financial records and decide which companies and individuals are insolvent
(and should therefore go bankrupt) and which are merely illiquid (and therefore eligible for additional
loans, pledged against good collateral). In a similar fashion, central bank officials decide which
banks are to close and which are to remain open. Lenders made freshly aware of bankruptcy risk raise
(or normalise) interest rates and in so doing complete the process of clearing bad debt out of the
system. Overall, reality replaces wishful thinking.
While this process is by no means pleasant for the people involved, from a societal standpoint
bankruptcy and higher interest rates are necessary to keep businesses focused on profitable investment,
banks focused on prudent lending and overall debt levels manageable.
By contrast, the responses of policy-makers to 2008's financial crisis suggest the psychology
of hypernormalisation. Quantitative easing (also known as money printing) and interest rate suppression
(to zero percent and, in Europe, negative interest rates) are not working and will never result in
sustained increases in productivity, income and employment. However, as our leaders are unable to
consider alternative policy solutions, they have to pretend that they are working.
To understand why our leaders are unable to consider alternative policy solutions such as interest
rate normalization and banking reform one only needs to understand that while such policies would
lay the groundwork for a sustained recovery, they would also expose many of the world's biggest banks
as insolvent. As the financial sector is a powerful constituency (and a generous donor to political
campaigns) the banks get the free money they need, even if such policies harm society as a whole.
As we live in a democratic society, it is necessary for our leaders to convince us that there
are no other solutions and that the monetary policy fixes of the past 8 years have been effective
and have done no harm.
Statistical chicanery has helped understate unemployment and inflation while global cooperation
has served to obscure the currency depreciation and loss of confidence in paper money (as opposed
to 'hard money' such as gold and silver) that are to be expected from rampant money printing.
Looking at unemployment figures first, while the unemployment rate is currently very low, the
number of Americans of working age not in the labour force is currently at an all-time high of over
95 million people. Discouraged workers who stop looking for work are no longer classified as unemployed
but instead become economically inactive, but clearly many of these people really should be counted
as unemployed. Similarly, while government statistical agencies record inflation rates of between
one and two percent, measures that use methodologies used in the past (such as John Williams' Shadowstats
measures) show consumer prices rising at annual rates of 6 to 8 percent. In addition, many people
have noticed what has been termed 'shrinkflation', where prices remain the same even as package sizes
shrink. A common example is bacon, which used to be sold by the pound but which is now commonly sold
in 12 ounce slabs.
Meanwhile central banks have coordinated their money printing to ensure that no major currency
(the dollar, the yen, the euro or the Chinese renminbi) depreciates noticeably against the others
for a sustained period of time. Further, since gold hit a peak of over $1900 per ounce in 2011, central
banks have worked hard to keep the gold price suppressed through the futures market. On more than
a few occasions, contracts for many months worth of global gold production have been sold in a matter
of a few minutes, with predictable consequences for the gold price. At all costs, people's confidence
in and acceptance of the paper (or, more commonly, electronic) money issued by central banks must
be maintained.
Despite these efforts people nonetheless sense that something is wrong. The Brexit vote and the
election of Donald Trump to the White House represent to a large degree a rejection of the fake reality
propagated by the policymaking elite. Increasingly, people recognize that a financial system dependent
upon zero percent interest rates is not sustainable and are responding by taking their money out
of the banks in favour of holding cash or other forms of wealth. In the face of such understanding
and resistance, governments are showing themselves willing to use coercion to enforce acceptance
of their fake reality.
The recent fuss over 'fake news' seems intended to remove alternative news and information
sources from a population that, alarmingly for those in charge, is both ever-more aware that the
system is not working and less and less willing to pretend that it is . Just this month U.S. President
Barack Obama signed the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act into law. United States, meet
your Ministry of Truth.
Meanwhile, in India last month, people were told that the highest denomination bills in common
circulation would be 'demonetized' or made worthless as of December 30th. People were allowed to
deposit or exchange a certain quantity of the demonetized bills in banks but many people who had
accumulated their savings in rupee notes (often the poor who did not have bank accounts) have been
ruined. Ostensibly, this demonetization policy was aimed at curbing corruption and terrorism, but
it is fairly obvious that its real objective was to force people into the banking system and electronic
money. Unsurprisingly, the demonetization drive was accompanied by limits on the quantity of gold
people are allowed to hold.
Despite such attempts to influence our thinking and our behaviour, we don't need to resign ourselves
to pretending that our system is working when it so clearly isn't. Looking at the eventual fate of
the Soviet Union, it should be clear that the sooner we abandon the drift towards hypernormalisation
and start on the path to normalisation the better off we will be.
Correct. I seen with sufficient level of comprehending consciousness the last 5 years of it
- copy-cat perfection with the current times in US(S)A, terrifying how similar the times are as
it is a clear indication of the times to come.
The funny thing is I had almost identical thoughts just a few days ago. But I was thinking
in comparison more of East Germany's last 20 years before they imploded - peacefully, because
not a single non-leading-rank person believed any of the official facts anymore (and therefore
they even simply ignored orders from high command to crush the Leipzig Monday demonstrations.)
I was just thinking that the whole economic world sees us in a sort of equilibrium at the moment.
There will be some adjustments under Trump, but nothing serious. We shall see ..
Repeat something often enough and it becomes hypernormalised. With that in mind the number
of eyes/minds/hits is all that matters. This has been known and exploited for hundreds of years.
That a handful of individuals can have a monopoly over the single most important aspect of
whether you live or die is the ultimate success of hypernormalisation. CENTRAL BANKING.
Mrs.M is of the last Soviet generation. Her .gov papers say so. There is never
a day when I don't hear something soviet. She still has a her red pioneer ribbon.
I have tried to encourage her to write about it on ZH so that we know. Do you think she
will? No. She's says that we can't understand what it was like no matter what she
says.
Mrs.M was born in 1981 so she has lived an interesting life. I married her in 2004 after
much paperwork and $15000. I wanted that female because we got along quite well. She
is who I needed with me this and I would do it all over again.
Needless to say, I do not support any aggression towards Russia. And to my fellow Americans,
I advise caution because the half you are broke ass fucks and are already ropes with me.
I recall the joke from the old Soviet Union: "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work."
In the USSA these last few years, Barry pretends to tell the truth. Libtards pretend to believe
him.
Geezer, I'd change only one thing... I believe libtards bought Barry's bullshit hook, line
and sinker... it was the rest of us who not-so-subtly were saying WTF!!!
Reagan used to quip that in the Soviet Union, the people pretend to work and the government
pretends to pay them. We're not the Soviet Union, but we have become a farce. Next stop
- the fall. Followed by chaos, then onto something new. The new elites will just be the old elites,
well, the ones that escape the noose.
what noose? you think joe 6p is going to identify the culprits? i think not. "no one saw this
coming!!!" is still ringing in my ears from the last time.
I really don't know how people can keep on getting clicks with this tired crap. It didn't happen
in 2008 just get over it. The delusional people are the people that think the world is going to
end tomorrow.
Maybe the world has ended, for 95 million? I haven't paid a single Fed income tax dollar
in over 8 yrs., for a specific reason, I refuse to support the new normal circus, and quite frankly
I would have gotten out during the GWBush regime, but I couldn't afford to at the time.
The real ugly problem with the Soviet Union is that whatever they broke it into isn't working
well either. Same with the USSA. No one really knows what to do. Feudalism would probably
work, but it is not possible to go back to it. My bet is that we will end up with some form of
socialism, universal income and whatever else, just because there is no good alternative for dealing
with lots and lots of people who are not needed anymore.
Do you mean useless eaters or fuckers deserving the guillotine? Russia's problem post collapse
was the good ol' USSA and its capitalist, plunderer banking mavens.
The Soviet Union pushed its old culture to near destruction but failed to establish a new and
better culture to replace it, writes Angelo M. Codevilla in "The Rise of Political Correctness,"
and as a result the U.S.S.R fell, just as America's current "politically correct" and dysfunctional
"progressive utopia" will implode.
As such, Codevilla would agree that the US population " is both ever-more aware that the system
is not working and less and less willing to pretend that it is."
As for the U.S.S.R., "this step turned out instead to destroy the very basis of Soviet power,"
writes Codevilla. "[C]ontinued efforts to force people to celebrate the party's ersatz reality,
to affirm things that they know are not true and to deny others they know to be true – to live
by lies – requires breaking them , reducing them to a sense of fearful isolation, destroying their
self-esteem and their capacity to trust others. George Orwell's novel 1984 dramatized this culture
war's ends and means : nothing less than the substitution of the party's authority for the reality
conveyed by human senses and reason. Big Brother's agent, having berated the hapless Winston
for preferring his own views to society's dictates, finished breaking his spirit by holding up
four fingers and demanding that Winston acknowledge seeing five.
"Thus did the Soviet regime create dysfunctional, cynical, and resentful subjects. Because
Communism confused destruction of 'bourgeois culture' with cultural conquest, it won all the cultural
battles while losing its culture war long before it collapsed politically. As Communists identified
themselves in people's minds with falsehood and fraud, people came to identify truth with anything
other than the officials and their doctrines. Inevitably, they also identified them with corruption
and privation. A nd so it was that, whenever the authorities announced that the harvest had been
good, the people hoarded potatoes; and that more and more people who knew nothing of Christianity
except that the authorities had anathematized it, started wearing crosses."
And if you want to see the ruling class's culture war in action today in America, pick up the
latest issues of Vogue Magazine or O, The Oprah Magazine with their multitude of role reversals
between whites and minorities. Or check out the latest decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court forcing
people to acknowledge that America is not a Christian nation, or making it "more difficult for
men, women and children to exist as a family" or demanding via law "that their subjects join them
in celebrating the new order that reflects their identity."
As to just how far the ruling class has gone to serve the interests and proclivities of its
leaders and to reject the majority's demand for representation, Codevilla notes, "In 2012 no one
would have thought that defining marriage between one man and one woman, as enshrined in U.S.
law, would brand those who do so as motivated by a culpable psychopathology called 'homophobia,'
subject to fines and near-outlaw status. Not until 2015-16 did it occur to anyone that requiring
persons with male personal plumbing to use public bathrooms reserved for men was a sign of the
same pathology
"On the wholesale level, it is a war on civilization waged to indulge identity politics."
This article is so flawed! People[impoverished] aren't trying to jump over a wall patrolled
by guards into Mexico -YET. Tyler, why do you repost shit like this?
That's because the Yankees, fleeing high taxes, can move to the sunbelt states w/o freezing.
The USA went broke in 2008. Mexico got a head start by 22 years when oil prices collapsed in '86.
The only way to normalize banking in a contemporary banking paradigm of QE Infinity & Beyond
is to start over again without the bankers & accountants that knowingly bet the ranch for a short
term gain at the expense of long term profitability. In Japan an honourable businessman/CEO would
suicide for bringing this kind of devastation to the company shareholders.
In America they don't give a shit because it is always someone else other than the CEO
that takes the fall. 08 was proof that America is not equipped to participate in a Multinational
& Multipolar world of business & investment in business. America can't get along in business in
this world anymore. Greed has rendered America unemployable as a major market participant in a
Globally run network of businesses.
America is the odd man out these days even though the next POTUS promises better management
from a business perspective. Whilst the Mafia Cartel bosses trust TrumpO's business savvy the
rest of the planet Earth does not.
A liberal friend laid this movie on me to show me why he supported Hillary. A smart cookie,
a PHd teaching English in Japan. A Khazarnazi Jew, he even spent time in Kyiv, Ukraine pre-coup,
only mingling with "poets and writers". He went out of his way to tell me how bad the Russians
were, informed as he was prior to the rejection of the EU's usurious offer.
He even quite dramatically pulled out the Anti-Semite card. I had to throw Banderas in his
face and the US sponsored regime. I had respect for this guy and his knowledge but he just - could
- not - let - go the cult assumptions. I finally came to believe Liberal Arts educators are victims
of inbred conditioning. In retaliation, he wanted to somehow prove Putin a charlatan or villian
and Trump his proxie.
This, after I'd point out his evasion and deflection every time I addressed his bias and
belief in the MSM propaganda mantras of racism, misogyny, xenophobia - all the usual labeling
bullshit up to insinuating Russia hacked the election. Excerpts from a correspondence wherein
I go full asshole on the guy follow. Try and make sense of it if you watch this trash:
HyperNormalization 50:29 Not Ronald Rayguns, or Quadaffi plays along. Say what? They're, i.e.
Curtis, assuming what Q thought?
1:15 USSR collapses. No shit. Cronyism in a centralized organization grown too large is inevitable
it seems. So the premise has evolved to cultural/societal "management". Right. USSR collapses
but let's repeat the same mistakes 'cause "it's different this time". We got us a computer!
Then Fink the failed Squid (how do Squids climb the corporate ladder?) builds one and programs
historical data to,,,, forecast? I heard a' this. Let me guess. He couldn't avoid bias, making
his models fallacious. Whoops. Well, he does intend to manipulate society, or was that not the
goal? Come again? Some authority ran with it and ... captured an entire nation's media, conspired
with other like-minded sycophants and their mysterious masters to capture an election by ... I
may be getting ahead of myself.
Oh, boy, I have an inkling of where this is going. Perceptions modified by the word, advanced
by the herd, in order to capture a vulnerable society under duress, who then pick sides, fool
themselves in the process, miss the three hour tour never to live happily ever after on a deserted
isle because they eschew (pick a bias here from the list provided). The one you think the "others"
have, 'cause, shit, we're above it all, right? " Are we not entertained" is probably not the most
appropriate question here.
Point being, Curtis, the BBC documentarian, totally negates the reality of pathological Imperialism
as has been practiced by the West over the last half century, causing so many of the effects
he so casually eludes to in the Arab Spring, Libya, Syria, Russia, the US and elsewhere. Perhaps
the most blatant is this; Curtis asserts that Trump "defeated journalism" by rendering its fact-checking
abilities irrelevant. Wikipedia He Hypernormalizes the very audience that believes itself to be
enlightened. As for my erstwhile friend, the fucker never once admitted all the people *killed*
for the ideals he supported. I finally blew him off for good.
I've been using the term Hypernormalisation to describe aspects of western society for
the last 15 years, before Adam Curtis's brilliant BBC documentary Hypernormalisation , afflicting
western society and particularly politics. There are lies and gross distortions everywhere in
western society and it straddles/effects all races, colours, social classes and the disease is
most acute in our politics.
We all know the hypernoprmalisation in politics, as we witness stories everyday on Zerohedge
of the disconnect from reality...
Enter Operation Stillpoint: William Colby, William Casey and Leo Emil Wanta.
At the time it started, President Reagan wanted to get a better handle on ways to keep the
Soviets from expansionary tactics used to spread Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin's philosophy of
communism around the world. He looked to his Special Task Force to provide a means of doing so.
One thing was certain: The economy of the Soviets had never been strong and corruption, always
present in government and always growing at least as fast as a government grows, made the USSR
vulnerable to outside interference just as the United States is today.
According to Gorbachev's Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, the "moral [nravstennoe] state of
the society" in 1985 was its "most terrifying" feature: "[We] stole from ourselves, took and gave
bribes, lied in the reports, in newspapers, from high podiums, wallowed in our lies, hung medals
on one another. And all of this – from top to bottom and from bottom to top."
Again, it sounds like today's America, doesn't it?
Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze made equally painful comments about the lawlessness and
corruption dominating the Soviet Union. During the winter months of 1984-85, he told Gorbachev
that "Everything is rotten. It has to be changed."
"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong," Frantz Fanon said in his 1952 book
Black Skin, White Masks (originally published in French as Peau Noire, Masques Blancs). "When
they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted.
It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because
it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything
that doesn't fit with the core belief."
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
During their final days as a world power, the Soviet Union allowed cognitive dissonance
to rule its better judgment as so many Americans are doing in 2012. The handwriting on the wall
was pretty clear for Gorbachev. The Soviet economy was failing. They did none of the necessary
things to save their economy. In 2012, the handwriting on the wall is pretty clear for the American
people. The economy is failing. The people and the Congress do none of the necessary things to
save their economy. Why? Go re-read the definition of cognitive dissonance. That's why. We have
a classic fight going on between those who want government to take care of them who will pay the
price of lost freedom to get that care, and those who value freedom above all else.
On one day we have 50 state attorneys general suing Bank of America for making fraudulent mortgages,
and on the next we have M.F. Global losing billions upon billions of customer dollars because
they got mixed with the firm's funds – which is against the law – or we have J.P. Morgan Chase
losing $2 billion (or is it $5 billion?) in bad investments. As Eduard Shevardnadze said, "Everything
is rotten. It has to be changed." As I would say it, "There is no Rule of Law in America today.
There has been no real Rule of Law since George Herbert Walker Bush took office."
No one listened then; no one is listening in America now. The primary reason? Cognitive dissonance.
-- Chapter 2, "Wanta! Black Swan, White Hat" (2013)
Okay then, forget what was said in 1985, that was later reported in 2013 ..
Lee Wanta. I've heard of him before. He was screwed over for some bullshit charges. And the
CIA made a firm warning... How long did that dude spent in jail?
Just looked up his story as it was blurry. Cronyism at its finest. So now that I got my refreshing
course. Trump stole/adopted (however you want to look at that) his plan and the project the gov
(DOT) proposes sucks donkey balls compared to Wanta's.
So where are all the climate hoaxers now by the way? You'd figure they'd be all over this.
to me the PTB are "Japanifying" the u.s. (decades of no growth, near total demoralization
of a generation of worker bees (as in, 'things will never get any better, be glad for what little
you've got' etc... look what they've done to u.s. millenials just since '08... fooled (crushed)
them TWICE already)
But the PTB Plan B is to emulate the USSR with a crackup, replete with fire sale to oligarchs
of public assets. They will Japan as long as they can (so it will be difficult to forecast
any crackup anymore than six months beforehand). Hope they have a Gorbachev lined up, to limit
the bloodshed
"... Correspondingly, a "mismanaged life," the neoliberal appellation for failure to navigate impediments to prosperity, becomes a new mode of depoliticizing social and economic powers and at the same time reduces political citizenship to an unprecedented degree of passivity and political complacency. ..."
"... as individual "entrepreneurs" in every aspect of life, subjects become wholly responsible for their well-being and citizenship is reduced to success in this entrepreneurship ..."
"... That is, the political rationality of neoliberalism might be read as issuing from a stage of capitalism that simply underscores Marx's argument that capital penetrates and transforms every aspect of life-remaking everything in its image and reducing every value and activity to its cold rationale. ..."
"... neoliberalism entails the erosion of oppositional political, moral, or subjective claims located outside capitalist rationality yet inside liberal democratic society, that is, the erosion of institutions, venues, and values organized by nonmarket rationalities in democracies. ..."
"... Market rationality knows no culture or country, and administrators are, as the economists say, fungible. ..."
"... Together these phenomena suggest a transformation of American liberal democracy into a political and social form for which we do not yet have a name, a form organized by a combination of neoliberal governmentality and imperial world politics, shaped in the short run by global economic and security crises. They indicate a form in which an imperial agenda is able to take hold precisely because the domestic soil has been loosened for it by neoliberal rationality. ..."
"... A potentially permanent "state of emergency" combined with an infinitely expandable rhetoric of patriotism overtly legitimates undercutting the Bill of Rights and legitimates as well abrogation of conventional democratic principles in setting foreign policy, principles that include respect for nation-state sovereignty and reasoned justifications for war. But behind these rhetorics there is another layer of discourse facilitating the dismantling of liberal democratic institutions and practices: a governmentality of neoliberalism that eviscerates nonmarket morality and thus erodes the root of democracy in principle at the same time that it raises the status of profit and expediency as the criteria for policy making. ..."
"... Still, if we are slipping from liberalism to fascism, and if radical democracy or socialism is nowhere on the political horizon, don't we have to defend liberal democratic institutions and values? ..."
It is commonplace to speak of the present regime in the United States as a neoconservative one, and
to cast as a consolidated "neocon" project present efforts to intensify U.S. military capacity, increase
U.S. global hegemony, dismantle the welfare state, retrench civil liberties, eliminate the right to
abortion and affirmative action, re-Christianize the state, deregulate corporations, gut environmental
protections, reverse progressive taxation, reduce education spending while increasing prison budgets,
and feather the nests of the rich while criminalizing the poor. I do not contest the existence of a
religious-political project known as neoconservatism or challenge the appropriateness of understanding
many of the links between these objectives in terms of a neoconservative agenda. However, I want to
think to one side of this agenda in order to consider our current predicament in terms of a neoliberal
political rationality, a rationality that exceeds particular positions on particular issues and that
undergirds important features of the Clinton decade as well as the Reagan-Bush years. Further, I want
to consider the way that this rationality is emerging as governmentality-a mode of governance encompassing
but not limited to the state, and one that produces subjects, forms of citizenship and behavior, and
a new organization of the social.1
Economic Liberalism, Political Liberalism, and What Is the Neo in Neoliberalism
In ordinary parlance, neoliberalism refers to the repudiation of Keynesian welfare state economics
and the ascendance of the Chicago School of political economy-von Hayek, Friedman, and others. In popular
I usage, neoliberalism is equated with a radically free market: maximized competition and free trade
achieved through economic deregulation, elimination of tariffs, and a range of monetary and social policies
favorable to business and indifferent toward poverty, social deracination, cultural decimation, long-term
resource depletion, and environmental destruction. Neoliberalism is most often invoked in relation to
the Third World, referring either to NAFTA-like schemes that increase the vulnerability of poor nations
to the vicissitudes of globalization or to International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies that,
through financing packages attached to "restructuring" requirements, yank the chains of every aspect
of Third World existence, including political institutions and social formations. For progressives,
neoliberalism is thus a pejorative not only because it conjures economic policies that sustain or deepen
local poverty and the subordination of peripheral to core nations, but also because it is compatible
with, and sometimes even productive of, authoritarian, despotic, paramilitaristic, and corrupt state
forms as well as agents within civil society.
While these referents capture important effects of neoliberalism, they also reduce neoliberalism
to a bundle of economic policies with inadvertent political and social consequences: they fail to address
the political rationality that both organizes these policies and reaches beyond the market. Moreover,
these referents do not capture the neo in neoliberalism, tending instead to treat the contemporary phenomenon
as little more than a revival of classical liberal political economy. Finally, they obscure the specifically
political register of neoliberalism in the First World: that is, its powerful erosion of liberal democratic
institutions and practices in places like the United States.
My concern in this essay is with these neglected dimensions of neoliberalism.
One of the more incisive accounts of neoliberal political rationality comes from a surprising quarter:
Michel Foucault is not generally heralded as a theorist of liberalism or of political economy. Yet Foucault's
1978 and 1979 Collčge de France lectures, long unpublished,2 consisted of his critical analysis of two
groups of neoliberal economists: the Ordo-liberal school in postwar Germany (so named because its members,
originally members of the Freiburg School, published mainly in the journal Ordo) and the Chicago School
that arose midcentury in the United States. Thanks to the German sociologist Thomas Lemke, we have an
excellent summary and interpretation of Foucault's lectures on neoliberalism; in what follows I will
draw extensively from Lemke's work.3
It may be helpful, before beginning a consideration of neoliberalism as a political rationality,
to mark the conventional difference between political and economic liberalism-a difference especially
confusing for Americans for whom "liberal" tends to signify a progressive political viewpoint and, in
particular, support for the welfare state and other New Deal institutions, along with relatively high
levels of political and legal intervention in the social sphere.4 In addition, given the contemporary
phenomena of both neoconservatism and neoliberalism, and the association of both with the political
right, ours is a time of often bewildering political nomenclature.5
Briefly, then, in economic thought,
liberalism contrasts with mercantilism on one side and Keynesianism or socialism on the other; its classical
version refers to a maximization of free trade and competition achieved by minimum interference from
political institutions. In the history of political thought, while individual liberty remains a touchstone,
liberalism signifies an order in which the state exists to secure the freedom of individuals on a formally
egalitarian basis.
A liberal political order may harbor either liberal or Keynesian economic policies-it may lean in
the direction of maximizing liberty (its politically "conservative" tilt) or of maximizing equality
(its politically "liberal" tilt), but in contemporary political parlance, it is no more or less a liberal
democracy because of one leaning or the other. Indeed, the American convention of referring to advocates
of the welfare state as political liberals is especially peculiar, given that American conservatives
generally hew more closely to both the classical economic and the political doctrines of liberalism-it
turns the meaning of liberalism in the direction of liberality rather than liberty. For our purposes,
what is crucial is that the liberalism in what has come to be called neoliberalism refers to liberalism's
economic variant, recuperating selected pre-Keynesian assumptions about the generation of wealth and
its distribution, rather than to liberalism as a political doctrine, as a set of political institutions,
or as political practices. The neo in neoliberalism, however, establishes these principles on a significantly
different analytic basis from those set forth by Adam Smith, as will become clear below. Moreover, neoliberalism
is not simply a set of economic policies; it is not only about facilitating free trade, maximizing corporate
profits, and challenging welfarism. Rather, neoliberalism carries a social analysis that, when deployed
as a form of governmentality, reaches from the soul of the citizen-subject to education policy to practices
of empire. Neoliberal rationality, while foregrounding the market, is not only or even primarily focused
on the economy; it involves extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and social
action, even as the market itself remains a distinctive player. This essay explores the political implications
of neoliberal rationality for liberal democracy-the implications of the political rationality corresponding
to, legitimating, and legitimated by the neoliberal turn.
While Lemke, following Foucault, is careful to mark some of the differences between Ordo-liberal
thought and its successor and radicalizer, the Chicago School, I will be treating contemporary neoliberal
political rationality without attending to these differences in some of its source material. A rich
genealogy of neoliberalism as it is currently practiced-one that mapped and contextualized the contributions
of the two schools of political economy, traced the ways that rational choice theory differentially
adhered and evolved in the various social sciences and their governmental applications, and described
the interplay of all these currents with developments in capital over the past half century-would be
quite useful. But this essay is not such a genealogy. Rather, my aim is to consider our current political
predicament in terms of neoliberal political rationality, whose chief characteristics are enumerated
below.
1. The political sphere, along with every other dimension of contemporary existence, is submitted
to an economic rationality; or, put the other way around, not only is the human being configured exhaustively
as homo oeconomicus, but all dimensions of human life are cast in terms of a market rationality. While
this entails submitting every action and policy to considerations of profitability, equally important
is the production of all human and institutional action as rational entrepreneurial action, conducted
according to a calculus of utility, benefit, or satisfaction against a microeconomic grid of scarcity,
supply and demand, and moral value-neutrality. Neoliberalism does not simply assume that all aspects
of social, cultural, and political life can be reduced to such a calculus; rather, it develops institutional
practices and rewards for enacting this vision. That is, through discourse and policy promulgating its
criteria, neoliberalism produces rational actors and imposes a market rationale for decision making
in all spheres. Importantly, then, neoliberalism involves a normative rather than ontological claim
about the pervasiveness of economic rationality and it advocates the institution building, policies,
and discourse development appropriate to such a claim. Neoliberalism is a constructivist project: it
does not presume the ontological givenness of a thoroughgoing economic rationality for all domains of
society but rather takes as its task the development, dissemination, and institutionalization of such
a rationality. This point is further developed in (2) below.
2. In contrast with the notorious laissez-faire and human propensity to "truck and barter" stressed
by classical economic liberalism, neoliberalism does not conceive of either the market itself or rational
economic behavior as purely natural. Both are constructed-organized by law and political institutions,
and requiring political intervention and orchestration. Far from flourishing when left alone, the economy
must be directed, buttressed, and protected by law and policy as well as by the dissemination of social
norms designed to facilitate competition, free trade, and rational economic action on the part of every
member and institution of society. In Lemke's account, "In the Ordo-liberal scheme, the market does
not amount to a natural economic reality, with intrinsic laws that the art of government must bear in
mind and respect; instead, the market can be constituted and kept alive only by dint of political interventions.
. . . [C]ompetition, too, is not a natural fact. . . . [T]his fundamental economic mechanism can function
only if support is forthcoming to bolster a series of conditions, and adherence to the latter must consistently
be guaranteed by legal measures" (193).
The neoliberal formulation of the state and especially of specific legal arrangements and decisions
as the precondition and ongoing condition of the market does not mean that the market is controlled
by the state but precisely the opposite. The market is the organizing and regulative principle of the
state and society, along three different lines: a. The state openly responds to needs of the market,
whether through monetary and fiscal policy, immigration policy, the treatment of criminals, or the structure
of public education. In so doing, the state is no longer encumbered by the danger of incurring the legitimation
deficits predicted by 1970s social theorists and political economists such as Nicos Poulantzas, Jürgen
Habermas, and James O'Connor.6 Rather, neoliberal rationality extended to the state itself indexes the
state's success according to its ability to sustain and foster the market and ties state legitimacy
to such success. This is a new form of legitimation, one that "founds a state," according to Lemke,
and contrasts with the Hegelian and French revolutionary notion of the constitutional state as the emergent
universal representative of the people. As Lemke describes Foucault's account of Ordo-liberal thinking,
"economic liberty produces the legitimacy for a form of sovereignty limited to guaranteeing economic
activity . . . a state that was no longer defined in terms of an historical mission but legitimated
itself with reference to economic growth" (196).
b. The state itself is enfolded and animated by market rationality: that is, not simply profitability
but a generalized calculation of cost and benefit becomes the measure of all state practices. Political
discourse on all matters is framed in entrepreneurial terms; the state must not simply concern itself
with the market but think and behave like a market actor across all of its functions, including law.
7
c. Putting (a) and (b) together, the health and growth of the economy is the basis of state legitimacy,
both because the state is forthrightly responsible for the health of the economy and because of the
economic rationality to which state practices have been submitted. Thus, "It's the economy, stupid"
becomes more than a campaign slogan; rather, it expresses the principle of the state's legitimacy and
the basis for state action-from constitutional adjudication and campaign finance reform to welfare and
education policy to foreign policy, including warfare and the organization of "homeland security."
3. The extension of economic rationality to formerly noneconomic domains and institutions reaches
individual conduct, or, more precisely, prescribes the citizen-subject of a neoliberal order. Whereas
classical liberalism articulated a distinction, and at times even a tension, among the criteria for
individual moral, associational, and economic actions (hence the striking differences in tone, subject
matter, and even prescriptions between Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and his Theory of Moral Sentiments),
neoliberalism normatively constructs and interpellates individuals as entrepreneurial actors in every
sphere of life.
It figures individuals as rational, calculating creatures whose moral autonomy is measured
by their capacity for "self-care"-the ability to provide for their own needs and service their own ambitions.
In making the individual fully responsible for her- or himself, neoliberalism equates moral responsibility
with rational action; it erases the discrepancy between economic and moral behavior by configuring morality
entirely as a matter of rational deliberation about costs, benefits, and consequences.
But in so doing,
it carries responsibility for the self to new heights: the rationally calculating individual bears full
responsibility for the consequences of his or her action no matter how severe the constraints on this
action-for example, lack of skills, education, and child care in a period of high unemployment and limited
welfare benefits. Correspondingly, a "mismanaged life," the neoliberal appellation for failure to navigate
impediments to prosperity, becomes a new mode of depoliticizing social and economic powers and at the
same time reduces political citizenship to an unprecedented degree of passivity and political complacency.
The model neoliberal citizen is one who strategizes for her- or himself among various social, political,
and economic options, not one who strives with others to alter or organize these options. Afully realized
neoliberal citizenry would be the opposite of public-minded; indeed, it would barely exist as a public.
The body politic ceases to be a body but is rather a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers
. . . which is, of course, exactly how voters are addressed in most American campaign discourse.8 Other
evidence for progress in the development of such a citizenry is not far from hand: consider the market
rationality permeating universities today, from admissions and recruiting to the relentless consumer
mentality of students as they consider university brand names, courses, and services, from faculty raiding
and pay scales to promotion criteria.9 Or consider the way in which consequential moral lapses (of a
sexual or criminal nature) by politicians, business executives, or church and university administrators
are so often apologized for as "mistakes in judgment," implying that it was the calculation that was
wrong, not the act, actor, or rationale. The state is not without a project in the making of the neoliberal
subject. It attempts to construct prudent subjects through policies that organize such prudence: this
is the basis of a range of welfare reforms such as workfare and single-parent penalties, changes in
the criminal code such as the "three strikes law," and educational voucher schemes. Because neoliberalism
casts rational action as a norm rather than an ontology, social policy is the means by which the state
produces subjects whose compass is set entirely by their rational assessment of the costs and benefits
of certain acts, whether those acts pertain to teen pregnancy, tax fraud, or retirement planning. The
neoliberal citizen is calculating rather than rule abiding, a Benthamite rather than a Hobbesian.
The state is one of many sites framing the calculations leading to social behaviors that keep costs
low and productivity high. This mode of governmentality (techniques of governing that exceed express
state action and orchestrate the subject's conduct toward himor herself) convenes a "free" subject who
rationally deliberates about alternative courses of action, makes choices, and bears responsibility
for the consequences of these choices. In this way, Lemke argues, "the state leads and controls subjects
without being responsible for them"; as individual "entrepreneurs" in every aspect of life, subjects
become wholly responsible for their well-being and citizenship is reduced to success in this entrepreneurship
(201).
Neoliberal subjects are controlled through their freedom-not simply, as thinkers from the Frankfurt
School through Foucault have argued, because freedom within an order of domination can be an instrument
of that domination, but because of neoliberalism's moralization of the consequences of this freedom.
Such control also means that the withdrawal of the state from certain domains, followed by the privatization
of certain state functions, does not amount to a dismantling of government but rather constitutes a
technique of governing; indeed, it is the signature technique of neoliberal governance, in which rational
economic action suffused throughout society replaces express state rule or provision. Neoliberalism
shifts "the regulatory competence of the state onto 'responsible,' 'rational' individuals [with the
aim of] encourag[ing] individuals to give their lives a specific entrepreneurial form" (Lemke, 202).
4. Finally, the suffusion of both the state and the subject with economic rationality has the effect
of radically transforming and narrowing the criteria for good social policy vis-ŕ-vis classical liberal
democracy. Not only must social policy meet profitability tests, incite and unblock competition, and
produce rational subjects, it obeys the entrepreneurial principle of "equal inequality for all" as it
"multiples and expands entrepreneurial forms with the body social" (Lemke, 195). This is the principle
that links the neoliberal governmentalization of the state with that of the social and the subject.
Taken together, the extension of economic rationality to all aspects of thought and activity, the
placement of the state in forthright and direct service to the economy, the rendering of the state tout
court as an enterprise organized by market rationality, the production of the moral subject as an entrepreneurial
subject, and the construction of social policy according to these criteria might appear as a more intensive
rather than fundamentally new form of the saturation of social and political realms by capital. That
is, the political rationality of neoliberalism might be read as issuing from a stage of capitalism that
simply underscores Marx's argument that capital penetrates and transforms every aspect of life-remaking
everything in its image and reducing every value and activity to its cold rationale.
All that would
be new here is the flagrant and relentless submission of the state and the individual, the church and
the university, morality, sex, marriage, and leisure practices to this rationale. Or better, the only
novelty would be the recently achieved hegemony of rational choice theory in the human sciences, self-represented
as an independent and objective branch of knowledge rather than an expression of the dominance of capital.
Another reading that would figure neoliberalism as continuous with the past would theorize it through
Weber's rationalization thesis rather than Marx's argument about capital. The extension of market rationality
to every sphere, and especially the reduction of moral and political judgment to a cost-benefit calculus,
would represent precisely the evisceration of substantive values by instrumental rationality that Weber
predicted as the future of a disenchanted world. Thinking and judging are reduced to instrumental calculation
in Weber's "polar night of icy darkness"-there is no morality, no faith, no heroism, indeed no meaning
outside the market.
Yet invaluable as Marx's theory of capital and Weber's theory of rationalization are in understanding
certain aspects of neoliberalism, neither brings into view the historical-institutional rupture it signifies,
the form of governmentality it replaces and the form it inaugurates, and hence the modalities of resistance
it renders outmoded and those that must be developed if it is to be effectively challenged.
Neoliberalism
is not an inevitable historical development of capital and instrumental rationality; it is not the unfolding
of laws of capital or of instrumental rationality suggested by a Marxist or Weberian analysis but represents
instead a new and contingent organization and operation of both. Moreover, neither analysis articulates
the shift neoliberalism heralds from relatively differentiated moral, economic, and political rationalities
and venues in liberal democratic orders to their discursive and practical integration. Neoliberal governmentality
undermines the relative autonomy of certain institutions-law, elections, the police, the public sphere-from
one another and from the market, an independence that formerly sustained an interval and a tension between
a capitalist political economy and a liberal democratic political system. The implications of this transformation
are significant. Herbert Marcuse worried about the loss of a dialectical opposition within capitalism
when it "delivers the goods"-that is, when, by the mid–twentieth century, a relatively complacent middle
class had taken the place of the hardlaboring impoverished masses Marx depicted as the negating contradiction
to the concentrated wealth of capital-but neoliberalism entails the erosion of oppositional political,
moral, or subjective claims located outside capitalist rationality yet inside liberal democratic society,
that is, the erosion of institutions, venues, and values organized by nonmarket rationalities in democracies.
When democratic principles of governance, civil codes, and even religious morality are submitted to
economic calculation, when no value or good stands outside of this calculus, then sources of opposition
to, and mere modulation of, capitalist rationality disappear. This reminds us that however much a left
analysis has identified a liberal political order with legitimating, cloaking, and mystifying the stratifications
of society achieved by capitalism (and achieved as well by racial, sexual, and gender superordinations),
it is also the case that liberal democratic principles of governance- liberalism as a political doctrine-have
functioned as something of an antagonist to these stratifications.
As Marx himself argued in "On the
Jewish Question," formal political principles of equality and freedom (with their attendant promises
of individual autonomy and dignity) figure an alternative vision of humanity and alternative social
and moral referents to those of the capitalist order within which they are asserted. This is the Janus-face
or at least Janus-potential of liberal democracy vis-ŕ-vis a capitalist economy: while liberal democracy
encodes, reflects, and legitimates capitalist social relations, it simultaneously resists, counters,
and tempers them.
Put simply, what liberal democracy has provided over the past two centuries is a modest ethical gap
between economy and polity. Even as liberal democracy converges with many capitalist values (property
rights, individualism, Hobbesian assumptions underneath all contracts, etc.), the formal distinction
it establishes between moral and political principles on the one hand and the economic order on the
other has also served to insulate citizens against the ghastliness of life exhaustively ordered by the
market and measured by market values. It is this gap that a neoliberal political rationality closes
as it submits every aspect of political and social life to economic calculation: asking not, for example,
what liberal constitutionalism stands for, what moral or political values it protects and preserves,
but rather what efficacy or profitability constitutionalism promotes . . . or interdicts.
Liberal democracy cannot be submitted to neoliberal political governmentality and survive. There
is nothing in liberal democracy's basic institutions or values-from free elections, representative democracy,
and individual liberties equally distributed to modest power-sharing or even more substantive political
participation-that inherently meets the test of serving economic competitiveness or inherently withstands
a cost-benefit analysis. And it is liberal democracy that is going under in the present moment, even
as the flag of American "democracy" is being planted everywhere it can find or create soft ground. (That
"democracy" is the rubric under which so much antidemocratic imperial and domestic policy is enacted
suggests that we are in an interregnum-or, more precisely, that neoliberalism borrows extensively from
the old regime to legitimate itself even as it also develops and disseminates new codes of legitimacy.
More about this below.) Nor is liberal democracy a temporary casualty of recent events or of a neoconservative
agenda. As the foregoing account of neoliberal governmentality suggests, while post-9/11 international
and domestic policy may have both hastened and highlighted the erosion of liberal democratic institutions
and principles, this erosion is not simply the result of a national security strategy or even of the
Bush administration's unprecedented indifference to the plight of the poor, civil liberties, law valued
as principle rather than tactic, or conventional liberal democratic criteria for legitimate foreign
policy.10 My argument here is twofold. First, neoliberal rationality has not caused but rather has facilitated
the dismantling of democracy during the current national security crisis. Democratic values and institutions
are trumped by a cost-benefit and efficiency rationale for practices ranging from government secrecy
(even government lying) to the curtailment of civil liberties. Second, the post-9/11 period has brought
the ramifications of neoliberal rationality into sharp focus, largely through practices and policies
that progressives assail as hypocrisies, lies, or contradictions but that may be better understood as
neoliberal policies and actions taking shape under the legitimating cloth of a liberal democratic discourse
increasingly void of substance.
The Bush administration's imperial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq clearly borrowed extensively
from the legitimating rhetoric of democracy. Not only were both wars undertaken as battles for "our
way of life" against regimes said to harbor enemies (terrorists) or dangers (weapons of mass destruction)
to that way of life, but both violations of national sovereignty were justified by the argument that
democracy could and ought to take shape in those places-each nation is said to need liberation from
brutal and despotic rule. The standard left criticism of the first justification is that "our way of
life" is more seriously threatened by a politics of imperialism and by certain policies of homeland
security than by these small nations. But this criticism ignores the extent to which "our way of life"
is being figured not in a classically liberal democratic but in a neoliberal idiom: that is, as the
ability of the entrepreneurial subject and state to rationally plot means and ends and the ability of
the state to secure the conditions, at home and abroad, for a market rationality and subjectivity by
removing their impediments (whether Islamic fundamentalism or excessive and arbitrary state sovereignty
in the figure of Saddam Hussein). Civil liberties are perfectly expendable within this conception of
"our way of life"; unlike property rights, they are largely irrelevant to homo oeconomicus. Their attenuation
or elimination does not falsify the project of protecting democracy in its neoliberal mode.
The Left criticized the second justification, that the United States could or ought to liberate Afghanistan
from the Taliban and Iraq from Hussein, as both hypocritical (the United States had previously funded
and otherwise propped up both regimes) and disingenuous (U.S. foreign policy has never rested on the
principle of developing democracy and was not serious about the project in these settings). Again, however,
translated into neoliberal terms, "democracy," here or there, does not signify a set of independent
political institutions and civic practices comprising equality, freedom, autonomy and the principle
of popular sovereignty but rather indicates only a state and subjects organized by market rationality.
Indeed, democracy could even be understood as a code word for availability to this rationality; removal
of the Taliban and Baath party pave the way to that availability, and democracy is simply the name of
the regime, conforming to neoliberal requirements, that must replace them. When Paul Bremer, the U.S.-appointed
interim governor of Iraq, declared on May 26, 2003 (just weeks after the sacking of Baghdad and four
days after the UN lifted economic sanctions), that Iraq was "open for business," he made clear exactly
how democracy would take shape in post- Saddam Iraq. Duty-free imported goods poured into the country,
finishing off many local Iraqi businesses already damaged by the war. Multinationals tumbled over themselves
to get a piece of the action, and foreign direct investment to replace and privatize state industry
was described by the corporate executives advising the Bush administration as the "answer to all of
Iraq's problems."11 The question of democratic institutions, as Bremer made clear by scrapping early
plans to form an interim Iraqi government in favor of installing his own team of advisers, was at best
secondary to the project of privatizing large portions of the economy and outsourcing the business of
policing a society in rubble, chaos, and terror occasioned by the combination of ongoing military skirmishes
and armed local gangs.12
It is not news that replacements for the Taliban and the Baath regimes need not be rights-based,
formally egalitarian, representative, or otherwise substantively democratic in order to serve the purposes
of global capitalism or the particular geopolitical interests of the United States. Nor is it news that
the replacements of these regimes need not be administered by the Afghans or Iraqis themselves to satisfy
American and global capitalist purposes and interests, though the residues of old-fashioned democracy
inside the legitimation project of neoliberalism make even puppet or faux rule by an appointed governing
council, or by officials elected in severely compromised election conditions, ideologically preferable
to full-fledged directorship by the American occupation. What is striking, however, is the boldness
of a raw market approach to political problem solving, the extent to which radical privatization schemes
and a flourishing market economy built on foreign investment are offered not simply as the path to democracy
but as the name and the measure of democracy in these nations, a naming and measuring first appearing
in post-1989 Eastern Europe a decade earlier. Not only are democratic institutions largely irrelevant-
and at times even impediments-to neoliberal governmentality, but the success of such governmentality
does not depend on the question of whether it is locally administered or externally imposed.
Market
rationality knows no culture or country, and administrators are, as the economists say, fungible. Indeed,
at this juncture in the displacement of liberal democracy by neoliberal governmentality, the question
is how much legitimacy neoliberal governance requires from a democratic vocabulary-how much does neoliberalism
have to cloak itself in liberal democratic discourse and work with liberal democratic institutions?
This is less a theoretical than a historical-empirical question about how deeply and extensively neoliberal
rationality has taken hold as ideology, that is, how much and where neoliberal governance can legitimate
itself in its own terms, without borrowing from other discourses. (Neoliberalism can become dominant
as governmentality without being dominant as ideology-the former refers to governing practices and the
latter to a popular order of belief that may or may not be fully in line with the former, and that may
even be a site of resistance to it.)
Clearly, a rhetoric of democracy and the shell of liberal democratic
institutions remain more important in the imperial heartland than in recently "liberated" or conquered
societies with few if any democratic traditions of legitimacy. However, the fact that George W. Bush
retains the support of the majority of the American people, despite his open flaunting of democratic
principles amid a failing economy and despite, too, evidence that the public justification for invading
Iraq relied on cooked intelligence, suggests that neoliberalism has taken deep hold in the homeland.
Particularly striking is the number of pundits who have characterized this willful deceit of the people
as necessary rather than criminal, as a means to a rational end, thereby reminding us that one of the
more dangerous features of neoliberal evisceration of a non-market morality lies in undercutting the
basis for judging government actions by any criteria other than expedience.13
Just as neoliberal governmentality
reduces the tension historically borne by the state between democratic values and the needs of capital
as it openly weds the state to capital and resignifies democracy as ubiquitous entrepreneurialism, so
neoliberalism also smooths an old wrinkle in the fabric of liberal democratic foreign policy between
domestic political values and international interests. During the cold war, political progressives could
use American sanctimony about democracy to condemn international actions that propped up or installed
authoritarian regimes and overthrew popularly elected leaders in the Third World. The divergence between
strategic international interests and democratic ideology produced a potential legitimation problem
for foreign policy, especially as applied to Southeast Asia and Central and Latin America. Neoliberalism,
by redefining democracy as thoroughgoing market rationality in state and society, a redefinition abetted
by the postcommunist "democratization" process in Eastern Europe, largely eliminates that problem.
Certainly human rights talk is ubiquitous in global democracy discourse, but not since Jimmy Carter's
ill-fated efforts to make human rights a substantive dimension of foreign policy have they served as
more than window dressing for neoliberal adventures in democracy. Mourning Liberal Democracy An assault
on liberal democratic values and institutions has been plainly evident in recent events: civil liberties
undermined by the USA Patriot Acts and the Total Information Awareness (later renamed Total Terror Awareness)
scheme, Oakland police shooting wood and rubber bullets at peaceful antiwar protesters, a proposed Oregon
law to punish all civil disobedience as terrorism (replete with twenty five-year jail terms), and McCarthyite
deployments of patriotism to suppress ordinary dissent and its iconography. It is evident as well in
the staging of aggressive imperial wars and ensuing occupations along with the continued dismantling
of the welfare state and the progressive taxation schemes already diluted by the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush,
and Clinton administrations. It has been more subtly apparent in "softer" events, such as the de-funding
of public education that led eighty four Oregon school districts to sheer almost a month off the school
year in spring 2003 and delivered provisional pink slips to thousands of California teachers at the
end of the 2002–03 academic year.14 Or consider the debate about whether antiwar protests constituted
unacceptable costs for a financially strapped cities-even many critics of current U.S. foreign policy
expressed anger at peaceful civil disobedients over the expense and disruption they caused, implying
that the value of public opinion and protest should be measured against its dollar cost.15
Together
these phenomena suggest a transformation of American liberal democracy into a political and social form
for which we do not yet have a name, a form organized by a combination of neoliberal governmentality
and imperial world politics, shaped in the short run by global economic and security crises. They indicate
a form in which an imperial agenda is able to take hold precisely because the domestic soil has been
loosened for it by neoliberal rationality.
This form is not fascism or totalitarian as we have known them historically, nor are these labels
likely to prove helpful in identifying or criticizing it.16 Rather, this is a political condition in
which the substance of many of the significant features of constitutional and representative democracy
have been gutted, jettisoned, or end-run, even as they continue to be promulgated ideologically, serving
as a foil and shield for their undoing and for the doing of death elsewhere. These features include
civil liberties equally distributed and protected; a press and other journalistic media minimally free
from corporate ownership on one side and state control on the other; uncorrupted and unbought elections;
quality public education oriented, inter alia, to producing the literacies relevant to informed and
active citizenship; government openness, honesty, and accountability; a judiciary modestly insulated
from political and commercial influence; separation of church and state; and a foreign policy guided
at least in part by the rationale of protecting these domestic values. None of these constitutive elements
of liberal democracy was ever fully realized in its short history-they have always been compromised
by a variety of economic and social powers, from white supremacy to capitalism.
And liberal democracies in the First World have always required other peoples to pay-politically,
socially, and economically-for what these societies have enjoyed; that is, there has always been a colonially
and imperially inflected gap between what has been valued in the core and what has been required from
the periphery. So it is important to be precise here. Ours is not the first time in which elections
have been bought, manipulated, and even engineered by the courts, the first time the press has been
slavish to state and corporate power, the first time the United States has launched an aggressive assault
on a sovereign nation or threatened the entire world with its own weapons of mass destruction. What
is unprecedented about this time is the extent to which basic principles and institutions of democracy
are becoming nothing other than ideological shells concealing their opposite as well as the extent to
which these principles and institutions even as values are being abandoned by large parts of the American
population.
Elements in this transformation include the development of the most secretive government
in fifty years (the gutting of the Freedom of Information Act was one of the quiet early accomplishments
of the G. W. Bush administration, the "classified" status of its more than 1,000 contracts with Halliburton
one of its more recent); the plumping of corporate wealth combined with the reduction of social spending
for limiting the economic vulnerability of the poor and middle classes; a bought, consolidated, and
muffled press that willingly cooperates in its servitude (emblematic in this regard is the Judith Miller
(non)scandal, in which the star New York Times journalist wittingly reported Pentagon propaganda about
Iraqi WMDs as journalistically discovered fact); and intensified policing in every corner of American
life- airports, university admissions offices, mosques, libraries, workplaces- a policing undertaken
both by official agents of the state and by an interpellated citizenry.
A potentially permanent "state
of emergency" combined with an infinitely expandable rhetoric of patriotism overtly legitimates undercutting
the Bill of Rights and legitimates as well abrogation of conventional democratic principles in setting
foreign policy, principles that include respect for nation-state sovereignty and reasoned justifications
for war. But behind these rhetorics there is another layer of discourse facilitating the dismantling
of liberal democratic institutions and practices: a governmentality of neoliberalism that eviscerates
nonmarket morality and thus erodes the root of democracy in principle at the same time that it raises
the status of profit and expediency as the criteria for policy making.
There is much that is disturbing in the emergence of neoliberal governmentality and a great deal
more work to do in theorizing its contribution to the organization and possibilities in current and
future political life in the United States. In particular, as I suggested at the outset of this essay,
filling in the contemporary political picture would require mapping the convergences and tensions between
a (nonpartisan) neoliberal governmentality on the one hand and the specific agendas of Clintonian centrists
and Reagan-Bush neoconservatives on the other. It would require exploring the continued efficacy of
political rhetorics of morality and principle as neoliberalism voids the substance of and undercuts
the need for extramarket morality. It would require discerning what distinguishes neoliberal governmentality
from old-fashioned corporatism and old-fashioned political realism. It would require examining the contradictory
political imperatives delivered by the market and set as well by the tensions between nationstate interests
and globalized capitalism indifferent to states and sovereignty. And it would require examining the
points at which U.S. imperial policies converge with and diverge from or even conflict with neoliberal
governmentality.
By way of conclusion, however, I leave aside these questions to reflect briefly on the implications
for the Left of neoliberalism's erosion of liberal democracy. While leftists of the past quarter century
were rarely as antagonistic to liberal democracy as the Old Left, neither did we fully embrace it; at
times we resented and railed against it, and certainly we harbored an aim to transform it into something
else-social democracy or some form of radical democracy. So the Left is losing something it never loved,
or at best was highly ambivalent about. We are also losing a site of criticism and political agitation-we
criticized liberal democracy not only for its hypocrisy and ideological trickery but also for its institutional
and rhetorical embedding of bourgeois, white, masculinist, and heterosexual superordination at the heart
of humanism. Whatever loose identity we had as a Left took shape in terms of a differentiation from
liberalism's willful obliviousness to social stratification and injury that were glossed and hence secured
by its formal juridical categories of liberty and equality.
Still, liberalism, as Gayatri Spivak once wrote in a very different context, is also that which one
"cannot not want" (given the other historical possibilities, given the current historical meaning of
its deprivation). Even here, though, the desire is framed as roundabout and against itself, as Spivak's
artful double negative indicates. It indicates a dependency we are not altogether happy about, an organization
of desire we wish were otherwise. What might be the psychic/social/intellectual implications for leftists
of losing this vexed object of attachment? What are the possible trajectories for a melancholic incorporation
of that toward which one is openly ambivalent; or perhaps even hostile, resentful, rebellious?
Freud posits melancholy as occasioned by ambivalence, though the ambivalence may be more unconsciously
sustained than I am suggesting is the case for the Left's relationship to liberal democracy. More precisely,
Freud's focus in theorizing melancholy is love that does not know or want to avow its hostility, whereas
the task before us is to consider hostility that does not know or want to avow its love or dependency.
Still, Freud's thinking about melancholia remains useful here as a theory of loss amid ambivalent attachment
and dependence and a theory of identity formation at the site of an ungrievable passion or attachment.
It reminds us to consider how left melancholia about liberal democracy would not just be a problematic
affect but would constitute a formation of the Left itself.
Incorporating the death of a loathed object to which one was nonetheless attached often takes the
form of acting out the loathed qualities of the object. I once had an acquaintance whose muchdespised
and abusive father died. While my friend overtly rejoiced at his passing, in the ensuing months she
engaged in extraordinary outbursts of verbal and physical abuse toward friends and colleagues, even
throwing things at them as she had described her father throwing household objects during her childhood.
Another friend buried, after years of illness, a childish, hysterical, histrionic, and demanding mother,
one who relentlessly produced herself as a victim amid her own aggressive demands. Relieved as my friend
was to have done with this parent, what should emerge over the following year but exactly such tendencies
in her own relationships? So this is one danger: that we would act out to keep alive those aspects of
the political formation we are losing, that we would take up and perform liberal democracy's complacencies,
cruelties, or duplicities, stage them in our own work and thinking. This behavior would issue in part
from the need to preserve the left identity and project that took shape at the site of liberal democracy,
and in part from ambivalence about liberal democracy itself. In response to the loss of an object both
loved and loathed, in which only the loathing or contempt is avowed, melancholy sustains the loved object,
and continues to provide a cover for the love-a continued means of disavowing it-by incorporating and
performing the loathsomeness.
There are other ways ambivalently structured loss can take shape as melancholic, including the straightforward
possibility of idealizing a lost object as it was never idealized when alive. Straightforward, perhaps,
but not simple, for this affect also involves remorse for a past of not loving the object well enough
and self-reproach for ever having wished for its death or replacement. As idealization fueled by guilt,
this affect also entails heightened aggression toward challenges or challengers to the idealization.
In this guilt, anxiety, and defensiveness over the loss of liberal democracy, we would feel compelled
to defend basic principles of liberalism or simply defend liberalism as a whole in a liberal way, that
is, we would give up being critical of liberalism and, in doing so, give up being left. Freud identifies
this surrender of identity upon the death of an ambivalent object as the suicidal wish in melancholia,17
a wish abetted in our case by a more general disorientation about what the Left is or stands for today.
Evidence for such a surrender in the present extends from our strikingly unnuanced defenses of free
speech, privacy, and other civil liberties to the staging of antiwar protests as "patriotic" through
the iconography of the American flag. Often explained as what the Left must do when public discourse
moves rightward, such accounts presume a single political continuum, ranged from extreme left to extreme
right, in which liberals and conservatives are nothing more than the moderate versions of the extremes
(communists and fascists). Not only does the model of the continuum reduce the variety of political
possibility in modernity to matters of degree rather than kind, it erases the distinctiveness of a left
critique and vision. Just as today's neoliberals bear little in common with traditional conservatives,
so the Left has traditionally stood for a set of values and possibilities qualitatively different from
those of welfare state liberals. Times of alliance and spheres of overlap obviously exist, but a continuum
does not capture the nature of these convergences and tactical linkages any better than it captures
the differences between, for example, a liberal commitment to rights-based equality and a left commitment
to emancipating the realm of production, or between a liberal enthusiasm for the welfare state and a
left critique of its ideological and regulatory dimensions. So the idea that leftists must automatically
defend liberal political values when they are on the ropes, while sensible from a liberal perspective,
does not facilitate a left challenge to neoliberalism if the Left still wishes to advocate in the long
run for something other than liberal democracy in a capitalist socioeconomic order.
Of course, there are aspects of liberal democracy that the Left has come to value and incorporate
into its own vision of the good society-for example, an array of individual liberties that are largely
unrelated to the freedom from domination promised by transforming the realm of production. But articulating
this renewed left vision differs from defending civil liberties in liberal terms, a defense that itself
erases a left project as it consigns it to something outside those terms. Similarly, patriotism and
flag-waving are surely at odds with a left formulation of justice, even as love of America, represented
through icons other than the flag or through narratives other than "supporting the troops," might well
have a part in this formulation. Finally, not only does defending liberal democracy in liberal terms
sacrifice a left vision, but this sacrifice discredits the Left by tacitly reducing it to nothing more
than a permanent objection to the existing regime. It renders the Left a party of complaint rather than
a party with an alternative political, social, and economic vision.
Still, if we are slipping from liberalism to fascism, and if radical democracy or socialism is nowhere
on the political horizon, don't we have to defend liberal democratic institutions and values? Isn't
this the lesson of Weimar? I have labored to suggest that this is not the right diagnosis of our predicament:
it does not grasp what is at stake in neoliberal governmentality-which is not fascism-nor on what grounds
it might be challenged. Indeed, the left defense of the welfare state in the 1980s, which seemed to
stem from precisely such an analysis-"if we can't have socialism, at least we should preserve welfare
state capitalism"-backfired from just such a misdiagnosis. On the one hand, rather than articulating
an emancipatory vision that included the eradication rather than regulation of poverty, the Left appeared
aligned with big government, big spending, and misplaced compassion for those construed as failing to
give their lives proper entrepreneurial shape. On the other hand, the welfare state was dismantled on
grounds that had almost nothing to do with the terms of liberal democracy and everything to do with
neoliberal economic and political rationality. We are not simply in the throes of a right-wing or conservative
positioning within liberal democracy but rather at the threshold of a different political formation,
one that conducts and legitimates itself on different grounds from liberal democracy even as it does
not immediately divest itself of the name. It is a formation that is developing a domestic imperium
correlative with a global one, achieved through a secretive and remarkably agentic state; through corporatized
media, schools, and prisons; and through a variety of technologies for intensified local administrative,
regulatory, and police powers. It is a formation made possible by the production of citizens as individual
entrepreneurial actors across all dimensions of their lives, by the reduction of civil society to a
domain for exercising this entrepreneurship, and by the figuration of the state as a firm whose products
are rational individual subjects, an expanding economy, national security, and global power.
This formation produces a twofold challenge for the Left. First, it compels us to consider the implications
of losing liberal democracy and especially its implications for our own work by learning what the Left
has depended on and demanded from liberal democracy, which aspects of it have formed the basis of our
critiques of it, rebellions against it, and identity based on differentiation from it. We may also need
to mourn liberal democracy, avowing our ambivalent attachment to it, our need for it, our mix of love
and hostility toward it. The aim of this work is framed by the second challenge, that of devising intelligent
left strategies for challenging the neoliberal political-economic formation now taking shape and an
intelligent left countervision to this formation.
A half century ago, Marcuse argued that capitalism had eliminated a revolutionary subject (the proletariat)
representing the negation of capitalism; consequently, he insisted, the Left had to derive and cultivate
anticapitalist principles, possibilities, and agency from capitalism's constitutive outside. That is,
the Left needed to tap the desires- not for wealth or goods but for beauty, love, mental and physical
well-being, meaningful work, and peace-manifestly unmet within a capitalist order and to appeal to those
desires as the basis for rejecting and replacing the order. No longer could economic contradictions
of capitalism inherently fuel opposition to it; rather, opposition had to be founded in an alternative
table of values. Today, the problem Marcuse diagnosed has expanded from capitalism to liberal democracy:
oppositional consciousness cannot be generated from liberal democracy's false promises and hypocrisies.
The space between liberal democratic ideals and lived realities has ceased to be exploitable, because
liberal democracy itself is no longer the most salient discourse of political legitimacy and the good
life. Put the other way around, the politically exploitable hollowness in formal promises of freedom
and equality has largely vanished to the extent that both freedom and equality have been redefined by
neoliberalism. Similarly, revealed connections between political and economic actors-not merely bought
politicians but arrangements of mutual profiteering between corporate America and its political elite-do
not incite outrage at malfeasance, corruption, or injustice but appear instead as a potentially rational
set of linkages between state and economy.
Thus, from the "scandal" of Enron to the "scandal" of Vice
President Cheney delivering Iraq to Halliburton to clean up and rebuild, there is no scandal. There
is only market rationality, a rationality that can encompass even a modest amount of criminality but
also treats close state-corporate ties as a potentially positive value-maximizing the aims of each-rather
than as a conflict of interest. 18 Similarly, even as the Bush administration fails to come up with WMDs in Iraq and fails to be able to install order let alone democracy there, such deficiencies are
irrelevant to the neoliberal criteria for success in that military episode. Indeed, even the scandal
of Bush's installation as president by a politicized Supreme Court in 2000 was more or less ingested
by the American people as business as usual, an ingestion that represents a shift from the expectation
that the Supreme Court is independent of political influence to one that tacitly accepts its inclusion
in the governmentality of neoliberalism. Similarly, John Poindexter, a key figure in the Iran-Contra
affair and director of the proposed "Terrorism Information Awareness" program that would have put all
Americans under surveillance, continued to have power and legitimacy at the Pentagon until the flap
over the scheme to run a futures market on political violence in the Middle East. All three of these
projects are instances of neoliberalism's indifference to democracy; only the last forced Poindexter
into retirement.
These examples suggest that not only liberal democratic principles but democratic morality has been
largely eviscerated-in neoliberal terms, each of these "scandals" is framed as a matter of miscalculation
or political maneuvering rather than by right and wrong, truth or falsehood, institutional propriety
or impropriety. Consequently, the Left cannot count on revealed deception, hypocrisies, interlocking
directorates, featherbedding, or corruption to stir opposition to the existing regime. It cannot count
on the expectation that moral principle undergirds political action or even on consistency as a value
by which to judge state practices or aims. Much of the American public appeared indifferent to the fact
that both the Afghan and Iraqi regimes targeted by Bush had previously been supported or even built
by earlier U.S. foreign policy. It also appeared indifferent to the touting of the "liberation" of Afghan
women as one of the great immediate achievements of the overthrow of the Taliban while the overthrow
of the Baath regime set into motion an immediately more oppressive regime of gender in Iraq. The inconsistency
does not matter much, because political reasons and reasoning that exceed or precede neoliberal criteria
have ceased to matter much. This is serious political nihilism, which no mere defense of free speech
and privacy, let alone securing the right to gay marriage or an increase in the minimum wage, will reverse.
What remains for the Left, then, is to challenge emerging neoliberal governmentality in Euro-Atlantic
states with an alternative vision of the good, one that rejects homo oeconomicus as the norm of the
human and rejects this norm's correlative formations of economy, society, state, and (non)morality.
In its barest form, this would be a vision in which justice would center not on maximizing individual
wealth or rights but on developing and enhancing the capacity of citizens to share power and hence to
collaboratively govern themselves. In such an order, rights and elections would be the background rather
than token of democracy; or better, rights would function to safeguard the individual against radical
democratic enthusiasms but would not themselves signal the presence or constitute the principle of democracy.
Instead, a left vision of justice would focus on practices and institutions of popular power; a modestly
egalitarian distribution of wealth and access to institutions; an incessant reckoning with all forms
of power-social, economic, political, and even psychic; a long view of the fragility and finitude of
nonhuman nature; and the importance of both meaningful activity and hospitable dwellings to human flourishing.
However differently others might place the accent marks, none of these values can be derived from neoliberal
rationality or meet neoliberal criteria for the good.
The drive to develop and promulgate such a counterrationality-a different figuration of human beings,
citizenship, economic life, and the political-is critical both to the long labor of fashioning a more
just future and to the immediate task of challenging the deadly policies of the imperial American state.
"... In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might occur among Democrats. ..."
"... `I do not understand the pushback [against transnational causes for these events]. Do they really believe that Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, the rise of many right-wing populist parties in Europe etc. have nothing to do with economics? That suddenly all these weird nationalists and nativists got together thanks to the social media and decided to overthrow the established order? People who believe this remind me of Saul Bellow's statement that "a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is strong."' ..."
"... These are not idiomatic one-off events due to contingent political situations peculiar to each individual country. ..."
"... Something bigger is going on. If Marine LePen wins in France (and I predict she will), that will provide even more evidence. This looks like a global rebellion against globalization + neoliberal economics because the bottom 96% are realizing they're getting screwed and all the benefits are going to the top 6% of professional class + licensed professionals + top 1% in the financial robber barony. ..."
"... Because the 'soft' left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the 'hard left'. ..."
"... If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever weapons are to hand to do so . If 'left wing' options aren't available, they will choose 'right wing' ones. ..."
"... I think that the Democratic Party is unlikely to hand over power to the average man and woman in America, but I'm sure that the Republican Party is even less likely to do so; anybody who voted Republican in 2016 because it seemed the best chance of getting power for the average man and woman was played for a sucker. ..."
"... The original Nazis emerged and rose to power in a context where the Communists were trying to destroy the system, and also seeking to crush the Social-democrats; close to the opposite of the pattern you're describing. ..."
"... And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to be a battle between the 'liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning' intelligence services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. ..."
"... And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be 'let off the leash' by a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government. ..."
"... you must know why you yourself aren't doing it, and the reasons that apply to you could easily apply to other people as well. ..."
"... There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect? ..."
by Henry on January 5, 2017 A piece I wrote on Brexit and the
UK party system has
just come out
in Democracy. More than anything else, I wrote the article to get people to read Peter
Mair. I didn't know Mair at all well – he was another Irish political scientist, but was based in
various European universities and in a different set of academic networks than my own. I met him
once and liked him, and chatted briefly a couple of times after that about email. I wish I'd known
him better – his posthumously edited and published book,
Ruling the Void is the single most compelling
account I've read of what has gone wrong in European politics, and in particular what's gone wrong
for the left. It's still enormously relevant years after his death. The ever ramifying disaster that
is the British Labour party is in large part the working out of the story that Mair laid out – how
party elites became disconnected from their base, how the EU became a way to kick issues out of politics
into technocracy, and how it all went horribly wrong.
The modern Labour Party is caught in an especially unpleasant version of Mair's dilemma. Labour's
leaders tried over decades to improve the party's electoral prospects in a country where its traditional
class base was disappearing. They sought very deliberately and with some success to weaken its
party organization in order to achieve this aim. However, their success created a new governing
class within Labour, one largely disconnected from the party grassroots that it is supposed to
represent. Ed Miliband recognized this problem as party leader and tried to rebuild the party's
connection to its grassroots. However, as Mair might have predicted, there weren't any traditional
grassroots out there to cultivate. Mair argued that the leadership and the base were becoming
disengaged from each other, so that traditional parties were withering away. Labour has actually
taken this one stage further, creating a party in which the leadership and membership are at daggers
drawn, each able to stymie the other, but neither able to prevail or willing to surrender.
This has all changed. Class and ethnic and religious identities no longer provide secure
foundations for European parties, which have more and more tried to become "catchalls," appealing
to wide and diffuse groups of voters. People are not attached to parties for life anymore,
often waiting until just before Election Day to decide whom to vote for. Party membership figures
across Western Europe have shrunk by more than half in a generation.
Do you evaluate this change (on balance) positively or negatively? and why?
Also, since I'm commenting anyway, one minor query:
(Some European countries had different parties for Catholics and Protestants.)
Which countries did you have in mind? There are few European countries that have (or had) both
enough Catholics for a significant Catholic party and enough Protestants for a significant Protestant
party.
I know about the Netherlands, which had separate Catholic and Protestant parties until
the 1970s, when the Catholic party merged with the main Protestant parties (although there's
still a small Protestant party on the margins), but that's just one country.
Germany had a distinct Catholic party (but no specifically Protestant party) under the
Wilhelmine Reich and the Weimar Republic, but not the Federal Republic;
Switzerland has a Catholic-based party but no specifically Protestant-based party; where
else? (There's Northern Ireland, of course, but that's a bit different.) What am I missing?
The Labour Party is so weak that the Conservatives do not need to worry about Labour defeating
them in the next election, or perhaps in the election after that.
I don't think this is obvious, precisely because of the volatility of the situation. I remember
people saying this about the Cameron government in 2015 and I objected at the time that no-one
knew how the Brexit referendum will turn out. Now Cameron is gone and just about forgotten. It's
true that the Conservatives are still in, but it's a very different crew.
More importantly, we haven't yet seen what Brexit means, in any sense. May has been coasting
on the referendum result, and Labour has been wedged, unable to oppose the referendum outcome
and also unable to criticise May's Brexit policy because she either doesn't have one or isn't
telling. This can't continue forever (presumably not beyond March), and when the situation changes,
anything can happen.
Some scenarios where the Conservatives could come badly unstuck
(a) they put up a "have cake and eat it" proposal that is rejected so humilatingly that they
look like fools, then cave in and accept minor concessions on migration in return for a face-saving
soft Brexit
(b) hard Brexit becomes inevitable and the financial sector flees en masse
(c) train-crash Brexit with no agreement and a massive depression
The only scenarios I can see that would cement the current position are
(a) a capitulation by the EU on migration etc, with continued single market access
(b) an economically successful hard Brexit/non-fatal train crash
It seems to me that (a) is politically infeasible and (b) is economically unlikely
That's not to gloss over Labour's problems or your diagnosis, with which I generally agree.
" how party elites became disconnected from their base, how the EU became a way to kick issues
out of politics into technocracy, and how it all went horribly wrong."
This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests
that there's something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation
in any given country
The essay is excellent as we might expect, Henry. I'm not convinced that Labour had any other
choice but to elect Corbyn. Single data points are always suspect, but the decision by the Labor
bigwig (have succeeded in forgetting which) to mock 'white-van man' clearly suggests she was playing
to a constituency within Labour primed to share in a flash-sneer at the prols. I'd have
expected as much from any Tory. I have other quibbles, the decision by Labour to take a position
on the referendum and on Remain always seemed critical to forcing Labour to adopt anti-immigrant
Tory-light postures in order to have it both ways with working-class voters hostile to London
and Brussels.
More problematic is this paragraph: "Research by Tim Bale, Monica Poletti, and Paul Webb shows
that these new members tend to be well-educated and heavily left-wing. They wanted to join the
Labour Party to remake it into an unapologetically left-leaning party. However, the research suggests
that they aren't prepared to put in the hard grind. While most of them have posted about Labour
on social media or signed a petition, more than half have never attended a constituency meeting,
and only a small minority have gone door to door or delivered leaflets. They are at best a shaky
foundation for remaking the Labour Party." Your questionable decision to deploy 'they' and 'them'
muddies the reality a bit, as does your decision to rely on metrics from the past to predict future
behavior.
I take your point that failing to attend a political rally, or go door-to-door, means something
in a time when populist parties are in the 'ascent.' But as you point out this rise can only occur
because the 'old parties' have failed so badly to connect activists and members. Again, that said,
I'm still not convinced all is doom and gloom. Labour activists opposed to EU membership were
effectively gagged/shamed by the elite right up to the present. It is only now this week, that
Labour has elected to make English compulsory for new immigrants:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chuka-umunna-immigrants-should-be-made-to-learn-english-on-arrival-in-uk-classes-esol-social-a7509666.html
Labour wasn't anything but Tory-lite until Jeremy and the new influx of members. I'm not personally
in favor of the new policy. It does seem to me more Tory-lite. But the battles are now more out
in the open. My guess is that Labour will survive and will rule again, but only if the party can
persuade Scotland and Wales to remain part of the UK. Adopting Tory-lite policies is precisely
what alienated Scots Labour voters and drove them into the arms of the SNP, so that's that the
PLP gives you.
Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those
dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and greater
social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large sections
of the electorate. Strong borders and a sensible immigration policy is part of that.
@10 "This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests
that there's something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation
in any given country"
"This sounds " Yes, in general terms. Yet, the donor-class candidates could have and should
have won in Brexit and in the US.
In the case of the Brexit, I argued before and after that simply allowing Labour candidates
and members to express their own views publicly, rather than adhere to a (sufficiently unpopular)
particular policy set by Henry's elite would have negated the need to adopt anti-immigrant Tory
lite stances – a straddle that fooled nobody and drove Labour voters to UKIP in not insignificant
numbers.
In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class
candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively
run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse
of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might
occur among Democrats.
Had, however, the Clinton campaign actually placed the candidate in Wisconsin, in Michigan,
and in Pennsylvania rather than bank on turning off voters, we'd be looking at a veneer of stability
covering up the rot now on display.
The point being: there's always something transnational going on. I explained Brexit to my
own students as a regional rebellion against London, as much as Brussels. Henry's essay is good
on Brexit and UKIP. Both the US and UK outcomes could have been avoided.
Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those
dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and
greater social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large
sections of the electorate.
If Britain were to enter a period of jobs, housing, and respect for all, with greater social
and economic mobility, it would be reasonable to expect most people to be pleased; but there's
no evidence that anything of the kind is happening, or is going to happen.
"The PLP didn't opt to get along, they opted to fight, and got mauled."
They lost the battle but are winning the war.
Corbyn has been keeping a very low profile since his re-election, proposals for reform such
as mandatory reselection seem to have been dropped, and the left of the party is squabbling over
whether it remains a Corbyn fan club or an active agent for the democratisation of the party.
Party policy remains inchoate and receives little media publicity.
Michels hasn't been disproved just yet, and I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform,
short of a major split.
I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform, short of a major split.
There are plenty of examples from the UK and other countries, including the Labour Party itself,
of parties undergoing major splits, and the evidence doesn't suggest that the experience is conducive
to lasting reform.
Yes, after the second election, the PLP have opted for the long game, with the expectation
that a disastrous General Election (one of the reasons why the talk up the possibility of an early
one at every opportunity) will see a return to "normality". In the meantime, the strategy is to
make Corbyn an irrelevance, hence the lack of coverage in the MSM, except for a drip of mocking
articles of which today's by Gaby Hinsliff in the Graun is typical.
Corbyn and his organisation don't help themselves but, faced with such irredentism, they have
little leverage on the situation.
You don't make a single mention of Scotland, which is a massive omission to make. (And frankly,
it's a particularly odd mistake for an Irishman: it's supposed to be the English who blithely
assume that where they live is coterminous with the whole United Kingdom).
I like a lot of the essay, but it's gravely weakened by the fact that you're prepared to discuss
things like political elites and class allegiance- and, in a European context, religious allegiance-
but you don't mention national or regional political identities. You really can't leave those
things out and give an accurate picture of current British politics.
I agree that a Labour revival isn't coming along soon. The problem is that a lot of people in
Labour think and hope that it might, and that makes them very unwilling to start thinking about
electoral alliances, because they are committed to standing candidates everywhere.
Labour, imo, needs some further and serious bad shocks to get them into the frame of mind that
could make an anti-Tory alliance possible. Once it is, FPTP could turn from the secret of Tory
success into the mechanism for their destruction. But 2020 might be too soon.
Forming coalitions and alliances requires negotiation and making trade-offs and active listening:
unfortunately there are probably too many people in the Labour Party who would find that very
difficult. They appear not to be willing to negotiate even with their own members.
I really can't see the obsession with an 'anti-Tory alliance'. Given that it involves allying
with a party who recently were effectively part of a pro-Tory alliance, it only works in any sense
if you think that the Tories have morphed into the far-right, or if you have a well-worked out
programme of constitutional reform you want to implement.
The bit that concerns involving the SNP particularly baffles me. Given that they have been
at daggers drawn with the Labour Party in Scotland, and that they are highly unlikely to step
aside from any of their 90-odd % of Scottish seats to give their alliance partner a few more MPs,
it seems a non-starter. This impression is magnified when you consider that the spectre of a Labour-SNP
minority government was thought to have scared off potential Labour voters at the last election.
Corbyn is just awful. A toxic mix of naivity, ego, and blundering stupidity.
His concept of role is almost non-existant. He walks onto a train without having pre-booked,
finds it difficult getting two seats together, and decides on the spot that all trains must be
nationalised. He spots a man sleeping rough and decides ending rough sleeping is his top priority.
He blunders around like he's just landed from another planet, sees an injustice and thinks he,
Jeremy, is the first person ever to see such a terrible thing, and decides on the spot to make
it his top priority to eliminate this evil by the simple policy expedient of saying he will eliminate
it.
He doesn't do policy in any recognisable sense. He does positioning statements which he assembles
with mates and puts on his personal web site. Take his "Manifesto for Digital Democracy". It claims
to be a policy, but in reality its just a list of Things That Jeremy Thinks Are Good. It doesn't
appear to have gone through a discussion process or approval process. It is not clear if this
is a party policy or just a personal document.
His position on Brexit is a disaster. On the issue which is coming to define politics in the
UK he is neither clearly for it nor clearly against it. He gives the impression he finds it a
dull subject. He is at best second choice for everyone, first choice for no-one; at worst, he
is an irrelevance.
Worse, he appears completely oblivious to the power games being played out in his name. Neighbouring
constituencies are to be carved up so Jeremy's seat can be preserved. His son Seb is given a job
in John McDonnell's office. He is effectively held captive by a North London clique who look after
him, tell him he's great, and then use his "policies" as a checklist against which to assess conformance
of MPs to The One True Corbyn Way and pursue vendettas.
His personality is completely unsuited to the job of Leader, let alone Prime Minister. Even
if you believe in Jeremy's policies you need to find someone else to implement them because he
lacks any of the requisite capabilities.
Nothing is going to magically get better.
No matter how bad things get, under Jeremy they can always get worse.
'Unofficially limited' dies give one the wiggle room to assert just about anything. It's a way
of lying which can't be rebutted. If you say 'but there were 3 candidates', he'll respond that
he did say 'unofficially' limited. If you say 'but two of them did quite well', he'll respond
that he did, after all, say 'unofficially' limited. So he can take a case where there was actually
a competitive race, and make it seem like there was never a competitive race. Of course, his post
is, officially, approved by the moderators
While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than
half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door
or delivered leaflets.
There's a strong feel of "young folks aren't doing politics the way my generation used to do
politics" about this, especially given the activities you're complaining they're not doing. Is
posting on social media achieving more or less than posting leaflets to fill up people's recycling
bins?
kidneystones @14 claims: "I explained Brexit to my own students as a regional rebellion against
London, as much as Brussels."
If that's correct, why did we get: [1] Trump/Sanders in the U.S., [2] Brexit in the UK, [3]
repudiation of Matteo Renzi along with the referendum in Italy, [4] a probable win for Marine
LePen in France (wait for it, you'll be oh-so-shocked when it happens)?
`I do not understand the pushback [against transnational causes for these events]. Do they
really believe that Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, the rise of many right-wing populist parties in Europe
etc. have nothing to do with economics? That suddenly all these weird nationalists and nativists
got together thanks to the social media and decided to overthrow the established order? People
who believe this remind me of Saul Bellow's statement that "a great deal of intelligence can be
invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is strong."'
I would suggest kidneystones is simply wrong. These are not idiomatic one-off events due
to contingent political situations peculiar to each individual country.
Something bigger is going on. If Marine LePen wins in France (and I predict she will),
that will provide even more evidence. This looks like a global rebellion against globalization
+ neoliberal economics because the bottom 96% are realizing they're getting screwed and all the
benefits are going to the top 6% of professional class + licensed professionals + top 1% in the
financial robber barony.
@43 Actually, I make no claim against trans-national developments. Quite the opposite.
Elsewhere, I've written that we are dealing with a world-wide tension between advocates of
globalization and their opponents. Where you differ is in determinations and outcomes, which I
argue are based on the actors, actions and dynamics of each state and which are, as such, unique.
There is nothing at all inevitable about any of this and JQ very sensibly reminds us of the volatility
of the present moment.
What is clear to me at least is that ideas and actions matter. Labour need not have decided
in 2014, or so, to ban members from advocating either a referendum, or leaving the EU. I dug all
this up at the time and the timeline is easy enough to recreate.
Austria stepped back from the brink, as did Greece when it repudiated Golden Dawn. The French
right and left worked together to keep the presidency out of the hands of the FN, although it's
less clear how that successful these efforts will be in the future.
The next few years will be telling. I see no reliable evidence to indicate good fortune, or
end times. The safest bet is more of the same, repackaged, with all the predictable shrieks and
yells about 'never before' etc. that usually accompanies the screwing of the lower orders. The
donor class is utterly dedicated to retaining power. I think JQ is spot on regarding alliances.
We didn't come this far just to have the wheels fall off.
The populism of the right (which I support in large measure) points the way. I'd have preferred
to see a populism of the left win, but too many are/were unwilling to burn down establishment
with the same willingness and enthusiasm of those on the right. Indeed, this thread has several
vocal defenders of an utterly corrupt Democratic party apparatus busted cold for colluding to
steal the nomination. There's a reason donors forked over 1.2 billion to the Clinton crime family
and it wasn't to help Hillary turn over power to the average woman and man in America.
Because the 'soft' left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have
worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the 'hard left'.
'High points' in this 'epic battle' include Neil Kinnock's purging of Militant, the failure
of the trade union establishment to (in any meaningful sense) support the miners' strike (1984),
the failure of the Democratic party establishment to get behind McGovern (1972), Carter's rejections
of Keynesianism (and de facto espousal of monetarism) in roughly 1977, Blair's war on 'Bennism',
the tolerance of/espousal of Reaganite anti-Communism by most sectors of the British left by the
late 1980s/early 1990s, and so on.
So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations
(i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other 'radical' left wing option
(and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.
What the 'soft left' hoped is that, with 'radical' left wing options off the table, the proles
would STFU and stop voting, or at least continue to vote for a 'nice' 'respectable' soft left
party.
What they failed to predict is that (as they were designed to do) neo-liberal policies immiserated
the working class, leaving that class angrier than ever before.
And so, the working class wanted to lash out, to register their anger, their fury. But, as
noted before, the 'traditional' way to do that was off the table. Ergo: Trump, Brexit etc.
If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get
the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever
weapons are to hand to do so . If 'left wing' options aren't available, they will choose 'right
wing' ones.
We have all read this story book before: the 'social democrats' connived with the German state
to crush the 1918/1919 working class uprising, and then were led, blubbering, to Dachau 20 years
later. One wonders how many of them reflected that they themselves might be partially responsible
for their fate.
In the same way: the 'soft left' connived and collaborated with the Right to crush the 'radical
left' in the US and the UK (and worldwide) and then were SHOCKED!! and AMAZED!! that the Right
don't really like them very much and were only using them as a tool to defeat the organised
forces of the working class, and that with the 'radicals' out of the way, the parties of the 'soft
left' (with no natural allies left) can now be picked off one by one, at the Right's leisure.
I think that the Democratic Party is unlikely to hand over power to the average man and
woman in America, but I'm sure that the Republican Party is even less likely to do so; anybody
who voted Republican in 2016 because it seemed the best chance of getting power for the average
man and woman was played for a sucker.
(Incidentally, if 'the donor class' means the same thing as 'rich people', wouldn't it be clearer
to refer to them as 'rich people'? and if 'the donor class' means something different from 'rich
people', what constitutes the difference?)
Any tirade against Corbyn is entirely pointless, because you're not addressing the reasons
why he was elected, or what he represents. I think most of those that support him have a varying
degree of criticism, and many would prefer a more able leader. The problem for Labour is that
there is not a more able leader available that understands the need to ditch Third Way nonsense.
If any of the PLP "big beasts" had done this in any meaningful way, instead of plotting against
him, they would be leader by now.
So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations
(i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other 'radical' left wing option
(and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.
In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.
It's true that the option of voting Communist no longer exists, because the Communist Party has
stopped running candidates, but that seems to be a realistic response by the party to its derisory
level of voter support. If there are people who still want to follow the Communist line, what
they would have done in 2016 is turn out to vote against Trump (that's what the party was urging
on its website; the information is still accessible).
In Italy, on the other hand, it's true that large numbers of voters supported Communist candidates
in the 1950s and 1960s; and in Italy, voters still have the option of supporting Communist candidates,
but the numbers of those who choose to do so have become much smaller.
People who voted for Trump weren't doing so because they were denied the option of voting Communist;
and people who voted 'No' in the Italian referendum weren't doing so because they were denied
the option of voting Communist.
If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the
Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever
weapons are to hand to do so.
The original Nazis emerged and rose to power in a context where the Communists were trying
to destroy the system, and also seeking to crush the Social-democrats; close to the opposite of
the pattern you're describing.
Yes, and another situation where 'mostpeople' have failed to follow the logic of a situation
through. Many intellectuals can see that it is not in the EU's interests for the UK to prosper
out of the EU lest it 'encourager les autres'. Fewer have pointed out that this works the other
way, too. It is no longer in the UK's interests for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue),
and a new nationalist orientated Conservative government might make moves in this direction.
As Jeremy Corbyn alone has had the perspicacity to point out, insofar as there is a political
movement in the UK that is most closely aligned with Donald Trump's Republicanism, it is the Conservatives
under May (the UK's latest intervention vis a vis the UN and Israel was a blatant attempt to curry
favour with the new American administration).
And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to
be a battle between the 'liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning' intelligence
services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. Assuming Trump wins (not a certainty)
it is possible/likely that Trump will use the newly 'energised' intelligence services to pursue
a more 'American nationalism' orientated policy, and it is likely that this new approach will
see the EU being viewed as much more of an economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for
the containment of Russia, as it is primarily seen at the moment.
And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they
did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be 'let off the leash' by
a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government.
It is not implausible, therefore, that the US and the UK will use what 'soft' power they have
to weaken the EU and sow division wherever they can. And of course the EU has enough problems
of its own, such that these tactics might work. Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will
simply not exist by 2050, or at least, not in the form that we have it at present.
"One of the consequences of the phenomenon you're discussing is that volatility is incredibly
high. I'd never before seen a politically party as totally, irredeemably fecked as Fianna Fail
in 2010, but look at them now."
I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental
parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative, and even with 20%
of the vote Fianna Fail had enough of a profile that an opportunistic campaign of opposition could
lead to them recovering their fortunes to some extent at the next election. I suspect that even
PASOK and New Democracy will receive a similar bounce at the next Greek election.
These kind of stances usually involve avoiding too close a link to certain social groups and
maintaining a distance from potentially principled and activist party memberships. This explains
the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel that ideological
commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce the party's freedom
of maneuver, damaging their chances of capitalizing electorally on Tory failure.
Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should support
such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are evil. And
they then wonder why many people are alienated from politics.
"Fewer have pointed out that this works the other way, too. It is no longer in the UK's interests
for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue) "
Interesting, I'd not seen that elsewhere. I'd be pretty certain that this is the objective
of people like Hannan.
".. and it is likely that this new approach will see the EU being viewed as much more of an
economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for the containment of Russia, as it is primarily
seen at the moment."
Maybe less to do with competition than regulation? The Trump view is presumably that anything
that restricts continued plundering of the economy, especially transnational institutions.
@Igor
"I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental
parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative "
"This explains the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel
that ideological commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce
the party's freedom of manoeuvre, damaging their chances of capitalising electorally on Tory failure."
"Perhaps these parties are in fact in sync with global political trends because they are
all nationalist parties and nationalism is clearly on the rise at the moment. "
Yes, they are clearly part of the nationalist turn. Or at least I assume that is true of Plaid
Cymru and the SNP, but it definitely is of Sinn Fein, who are policy wise a leftist party, but
ideologically first and foremost a nationalist one. You can see this in polling on their support
base, which tends to be more reactionary* and culturally conservative than even the irish centre
right parties, yet Sinn Fein as a political party often takes position (such as their strong support
for gay marriage) in opposition to the preferences of a large chunk of their base.
This Is particularly the case with immigration, where for going on a decade local politicians
have noted that this is one of the concerns they often hear in constituency work that they don't
make a priority in national politics. It's difficult to (as Sinn Fein does) see yourself (rightly
or wrongly) as the nationalism of a historically oppressed minority, and to support the rights
of that minority in the north (I'm making no normative claims on the correctness of their interpretation)
and then attack other minorities. This is why they're institutionally , and seemingly ideologically,
commited to diversity and multiculturalism in the south of ireland, while also being fundamentally
a nationalist party. (Question is (1) does this posture survive the current leadership , and (2)
is it enough to stave off explicitly nativist parties**) Afaict this is also true of the snp,
I don't know about PC.
But there's still a lot of poison in it. "Anti englishness" , which a lot of this, (at least
implicitly") can encourage , might be more acceptable than anti immigrant sentiment, but it's
still qualitatively the same mind set.
*this is 're a big chunk if their base, but by no means the full story.
**basically what happens to the independent vote, which is (afaict)possibly the real populist
turn in ireland.
At the risk of sounding like I'm simply saying 'but Ireland is special!' I think the (partial)
resurgence of Fianna Fail is a bit of a sui generis phenomenon. Irish politics have historically
been tribal in a way that makes UK voters look like an exemplar of rational choice theory. It
is only the very slightest exaggeration to say that my father's vote in every general election
he has participated in was determined in 1922, several decades before his birth – I'm sure other
Irish Timberteers have experienced similar. Even then, FF is still far away from the kind of hegemonic
dominance it enjoyed prior to the crash – when a poll result of 38% would have been regarded as
disastrous – and the FF/FG combined vote total is still struggling to hit 60%. While I'd agree
that this looks like pretty strong evidence for the 'resurgence of the right' thesis of European
politics at first glance, the failure of the left in Ireland is more due to a) Sinn Fein and Labour
being deeply imperfect vessels for the transmission of left-wing politics (albeit for very different
reasons) b) the low-cost of entry into the Irish political system due to PR-STV leading to a splintering
of the political left.
Additionally, the attempt by former Fine Gael deputy Lucinda Creighton to tap into the supposed
right-wing resurgence via the Renua party ended in an electoral curb-stomping as comprehensive
as it was satisfying to witness. So I don't think a surge in popularity for 'the right' is what's
going on here.
It should also be noted that Michael Martin is an infinitely more talented politician than
Enda Kenny (even though that is a bit of a 'world's tallest dwarf' comparison), and has explicitly
positioned FF to the left of FG, but also as a fundamentally 'centrist' and 'moderating' force.
In other words, he's pursuing a political strategy similar to that of Tony Blair, and is reaping
political dividends for doing so. Shocking, I know! (And FWIW – I have a deep, fundamental dislike
of FF and all it stands for and would never consider voting for them, lest anyone think I'm here
to carry water for Martin).
Unfortunately, for those arguing the 'Jeremy Corbyn is only getting clobbered in the polls
because of the perfidy of the PLP/the biased right-wing media/dark forces within MI5' the Irish
experience doesn't offer much comfort. After 2010 the various hard-left groupuscules in Ireland
put aside their factional differences and were able to mount a relatively united front in two
successive elections, and under leaders like Richard Boyd Barrett, Joe Higgins and Clare Daly.
All of these individuals are relatively charismatic, as well as possessing strong skills as political
communicators (attributes even Corbyn's most ardent defenders would admit he is lacking in).
They also had an issue, in the form of water charges, that allowed them to develop an extremely
clear, very popular political position which resonated with large swathes of the electorate in
every region of the country (again, something UK Labour is severely missing).
The results? Just over 5% of the vote in the last election for a total of 10 TDs, and basically
zero influence over the actual governance of the country.
This is not because of some vast array of structural forces and barriers are arrayed against
them (as discussed above, PR-STV makes the barrier to entry into Irish politics very low). It
is because, as with Corbyn, the electorate neither trusts them to competently administer the
state, nor supports their vision for its future socio-economic development. You can argue
that the electorate are ignorant, or mistaken in this regard, but given that Corbyn has at various
points in his career argued that East Germany, Cuba and Venezuela represent optimal socio-economic
systems, I would argue that they're probably right on this particular question.
In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.
The effect is not direct. It comes down to the fact that for the average working person, there
two main ways they could be significantly better or worse off; wages could be higher, or tax could
be lower.
One of those is a thing that is promised by political parties, one isn't.
The actual rate of tax, or the feasibility or secondary effects of changing, don't really matter.
Leaving the EU, whatever else it means, means not paying tax to it. A belief that the tax paid
to the EU ends up as a net benefit to the payee requires a level of trust in the system that is
easy to argue against.
The US has lower taxes than any other developed democracy, and so presumably wouldn't carry
on functioning as one if you cut further. Which means to deliver further tax cuts, you need a
politician who doesn't understand, doesn't care, or just possibly is in hock to those who wish
the US harm.
Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal
than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.
Kidneystones: "Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years,
effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one."
Seconding Belle here – 'effectively run' means 'defeated by another, and forced to work your
way back up'.
The Labour Party as a functioning opposition seems to have vanished – seriously: what did the
general public hear from them over the last year or so apart from party infighting and accusations
of anti-semitism?
I still support many of Corbyn's policies and ironically
so does much of the general public . But he lost my trust with his ridiculous wavering over
Brexit and ineffectiveness as a politician in general.
I actually don't think it would be too hard to organize an effective opposition considering
the fact that the Tories have no idea at all what they are doing and their policies are not in
the interest of the vast majority of people. But you have to hit them over the head with this
on a daily basis and I have no idea why nobody does it.
Well I wouldn't say it was entirely pointless. It is important to establish a baseline, and
in this case the baseline is that Corbyn's leadership is most unlikely to deliver electoral success
for Labour.
But your main point is a fair one, so time to try a different tack.
Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right. The current conservative
party is running a significant deficit, is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point
of use, has implemented a living wage, has introduced same-sex marriage, and at the last election
touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance. all these policies were traditionally
associated with left-wing parties.
Policy is free, and it isn't particularly sticky. Given those features, policy is not a particularly
reliable feature. No private company would make policy its chief USP as it can easily be replicated
and customers show little loyalty based on policy. So if policy is not a route to political identity,
what is?
What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests paramount
as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy is implemented
in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the difficult and complex
world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their interests. The modern
Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just managing families
– dead centre in her Downing Street speech. And so far she has very high levels of public support.
By contrast, Labour doesn't seem to know who it represents, who it is batting for, and what
it wants for them. It doesn't give clear signals about where British workers stand in its hierarchies
of priorities. Until someone stands up and clearly articulates a vision of ambition for the mass
of the people then Labour will get out-fought in all significant political debates.
Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will simply not exist by 2050, or at least,
not in the form that we have it at present.
What a weak and trivial assertion.
It is possible that the US will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It
is possible that the UK will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It is possible
that the Conservative Party [the Democratic Party] [the Labour Party] [the Republican Party] will
not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It is possible that MI5 [MI6] [the CIA]
[the NSA] will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. [Lather, rinse, repeat.]
'The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being
contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.' (Winston Churchill,
A History Of The English-Speaking Peoples )
@52
Yeah maybe I should clarify that. Obviously much of the UK's trade is done with the EU so in that
sense the UK does have an economic interest in the EU prospering, but only in terms of
individual states. The UK (arguably) does not have an interest, any more in the EU as a unified
political/economic entity and if, as seems plausible, the UK now moves in a more Trumpian
direction, this tendency might well continue.
@55 Your evidence argues against your own argument. You have persistently argued, across many
CT threads, that the only and sole reason that Labour is doing badly right now is because of Corbyn.
And then the evidence you provide is that the left is doing badly in Ireland too. Do you see the
problem?
The fact is that if there was any serious alternative to Corbyn, the PLP would have put him
or her forward in the recent leadership election, and s/he would probably have won. But there
is no such candidate because the problems the Labour party face are much more deeply rooted than
the current crisis caused by the Corbyn leadership and these problems are faced by almost every
centre-left political party in the West . (The 'radical' left, as I pointed out above, having
essentially vanished in almost all of the developed world).
Let's not forget that as recently as the late 1990s, almost every country in Europe was governed
by the centre left. Now, almost none* of them are. That's the scale of the collapse. Indeed the
usual phrase for this phenomenon is 'Pasokification'. Not Corbynification (at least not yet).
Corbyn certainly doesn't have a solution to this problem but then nobody else does either,
so there you go.
All elections for the last few decades:
Many people in the UK: "Can we have our share of the benefits of globalisation?"
Tacit cartel: "After the City has taken the lion's share and we've had our cut, there might be
something left that you can have."
Referendum:
Tacit cartel: "Vote Remain or everybody will lose the benefits of globalisation!"
It's obviously in the interests of (hard) Brexiteers that the EU should fail, but it's not clear
what they can do to promote this end, except in the sense that hard Brexit itself will be mutually
damaging. Supporting ideological soulmates like Le Pen might help but could be a two edged sword
(do Le Pen voters welcome British support?)
By contrast, there's a great deal that the EU can do to harm the UK at modest cost, for example,
by objecting whenever they try to carry over existing WTO arrangements made under EU auspices.
Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should
support such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are
evil.
Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me.
Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal
than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.
It's commonplace for minimum wages to be increased without Communists playing any role.
Yes, there's a definite thread of wanting to make the EU fail from the Brexiters (at the same
time as believing that it's going to fail anyway, which is why we should get out). As you say,
it's not clear what the UK could do to make this happen, especially from the outside pissing in.
Vice versa, whatever "the EU" thinks about wanting the UK to fail, "the EU" can't do much about
it, and the interests of the member states' governments may or may not be the same. On the other
hand, if there's one way to get them to respond with one voice, the UK attempting to damage Germany's
relationship with France might be it.
What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests
paramount as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy
is implemented in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the
difficult and complex world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their
interests. The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market
– Just managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech.
Anybody who thinks that the Conservatives are going to hold paramount the interests of 'just
about managing' families has been played for a sucker.
Corbyn, like Trump, is the consequence – not the cause of the some twenty years of failed policies.
Vastly more popular than Corbyn isn't saying much. Some 20 percent of those who pulled the lever
in November for Trump don't believe he's qualified for his new position.
Henry's essay does a good job, I think, of identifying the general problem Labour faces. As
for the leadership, it's going go be extremely difficult to find a senior Labour PLP big beast
who did not vote for the Iraq war/Blairites, or who did not oppose even the referendum on Brexit,
not to mention Leave. Both of these issues are deal-breakers, it seems, for some of the more active
members still remaining in Labour. Left-leaning Labour voters, especially those in Scotland, are
unhappy with Tory-lite and with the pro-war positions of the Blairites. Labour voters hostile
to London generally (many in Wales), and to the focus on Europe, rather than depressed regions
of Britain, are unlikely to rally around PLP figures who spent much of the run-up to the vote
calling Leave supporters closet racists.
Actions and decisions have consequences and the discussions that seem to distress a few here
and there (not to mention Labour's low-standing in the polls) are both long overdue and essential
if Labour plans on offering a coherent platform on anything. Running on the NHS and education
and even housing was fine for a while, and might still be so. Intervening in Syria, Libya, and
Iraq complicates matters considerably, as does forcing Labour supporters to adhere to either side
of the Remain/Leave case.
A little civility and good will here and there would do a world of good, but I'm aware that
discussion is better suited to Henry's earlier post on science fiction.
"It's obviously in the interests of (hard) Brexiteers that the EU should fail, but it's not clear
what they can do to promote this end, except in the sense that hard Brexit itself will be mutually
damaging."
I don't think this is right. Australia has neighbours that we aren't in a trade and currency
and migration zone with, but I don't think Australia wants these countries to fail economically
or any other way. I don't see why Britain would want the EU to fail - the UK is better off being
neighbours with stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out
of the EU I would think .??
"While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than
half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door
or delivered leaflets."
My observations is that people do more voluntary work of this hands on kind with non-profit
advocacy groups than political parties.
Maybe as the major political parties became more similar, and weren't polarised in the sense
they were in the post-war era to the 80s, people prefer to volunteer for specific causes they
believe in, rather than for major political parties.
It's not 'Britain' that wants the EU to fail; it's the people who were strong supporters of
UK withdrawal from the EU who want that, because to them failure of the EU would provide vindication,
or at least a plausible appearance of it.
you must know why you yourself aren't doing it, and the reasons that apply to you could easily
apply to other people as well.
I wasn't aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.
There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in
the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?
Seriously, I don't see that. Now there might be a big media conspiracy to drown out these voices,
but I think it's more plausible that the current Labour leadership is just not very good at this
game.
'I don't see why Britain would want the EU to fail - the UK is better off being neighbours with
stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out of the EU I would
think .??'
Yeah just to be absolutely precise (again) I don't think the UK would ever want the EU to fail,
exactly. But if the perception gains ground that the EU is trying to shaft the UK (and remember
it's in the EU's interests to do just that) 'tit for tat' moves can spiral out of control and
might be politically popular.
The joker in the pack is the new Trump Presidency. Almost all American Presidents since the
war have been (either de facto or de jure) pro-EU for reasons of realpolitik. Trump might go either
way but we know he holds grudges. In recent months Angela Merkel chose to give Trump veiled lessons
on human rights, whereas the May administration has done its utmost to ditch all its previous
'opinions' and fawn all over him.Who is Trump likely to like most?
If the UK goes to Trump and begs for help in its economic war with the EU, Trump might listen.
More generally (and a propos of nothing, more or less), it might be 'number magic' but at least
since the late 19th century 'Western' history tends to divide into 30 year blocks (more or less).
You had the 40 year bloc between the Franco-Prussian war and 1914. Then of course the 30 years
of chaos between 1914 and 1945. Then the Trente Glorieuses between 1945 and 1975. Finally we had
the era of the 'two neos': neoliberalism at home, and neoconservatism abroad (AKA the 'let them
eat war' period) between 1976 and 2006.
We now seem to be moving into a new era of Neo-Nationalism, with a concommitant suspicion of
trans-national entities (e.g. the EU), a rise in interest in economic protectionism, and increasing
suspicion of immigration. Needless to say, this is not a Weltanschauung that makes things easy
either for the Left or for Liberals. One might expect both the soft and hard right to thrive,
on the other hand.
"Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me."
The problem is that merely asserting that the Tories are bad does not necessarily mean that
people will (or even should) automatically assume that you are a viable or less evil alternative.
Indeed, the response of the Labour Party's leading lights after the 2015 election was to minimise
the distance between themselves and the Tories, and their actions during the 'interregnum' between
Miliband and Corbyn demonstrated that they were quite willing to connive with evil in the shape
of Tory welfare policy as they assumed it would appease 'aspirational voters'.
This is the crux of the divide within the Labour Party. Corbyn's political career has concentrated
on defending those at home or abroad who cannot or find it difficult to defend themselves. The
majority of Labour's career politicians argue that these people are politically marginal and defending
their interests will not win elections or achieve political power. To some extent they have a
point, but they fail to acknowledge that their own brand of cynical opportunism has alienated
not just many Labour members but also many potential voters.
The accusations of anti-Semitism and sympathy for dictators made by Corbyn's enemies were so
virulent not just in an attempt to smear his reputation, but also to try and salve their own consciences,
having thrown so many of their moral scruples aside in an increasing futile quest to secure the
support of the mythical median voter.
"Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right."
You what?
I would have thought that policy, by which I mean actually implemented policies and actions,
with real effects, rather than rhetoric, sound-bites or general bullshit, is precisely how we
determine if a party is left or right.
As for the remainder of that paragraph:
"The current conservative party is running a significant deficit "
As any decent economist, and even George Osborne, will tell you, the deficit is an outcome
of the economy, not under the direct control of the chancellor so, despite the rhetoric, it's
not really meaningful to use as a policy target. Further, IIRC, in the history of modern advanced
economies, I believe they have run deficits in something like 98% of years, so the presence of
a deficit is hardly unusual if you're in government.
" is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point of use "
This is just a bullshit phrase and, in the context of actual policy, entirely meaningless.
The Tory party has a long term project to privatise large sections of the NHS, and is currently
driving it into the ground as a means to this end. New Labour laid the foundations for this to
happen, so is equally to blame. No self-respecting left party would go anywhere near those policies.
" at the last election touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance."
More sound-bites. Nothing is delivered. Believe it or not, the state spends money with this
aim all of the time. The scope of what new spending is to be delivered is likely to be small.
The other items sound like you think that we are still in the centrist liberal nirvana of Blair/Clegg/Cameron
where we were governed by managerialist technocrats, concerned with "what works", delivering much
the same policy no matter who was elected, only competing with each other on the basis of media
platitudes. But that has caused massive resentment, failed, and is the reason for Brexit and Corbyn.
Precisely because none of those parties were delivering policies that benefited most people.
Indeed, I think that you will find that 600,000 Labour Party members believe that there is,
or rather should be, a big dividing line in policy between themselves and the Tory Party.
"The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just
managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech."
This reads like it has come directly from Central Office. Do you really believe that the Tories
give two hoots about "just managing families"? Did Hammond reduce Osborne's austerity plan in
any way in the last Budget?
Labour, as a whole, certainly doesn't seem to know who it represents ATM. There are multiple
reasons for that: an irredentist PLP, a media sympathetic to the PLP and determined to trivialise
or ignore Corbyn, and the disorganisation and incoherence of Corbyn and his organisation amongst
them. But deposing Corbyn and returning to neoliberal bullshit won't solve the reasons why he
exists.
Brexit has not happened yet, so it can be whatever you want it to be: that freedom to project
counterfactuals tends to accentuate the centrifugal not the consensual as far as diversity of
opinion is concerned. I actually think Corbyn is unusually wise for a Labour leader to mumble
and fumble a lot at this stage. If it is a personal failing, it is appropriate to circumstances.
The Tories have given themselves a demolition job to do. If your opponent is handling dynamite,
best not to get close and certainly a bad idea to try to snatch it from them.
From the standpoint of Labour constituencies like Corbyn's own in North London, taking The
City down a peg or three would possibly be a means of relief, but if any Brexit negotiating "event"
triggered an exodus of financial sector players the immediate political fallout would be akin
to the sky falling and certainly would cause consternation among Tory donor groups not that supportive
of May's brand. And, failing to invoke Article 50 is likely to be corrosive to the Tories in ways
that benefit Labour as much as the Liberal Democrats only if Labour refrains from expressions
of hostility to Leave voters - a point too subtle for some Blairites, apparently.
There are a lot of different ways for Brexit to sink the Tory ship. May could be forced to
procrastinate on invoking Article 50. Invoking Article 50 by Royal Prerogative could bring on
a constitutional crisis, or at least a dispute over whether Article 50 has been invoked at all
in a way that satisfies the Treaty. Having invoked, the EU may well step in their own dog poop,
with overtly hostile or simply opportunistic gambits, underestimating the costs imo but otherwise
as JQ suggests.
The whole negotiating scheme will almost certainly run aground on sheer complexity and the
unworkable system of decision-making in the European Council. That could result in procrastination
in an endless series of extensions that keep Britain effectively in for years and years. Or, one
side or both could just let the clock run out, with or without formally leaving negotiations.
Meanwhile, at home, in addition to The City, Scotland and Ireland are going to be nervous, possibly
hysterical.
I suppose if you think the EU is fine just as it is, it is easy to overlook the glaring defects
in its design, particularly the imperviousness to reformist, adaptive politics. The EU looks to
go down with the neoliberal ship - hell, it is the neoliberal ship! I suppose the sensible Labour
position on the EU would be a set of reform proposals that would paper over different viewpoints
within the Labour Party, but that is not possible, because EU reform is not possible, which is
why Brexit is the agenda. Corbyn's instincts seem right to me; Labour should not prematurely oppose
Brexit alienating Leave voters nor should it start a love-fest for an EU that might very shortly
make itself very ugly toward Britain.
The Euro certainly and the EU itself may well break before the next General Election in Britain
opening up policy possibilities for Tories or Labour that can scarcely be imagined now. It is
not inconceivable to me that Scandanavia, Netherlands and Switzerland might be persuaded to form
a downsized EU2 sans Euro with Britain and a reluctant Ireland.
In my view, Corbyn as a political personality is something of a stopped clock, but as others
have pointed out, Labour like other center-left neoliberal parties have been squandering all their
credibility in post-modern opportunism. A stopped clock is right more often than one perpetually
fast or slow.
Labour has a chance to remake itself as a membership party while the Tories play with Brexit
c4 (PE-4). Membership support is what distinguishes Labour from the Liberals and transforming
Labour into a new Liberal party is apparently what Blair had in mind. Let Brexit mature as an
issue and let Labour try out the alternative model of an active membership base.
I wasn't aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.
You're not, of course. But when you wrote 'I have no idea why nobody does it', it wasn't immediately
clear to me that what you meant was 'I have no idea why the Labour leadership doesn't do it' (where
'it' referred back to 'hit them over the head with this', and 'them' referred back to 'the vast
majority of people' and 'this' referred back to 'the fact that the Tories have no idea at all
what they are doing and their policies are not in the interest of the vast majority of people').
There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the
interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?
Seriously, I don't see that.
Perhaps that's a result of where you've chosen to look. Seriously, where have you looked? have
you, for example, looked at the Labour Party's website?
Igor Belanov
If you think Labour is just as evil as the Conservatives, then obviously you have no motivation
to support Labour against the Conservatives.
Is that what you think, that Labour is just as evil as the Conservatives?
Sidenote to J-D @ 8 on parties with religious identification
The disappearance of religious affiliation or identity as an organizing principle in Europe
is interesting. You might recall that the British Tory Party was an Anglican Party, committed
to establishment and the political disability of Catholics and Dissenters, as defining elements
of their credo. Despite the extreme decline in religious observance in Britain, I imagine there
remain strong traces of religious identity in British party identification patterns.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Greek Orthodox Church plays a political role in Greece and Cyprus,
though the current SYRIZA government is somewhat anti-clerical. Anti-clerical doctrines have been
revived in France by tensions with Muslims.
"... The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency ..."
"... No doubt. But the Wall St. Dems are going to keep blaming Bernie Bros and the Russians. And they'll keep helping themselves to that sweet corporate payola. ..."
"... Talk about pushing ahead with TPP, this piece is jaw dropping. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/tpp-how-obama-traded-away_b_13872926.html?section=us_politics ..."
"... I see it as karma. TPP may have been the worst thing ever tried by a US President, to date. I didn't realize that so many people understood it though, at least I didn't get that impression in central California. ..."
"... And not just Hillary Clinton. The whole Democratic party. Obama has been a disaster for Democrats. There is a piece in the WAPO by Matt Stoller today discussing just this issue. ..."
"... Excellent point. Basically will corporations pass along increased costs to consumers? ..."
"... Take a look at what happened when the price of oil spiked. Corporations that had healthy profit margins in general didn't pass on to consumers their increased costs when oil was part of their COGS (cost of good sold). Though in contrast, airlines did. At the time Airlines had low profit margins. But I suspect their pricing power is less elastic regardless – their 10Ks show their entire business model is metric'd on the price of fuel. ..."
"... Offshoring isn't about lower consumer goods prices. The cost of labor in a mass-produced product is small, often trivial. That's what mass production is designed to do. ..."
"... The addiction to foreign trade is for the money in it. The importer doubles his money, the wholesaler doubles his money, the distributor doubles his money and the retailer gets what he can. The Chinese manufacturer is satisfied but most of the street cost goes to the intermediaries. ..."
"... In this case, "sovereignty" means the power to regulate commerce. Insofar as the signatories are democracy, it also means democracy – the ability to carry out the decisions of representative bodies. ..."
"... Countries without an internationally traded currency will not willingly sign up for specious 'trade in money' sections. Galbraith the Younger wrote a famous paper on the subject that clearly established there is no such thing as a trade in money. Every way I look at it, its a rip-off, facilitated by a useful idiot in the country's central bank. ..."
"... ISDS is nothing more than a scheme to enable direct foreign attacks on the legislative process itself – even more direct and invasive than influencing elections by hacking, propaganda or whatever ..."
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Originally
published at Inter Press Service and cross
posted from
Triple Crisis
President-elect Donald Trump has promised that he will take the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPPA) on the first day of his presidency. The TPP may now be dead, thanks to Trump and
opposition by all major US presidential candidates. With its imminent demise almost certain, it is
important to draw on some lessons before it is buried.
Fraudulent Free Trade Agreement
The TPP is fraudulent as a free trade agreement, offering very little in terms of additional growth
due to trade liberalization, contrary to media hype. To be sure, the TPP had little to do with trade.
The US already has free trade agreements, of the bilateral or regional variety, with six of the 11
other countries in the pact. All twelve members also belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
which concluded the single largest trade agreement ever, more than two decades ago in Marrakech –
contrary to the TPPA's claim to that status. Trade barriers with the remaining five countries were
already very low in most cases, so there is little room left for further trade liberalization in
the TPPA, except in the case of Vietnam, owing to the war until 1975 and its legacy of punitive legislation.
The most convenient computable general equilibrium (CGE) trade model used for trade projections
makes unrealistic assumptions, including those about the consequences of trade liberalization. For
instance, such trade modelling exercises typically presume full employment as well as unchanging
trade and fiscal balances. Our colleagues' more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that
almost 800,000 jobs would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million
from the US alone. There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities
at the national level.
Already, many US manufacturing jobs have been lost to US corporations' automation and relocation
abroad. Thus, while most politically influential US corporations would do well from the TPP due to
strengthened intellectual property rights (IPRs) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms,
US workers would generally not. It is now generally believed these outcomes contributed to the backlash
against such globalization in the votes for Brexit and Trump.
Non-Trade Measures
According to the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE), the US think-tank known
for cheerleading economic liberalization and globalization, the purported TPPA gains would mainly
come from additional investments, especially foreign direct investments, due to enhanced investor
rights. However, these claims have been disputed by most other analysts, including two US government
agencies, i.e., the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) and the US International
Trade Commission (ITC).
Much of the additional value of trade would come from 'non-trade issues'. Strengthening intellectual
property (IP) monopolies, typically held by powerful transnational corporations, would raise the
value of trade through higher trading prices, not more goods and services. Thus, strengthened IPRs
leading to higher prices for medicines are of particular concern.
The TPP would reinforce and extend patents, copyrights and related intellectual property protections.
Such protectionism raises the price of protected items, such as pharmaceutical drugs. In a 2015 case,
Martin Shkreli raised the price of a drug he had bought the rights to by 6000% from USD12.50 to USD750!
As there is no US law against such 'price-gouging', the US Attorney General could only prosecute
him for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme.
"Medecins Sans Frontieres" warned that the agreement would go down in history as the worst "cause
of needless suffering and death" in developing countries. In fact, contrary to the claim that stronger
IPRs would enhance research and development, there has been no evidence of increased research or
new medicines in recent decades for this reason.
Corporate-Friendly
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is also supposed to go up thanks to the TPPA's ISDS provisions.
For instance, foreign companies would be able to sue TPP governments for ostensible loss of profits,
including potential future profits, due to changes in national regulation or policies even if in
the national or public interest.
ISDS would be enforced through ostensibly independent tribunals. This extrajudicial system would
supercede national laws and judiciaries, with secret rulings not bound by precedent or subject to
appeal.
Thus, rather than trade promotion, the main purpose of the TPPA has been to internationally promote
more corporate-friendly rules under US leadership. The 6350 page deal was negotiated by various working
groups where representatives of major, mainly US corporations were able to drive the agenda and advance
their interests. The final push to seek congressional support for the TPPA despite strong opposition
from the major presidential candidates made clear that the main US rationale and motive were geo-political,
to minimize China's growing influence.
The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary
Clinton the presidency as she came across as insincere in belatedly opposing the agreement which
she had previously praised and advocated. Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan
and Pennsylvania, where concerned voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.
The problem now is that while the Obama administration undermined trade multilateralism by its
unwillingness to honour the compromise which initiated the Doha Development Round, Trump's preference
for bilateral agreements benefiting the US is unlikely to provide the boost to multilateralism so
badly needed now. Unless the US and the EU embrace the spirit of compromise which started this round
of trade negotiations, the WTO and multilateralism more generally may never recover from the setbacks
of the last decade and a half.
The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost
Hillary Clinton the presidency
No doubt. But the Wall St. Dems are going to keep blaming Bernie Bros and the Russians. And
they'll keep helping themselves to that sweet corporate payola.
I see it as karma. TPP may have been the worst thing ever tried by a US President, to date.
I didn't realize that so many people understood it though, at least I didn't get that impression
in central California.
And not just Hillary Clinton. The whole Democratic party. Obama has been a disaster for
Democrats. There is a piece in the
WAPO by Matt Stoller today discussing just this issue.
Not knowing what he does not know may be beneficial. To be freed from the straitjacket of political
sophistry that has led to previous disasters for American workers is, perhaps, a positive.
I'd be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk as I do now.
Corporations, Hollywood, Big Pharma and Silicon Valley will be hurt? Tough luck, they are there
to make profits and are no friend of American workers. Might as well say it, because of their
behavior, they are the enemy of progress for workers.
Short version:
Trump has done more for American workers and has obtained more net benefit out of the car companies,
before he's even sworn in than the Clintons did in ten collective years of 'public service'.
>I'd be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk as I do now.
And I don't think you would even have to every time you can manage to look at what it costs*
to make something in China instead of the USA, and compare it to the retail price, you get a real
"whoa".** The price is just enough less to drive the US manufacturer themselves out of business,
most of the money *does* stay in the US but it goes to the top 0.1%.
This is more about control of the proles than economics, sometimes I think.
*like anybody can totally figure it out given the Chinese state's involvement in everything,
but we can make decent guesses
**I know that American mfg cost is generally 1/2 of retail price and sometimes as low as 1/3.
I'm talking about 1/10 to 1/20th for Chinese goods.
Excellent point. Basically will corporations pass along increased costs to consumers?
Take a look at what happened when the price of oil spiked. Corporations that had healthy
profit margins in general didn't pass on to consumers their increased costs when oil was part
of their COGS (cost of good sold). Though in contrast, airlines did. At the time Airlines had
low profit margins. But I suspect their pricing power is less elastic regardless – their 10Ks
show their entire business model is metric'd on the price of fuel.
Offshoring isn't about lower consumer goods prices. The cost of labor in a mass-produced
product is small, often trivial. That's what mass production is designed to do.
It's more about dropping more of the top line to the bottom line. Along with the fake aristo
disdain for wage earners that seems to be a requirement for corporate managers.
That 35% tariff sure equals a lot of profits lost on cars made in Mexico. Therefore, they will
be made in America. Due to the competitive nature of auto sales, the lack of interest in teenagers
in buying cars, I think Detroit will not raise prices to match the labor cost difference. Also,
there will be even less demand for U.S. made cars as most of the Mexican factories will possibly
remain open for the Latin American market, which means even fewer exports of American made cars.
A scarcity of markets means lower prices.
The addiction to foreign trade is for the money in it. The importer doubles his money,
the wholesaler doubles his money, the distributor doubles his money and the retailer gets what
he can. The Chinese manufacturer is satisfied but most of the street cost goes to the intermediaries.
The Chinese governments interest for many years was simply receiving the foreign money payments
and paying out the exchange in RMB.
Trump hasn't done a thing for American workers. Indiana taxpayers (American workers) are on
the hook for Carrier taking on roughly 700 jobs of the 2000 that Trump said he would "save". We
don't even know the deep details of that "deal". If anyone thinks that Carrier signed off on that
deal without the permission of Carrier's parent, United Technologies (a pure defense firm), I
have a bridge to sell them. What future "deal" did the American taxpayer (worker) get subjected
to when this "deal" was made behind closed doors to a defense contractor whose *only* means of
revenue is from the American taxpayer (worker)?
What about the citizens (workers) of Indiana who are going to carry the financial and social
burden of the 1300 Carrier workers that Trump promised (early on in his campaign) whose jobs he
would save. The carrier deal, in fact, was virtually the same deal that Pence had put on the table
a year ago.
United Technologies has *three* air conditioning brands; their Mexican lines are still open,
and the 700 jobs that Trump said he "saved" are not committed to any kind of permanent status
in the USA. Again, the Mexican manufacturing lines remain open, operating, and ready to accept
those jobs when Carrier thinks it's appropriate.
As for the auto companies? Please. Trump did NOTHING that wasn't already planned, or that wasn't
already inspired by market forces and in the works.
FORD on the cancelled Mexican plant:
http://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2017/01/04/we-didnt-cut-a-deal-with-trump-ford-on-canceled-mexican-plant
"'To be clear, Ford is still moving its production of small vehicles to Mexico. The Ford Focus
will still be produced in Mexico, just at an existing Mexican plant instead of the canceled plant.
"[T]he reason we are canceling our plant in Mexico, the main reason, is because we are seeing
a decline in demand for small vehicles here in North America.."
Trump is a fraud and an overt liar; he's a pure clinical narcissist who doesn't work for anyone
but his frail ego – ever seeking out his next source of narcissistic supply – a supply he has
been able to control from his early days from the happy accident of inherited wealth – going on
from there to use his inheritance to enrich himself at the expense of others.
Yes, American workers have been screwed over, but they have been screwed over mostly by Plutocrats
who have owned both parties for decades. Ironically (in the face of all the anti-immigration talk),
the vast majority of those Plutocrats have been *white, male* CEOs.
Anyone looking at Trump's early appointments and Cabinet nominees – not to mentioned his unhinged
comments and tweets – who is not scared stiff by the presence of this goon in the White House
– is suffering from a serious case of confirmation bias.
Why would you be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk? Especially if it were still
junk? If I were going to pay twice as much for something, I would rather that something be American
not-junk rather than Chinese junk.
Given the reality that the most modern manufacturing capacity in the world is Chinese when
it comes to consumer durables, it is racist to assume that "American" products are automatically
better. The disinvestment in American manufacturing would take decades to replace.
last night listening to some folks opine re starbucks as a ubiquitous bad, the defense was
they generally treat their employees ok, better than mcdonalds certainly, homeless people are
given a little space before they get cleared out after a few hours if they are civil, which seemed
to make the "striving to be good consumers, attempting to be socially responsible" lean towards
well maybe they guessed it might be ok to go there. They all have i phones, however, and I didn't
say it as I like my job, but was thinking "how many suicide nets does starbucks have in their
global domain?" To call that racist makes me wonder about your comment, maybe if you had said
is it racist, but no further, and in direct relation to that, china got manufacturing
because suicide nets are a solution for apple that would not go over well around here. Maybe that's
why they produce there, and not because the chinese are better at manufacturing?
You can only play the race card but so many times before you wear it out. And it is pretty
thin.
I assume that American-made Science Diet dog food won't have poison in it the way I have to
assume Chinese dog food may have. I assume that American-made sheet rock won't offgas sulfur dioxide
gas which turns into sulfuric acid in moist air ( as in Florida), and destroys household appliances
in a year or less. The way some Chinese high-sulfur sheetrock did at least once in Florida. I
assume an American-made Oakland-Bay-Bridge at twice the price would not now be already having
the decay and bad-build problems which the Cheap China Crap Construction bridge is already having.
Shall I go on?
You sound like a Free Trade Treason hasbarist for China. In fact, I think you are.
You still want to call me racist? Well . . . kiss me, I'm deplorable.
>Trump's plan to enter into bi-lateral trade deals (after supposedly tearing up extant pacts)
Well we never know what the frell he is actually going to do, sure can't judge by what he says.
If he did start with and modifies "extant pacts", that would actually make a lot of sense
and maybe even go decently well at a more-than-glacial speed.
Of course – I hate when people speculate, and especially when they speculate that somebody
is going to do literally the opposite of what they said they were going to do, yet here I am doing
exactly that. My only excuse is that his personality is not to get that deep into anything, so
it just seems more likely that he would simply focus on whatever specific aspect of a given treatry
is problematical, wack a bit at that (for better or worse), and move on.
Bi-lateral trade deals can focus on relatively narrow trade areas and in this case those needn't
so much time to get negotiated and passed. I don't know if that is Trump's strategy.
This is a great summary of the recent fate of the TPP and the reasons for it. It may not be
dead yet – even though it has been unceremoniously tossed on the cart of the dead (monty python).
But the thinking behind it is terminal. Why no one ever discussed the military aspect of the TPP
can be attributed to its strict secrecy. It was obvious to lots of people that the TPP was NATO
for the Pacific and China was the target, and equally obvious that it was bad policy from any
perspective. Bilateral trade will survive this debacle and world trade will continue – but trade
will not be such a military tool, hopefully. It will be a good thing.
It was not obvious to me. It is still not obvious to me. "China" was the excuse advanced for
TPP late in the day when the Tradesters discovered that popular sentiment was turning against
the Corporate Globalonial Plantationist purpose of the TPP, and hence against the TPP itself.
First, she is much closer to correct than you re the purpose of TPP. Secondly, why would you
argue that the 'Tradesters' had to resort to 'China' in order to attempt to sell their putrid
deal if 'China' was not viewed by said 'Tradesters' as a word loaded with a host of negative associations,
most of which are based on typical US foreign policy jingoistic nonsense rooted in what is certainly
a classic case of US/Western supremacist nonsense, if not the more obvious, overt racism now making
a rather spectacular comeback?
Lesson learned is to avoid electing corrupt candidates that call it a gold standard right
away you know who is receiving, and who is paying, the gold.
And then there are sitting elected officials pushing the crap with all their might, anticipating
their gold shares maturing as soon as they leave office
Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where concerned
voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.
Bravo! "Concerned voters" is a much better descriptor than "deplorables", "working class whites"
or even, in this case, "working class voters" as there were also sovereignty issues.
The wording of your comment is rather ambiguous – are you stating that "statistics show" that
"sexism played a big role" in the swing states? Where do you situate yourself relative to Lambert's
discussion of the subject?
The sexism card is wearing about as thin as the racism card is wearing. Clinton lost support
in the Midwest when she revealed herself to be a Free Trade Traitor against America by stating
that she would put her husband, NAFTA Bill, in charge of the economic recovery when she got elected.
That expression of support for anti-American Trade Treason guaranteed her loss right there.
Statistics show . . . that figures lie when liars figure.
" trade agreements take a long time to negotiate, typically because they also include services,
and those take way longer to sort out than the physical goods side."
My first reaction: good. Services shouldn't be in trade pacts. And if they take a long time to
get done, all the better. The fetish for "trade pacts" is mostly destructive.
Fundamentally: they're superfluous. People have always traded, mostly without "pacts." When
it comes to "absolute advantage," literally trading apples for oranges, everybody really does
benefit and barriers melt away. Under modern conditions. "comparative advantage" is a falsehood,
as a close look at the conditions Ricardo set for it will show. It requires that labor and capital
don't move at all freely between countries – true in his day, but certainly not in ours. Bizarrely,
his theory is being used, dishonestly, to promote the destructive free movement of capital, and
that's what "services" mostly means.
The point that trade agreements take a long time is probably true, as well as not an objection;
but it isn't an argument for multilateral agreements like the TPP; it's an argument for the WTO,
if it had been done right. The plan was to set up an overarching, worldwide structure for trade.
But it should have been done under the UN, and it shouldn't include attacks on sovereignty like
the tribunals. The real reason for other agreements is that the requirement for consensus in the
WTO put up a dead end sign: thus far, and no farther. So the "Washington Consensus" tried for
work arounds. But the consensus model makes sense, and the rules should be universal.
The real gist of Ricardo is that trade is NOT an unmitigated good. It easily becomes more or
less subtle forms of imperialism. Furthermore, low trade barriers make sense. Diversity depends
on barriers. They encourage a modicum of self-reliance and provide firewalls so that a financial
collapse in one country doesn't automatically go world-wide. We probably had it right in the 50s
and 60s, when the economy was far healthier. Granted, there were still a lot of actual colonies
then, so it's hard to tell how that translates to modern conditions.
I don't think I'm saying anything that isn't very familiar here. We should beware of capitalist
ideologies.
The fetish for Multilaterialism is also destructive. Multilateralism is just "french" for Corporate
Globalonial Plantationist trade pacts designed to exterminate sovereignty for dozens of countries
at a time.
" Our colleagues' more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that almost 800,000 jobs
would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million from the US alone.
There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities at the national
level."
Yes, that's what these "trade agreements" are FOR. You don't think the PTB take bullshit economics
seriously, do you?
As an aside, I never particularly liked the sovereignty argument against TPP (which I note
is omitted from this article) because I felt it painted with an overly broad brush. More specifically,
I would argue that it can sometimes be a good thing if nation-states collectively agree to be
bound by rules that supersede national legislation. The Geneva Convention is one example.
TPP would have been bad not because it compromised national sovereignty, but because of the
reasons for which it did so. Overriding national legislation to protect human rights is one thing.
Overriding it to grant multinational corporations more power over workers, consumers and governments
is quite another.
"I would argue that it can sometimes be a good thing if nation-states collectively agree to
be bound by rules that supersede national legislation. The Geneva Convention is one example."
In this case, "sovereignty" means the power to regulate commerce. Insofar as the signatories
are democracy, it also means democracy – the ability to carry out the decisions of representative
bodies.
The Pacific Rim countries might approve "needless suffering and death" if it keeps them in
the west's good books.
Countries without an internationally traded currency will not willingly sign up for specious
'trade in money' sections. Galbraith the Younger wrote a famous paper on the subject that clearly
established there is no such thing as a trade in money. Every way I look at it, its a rip-off,
facilitated by a useful idiot in the country's central bank.
These agreements, whether global or bilateral, are an invitation to central bankers to become
traitors to their own country; an attempt to take over a nation without firing a shot, a blast
from a future that permits only trade blocks and no countries.
I am convinced what the world really wants is a debate on the shape of world government. I
do not agree that the chap with the most printed money calls the shots. We are better than that.
ISDS is nothing more than a scheme to enable direct foreign attacks on the legislative
process itself – even more direct and invasive than influencing elections by hacking, propaganda
or whatever . Imagine if Vladimir Putin were to accomplish a legislative objective in the
U.S. simply by launching an ISDS extortion suit via a Russian state owned enterprise and a willing
ISDS tribunal outside the U.S. court system and not at all accountable to U.S. interests. What
would the pro TPP corporate Dems have to say then?
Are we Remainers making a simple
mistake about Brexit?
What I mean is that we think of
Brexit in consequentialist terms – its effects upon
trade
, productivity
and
growth
. But many Brexiters instead regard Brexit as an
intrinsic good, something desirable in itself in which
consequences are of secondary importance.
Thinking of Brexit in this way
explains a lot of otherwise strange behaviour:
- Why the Tories have a big poll
lead even though voters
think
they're doing a lousy job of managing the Brexit
process. If you think Brexit is worth having for its own sake,
then you'll be pleased the Tories are getting on with it,
because a second-best Brexit is better than none.
- Why most Brexiters had no plan
for the process. They just weren't thinking in consequentialist
terms.
- Why Theresa May says "Brexit
means Brexit". To consequentialists, this is pure gibberish.
From the perspective of those who want Brexit as a matter of
principle, it's not: it's an assurance they'll get what they
want.
- Why
preparations
for
Brexit
are so
chaotic
. If you regard Brexit as an intrinsic good, then
it's not so important how we achieve it. Of course, there are
good and less good types of Brexit. But if you prefer to
satisfice than optimize, this isn't necessarily decisive.
= Why the government is
offering ad hoc support to businesses likely to be hit by
Brexit, be it handouts to
Nissan
or assurances to farmers that they'll still be able
to hire cheap foreign
labour
. There isn't a systematic plan here or conception of
what Brexit should look like, just one-by-one attempts to buy
off specific discontents.
- Why technocrats and Brexiters
have a mutual incomprehension and loathing. Technocrats haven't
grasped that because Brexit is a good in itself, the process of
achieving it is a secondary detail. And Brexiters have had
enough of experts because they are irrelevant as consequences
(up to a point) don't much matter.
Of course, Brexiters might well
be under-estimating those consequences. But if so, they are not
the first people whose wishful thinking causes them to
under-estimate the force of Isaiah Berlin's
point (pdf)
that "some among the great goods cannot live
together".
All this poses the question: what
is the nature of this intrinsic good? I suspect it's to do with
self-image. Brexiters want to think of themselves as independent
people free of the yoke of Brussels, an image that trumps
technocratic consequentialist considerations – or at least is
incommensurable with them. The fact that many cannot
say
what exactly they'll be free to do after Brexit isn't
important: freedom can be desired for its own sake.
In this sense, Brexit is another
form of identity politics. Remainers who complain about its
adverse effects might be making a point that satisfies
themselves, but not one that has much influence upon many of
their opponents. As with so much identity politics, we're left
with a rather futile dialogue of the deaf.
Blissex |
January 08, 2017 at 01:32 PM
Looking at it as to the long run, "Leave" is a reverberation of
the impact of England's (and France's) defeat in WW2. Losing
that war became undeniable (for some) and at the same time
insufferable (for others) with the strategic defeat at Suez.
My
usual humorous take on the "self-image" aspect is that if the EU
were merely renamed "The English Empire of Great Britain and the
Continent" and Her Majesty were appointed as its figurehead and
opened each year the proceedings of the Imperial Parliament in
Strasbourg or Brussels, with no substantial changes, a lot of
"Leavers" would stop objecting...
:-)
One would have also to rename the European Commission as
the "HM Imperial Civil Service" and the Council of EU ministers
as "HM Imperial Council" :-).
The Daily Mail would then have fawning articles like
"Imperial Lead Minister Angela Merkel attends HM's speech at the
Imperial Parliament's opening in Brussels" and "Boris Johnson,
Imperial Commissioner for Entertainment, reports to the English
Parliament the success of the Imperial Council's policy of
banana standardization that he has promoted". :-)
"May says "Brexit means Brexit". To consequentialists, this is
pure gibberish."
Well, maybe, but for my "Remain" and
mostly-consequentialist ears it clearly means "Article 50", that
is no second referendum, no fudging with a treaty revision. Then
once Article 50 is invoked, everything else is up for grabs, but
Article 50 is the point-of-no-return that "Leavers" want to be
reassured about.
The Leavers from all voting analysis were less educated, more
rural , less prosperous and definitely older voters. They
swallowed the Brexit Tabloid media which distorted all things EU
, immigrant and economic. Now as we exit 500 million other
consumers and undo 45 years we shall know the full consequences.
Is it that the English and Welsh are just politically,
economically and socially less educated than other Northern and
Western Europeans. I think so- our tabloid media and supplicant
'Daily Express on legs' BBC is likely the worst in EU.
Spot on. Sums up this leaver's position very well. EU membership
is a historic error for the island nation, and it is well worth
paying a price to correct that error.
it
is so interesting to note that Brexiteers and Remainers seem to
be living in parallel universes with regards to the Brexit
narrative. Here in the article again: Brexiteers DO NOT see the
brexit process as being chaotic at all. This is entirely a
remainer view, not shared by brexiteers (i.e. the majority of
voters).
Yes. This would also perhaps partly explain the dishonesty with
respect to campaigning by the Leavers. The truth (or at least,
rational good faith argument) to them is less important than the
act of leaving in itself.
They see it as a fight, they want to
have a sense of the UK gaining autonomy and control, and to hell
with the consequences. I suspect this 'us vs them' identity
politics has grown out of the financial crisis and austerity.
"
- Why most Brexiters had no plan for the process. They just
weren't thinking in consequentialist terms."
They were
absolutely thinking in consequential terms:
They believed Ł350M a week would go to NHS etc. They believed
the EU/Euro was about to collapse and UK was better to leave
asap. They believed 400-600K immigrants would arrive each year,
for ever, and housing, medical treatment etc. would be
impossible to achieve. Those in non-immigrant areas believed
they would be next in the migrant wave queue. They believed they
had the power to eject non-performing MPs at elections. They
believed that UK would thrive once free of the EU. The Tories
are delivering all that for them.
What they do not want to believe, so will not easily change
their minds, is that the Government only wants to control
migration - not reduce it. That no one will lose their jobs, and
jobs will become even more soul destroying. That housing will be
even scarcer and more costly. That proper training and career
progression is a thing of the past. That primacy will not be
revived and they will not be first in the queue for everything.
That neither the Conservative nor Labour parties will do a thing
for the left behind and JAMs.
Once they do realise they have been taken for a ride yet
again, the anger may flow over into extremes.
Many Brexiteers, when arguing for Brexit, flip backwards and
forwards between consequentialist arguments and arguments for
Brexit as an intrinsic good. As Dominic Cummings admits, "Leave"
would not have won if they hadn't lied about the money that
could be spent in the NHS and the status of Turkey - and,
apparently, the facts that these were lies doesn't bother him.
It's bizarre, though, how a newspaper like the Daily Mail
spent 10 years pre-1973 campaigning for entry to the Common
Market and now finds everything European to be suspect. Does it
really think that neighbouring countries in Europe, that share
many of our traditions and culture, are really less congenial
trading partners than other global trading states?
"Many Brexiteers, when arguing for Brexit, flip backwards and
forwards between consequentialist arguments and arguments for
Brexit as an intrinsic good."
They are addressing both of
their main constituencies...
"neighbouring countries in Europe, that share many of our
traditions and culture, are really less congenial trading
partners than other global trading states?"
For "self-image" based "Leavers", giving up a global empire
to be just one of many "neighbouring countries" in a mere
regional alliance is simply foolish or a betrayal; the economic
or trade aspect is not that important.
For consequentialist "Leavers" trade/immigration matters but
negatively, and they weren't given an opportunity to vote
against global trade/immigration making them poorer, only
against east european trade/immigration making them poorer. They
surely would have voted against too much trade/immigration with
the other "global trading states" though.
"They believed 400-600K immigrants would arrive each year, for
ever,"
That was the big hope of the rentier/neoliberal voters
and politicians in both New Labour and Conservatives: to replace
ever more the native "uppity, lazy, exploitative" low-income
classes with ever larger numbers of docile cheap non voting
servants.
"and housing, medical treatment etc. would be impossible to
achieve."
The rentier/neoliberal voters and politicians never had such
concerns: they would be very happy to pack immigrants 4-8 to a
room everywhere paying top rents and give them minimal access to
a cut-down NHS.
"Those in non-immigrant areas believed they would be next in
the migrant wave queue."
* Those in rich non-immigration areas are simply outraged
that foreigners can move and work to *their* England without
begging for a visa. They have the attitude of landlords who want
to make sure their tenants understand that they can throw them
out anytime.
* Those in poor non-immigration areas often do look for jobs
in rich immigration areas know very well how much of a
competition even poorer eastern europeans are for jobs in rich
immigration areas. Even many polish immigrants complain about
the romanians after all.
During his recent visit to Turkey our
darling Boris Johnson stated that the UK government supported
visa-free travel for turks and EU membership for Turkey.
Probably this was said a bit mischievously, but the prospect
of a mass immigration of millions of docile cheap turkish
servants and workers make the UK (and EU) property and business
owners very excited.
They know how much money the german property and business
owners made in the 1950-1970s from cheap docile turkish "guest
workers", and are envious of the potential massive profits
today's german property and business owners are going to make
from the "syrian" refugees.
Blissex: "That was the big hope of the rentier/neoliberal voters
and politicians in both New Labour and Conservatives: to replace
ever more the native "uppity, lazy, exploitative" low-income
classes with ever larger numbers of docile cheap non voting
servants."
Agreed, when we consider British anti-poor
political rhetoric, the above does really seem to follow quite
naturally.
And I'd agree it's vital in this analysis to explicitly
identify the political class as the rentier/neoliberal class.
And I'm not even remotely a Marxist btw. It's just fact.
"explicitly identify the political class as the
rentier/neoliberal class. And I'm not even remotely a Marxist
btw."
The irony is that instead many in that
"rentier/neoliberal class" are pretty much marxists, in the
sense that they have come to much the same analysis as Karl
himself, the difference being their point of view as
beneficiaries.
FORD CITY, Pa. - He is old and gray now, he struggles
sometimes to hear, but if he closes his eyes the burly man
can easily conjure that young boy again, a lad at work in a
bustling factory that for a century formed the strong,
straight economic backbone of this proud industrial borough.
"We were poor, but we didn't realize it because all our
neighbors were, too,'' Paul Hromadik said as he gazed across
a rainy town common here at what used to be the Pittsburgh
Plate Glass works.
In 1953, Hromadik was among thousands who flooded through
a pedestrian tunnel at the corner of Third Avenue and Ninth
Street and into the glassworks. He made rear windows for cars
and trucks before he left for a stint in the Army and then a
life as a power company supervisor, father, and grandfather.
"This town is dying now,'' the 81-year-old Hromadik said
softly. "All the young people are moving out.''
That Pittsburgh Plate Glass plant is long gone, an early
harbinger of an economic collapse that has decimated the
region's manufacturing base and fueled a resentment,
particularly acute among white working-class voters, that has
become an emblem of Donald Trump's America.
And that's why I am here along the banks of the Allegheny
River, talking to Hromadik and others like him. I have
cowered under the covers long enough. Denial does no one any
good. Donald Trump is going to put his left hand on the Bible
in a couple weeks and repeat the oath of office administered
by Chief Justice John Roberts.
I do not live in Donald Trump's America, but I aim to
learn from those who do. I've rented a sturdy car. I've
enlisted a wingman with serious driving chops. And I've
pointed myself west to the land Trump found so fertile and
tilled with such skill and in a rough-shod style all his own.
West beyond Hartford. West over the Hudson River. West
through snow-dusted farmlands and tree-studded mountains and
along the vast interstate highway system named for another
Republican and political newcomer, Dwight Eisenhower.
Trump lost the popular vote, but he won the land, 3
million square miles and 80 percent of the nation's counties.
This is one of them. Forty miles northeast of Pittsburgh,
Ford City's population of 3,000 is about half the number who
lived here a century ago, when John B. Ford built what was
said to be one of the planet's biggest plate-glass factories.
There is a statue of Ford in the central park where he
stands forever staring at the factory that once was a roaring
economic engine but is now a hulking and empty reminder that
this is a city whose glory days are in the rear-view mirror.
It's not difficult to understand the appeal here of Trump,
who shakes his fist at foreign economic interlopers and
pledges at every turn to make America great again.
Make Ford City great again? That's what has Sheri Humenik
animated these days.
I encountered her at the local library last week, where
she was replenishing the racks of magazines and periodicals
and evangelizing about the beauty and the allure of
small-town life.
"I believe in this community,'' said Humenik, a
40-something full-time mom and part-time pharmacist. "This
town is the best-kept secret. Where Pittsburgh Plate Glass
was would be the perfect place for some new high-tech
business. It would bring our town back to life.''
All of Armstrong County could certainly use a lift.
Downsizing bulletins from local employers are routine. The
economic decline has been paralleled by the fading fortunes
of the local Democratic Party, whose members outnumbered
Republicans until 12 years ago. Republicans now dominate,
20,600 to 15,880. "For every Armstrong County Republican that
became a Democrat since January, three Democrats have gone in
the opposite direction,'' the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
reported last spring.
That trend does not surprise people like Humenik, who grew
up here and intends to stay put. Trump's message, she said,
was a warm and welcome salve.
"I felt like that he wants to revitalize places just like
this,'' she told me. "He wants to invest in people. He brings
a fire that has reignited hope in people. We need investments
in the small towns, not just the big cities. The small towns
are suffering. We need to recognize the hidden gems and bring
them back. I'm upbeat. I'm encouraged. I'm looking forward.''
I nearly looked over my shoulder to see if someone from
the Trump communications office was getting all of this on
film. It was so perfectly rendered. And it all felt so
genuine, which is going to take some getting used to. Because
back where I live, there you don't run into many who would
say out loud what she just did, even if they think it. And
there are plenty of disbelievers who can't bear the thought
of a President Trump.
And, truth be told, you don't have to look very far to
find them here either. The Trump-is-a-snake-oil-salesman
caucus is alive and well on the steps of the county
courthouse, where attorney Chuck Pascal has sneaked outside
for a late-morning smoke as a soft rain falls over
Kittanning, the Armstrong County seat.
"These are dangerous times,'' said Pascal, a former
Leechburg mayor and a member of the Democratic State
Committee. "I don't think Trump knows anything and I don't
think he knows that he doesn't know anything.''
But Pascal understands the allure of Trump. Comfortable
blue-collar jobs are gone. There's been an exodus of the
professional class. People wanted change. They were willing
to roll the dice on Trump.
Pascal, a Bernie Sanders supporter and delegate, knows it
is now wasted breath to dissect and analyze what went so
wrong. Hillary Clinton "was such a horrible candidate, and
now we're all going to suffer for it,'' he said. "I've never
been scared before, but this is so scary to me.''
It's scary to me, too. But that's not why I'm here. I want
reassurance that everything is going to work out fine. I want
to understand why so many of my fellow Americans have
embraced a man whose every Cabinet appointment seems like a
middle finger fiercely extended to the non-adherents he calls
enemies.
It's time to jump back into the SUV. It's a big red
country out there.
"What do you think? Ohio? Michigan?" I ask my monosyllabic
wingman.
"The MSM is building a case to do Putin like the one to do Assad."
I am not sure about that. I think this anti-Russian hysteria is mainly for internal consumption and designed to put a smoke
screen of the problem of the US neoliberal society and increase the cohesion of population, which essentially rejected neoliberal
elite during the recent elections.
The bout of McCarthyism that we observe now might also be an attempt to de-legitimize Trump presidency and to tie his hands.
This Machiavellian trick with expulsion of diplomats that Nobel Peace Price winner played with Russians recently suggests the
latter. Deep state that controls the US foreign policy feels the threat and reacts accordingly.
Too many people in Washington are "national security parasites" and are dependent of continuation of wars for the expansion
of the US led global neoliberal empire.
Trump promised to drain the swamp, but he probably underestimated the level of resistance he will encounter. Just look at hissy
fits that WaPo and NYT is still engaged it. They really behave like Putin agent is ascending into position of POTUS :-). The same
is true of some commenters here.
They feel threatened by the rejection of their ideology and are ready to do purges in best Trotskyites tradition. As I mentioned
before they are really "Latter Date Trotskyites" in most of their ideological postulates.
Use of violence for the spread of the ideology. A totalitarian vision for a world-encompassing monolithic global state
(US led neoliberal empire) governed by an ideologically charged "vanguard".
Creation and maintenance of the illusion of "immanent threat" from powerful enemies for brainwashing the population (National
Security State instead of "Dictatorship of proletariat").
Purges of dissent via neo-McCarthyism tactics.
The mantle of inevitability (famous TINA statement of Margaret Thatcher)
The study of neoclassical economics as the key method of indoctrination of people with economists as a class of well paid
priests of neoliberal ideology.
War on, and brutal suppression of organized labor. While in Soviet Russia organized labor was emasculated and trade unions
became part of government apparatus, under neoliberalism they are simply decimated. It "atomize" individual workers presenting
them as goods on the "labor market" controlled by large corporations ( via the myth of human capital ). Neoliberals see the
market as a semi-sacred element of human civilization. They want to create global labor market that favors transnational corporations.
The idea of "employability" is characteristically neoliberal. It means that neoliberals see it as a moral duty of human beings,
to arrange their lives to maximize their value on the labor market. Paying for plastic surgery to improve employability (almost
entirely by women) is a typical neoliberal phenomenon -- one that would surprise Adam Smith.
The pseudoscientific (or quasi-religious) myth of "free-market" (why not "fair"?). with neoclassical economy instead of
"Marxist political economy" which provides a pseudo-scientific justification for the greed and poverty endemic to the system.
Set of powerful myths, which like in Marxism create a "secular religion". Such as on "Free Trade", "Invisible Hand Hypothesis",
"Rational expectations" scam, "Shareholder value" scam, etc. Fake promises of prosperity, which are not unlike the rhetoric
of the Communist Party of the USSR about "proletariat" as the ruling class to which all benefits belongs.
Scapegoating and victimization of poor as new Untermensch. This is a part of Randism and is closely related to glorification
of the "creative class".
Rejection of the normal interpretation of the rule of the law and the idea of "neoliberal justice" (tough justice for Untermensch
only).
Cult of GDP. Like Marxism, neoliberalism reduces individuals to statistics contained within aggregate economic performance.
It professes that GDP growth is the ultimate goal of any society. This is very similar to the USSR cult of gross national product.
As Pope noted it is distinctly anti-Christian ideology, much like Trotskyism:
== quote ===
... Such an [neoliberal] economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure,
but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown
away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.
Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.
As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without
any means of escape.
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a "disposable" culture
which is now spreading.
It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means
to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society's underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised
– they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the "exploited" but the outcast, the "leftovers".
54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged
by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.
This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naďve trust in the goodness of those wielding
economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.
Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that
selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed.
Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other
people's pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else's responsibility and not our own. The culture
of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives
stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
"The MSM is building a case to do Putin like the one
to do Assad."
I am not sure about that. I think this anti-Russian
hysteria is mainly for internal consumption and designed to
put a smoke screen of the problem of the US neoliberal
society and increase the cohesion of population, which
essentially rejected neoliberal elite during the recent
elections.
The bout of McCarthyism that we observe now might also be
an attempt to de-legitimize Trump presidency and to tie his
hands. This Machiavellian trick with expulsion of diplomats
that Nobel Peace Price winner played with Russians recently
suggests the latter. Deep state that controls the US foreign
policy feels the threat and reacts accordingly.
Too many people in Washington are "national security
parasites" and are dependent of continuation of wars for the
expansion of the US led global neoliberal empire.
Trump promised to drain the swamp, but he probably
underestimated the level of resistance he will encounter.
Just look at hissy fits that WaPo and NYT is still engaged
it. They really behave like Putin agent ascending into
position of POTUS :-). The same is true of some commenters
here.
They feel threatened by the rejection of their ideology
and are ready to do purges in best Trotskyites tradition. As
I mentioned before they are really "Latter Date Trotskyites"
in most of their ideological postulates.
- Use of violence for the spread of the ideology. A
totalitarian vision for a world-encompassing monolithic
global state (US led neoliberal empire) governed by an
ideologically charged "vanguard".
- Creation and maintenance of the illusion of "immanent
threat" from powerful enemies for brainwashing the population
(National Security State instead of "Dictatorship of
proletariat").
- Purges of dissent via neo-McCarthyism tactics.
- The mantle of inevitability (famous TINA statement of
Margaret Thatcher)
- The study of neoclassical economics as the key method of
indoctrination of people with economists as a class of well
paid priests of neoliberal ideology.
- War on, and brutal suppression of organized labor. While
in Soviet Russia organized labor was emasculated and trade
unions became part of government apparatus, under
neoliberalism they are simply decimated. It "atomize"
individual workers presenting them as goods on the "labor
market" controlled by large corporations ( via the myth of
human capital ). Economic fetishism. Neoliberals see the
market as a semi-sacred element of human civilization. They
want to create global labor market that favors transnational
corporations. The idea of "employability" is
characteristically neoliberal. It means that neoliberals see
it as a moral duty of human beings, to arrange their lives to
maximize their value on the labor market. Paying for plastic
surgery to improve employability (almost entirely by women)
is a typical neoliberal phenomenon -- one that would surprise
Adam Smith.
- The pseudoscientific (or quasi-religious) myth of
"free-market" (why not "fair"?). with neoclassical economy
instead of "Marxist political economy" which provides a
pseudo-scientific justification for the greed and poverty
endemic to the system. Set of powerful myths, which like in
Marxism create a "secular religion". Such as on "Free Trade",
"Invisible Hand Hypothesis", "Rational expectations" scam,
"Shareholder value" scam, etc. Fake promises of prosperity,
which are not unlike the rhetoric of the Communist Party of
the USSR about "proletariat" as the ruling class to which all
benefits belongs.
- Scapegoating and victimization of poor as new
Untermensch. This is a part of Randism and is closely related
to glorification of the "creative class".
- Rejection of the normal interpretation of the rule of
the law and the idea of "neoliberal justice" (tough justice
for Untermensch only).
- Cult of GDP. Like Marxism, neoliberalism on the one hand
this reduces individuals to statistics contained within
aggregate economic performance. It professes that GDP growth
is the ultimate goal of any society. This is very similar to
the USSR cult of gross national product.
"... Not quite, they belong to different flavors of neoliberalism. As a politician Clinton was a "soft neoliberal", or "Third way"
neoliberal. Not quite the same as Reagan who was closer to "hard neoliberalism", or Thatcherism -- "in your face" neoliberalism. They
do not hide their principles and attitudes. ..."
"... Wikipedia: "Thatcherism represented a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, whereby the major
political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry, and close regulation
of the economy" ..."
"... Clinton (like later Tony Blair) basically accepted the central postulates of neoliberalism such as globalization, deregulation,
privatization, maintaining a flexible labor market by high unemployment, marginalizing the trade unions, but made his intentions hidden
under the smoke screen ("I feel you pain"). Essentially he created the second major flavor of neoliberalism "soft neoliberalism", or
neoliberal "wolf in sheep's clothing". ..."
that's true statement. He is. With penchant for mathiness and globalization. Although like any talented person sometimes he
transcends this limitation and writes really good articles.
"Clinton a Reagan copy?"
Not quite, they belong to different flavors of neoliberalism. As a politician Clinton was a "soft neoliberal", or "Third
way" neoliberal. Not quite the same as Reagan who was closer to "hard neoliberalism", or Thatcherism -- "in your face" neoliberalism.
They do not hide their principles and attitudes.
Wikipedia: "Thatcherism represented a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, whereby the
major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry, and close
regulation of the economy"
Clinton (like later Tony Blair) basically accepted the central postulates of neoliberalism such as globalization, deregulation,
privatization, maintaining a flexible labor market by high unemployment, marginalizing the trade unions, but made his intentions
hidden under the smoke screen ("I feel you pain"). Essentially he created the second major flavor of neoliberalism "soft neoliberalism",
or neoliberal "wolf in sheep's clothing".
The Facts Have A Well-Known Center-Left Bias
by Krugman
MAY 9, 2016 8:01 AM
Yesterday I tweeted a response to Donald Trump's claim that America is the highest-taxed nation in the world. Actually,
he's been busted on that claim repeatedly, which makes it even more shameful that TV interviewers just let it slide. But I'm
also interested in the responses I've been getting, which I think tell you something about the broader situation – maybe call
it the politics of epistemology.
As you might guess, I'm getting a lot of denial, with quite a few people "explaining" that the international comparisons
don't include state and local government. Um, guys, maybe you shouldn't make confident pronouncements about stuff you've never
looked at.
And I do wonder about right-wingers weighing in here. After all, isn't it a (false) right-wing trope that the economic troubles
of European nations are caused by their excessive welfare states? Doesn't that suggest that they have bigger government and
higher taxes than we do? Oh, never mind.
But I'm also hearing from Berniebros, insisting that anything I say must be wrong, because I criticized their hero. And
this suggests to me that we may need a clarification of the doctrine that facts have a well-known liberal bias. More specifically,
they seem to have a center-left bias: conservatives are big on empirical denial, but so is some of the U.S. left.
This has become especially obvious in the waning days of the Democratic primary: you can watch data journalists like the
two Nates (Cohn and Silver) growing increasingly exasperated with Sanders supporters who keep insisting that Hillary is stealing
the nomination with superdelegates, when it's actually the Sanders campaign talking about getting supers to overturn the pledged
delegate count and the popular vote.
Of course, campaigns can't be held responsible for everything their supporters say, although it's a bit worse when some
of those supporters are actual campaign surrogates. Still, we can ask whether Sanders himself is inclined to dismiss inconvenient
facts. Well, as you know, I think the answer is yes, on issues ranging from economic projections to the sources of Clinton
primary victories.
I was therefore primed to notice when Sanders declared that Democrats need their own version of Fox News. What does he mean,
exactly? Should the proposed network engage in similar factual distortions and outright falsehoods, except this time in the
service of progressive goals?
By the way, it wouldn't work. Fox caters to an audience of angry old white men; the angry young white guys who would want
a left-wing version of this message are fewer in number, have less purchasing power, and anyway don't get their news from TV.
But that's a side point.
The main point, instead, is that what we're seeing is that the sort of people who really care about getting facts right
– who see facing up to inconvenient truths as an important value – are largely on the center-left. Care with evidence appears
to matter if you are, say, the 11th most liberal senator; this is in contrast not just with the right, but also with some of
the left.
The good news is that this general election will be a contest between the center-left and the ignorant right, so political
values and intellectual values will be in perfect accord.
At the dawn of 2017, [neo]liberalism
finds itself confused. The world isn't what it was, it's bewildering, normless, chaotic. Nothing
makes sense, the counter-intuitive rules. [neo]liberalism is lost and cannot even think about a
way forward, let alone plot a course. In effect, it moves, it shambles around, but there is no
coherence, no answers,
no intelligence
. It has gone the way of the living dead, and can
only throw out a decomposing imitation of life. Living dead [neo]liberalism manifests in two
zombified forms. The first is liberal virtue signalling. You know the sort. The kind that
fights shy of the world
. It prefers not having to deal with it, and so shuts reality out by
blocking or ignoring, or pretending they're Dumbledore's Army or some such childish shit.
Even worse is that variant of zombie [neo]liberalism
that doubles down on all the elitist faults ascribed to it. Calling people thick because they
voted Trump?
No problem
. Brexiteers are all
stupid morons
who don't know what's good for them? Let's have it. Coming up with colourful
ways to call people names make well remunerated journalists with big platforms feel better, but
what does it do apart from signify one's impeccable (and super-intelligent) creds? Nothing. This
form of [neo]liberalism accomplishes its retreat from the world and becomes the rhetoric of
shrill but frightened narcissists.
The other type of undead [neo]liberalism says it's vital and alive, but is anything but.
So-called
muscular [neo]liberalism
has poured a gallon of paint onto its red lines and is prepared to
fight relentlessly, tweet-by-tweet, rebuttal-by-rebuttal,
by-election by by-election
against the rubbish pushed by the right. Challenging opponents'
commonsense and redefining politics is, well,
what progressive politics is supposed to do
. And, to be fair, I'd much rather have liberals
mindless tap polemic into their laptops and mail it in than posture uselessly to other liberals.
But ultimately, what's the end game? Defeating the right in their Tory, kipper, and alt-fash
guises requires boots-on-the-ground politics, a vehicle for transforming lives and implementing
policy. Labour is no longer the vehicle for liberal aspiration, the liberalish Cameroons
marginalised in the Tories, the SNP are too ghastly, and so all that is left are the LibDems.
While their real support is probably underestimated by nationwide polling, nine MPs and 70,000
members can hardly strike out for [neo]liberalism, especially as they remain compromised by their
previous association
. And so liberal writers will write, liberal campaigners will campaign,
and the world will not be better or worse for it. [neo]liberalism can rage all it likes, but as a
movement with political power it is diminished.
And so [neo]liberalism offers no way forward. It is paralysed because as an elite movement, it is
structurally incapable of seeing the world from anywhere but its position near the top of the
pile. Yet, the irony is, [neo]liberalism should be strong. The spontaneous outlook of growing
numbers of young people in most developed countries is more liberal than preceding generations.
It should be
the
liberal moment, and yet [neo]liberalism cannot relate. Its fixation on
the language games of posture and polemic, and its basic philosophic resistance to viewing the
world in terms other than individuals struggling for recognition and position means it cannot
orient itself to a rising generation blighted by precarity, debt, low pay, housing shortages. To
start probing this world of interest means abandoning [neo]liberalism, but when so many are
comfortably self-satisfied with it, not least the feted leading lights and their zombified
comment cabaret, what incentive have they in building something alive?
"... "Neoliberalism is a policy model of social studies and economics that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector .Neoliberal policies aim for a laissez-faire approach to economic development. ..."
"... neoliberal is a corporatist scam to make you think they are liberal because they do not want to defund planned parenthood. ..."
The term neoliberal is often to smear certain liberals who actually try to do economic analysis
but what does this term mean? One definition is found here:
"Neoliberalism is a policy model of social studies and economics that transfers control
of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector .Neoliberal policies aim for
a laissez-faire approach to economic development.
I'll not speak for others but both of these ideas are things I would oppose. So who are
the neoliberals per this link? Thatcher and Reagan. Hayek and Milton Friedman. That does not
sound like what I believe. As far as the financial deregulation we saw almost a generation
ago. I said back then that this was a mistake.
No – if this is what a neoliberal is, I'm not in this camp at all. Of course some people
around here toss out the term to avoid a real discussion of the issues.
I think some people use it, obtusely, as if it were a relative term without real meaning.
If you aren't as liberal as the True Liberals (tm), or ever expressed disagreement with
Bernie Sanders specifically, then you are a "neoliberal." Because, just because.
ilsm -> pgl... , -1
Get on.
neoliberal is a corporatist scam to make you think they are liberal because they do not
want to defund planned parenthood.
"... Sanders responded with an attack on what he called "casino capitalism," an economic system that largely rewards the very rich and leaves the poor and middle class behind. He said the United States should be more like Scandinavian countries, which provide larger safety nets for their populations. ..."
"... "When you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States," Sanders said. "You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we're not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have -- we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth. ..."
"... "Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people." ..."
"... Clinton fired back with a defense of capitalism as a concept. First she redefined it - capitalism, she said, is about entrepreneurs being able to start small businesses - and then she said America must save it from itself. "We are not Denmark," she told Sanders. "I love Denmark." ..."
"... Scarred by the Great Recession and 25 years of middle-class wage stagnation, a majority of Americans now see the economy as stacked against people like them. They're still angry at Wall Street after the financial crisis, and, particularly on issues such as family leave, many of them look fondly upon policies like Denmark's. ..."
"... These trends have continued under the recovery overseen by a Democratic president, Barack Obama. As they have, Democratic politicians have elevated inequality and middle-class stagnation to the top of their economic agendas. There's a real debate on the role of the free market in addressing those issues. It comes down to the question of whether capitalism needs to be fixed up, or overhauled completely. The difference between fixing and overhauling is the main policy difference between Clinton and Sanders, as the debate showed. ..."
Why Bernie Sanders loves Denmark but Hillary Clinton doesn't
By Jim Tankersley October 13, 2015
Raise your hand if you had "Hillary Clinton defends capitalism, and/or criticizes Denmark"
in your office pool for the first on-stage debate fight of the Democratic primaries. That's right
- you didn't. But Clinton's extolling of the free-market economic system, and her critique of
Democratic socialism, was her first open attack on the man closest to her in the polls, Sen. Bernie
Sanders of Vermont. It showed an important fault line in this primary campaign.
The debate opened with the moderator, CNN's Anderson Cooper, smacking each of the five candidates
on stage with her or his biggest perceived vulnerability in this race. For Sanders, it was his
long and proud identification as a socialist, a term that, Cooper said, half of Americans find
disqualifying in a candidate for president. "How can any kind of socialist win a general election
in the United States?" Cooper asked.
Sanders responded with an attack on what he called "casino capitalism," an economic system
that largely rewards the very rich and leaves the poor and middle class behind. He said the United
States should be more like Scandinavian countries, which provide larger safety nets for their
populations.
"When you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to
all people as a right, except the United States," Sanders said. "You see every other major country
saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we're not gonna separate you from your newborn baby,
because we are going to have -- we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other
country on Earth.
"Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries
like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working
people."
Clinton fired back with a defense of capitalism as a concept. First she redefined it - capitalism,
she said, is about entrepreneurs being able to start small businesses - and then she said America
must save it from itself. "We are not Denmark," she told Sanders. "I love Denmark."
"We would be making a grave mistake to turn our backs on what built the greatest middle class
in the history of the world," she said.
That this is a real debate in a major political party in the United States reflects several
changes in the economy, and one big shift among Democratic voters.
Scarred by the Great Recession and 25 years of middle-class wage stagnation, a majority of
Americans now see the economy as stacked against people like them. They're still angry at Wall
Street after the financial crisis, and, particularly on issues such as family leave, many of them
look fondly upon policies like Denmark's.
These trends have continued under the recovery overseen by a Democratic president, Barack Obama.
As they have, Democratic politicians have elevated inequality and middle-class stagnation to the
top of their economic agendas. There's a real debate on the role of the free market in addressing
those issues. It comes down to the question of whether capitalism needs to be fixed up, or overhauled
completely. The difference between fixing and overhauling is the main policy difference between
Clinton and Sanders, as the debate showed.
Last week we were
surprised to learn that demand for hotel rooms at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in
Davos, where the world's billionaires, CEOs, politicians, celebrities and oligarchs mingle every
year (while regaled by their public relations teams known as the "media", for whom getting an invite
to the DJ event du jour is more important than rocking the boat by asking unpleasant questions) was
so great, not only are hotel rooms running out, but local employees may be put up in
shipping containers in car parks to free up much needed accommodations.
This scramble to attend what has traditionally been perceived as the hangout for those who have
benefited the most from "peak globalization" was in some ways surprising: coming after a year in
which "populism" emerged as a dominant global force, while sending establishment politics, legacy
policies and even globalization reeling, the message - in terms of lessons learned from 2016 - sent
to the masses from the world's 0.1% was hardly enlightened.
However, while most Davos participants remain tone deaf, one person has gotten the message loud
and clear.
According to
Reuters
, German Chancellor Angela Merkel - who faces a crucial election this year as she runs for her
4th term as German chancellor amid sagging approval ratings - is steering clear of the World Economic
Forum in Davos, a meeting expected to be dominated by debate over the looming presidency of Donald
Trump "and rising public anger with elites and globalization", which is ironic because just two years
prior, the topic was rising wealth inequality which the world's billionaires blasted, lamented and,
well, got even richer as nothing at all changed. What is surprising about Merkel's absence in 2017
is that the Chancellor has been a regular at the annual gathering of political leaders, CEOs and
celebrities, traveling to the snowy resort in the Swiss Alps seven times since becoming chancellor
in 2005. But her spokesman told Reuters she had decided not to attend for a second straight year.
This year's conference runs from Jan. 17-20 under the banner "Responsive and Responsible Leadership".
Trump's inauguration coincides with the last day of the conference.
"It's true that a Davos trip was being considered, but we never confirmed it, so this is not a
cancellation," the spokesman said.
Reuters adds that this is the first time Merkel has missed Davos two years in a row since taking
office over 11 years ago and her absence may come as a disappointment to the organizers because her
reputation as a steady, principled leader fits well with the theme of this year's conference.
There was little additional information behind her continued absencea the government spokesman
declined to say what scheduling conflict was preventing her from attending, nor would it say whether
the decision might be linked to the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people
in mid-December.
The reason for her absence, however, may be far more prosaic: as Reuters echoes what we said previously,
"after the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Trump were attributed to rising public anger
with the political establishment and globalization, leaders may be more reluctant than usual to travel
to a conference at a plush ski resort that has become synonymous with the global elite. "
Another potential complication is that this year's Davod event concludes just hours before Trump's
inauguration. As a result, one European official suggested to Reuters that "the prospect of having
to address questions about Trump days before he enters the White House might also have dissuaded
Merkel, whose politics is at odds with the president-elect on a broad range of issues, from immigration
and trade, to Russia and climate change."
During the U.S. election campaign, Trump described Merkel's refugee policies as "insane". Like
Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, who announced in early December that he would not seek
a second term next year, will not be in Davos.
Most other European political leaders are expected to be present, despite the furious changes
in Europe's political landscape in the past year: the Forum had hoped to lure Matteo Renzi, but he
resigned as Italian prime minister last month. European leaders that are expected include Mark Rutte
of the Netherlands and Enda Kenny of Ireland. British Prime Minister Theresa May could also be there.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who was elected to the WEF board of trustees last
year, is expected to attend, as are senior ministers from a range of other European countries, as
well as top figures from the European Commission.
Members of Donald Trump's team, including Davos regulars like former Goldman Sachs president Gary
Cohn and fund manager Anthony Scaramucci, are also expected. Reuters reminds us that WEF Chairman
Klaus Schwab was invited to Trump Tower last month, although the purpose of the visit was unclear.
Although the WEF does not comment on which leaders it is expecting until roughly a week before
the meeting, the star attraction is expected to be Xi Jinping, the first Chinese president to attend.
Meanwhile, it is was highly unlikely that the one person everyone would like to seek answers from
at Davos, Russian president Vladimir Putin, will be present.
This is an interesting development. Despite the use of epithets like "cunt" and "bitch" in the
oh, so valuable discussion contributions above, the German head of state is quite astute and living
in the real world. She has decided that association with the most elite of global meetings is
a negative. Don't you consider that significant?
Hardly. There are "leaks" of German Govt cables to NDR revealing how far Juncker obstructed crackdown
on corporate tax evasion when PM of Luxembourg. Clear indication Germany wants Juncker gone before
BreXit negotiations start and Wilders gains votes in NL in March.
1st Quarter in Europe is dynamite.
Davos is fluff and irrelevant.
Once UK SC delivers opinion in Jan 2017 there is a 1-line Bill to go through both Houses of
Parliament. If the Lords blocks the Bill it will lead to a 1910 Constitutional Crisis and either
Election, or abolition of House of Lords. UK is especially volatile in 2017 especially if Queen
dies.
Merkel sees nothing but danger ahead. Ukraine will probably implode and set of a refugee wave
into Germany. Turkey could well crash and burn. UK is going to be a very difficult situation.
33% French farmers reportedly earning <350 Euros/month as exports to Russia collapsed. French
election could be volatile. Italy is heading for meltdown.
Merkel is going to burn - she has failed to head off any problem
Davos doesn't care about politicians. Politicians are merely banker's puppets. Look
no further than Trump. He gets to be POTUS and what is his first act of business?
To put Goldman Sachs in charge of his Treasury and put JP Morgan in charge of White House policy.
If anyone thinks a politician will change anything, you are wrong. The banks make the
orders and plans, everything else is theatre.
It's been said that the captain of the Titanic was drunk before the ship struck the iceberg.
Given the above, maybe the Davosians are also equally intoxicated as they helm an economic ship
that's about to go under. Whether it's by psychotropics or just plain hubris, they certainly
don't seem to understand the depth of the danger they are in.
"... The current narrative weaves an expectation that manufacturing industry will return to the USA complete with all the 1962-vintage societal benefits of great-paying blue collar jobs, plus an orgy of infrastructure-building. I think both ideas are flawed, even allowing for good intentions. For one thing, most of the factories are either standing in ruin or scraped off the landscape. ..."
"... New state-of-the-art factories would require an Everest of private capital investment that is simply impossible to manifest in a system that is already leveraged up to its eyeballs. ..."
"... If by some magic any new industrial capacity were built, much of the work in it would be performed by robotics, not brawny men in blue shirts, and certainly not at the equivalent of the old United Auto Workers $35-an-hour assembly line wage. ..."
"... Similarly for "infrastructure" spending touted by the forces of Trump as the coming panacea for economic malaise. I suspect most people assume this means a trillion-dollar stimulus spend on highways and their accessories. Well, that also assumes that we expect another fifty years of Happy Motoring and suburban living. ..."
"... The oil industry itself is already headed for collapse on its sinking energy-return-on-investment. ..."
"... The car financing system is broken. Bear in mind the original suburbanization of America back in the 20 th century - along with its accessory automobiles - must be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world . ..."
"... By affordable energy I mean energy with a greater-than 30-to-one energy-return-on-investment, which is the ratio you need for the kind of life we lead. That's what the now-ridiculed Peak Oil story was really about: not running out of oil, but not getting enough bang for our bucks pulling the remaining oil out of the earth to maintain our standard of living. I'll return to this issue in more detail later. But that was what provoked America's 21 st century economic malaise. Everything we've done in finance since then has been an attempt to compensate for our fundamental problem with debt - borrowing from the future to maintain our current (unaffordable) standard of living. Our debt has grown ever larger and faster each year, and our methods for managing it have become more desperate and dishonest as that occurred. ..."
"... Sixteen years after the Fed's creation, America entered its worst economic downturn ever, the Great Depression, which was only mitigated by the colossal abnormality of World War Two. America emerged from that episode as the last industrial society standing amid everyone else's smoldering ruins. That gave us an extraordinary advantage in world trade lasting roughly thirty years. ..."
"... Debt was the meat-and-potatoes of the Fed's wizardry, but the "secret sauce" of Fed magic was fraud, in the form of market interventions, manipulations, regulatory negligence, and just plain systematic lying about the numbers that defined the economy. It amounted to nationalized financial racketeering. ..."
"... Of course, nobody paid a criminal penalty for any of this misconduct besides the maverick Ponzi artist Bernie Madoff, and a few other small fish. The regulators looked the other way, on orders from their bosses. Unlike the earlier Savings and Loan bank crisis of the late 1980s, none of the leading bank officer perps went to jail. The damage of the 2008 crash was epic and never repaired, only papered over with more debt, more deceit, and more racketeering. ..."
"... Roaring stock markets were a secondary pillar of the Fed's economic world-view. The post-election 2000 point upsurge in the Dow, along with the historically low 4.6 unemployment number, gave the Fed the opportunity on December 15 to do the same thing they did the previous year: cover their asses and preserve some credibility by hiking the Fed Funds rate one-quarter percent. You'd think if they were really confident in the economy - especially given the year–end rally - they would venture to raise by half a percent or more. They are not confident. They are lying with their fingers crossed. ..."
"... The crucial ten-year treasury rate has gone up a hundred percent since the summer. ..."
"... A bear market is now on, meaning bond-holders are dumping their bonds. China and Saudi Arabia are among the leading dumpers of US Treasuries because they need the money for one reason or another. ..."
"... Bonds, of course, represent debt. Total US debt has doubled under President Obama from around ten trillion to twenty trillion dollars (as it doubled under Bush Two from five to ten trillion dollars). ..."
"... Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), in force for ten years, has driven house prices back to stratospheric levels. ..."
"... Efforts to eliminate cash are already underway around the world . The EU officially discontinued the €500 note from circulation. Ken Rogoff's Harvard colleague, Larry Summers, was calling for abolition of the $100 bill a year ago. ..."
"... Another method for depriving citizens of their financial liberty would be for the government to declare that retirement accounts had to contain a set percentage of US Treasury paper - once again herding people into a financial corral against their will - in order to prop up the value of bonds and tamp down interest rates. ..."
"... Their political counterparts in the Democrat / Prog coastal elite, hardcore Hillary, PC-and-unicorn crowd are moving through their post-election Kubler-Ross Transect-of-Grief from denial to anger too. So both sides are quite pissed off and primed for conflict. ..."
"... There's no sign that the Democrat / Progs have recognized that their poisonous identity politics played a significant role in their electoral defeat. ..."
"... The reports of Peak Oil's death are exaggerated, to borrow a gag from Mr. Twain. It's just been playing out in ways that many of us didn't quite anticipate and it is still at the heart of our economic predicament - which is that you can't rationalize an annual debt growth rate of 8 percent if your actual economic growth rate is under 4 percent (paraphrasing Chris Martenson at Peak Prosperity.com ). ..."
"... We haven't run out of oil, but we have run out of oil that is rationally economical to pull out of the ground. The so-called "shale oil miracle" extended the oil age a few years by debt-financed legerdemain. ..."
"... They just ran up a huge amount of debt to pursue the shale project. The pursuit was on wholeheartedly beginning around 2006, because 1) the Peak Oil story was scaring folks, including folks in the oil industry, and 2) the market price of crude oil soared after 2004 and shale looked like a possibly winning venture - especially since conventional exploration in recent years was turning up almost nothing of significance. ..."
"... Of course, most of the producers weren't making any money even at the $110-a-barrel, but they expected improved technology to mitigate that eventually. In the meantime, they just produced too much shale oil and the market was flooded and OPEC got into the act and pumped all-out trying to crash the price further to put the US shale producers out of business, and then nobody made a red cent fracking for shale oil. So, you can see there was a pattern. ..."
"... The pattern nicely describes the dynamic advanced by Joseph Tainter in his seminal work, The Collapse of Complex Societies : namely that over-investments in complexity lead to diminishing returns. ..."
"... As I write just before New Year's Eve, President Obama is trying to start World War Three with Russia as a parting gift to the voting public. I'm among the skeptics who think that the "Russia Hacks Election story" is a ruse to divert the public's attention from the stupendous failure of the Democratic Party to win, as expected. Rather, Wikileaks should get the Pulitzer Prize for revealing so much about the nefarious workings of the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic National Committee. ..."
"... Syria is the current goner-du-jour. Whatever it ends up being, either under Assad or someone else, it will not be stable the way it was. The USA ended up arming and funding the Sunni Salafist "bad guys" there because they opposed Shiite Iran and its regional proxy Hezbollah plus Assad. Russia eventually came in on that side on the theory that another failed state is not in the world's interests. ..."
"... The big news in that corner of the world last year was the collapse of Yemen, which occupies a big slab on Saudi Arabia's southern border. That poor-ass country is the latest Middle East basket-case and Saudi military operations there continue to date, using airplanes and weapons supplied by Uncle Sam - just another case of feeding Jihadist wrath. ..."
"... Russia? It's apparently stable. We hear no end of complaints about "Putin the Thug," but in this time of altered reality and disinformation fog, it's honestly impossible to tell what the fuck the score is. Has he bumped off some journalists? So they say. But, not to get to baroque about it, consider the impressive trail of dead bodies said to be left in the wake of Bill and Hillary. That story was so toxic that Google squashed searches for it during the election campaign. ..."
"... Ukraine was made a basket case with direct American assistance. (Remember Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland: "Fuck the EU!") Ukraine was rendered an instant failed state. As far as I could tell, the last thing Russia wanted was to take on Ukraine as an economic dependent. Same for the Baltic States. ..."
"... They need to subsidize these places like they need a hole in the head. Russia's 2015 annexation of the Crimea was a special case, since it had been part of Russia one way or another for most of the past 200 years, except for the period after Khrushchev gifted it to his homeboys in Ukraine around 1957. ..."
"... Finally, as renowned Russologist Stephen Cohen has said, wouldn't it make sense for the US and Russia to drop all this antagonism nonsense and make common cause against the real threat of our time: Islamic Jihad? How many Westerners has Russia killed or harmed the past twenty years compared to the forces of Jihad? The tensions in Syria are admittedly complex, but why are we making them worse while Russia attempts to stabilize the joint? Perhaps The Donald can start there . ..."
"There is no other endeavor in which men and women of enormous intellectual power have shown
total disregard for higher-order reasoning than monetary policy.
-David Collum
American Notes
Apart from all the ill-feeling about the election, one constant 'out there' since November 8 is
the Ayn Randian rapture that infects the money scene.
Wall Street and big business believe that the country has passed through a magic portal into a
new age of heroic businessmen-warriors (Trump, Rex T, Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, et. al.) who will go
forth creating untold wealth from super-savvy deal-making that un-does all the self-defeating malarkey
of the detested Deep State technocratic regulation regime of recent years. The main signs in the
sky, they say, are the virile near-penetration of the Dow Jones 20,000-point maidenhead and the rocket
ride of Ole King Dollar to supremacy of the global currency-space.
I hate to pound sleet on this manic parade, but, to put it gently, mob psychology is outrunning
both experience and reality . Let's offer a few hypotheses regarding this supposed coming Trumptopian
nirvana.
The current narrative weaves an expectation that manufacturing industry will return to the
USA complete with all the 1962-vintage societal benefits of great-paying blue collar jobs, plus an
orgy of infrastructure-building. I think both ideas are flawed, even allowing for good intentions.
For one thing, most of the factories are either standing in ruin or scraped off the landscape.
So, it's not like we're going to reactivate some mothballed sleeping giant of productive capacity.
New state-of-the-art factories would require an Everest of private capital investment that
is simply impossible to manifest in a system that is already leveraged up to its eyeballs. Even
if we tried to accomplish it via some kind of main force government central planning and financing
- going full-Soviet - there is no conceivable way to raise (borrow) the "money" without altogether
destroying the value of our money (inflation), and the banking system with it.
If by some magic any new industrial capacity were built, much of the work in it would be performed
by robotics, not brawny men in blue shirts, and certainly not at the equivalent of the old United
Auto Workers $35-an-hour assembly line wage. We have not faced the fact that the manufacturing
fiesta based on fossil fuels was a one-time thing due to special historical circumstances and will
not be repeated. The future of manufacturing in America is frighteningly modest. We'll actually be
lucky if we can make a few vital necessities by means of hydro-electric or direct water power, and
that will be about the extent of it . Some of you may recognize this as the
World Made By Hand scenario. I'll stick by that.
Similarly for "infrastructure" spending touted by the forces of Trump as the coming panacea
for economic malaise. I suspect most people assume this means a trillion-dollar stimulus spend on
highways and their accessories. Well, that also assumes that we expect another fifty years of Happy
Motoring and suburban living.
Fuggeddabowdit. We're in the twilight of motoring anyway you cut it, despite all the chatter about
electric cars and "driverless" cars. We won't have the electric capacity to switch over the Happy
Motoring fleet from gasoline. The oil industry itself is already headed for collapse on its sinking
energy-return-on-investment. And our problems with money and debt are so severe that the motoring
paradigm is more prone to fail on the basis of car loan scarcity and unworthy borrowers before the
fueling issues even kick in.
Every year, fewer Americans can afford to buy any kind of car - the way they're used to buying
them, on installment loans. The industry has gone the limit to help them - seven-year loans for used
cars! - but they have no more room to maneuver. The car financing system is broken. Bear in mind
the original suburbanization of America back in the 20 th century - along with its accessory
automobiles - must be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world
.
So, a rebuild of all this stuff would represent more and possibly even greater malinvestment.
We could have applied our post-WW2 treasure to building beautiful walkable towns and cities with
some capacity for adaptive re-use, but we blew it in order to enjoy life in a one-time demolition
derby. Life is tragic. Societies make poor choices sometimes, and then there are consequences.
We also might have been in better shape now if, beginning twenty years ago, we began a major rebuild
of our railway infrastructure. But we blew that off, too, and shortly it will be very difficult to
get around this geographically large country by any mechanical means. It may be too late now to do
anything about that for the financing reasons already touched on - and which I will elaborate on
next. The bottom line is that President Donald Trump will be overwhelmed by a sea of financial troubles
from the very get-go, and here's why.
Designated Bag-Holder
The American people have been punked by their own government and their central bank, the Federal
Reserve, for years and the jig is now up. In 2017 both will lose their authority and legitimacy,
a very grave matter for the survival of this republic.
Insiders surely have seen this coming for a long time. The people running this so-called Deep
State of overblown and overgrown institutions probably acted at first with the good intentions of
keeping the national lifestyle afloat. But in the end (now approaching) they stooped to too much
duplicity and deceit in the desperate attempt to not just preserve the system, but to protect their
own reputations and personal perquisites. And now there ought to be some question with the election
of 2016 that they have engineered all of this system fragility to blow up on Mr. Trump's watch, so
they can blame him for it. It was going to blow up anyway. But had Hillary Clinton won the election,
at least the right gang would have had to take the blame - the people in charge for the past twenty
years. Instead, Donald Trump has been elected Designated Bag-Holder.
About That "Big Fat Ugly Bubble" and its Consequences Part 1: History Lesson
The USA ran out of growth capacity around the turn of the millennium because we ran out of affordable
energy to run our techno-industrial economy. It was hard to see this with seemingly plenty of oil
available. And, of course, the computer tech fiesta was blossoming, but for all that glitzy stuff
to attract dwindling real capital, other old stuff had to go, and did go, and when all was said and
done the computers did not generate much wealth or social value. In fact, the diminishing returns
and blowback of computer tech were arguably more damaging than beneficial to society and its economy.
Look at where the middle class is today. Computer tech gave the magical appearance of growth while
actually undermining it.
By affordable energy I mean energy with a greater-than 30-to-one energy-return-on-investment,
which is the ratio you need for the kind of life we lead. That's what the now-ridiculed Peak Oil
story was really about: not running out of oil, but not getting enough bang for our bucks pulling
the remaining oil out of the earth to maintain our standard of living. I'll return to this issue
in more detail later. But that was what provoked America's 21 st century economic malaise.
Everything we've done in finance since then has been an attempt to compensate for our fundamental
problem with debt - borrowing from the future to maintain our current (unaffordable) standard of
living. Our debt has grown ever larger and faster each year, and our methods for managing it have
become more desperate and dishonest as that occurred.
The culprit at the center is America's central bank, the Federal Reserve, which is actually not
a government agency as it seems, but a consortium of the nation's biggest private banks, lately known
as Too-Big-To-Fail. The Fed was created in 1913, when the complexities of capital finance were multiplying
in step with the complexities of industrial production, which, remember, was a new and evolving phenomenon
of human history. Mankind had no prior experience with industrialism. We discovered toward the end
of the 19 th century - decades of unprecedented industrial growth - that the system's
dynamic produced booms accompanied by very destructive busts. The operations of banking usually outran
the cycles of trade, industry, and war that were coloring evolving Modernity. So the Fed was created
to smooth out these cycles. It had two basic mandates for this: acting as the lender of last resort
between banks during financial panics so that some money would always be available in an emergency;
and stabilizing the money supply and prices in the system. The Fed failed spectacularly to smooth
out the cycles of boom and bust and to maintain the value of the dollar over time.
Sixteen years after the Fed's creation, America entered its worst economic downturn ever,
the Great Depression, which was only mitigated by the colossal abnormality of World War Two. America
emerged from that episode as the last industrial society standing amid everyone else's smoldering
ruins. That gave us an extraordinary advantage in world trade lasting roughly thirty years.
That high tide of the era of seeming "normality" - the 1950s and 60s, which the Trumpian-minded
might recall as "great" - started unraveling in the 1970s, which was not coincidentally the moment
of America's all-time oil production peak.
In 1977, the Fed was given a third mission of promoting maximum employment with a trick-bag of
tools for manipulating the money supply and credit creation that have proven to be fatally mischievous.
This new task elevated Fed officials, and especially its chairperson, to the status of viziers -
magicians using occult mathematical models and formulas - to cast spells capable of controlling the
macro economy the way wizards are thought to control external reality. Their pretenses seemed to
work for reasons unrelated to the spells they were learning to cast.
It is still largely unrecognized that America recovered from the financial disorder of the 1970s
not because of the charms of "Reaganomics" but for the simple reason that the last giant finds of
oil with greater than 30-to-one energy-return-on-investment came on line in the 1980s: Alaska's North
Slope, Britain and Norway's North Sea fields, and Siberia. That allowed the USA and the West generally
to extend the techno-industrial fiesta another twenty years. As that bounty tapered down around the
year 2000, the system wobbled again and the viziers of the Fed ramped up their magical operations,
led by the Grand Vizier (or "Maestro") Alan Greenspan, who worked the control rods of interest rates
as though the financial system were a great nuclear powered pipe organ that could be revved up and
tamped down by a wondrous Fed control panel. This period of Fed spell-casting was characterized by
ever more systemically complex finance, growing systemic fragility, pervasive institutionalized accounting
fraud, and ever-greater bubbles and busts. Deregulation, especially the 1998 repeal of the Glass-Steagall
Act of 1932, sealed America's financial fate.
Debt was the meat-and-potatoes of the Fed's wizardry, but the "secret sauce" of Fed magic
was fraud, in the form of market interventions, manipulations, regulatory negligence, and just plain
systematic lying about the numbers that defined the economy. It amounted to nationalized financial
racketeering. Under the consecutive Grand Vizierships of Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, control
fraud (using official authority to cover up misconduct) was perfected by banking executives, eventuating
in the mortgage securities fiasco of 2008, which took down the housing market and the economy. (That
housing market, by the way, was made up mainly of suburban houses, the sine qua non of the greatest
misallocation of resources in the history of the world .)
Of course, nobody paid a criminal penalty for any of this misconduct besides the maverick
Ponzi artist Bernie Madoff, and a few other small fish. The regulators looked the other way, on orders
from their bosses. Unlike the earlier Savings and Loan bank crisis of the late 1980s, none of the
leading bank officer perps went to jail. The damage of the 2008 crash was epic and never repaired,
only papered over with more debt, more deceit, and more racketeering.
The supposed remedy, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, was a cover for continued pervasive fraud
and the institutional "capture" of government by the banking industry and its handmaidens, really
a fascist melding of banking and government, a swindle machine in which anything goes and nothing
matters. The frauds have only been rechanneled since 2008 into college loans, car loans, corporate
stock buyback monkey business, currency arbitrage shenanigans, private equity asset-stripping, and
the gigantic black box of derivatives trading.
Part 2: 2017, the Year of Living Anxiously
Under Bernanke's successor, UC-Berkeley Professor Janet Yellen, the emphasis in Fed policy has
been an elaborate game of "data-dependent" foot-dragging - a lot of talk with no action - with the
data itself largely fraudulent, especially the easily gamed employment and GDP numbers that supposedly
determine the rise or fall of interest rate policy. In short, the racketeering continues while the
authorities quail in the face of accumulated and now inescapable debt quandaries ever more certain
to end in systemic collapse.
Get this: the Fed is completely full of shit. It is terrified of the conditions it has set up
and it has no idea what to do next. The "data" that it claims to be so dependent on is arrantly fake.
The government's official unemployment number at Christmas 2016 was 4.6 percent. It's a compound
lie. The 4.6 percent does not include the 95 million people out of the workforce, most of them able-bodied,
who have simply run through their unemployment benefits and given up looking for work. Nor does it
figure in the fact that roughly 90 percent of the new jobs created are part time jobs, many of them
held by people working several jobs (because they have to, to pay the bills). Nor does it detail
the quality of the jobs created (minimum wage shit jobs.)
That 4.6 unemployment figure is the main pillar of the Fed's "data." They interpret it as meaning
the economy is roaring and has their full confidence. They're lying about that, of course. They have
been touting "the recovery" (from the crash of 2008) continually and heralding a program of "normalizing"
interest rates upward for two years. In 2015 they didn't do anything until the very last Fed meeting
of the year when they raised the Fed Funds rate 25 basis point (that's a measly one-quarter of a
percent). They raised, they said, because they were "confident" about the economy. No, that's not
why. They did it because they talked about it all year without doing anything and their credibility
was on the line. They also promised four rate hikes altogether in 2016, which they then failed to
carry out.
After that December 2015 rate hike, the stock markets tanked 10 percent. By springtime, the markets
appeared to be bouncing back, so the Fed started talking about more rate hikes again. They talked
it up all year without acting, an impressive act of fakery. The surprise Brexit vote gave them the
heebie jeebies. They laid low. Meanwhile, the US election season was on. The Fed denies this, but
they did not raise interest rates for eleven months in 2016 solely because they wanted to make the
Democratic administration look good heading into the November vote, and they knew the economy was
fragile. Once Hillary was nominated they were determined to usher her into the White House on a high
tide of fake good economic news.
When she lost the election the stock markets surprised everyone by entering a super-bubblicious
Trumpxuberance rally. There is a narrative for that too in the media chatter and it is simpleminded
nonsense based on the sheer hope that Trumponomics will be great for business. More on that below.
Roaring stock markets were a secondary pillar of the Fed's economic world-view. The post-election
2000 point upsurge in the Dow, along with the historically low 4.6 unemployment number, gave the
Fed the opportunity on December 15 to do the same thing they did the previous year: cover their asses
and preserve some credibility by hiking the Fed Funds rate one-quarter percent. You'd think if they
were really confident in the economy - especially given the year–end rally - they would venture to
raise by half a percent or more. They are not confident. They are lying with their fingers crossed.
The Fed Funds rate is one thing. As it happens, the Fed does not directly control the interest
rates on US treasury bonds, and they have been rising shockingly through the second half of 2016.
The crucial ten-year treasury rate has gone up a hundred percent since the summer. Because
bond values move inversely to bond rates, the price of treasuries has tanked, inducing trillions
of dollars in losses to bond-holders around the world. The bond market is many times larger than
the stock markets. Bonds have been in a bull market since the early 1980s and that bull rolled over
in mid-2016.
A bear market is now on, meaning bond-holders are dumping their bonds. China and Saudi Arabia
are among the leading dumpers of US Treasuries because they need the money for one reason or another.
They will dump more in 2017 because both countries are in deep economic trouble. Too many bond
sellers and not enough buyers in the market drive interest rates up. Rates have a lot room to move
up, since they started at near-zero. Accordingly, their value has a long way to fall.
Bonds, of course, represent debt. Total US debt has doubled under President Obama from around
ten trillion to twenty trillion dollars (as it doubled under Bush Two from five to ten trillion dollars).
The reason, as stated above, is that we don't produce enough to cover the cost of our national way
of life, so we have to borrow continually at ever-greater volume. Every year, the Treasury has to
pay interest on all that debt. It's a lot of money. This year, with interest rates starting out at
historically unprecedented lows (not seen ever in recorded history), the Treasury paid over a quarter-trillion
dollars in interest. By the way, the government borrows money to make these interest payments too.
An interest rate rise of one percent, would drive the annual US debt higher by $190 billion. As the
late, great Senator Everett Dirkson (R-Ill) once pungently remarked: " a billion here, a billion
there, sooner or later you're talking about real money."
A sharply rising interest rate on the ten-year Treasury bond will thunder through the system.
A lot of other basic interest costs are keyed to the ten-year bond rate, especially home mortgages,
apartment rentals (landlords hold mortgages), and car payments. When the ten year bond rate goes
up, so do mortgage payments. When mortgage rates go up, house prices go down, because fewer people
are in a position to buy a house at higher mortgage rates, and rents go up (more competition among
people who can't buy a house). Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), in force for ten years, has
driven house prices back to stratospheric levels. They are now primed to fall, perhaps severely,
leaving many homeowners "underwater," with houses worth way less on the market than the amount of
mortgage left to pay off. The re-financing market is dead. Housing starts were already down by a
stunning 19 percent in November. Automobile sales are rolling over. Manufacturing and retail sales
numbers are down at year end. What's up: stocks, stocks, stocks.
Yet investors did not execute the usual end-of-year profit-taking in the expectation that Trump
would lower the capital gains tax in 2017, so why sell now? You can wait until January 3, 2017 to
sell, and then not have to pay tax on your profits until April of 2018. Will investors start dumping
in the first trading days of 2017? I think so. And will that selling beget a stampede for the exits?
And what will happen if the interest rate on the ten-year bond hits three percent? (It doesn't have
far to go). Or maybe even four percent? What happens is the stock markets go down in the first quarter
of 2017. My forecast is 20 percent down on the S & P. That will only be a preview of coming attractions
once Trump gets his mitts on the levers of power. A still bigger crash ahead later in the year!
Why Trump Can't Pull a Reagan
When Reagan came into office in 1981, inflation was raging largely because of the effects of the
oil crises of 1973 and 1979, which had produced the "stagflation" that confounded the reigning economists'
models (they knew nothing about the relationship between energy dynamics and capital formation).
The Fed Funds rate was almost 20 percent in 1981. It had a lot of room to move down. The national
debt was less than one trillion (Reagan eventually ran it up to $2.8 trillion). Reagan was able to
endure a sharp recession early in his first term - and voodoo economics got him through all the rest
of his tenure, with both inflation and interest "normalizing" - as mentioned earlier, he enjoyed
the bonanza of the last great non-OPEC oil discoveries coming on-line during his two terms, which
ramped up economic activity and growth.
Today, the US is in a box and Trump comes on the scene with nowhere to move. Too much debt can
only be managed if interest rates are kept low. Everybody and his mother around the world is dumping
US Treasuries. With a bear market in bonds on, the Fed as buyer of last resort will have to sop up
whatever comes on the market to keep the interest rate from rising above three percent on the ten-year,
and even that may not prevent it. Trump's vaunted infrastructure stimulus plan will be impossible
to carry out without the Fed monetizing the necessary debt. So stimulus implies bigger deficits,
which means more bonded debt that nobody wants to buy. The result will be inflation and accordingly
further upward pressure on interest rates. Higher interest rates, in turn, will negatively impact
economic activity, lowering tax revenue, inducing larger fiscal imbalances and greater instability.
Trump may never even get the stimulus he seeks. The Republican controlled-congress has vowed not
to increase the national debt. How can Trump fulfill his pledge to cut taxes and bring on stimulus
without hugely increasing the debt? If there is war over spending between Trump and Congress, Congress
is likely to win, since they control the fiscal purse strings. Of course, Donald Trump cannot abide
not winning. Hostilities between them may become permanent early in Trump's term and bring on even
more dangerous paralysis of governance.
Also early in 2017, the Fed will abandon its "dot plot" talk about further interest rate hikes.
They may also surrender their credibility in the process. The system can't take the strain of three
interest rate rises in 2017. It may be that Janet Yellen has raised the Fed Funds rate a total of
one-half a percent in two years solely to be able to lower them again when the real economy finally
tanks under that strain of incessant central bank chicanery. By the second quarter of 2017, following
a 20 percent stock dump, the Fed will start making noises about Quantitative Easing 4 (QE), or they
will cook up some other program that accomplishes the same thing under a new cockamamie label. More
QE (or something like it) will drive the dollar back down and gold back up. The housing market will
be in the toilet and the rest of the economy will follow it down the drain. By the end of Trump's
first year in office, there will another, greater, dump in the stock markets after the initial 20
percent drop in the first quarter. America will be great again, all right: we'll be entering a depression
greater than the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Desperate Measures
One of the other big and dark trends of the past year has been the move of governments around
the world - and among the economist / necromancers who advise them - to ban cash from the scene in
order to herd all citizens into a digital banking system that will allow the authorities to track
all financial transactions and suck every possible cent of taxes into national coffers. It would
also be an opportunity for the bank-and government cabal to impose negative interest rates (NIRP)
on bank accounts so that money herded into the digital system could be surreptitiously "taxed" by
charging account holders just for being there (against their will). It's a little hard to see how
that might happen just now in a broad rising rate environment, but it would be the natural accompaniment
to banning cash - and renewed aggressive QE (QE forever!) might do the trick.
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff literally wrote the book on this ( The Curse of Cash ; Princeton
University Press, 2016), a mendacious argument that cash money merely enables drug dealers and terrorists
to operate and has no useful place otherwise in a regular economy. Rogoff appeared to be angling
for the Treasury slot in Hillary's cabinet, and would have fit in perfectly with this totalitarian
assault on the public's financial liberty - but, as we know, Hillary didn't make it.
Efforts to eliminate cash are already underway around the world . The EU officially discontinued
the €500 note from circulation. Ken Rogoff's Harvard colleague, Larry Summers, was calling for abolition
of the $100 bill a year ago. Sweden is successfully herding its people out of fiat krona. India's
Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled a fast one in November by banning the 1000 and 500 rupee note
(worth respectively $14 and $7), and threw India's economy into a epileptic seizure. The idea was
to discipline tax evaders who operate in a cash economy. The catch was that more than 85 percent
of India's economy operates on a cash basis among people too poor to have bank accounts and credit
cards - including millions of truck drivers and ordinary laborers. Naturally, the Indian economy
froze. Nobody could get paid. Food rotted in stalled trucks. ATM withdrawals were limited to a few
day's walking-around-money. Citizens could not even exchange their 1000 and 500 rupee notes at the
banks without going through onerous time-consuming bureaucratic rigmarole, including fingerprinting
and the submission of tax records. The process caused discouraging long queues to form at the banks,
and was probably designed to discourage the exchange of the 1000 and 500 rupee notes altogether and
instead just retire them from circulation - which means a lot of poor people lost the minimal cash
savings they had.
It's hard to see the US government banning cash as clumsily as India did, but they have other
ways to herd the multitudes into the black box of all-digital banking. Financial author James Rickards
calls this the "Ice-Nine" program, in reference to the isotope of water in Kurt Vonnegut's sci-fi
novel Cat's Cradle that freezes the world in a horrifying chain reaction. Rickards' Ice-Nine financial
nightmare would include features like freezing bank accounts, bail-ins (confiscation of accounts),
limits on ATM withdrawals, and the "gating" of investment funds. Ice-Nine would be invoked in a banking
emergency - say, a derivatives "accident" that took out some Too-Big-Too-Fail giant, or really anything
that triggered the extreme fault lines in the ultra-fragile system that the world's money elites
have cobbled together to keep the garbage barge of global finance from sinking. In his recent book,
The Road to Ruin , Rickards reminds readers that the emergency act signed by Bush Two after 9/11
has remained in effect under Obama, so that America is "just one phone call away from martial law."
Another method for depriving citizens of their financial liberty would be for the government
to declare that retirement accounts had to contain a set percentage of US Treasury paper - once again
herding people into a financial corral against their will - in order to prop up the value of bonds
and tamp down interest rates. David McAlvany (
his excellent podcast here )
makes the interesting point that if herding the public into the digital financial corral was a key
ingredient to "making America great again," who could object? - because now you'd be opposing American
greatness! Trump inherited a much bigger problem than Barack Obama did in 2009. Obama still had enough
soft-soap left in the machine to blow more bubbles. Trump arrives on the scene with the machine out
of bubble-blowing mojo. He'll be overwhelmed by financial disorder in 2017 and then the nation's
focus will turn to a tumultuous political scene
Wild in the Streets
The public is just plain pissed off, and remains pissed off after the Trump Victory. Their anger
has been fermenting for decades as their economic prospects dwindled and they began to understand
how it all worked against them. The battered middle class might have gotten a temporary thrill from
the election, but an awful lot of them are still out of work, or working at the humiliating shit-jobs
that replaced their old lost jobs in the old real stuff economy. Worse is coming their way in 2017.
Theirs is a true existential crisis.
Even under the most favorable circumstances, a stimulus program would not likely get out of congress
until much later in 2017, and I personally doubt that it will get through at all. The so-far-fortunate
retirees plugged into pensions represent another potential trouble spot. Pension funds are going
bust all over the country from the incapacity to stay solvent in a near-ZIRP environment. In 2016,
fissures started to show in places like the Dallas Police and Firemen's Pension fund, when pensioners'
redemptions were shut down. There are pension funds all over the country floundering from the same
conditions, since the Fed took the "fix" out of "fixed income." In the absence of decent "yield,"
the pension funds have been herded into risky stock markets, and if those markets blow up, the pension
funds are going to blow with them and then the pensioners' lives are going to blow up and then
maybe civil order dissolves around the country.
That may be the moment when President Trump and his militarily-weighted cabinet appointees opt
for martial law. What a goddamned mess that will be. There is no civilized country on earth with
as many small arms per capita than the USA, and despite the fearsome appearance of militarized police
forces, you cannot overstate how much deadly mischief a small number of pissed-off people can make
with automatic rifles, rocket-propelled-grenades, Semtex plastic explosive, and other fun stuff.
It could morph easily to a literal war on bankers and Wall Street in particular, especially if Ice-Nine
goes into effect. Bear in mind that a lot of veterans of the endless Middle East wars belong to this
suffering economic class, and they actually have some training in the warrior arts.
Their political counterparts in the Democrat / Prog coastal elite, hardcore Hillary, PC-and-unicorn
crowd are moving through their post-election Kubler-Ross Transect-of-Grief from denial to anger too.
So both sides are quite pissed off and primed for conflict. The Left will certainly do everything
possible to oppose Trump and try to make him look bad, whether it's in the public interest to do
so or not. They will throw every monkey-wrench possible into the machinery of governance, up to and
including the (mostly Democratic Party weighted) Federal Reserve hierarchy, whose interest rate "dot
plot" could be truly a plot to exact revenge on Trump. Of course, that would blow up in their faces
since proportionately the coastal elites own much more stock than the Trumpenlumpenprole red-staters,
and they could be wiped out in a significant market crash triggered by rising interest rates. But
that's the thing about political rage: it's the opposite of rational.
There's no sign that the Democrat / Progs have recognized that their poisonous identity politics
played a significant role in their electoral defeat. They will not abandon that endeavor in
2017. They will double-down on it. And as that happens, the Democratic Party will go the way of the
Whigs in 1856 - with a whimper, not a bang. God knows who or what will replace them as a credible
opposition to Trumpist crypto-Republicanism, although Trump himself stands a good chance of leading
that party to oblivion, too, if my forecast of a big financial blow-up comes to pass.
The Red Guard-like action on campus may continue, though it's hard to imagine the "Snowflakes"
besting their infantile hijinks of 2016. What they are demonstrating now is that coercive identity
politics is just a new form of leisure-time recreation on campus, like Ultimate Frisbee and the beer
blasts of old! Have fun wrecking faculty careers and basking in the Facebook feed! A few still-sane
people of all political persuasions are sick of their censorious attacks, reckless persecutions,
and insults to reality - such as the mandatory "white privilege" trainings and gender identity personal
pronoun crusades. I predict that there will be a revolt among the university trustees and boards
of directors against college presidents and deans who pander to the Maoist hysteria, as the damage
to higher education and intellectual freedom more generally finally manifests in dropping enrollments
and the loss of public funding.
There is every sign that black and white racial conflict will grow worse in the year ahead. The
week after Christmas 2016 saw an impressive number of shopping mall mass melees of black teens all
over the country. For years, the media went along with the hyperbolic story that innocent black men
were being killed by police for no reason - when the overwhelming majority of those cases involved
victims brandishing guns or grossly misbehaving in some way liable to get themselves in trouble.
Victimology still rules in America. It's a psychological defense mechanism to relieve the Dem / Prog's
shame and anxiety with the outcome of the long civil rights campaign - namely, black family disintegration,
educational failure, and a shocking rate of black-on-black murder. A subsidiary grievance industry,
lately led by Black Lives Matter, fans the flames of vengeance against the universal villain, Whitey,
whose "privilege" keeps other people down (except, notice, immigrants from China, Korea, Vietnam,
India, and other places where Whitey is absent.)
So, now Left and Right are both equally pissed off. It also means you have two adversarial groups
who might give themselves permission to turn violent to justify their grievances. If the financial
markets tank and the economy freefalls, it is easy to imagine the potential for violent conflict
between the Dem / Progs with their Black Lives matter proxies against the Trumpista lumpenproles.
It would be a terrible tragic distraction from the business of repairing the common weal, the economy,
and the common culture - but so was the Civil War
The Oil Quandary
The reports of Peak Oil's death are exaggerated, to borrow a gag from Mr. Twain. It's just
been playing out in ways that many of us didn't quite anticipate and it is still at the heart of
our economic predicament - which is that you can't rationalize an annual debt growth rate of 8 percent
if your actual economic growth rate is under 4 percent (paraphrasing Chris Martenson at
Peak Prosperity.com ).
We haven't run out of oil, but we have run out of oil that is rationally economical to pull
out of the ground. The so-called "shale oil miracle" extended the oil age a few years by debt-financed
legerdemain. Yes, we drove US oil production way up, almost back up to the 1970 peak production
level around 10 million barrels-a-day (b/d). The trouble was that the companies producing it didn't
make a red cent in the process. They just ran up a huge amount of debt to pursue the shale project.
The pursuit was on wholeheartedly beginning around 2006, because 1) the Peak Oil story was scaring
folks, including folks in the oil industry, and 2) the market price of crude oil soared after 2004
and shale looked like a possibly winning venture - especially since conventional exploration in recent
years was turning up almost nothing of significance.
From 2004 the price of oil skyrocketed from around $40-a-barrel until 2008, when it reached a
high point of about $140-a-barrel. Then, of course, the price crashed catastrophically for a year,
along with Wall Street and the economy. But, by then, the fracking industry was all ramped up in
the Bakken fields of North Dakota and the Eagle Ford range of Texas. Plus the industry was learning
some additional new fracking tricks to goose more oil out of the "tight" rock. So they were full
of confidence, despite the price crash. Then, in 2009 the oil price turned sharply upward again -
with central bank ZIRP and QE and other maneuvers to prop up the economy with more debt at lower
interest rates. And the price of oil just climbed and climbed again back into the $110-plus range
in 2011, and lingered there until 2015, when it crashed again.
Of course, most of the producers weren't making any money even at the $110-a-barrel, but they
expected improved technology to mitigate that eventually. In the meantime, they just produced too
much shale oil and the market was flooded and OPEC got into the act and pumped all-out trying to
crash the price further to put the US shale producers out of business, and then nobody made a red
cent fracking for shale oil. So, you can see there was a pattern.
The pattern nicely describes the dynamic advanced by Joseph Tainter in his seminal work, The
Collapse of Complex Societies : namely that over-investments in complexity lead to diminishing returns.
That is, as you keep making your systems extra-hyper-complex, you get less value back for doing it,
until you get to the point where there's no benefit whatsoever, and then the system implodes. And
that is exactly what has happened with oil and the economy that was engineered to run on it, and
the financial system that evolved to manage the wealth it used to produce.
A few other things happened the past few years on the oil scene. The American oil companies bowed
out of Arctic drilling. The Canadian Tar Sands went bust. The overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi choked
off Libyan production, which was offset by Iran coming back onto the international market, which
was offset by political mischief in Nigeria that choked off production, which was offset by increased
Iraqi production, which was offset by the collapse of Venezuela. Most of the world's oil producers
had entered decline anyhow.
Don't be fooled. The low prices at the gasoline pumps only mean that US oil companies are going
broke fast, as are American "consumers." There's a basic equation I've repeated a few times on this
blog: oil over $75-a-barrel destroys industrial economies; oil under $75-a-barrel destroys oil companies
. That's were things stand when the energy return on investment falls to 5-to-1, as is the case with
shale oil. Steve St. Angelo over at the
SRSRocco Report makes the excellent point that it takes at least 30-to-1 energy return on investment
to maintain plain vanilla modern life. Anything below that and parts of the economy have to be sacrificed.
Trucking, air travel, commuting, theme park vacations, your job . It's just another way of describing
the pernicious effects of the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity.
In the fall of 2016, OPEC members tried again to agree on an oil production output limit, as they
have done many time before. Each time, they all managed to cheat in order to sell greater volumes
of oil and make more short-term money - a classic Tragedy of the Commons story. Consequently, the
price of oil went up to about $53-a-barrel by Christmas 2016. Don't expect that to last. Unless,
of course, there is a geopolitical event somewhere out on the oil scene, most likely in the Middle
East, though Venezuela's economy is approaching total collapse. The forecast here is for oil prices
to follow the stock markets down in the first quarter of 2017. A lot of junk bonds in the oil space
will default as a result, leading to a general crisis in shale oil investment.
Vagrant Thoughts on Geopolitics
As I write just before New Year's Eve, President Obama is trying to start World War Three
with Russia as a parting gift to the voting public. I'm among the skeptics who think that the "Russia
Hacks Election story" is a ruse to divert the public's attention from the stupendous failure of the
Democratic Party to win, as expected. Rather, Wikileaks should get the Pulitzer Prize for revealing
so much about the nefarious workings of the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic National Committee.
Regular readers know I didn't vote for Trump, that I heaped considerable abuse on him in the campaign
commentaries. But I didn't take any comfort in the nostrum about being "better off with the Devil
you know (Hillary) than the one you don't know (Trump)." Both candidates were awful, and the condition
of the country is pretty awful as we turn the corner onto 2017. Readers also know from these commentaries
and from my books that I expect we will have to make big changes in our living arrangements up ahead
as the techno-industrial fiesta winds down. I won't reiterate the particulars here, but 2017 is the
hinge year for that. The strains on global finance are so spectacular that something's got give.
President Trump is sure to be overwhelmed by epic dislocations in markets, currencies, debt, and
misguided central bank efforts to hold back the tides of a necessary re-set - a re-set which will
see a lot of wealth vanish and a lot of pain inflicted on the losers of wealth, including whole societies.
We have three major European elections to look forward to in 2017: The Netherlands and France
in the Spring, and Germany in the fall. Geert Wilders (a member of the Trump Big Hair Club), is virulently
against the "Islamisation" of his country. He has campaigned previously to leave the European Union
and for the return to the old guilder currency. Should the right-wing Marine LePen win in France,
the EU experiment will likely end - she has made express promises to take France out of the EU. Angela
Merkel has made herself impressively unpopular by opening the gates to a flood of immigrants fleeing
the breakdown zones of the Middle East and Africa. And then, because of the Schengen Agreement (free
passage across EU borders), the immigrants were unleashed on the rest of Europe.
Those of us paying attention may have easily lost count of the terror atrocities carried out across
Europe by Islamic fanatics. Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice, the Brussels
airport, the Berlin Christmas Market were only the most recent and spectacular. For years, individuals
have been stabbed, had their heads cut off, throats cut, been blown up, machine-gunned. Take a look
at this
comprehensive list going back to 2001. You may be astonished. In that light, it's pretty hard
to keep waving the "diversity" banner, and I sense that Europe has had enough of it. One big question
is whether the new European right-wing leaders will actually move as far as mass deportations. I
rather think they will.
The UK "Brexit" vote was surprise all right. (I hit a white-tailed deer on the Maine Turnpike
at 70mph that June morning, uccchhh , and lived to tell about it.) Now there's a fair chance that
Parliament will find a way to wiggle out of Brexit. Noises are also emanating out of Brussels to
the effect that the EU could loosen up some of their rules - e.g. the Schengen Agreement - to induce
Britain to stay in the EU. But there are so many other fissures and fragilities in that system that
the Brexit may not matter anymore. The European banking system is melting down and there is absolutely
no way to rescue it on the macro EU scale. Italy was heading for a banking crackup before Christmas.
Deutsche Bank has been whirling around the drain for a couple of years. When the US markets and banks
shudder in 2017, Europe will get the vapors. Hence, I'll forecast breakup of the EU by this time
next year.
We've come to the pass where "all that is solid melts into air," in the poetic phrase of old Karl
Marx. Marx was referring to the "specter" of communism that loomed over burgeoning industrial society
of the mid-19 th century, and indeed it turned into quite a world struggle through the
century that followed. But now communism is down for the count and we begin to see what is truly
melting into air: Modernity itself, this colossal, hulking, grinding, machine of destruction that
threatens the global eco-system, and all its sub-systems including the human realms of money and
politics.
The idea that Modernity itself might go down is inconceivable to those in thrall to the Religion
of Progress, which declares that the world (and life in it) only gets better and better every year.
This would appear demonstrably untrue, just in the visible damage to the landscape and the living
things that struggle to dwell there. The most obvious problem with Modernity has been human population
overshoot. The truth is, we're not going to do a darn thing about it. There won't be any policy or
protocol, despite the good intentions of the groups inveighing against it. It will just go on until
it can't, to paraphrase the late Herb Stein. Of course, people still have sex under conditions of
hardship, so the population may plateau for a while until we are well into the long emergency. But
the usual suspects of starvation, disease, and war are all still out there, doing their thing, and
will only ramp up their operations.
The reason the Middle East and North Africa are melting down most conspicuously is because they
are geographically among the places least well endowed for supporting the swollen populations they
acquired over the past two hundred years. Iraq, Syria, the whole Arabian peninsula. Egypt, Libya,
et. al. are all deserts artificially supported by the perquisites of Modernity: cheap energy, fertilizers
made from that, irrigation, money derived from it, and continuing life-support subsidies from
even wealthier modern nations outside the region. In recent years that life-support has flipped into
deadly violence imposed from both within and without, as homegrown Sunni ad Shiite vie for supremacy
and their puppeteers in the First World rush in with bombers, rockets, and small arms to "help."
Iraq and Libya were already goners in 2016. They'll never be politically stable again in the modern
sense. Egypt is still headed down the drain despite the grip of General al-Sisi and his army. In
all these places the "youth bulge" has no prospects for earning a living or supporting a family.
The young men, especially, put their energy into Jihad, revolution, and civil war because there's
nothing else to do. Making war may be thrilling, but it won't lead to a better future because those
benefits of Modernity are running out and there's nothing to replace them.
Syria is the current goner-du-jour. Whatever it ends up being, either under Assad or someone
else, it will not be stable the way it was. The USA ended up arming and funding the Sunni Salafist
"bad guys" there because they opposed Shiite Iran and its regional proxy Hezbollah plus Assad. Russia
eventually came in on that side on the theory that another failed state is not in the world's interests.
President Obama blinked after he drew his infamous "line in the sand" years ago and now America
is too spooked to act directly. In fact, the Russians and Assad have the best chance of restoring
a semblance of order, but America's support for the "moderate" Salafists will necessarily keep undermining
that. In the meantime, all this activity has sparked a demographic emergency as refugees flee the
country for Europe and elsewhere, creating greater tensions where they land. Trump could stop the
flow of US arms to our favored maniacs in Syria. He may see the practical benefit of letting Russia
be the policeman on the beat there, and maybe he can sort out the underlying competing interest between
the Russian-sponsored gas pipeline proposed to cross Syria and the American-sponsored one - a dynamic
underlying all the mayhem there - and make some kind of "deal." Or maybe he'll just fuck it up even
more.
The situation will grow increasingly acute in Saudi Arabia, where population growth outstrips
the ability of oil production to pay for it. Their old "elephant" oil fields are aging out and they
know quite well that they cannot depend on oil wealth many decades ahead. The trouble is, they have
no realistic replacement for it, despite noises about creating other industries. The truth is, the
country was cursed by its oil. It grew its population too much too fast in one of the most inhospitable
corners of the globe, and it will take only a modest decline in oil income to destabilize the place
altogether. To buffer that, Saudi leaders plan an IPO for shares in Saudi Aramaco - which was originally
composed of American and western oil companies nationalized decades ago. That may get them a few
hundred billion or so in walking-around money that won't last very long considering that just about
everybody in the nation is on the dole.
The big news in that corner of the world last year was the collapse of Yemen, which occupies
a big slab on Saudi Arabia's southern border. That poor-ass country is the latest Middle East basket-case
and Saudi military operations there continue to date, using airplanes and weapons supplied by Uncle
Sam - just another case of feeding Jihadist wrath.
Make no mistake - as our Presidents like to say - all these countries are heading back to the
Middle Ages economically, maybe even further beyond. Their culture is still basically medieval. The
main point is that Modernity inflated them and now Modernity is over and they're either going to
pop or deflate. One wild card for now is what effect climate change may have in ME/NA. If the trend
is hotter, than that's not good news for a region so poorly watered and so hot that air conditioning
is mandatory for the pampered urban elites. Last one out, please turn off the lights.
Then there's Turkey, for decades known as "the sick man of Europe." Now, of course, it can't even
get into Europe, the EU, that is, and it's probably too late to sweat that anyway. Back when it was
"sick" it was quiet at least. You barely heard a peep from the fucker through the entire cold war
and beyond. But now that the countries on its border are breaking down, things have understandably
livened up in Turkey. It was, until World War One, the very seat of the Islamic Caliphate, and it
controlled much of the territory now occupied by the nations creatively carved out of the Sykes-Picot
Agreement. Turkey is still a power in the region, with a lot of well-watered, habitable territory
and a GDP half the size of Italy's, though shrinking. Its current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
has shown twinges of megalomania in recent years, no doubt in fear of the radical Islam epidemic
so close at hand. Lately, Kurdish extremists have been planting bombs around the country, too. Turkey
has a lot to be paranoid about and Erdogan wants to change the constitution so he can act the strongman
without a wimpy, pain-in-the-ass parliament weighing him down. He endured a coup last summer and
came out of with consolidated power. But he's capable of making another bonehead move like shooting
down a Russian jet (2015). Meanwhile, Turkey's currency is collapsing. The population is over 80
million. In the event of serious political upheaval, how many of them will try to flee to Europe?
Russia? It's apparently stable. We hear no end of complaints about "Putin the Thug," but in
this time of altered reality and disinformation fog, it's honestly impossible to tell what the fuck
the score is. Has he bumped off some journalists? So they say. But, not to get to baroque about it,
consider the impressive trail of dead bodies said to be left in the wake of Bill and Hillary. That
story was so toxic that Google squashed searches for it during the election campaign.
Putin seems to me, at worst, a competent and capable Czar, in a country that likes to be ruled
by them. That's their prerogative. He's hugely popular, anyway, and it's one of the unsung miracles
of recent times that Russia transitioned out of the fiasco of communism into a pretty much normal
modern society, with shopping, movies, tourism travel, and everything. The Russian people may look
back at these decades as a golden age. They've been punished by Western sanctions for a few years
now, but it has prompted them to promote their own version of a SWIFT Code for international banking
transactions, and their own counterpart to the EU, the Eurasian Customs Union, and to manufacture
some products of their own (import replacement).
Personally, I think the meme of "Russian aggression" is not born out by actual recent geopolitical
reality. They are castigated constantly for wanting to march back into the Baltic States, Ukraine,
and other former Soviet territories.
Ukraine was made a basket case with direct American assistance. (Remember Deputy Secretary
of State Victoria Nuland: "Fuck the EU!") Ukraine was rendered an instant failed state. As far as
I could tell, the last thing Russia wanted was to take on Ukraine as an economic dependent. Same
for the Baltic States.
They need to subsidize these places like they need a hole in the head. Russia's 2015 annexation
of the Crimea was a special case, since it had been part of Russia one way or another for most of
the past 200 years, except for the period after Khrushchev gifted it to his homeboys in Ukraine around
1957. Anyway, the Crimea was the site of Russia's only warm-water naval ports. They'd rented
it from Ukraine before the US pranged the country. The Crimean inhabitants voted to join Russia (why
do we assume that was not sincere?).
Finally, as renowned Russologist Stephen Cohen has said, wouldn't it make sense for the US
and Russia to drop all this antagonism nonsense and make common cause against the real threat of
our time: Islamic Jihad? How many Westerners has Russia killed or harmed the past twenty years compared
to the forces of Jihad? The tensions in Syria are admittedly complex, but why are we making them
worse while Russia attempts to stabilize the joint? Perhaps The Donald can start there .
As I write, Mr. Putin just announced that his country would not take any reciprocal action against
American diplomats in retribution for Mr. Obama's fugue of punishments meted out last week for the
still-unproven "Russia Hacks Election" story. Personally, I'm content to wait three weeks and see
if relations improve after Mr. Obama departs the Oval Office.
Finally, there's China. I'm among those who believe China is running the most farkakta banking
system on God's green earth. We should not be surprised if it implodes in 2017, and does so pretty
badly, in a way that might shake the foundations of the entire banking system. On that note, I confess
that I have run out of forecast mojo for the year, and anyway this bulletin in long enough. If you've
gotten this far, I commend and admire you hugely for your remarkable patience. Have a happy 2017
everybody, and don't let our Trumpadelic president get you down.
Pretty thorough article by Kunstler; here's the cliff note version... everything is based on fraud
. Every.last.thing. His opinion is that there isn't anything that can be done about it when it's
so obvious.
Now that is one awesome prediction to make when precisely a President comes to Power saying "we're
on a roll like we've never been. Just look at WS!... I'll make this country the jewel of the West."
You are defying the Gods of Mount Olympus in DC --
After 8 years of watching this shit show. I just chuckle when I read another New Years prediction
post and/or end of year wrap up. Get back to me in 2018 and I'm pretty sure things will be just
like they are today. No collapse.
Ditto. We are just going to crawl along. Congress is full of fucking retards on both
sides of the aisle. When Reagan came into office the Dems felt the wave of enthusiasm that
the electorate felt for the President and they tapped into it for their own good.
The Congress worked with Reagan and he got some of his shit through and they got a lot of their
shit through. The asshats in Congress are too stupid to accomplish anything. The Dems
could have worked out something reasonable when working to fix the healthcare system but instead
they created Obamacare. All of the bad stuff that makes it economically feasible has been
delayed because it will absolutely destroy the economy.
The websites still don't work yet Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc all have websites that have
been successful during the same timeframe. It isn't rocket science but the government contractors
cannot pull it off. Congress complains about crumbling infrastructure and other issues.
Go and fucking fix it.
"... Obama campaigned on change and vague promises, but still change. Instead he normalized atrocities that most of us had been screaming about in the Bush administration AND he didn't just squander the opportunities he had to change our course domestically because of the crash and the majorities in Congress, no he couldn't throw those away fast enough. ..."
"... Indeed. Bush was a known quantity. "Compassionate conservatism" was was blatantly hollow jingoism. My only surprise under W was how virulently evil Cheney was. ..."
"... The big O, though, was handed the opportunity to change the course of history. He took power with Wall Street on its knees. The whole world hungered for a change in course. Remember "never let a crisis go to waste". O turned Hope into blatantly hollow jingoism. ..."
"... Obama can be legitimately described as worse than Bush 43 because Obama ran as a "progressive" and flagrantly broke almost all of his promises and governed like a "Moderate" Republican. ..."
"... At the least, Bush, Sr. and Jr. ran as right wing politicos. The people basically got what they voted for with them. ..."
"... In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians. ..."
"... Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year later in the Congressional race - branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard than in the rough wards of Chicago politics. ..."
"... But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer, Mr. Obama was its grand marshal. ..."
"... A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. Mayor Washington had called it home, as did whites who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wealthy black entrepreneurs a generation removed from the civil rights battles of the 1960s. ..."
"... At its heart is the University of Chicago; at its borders are poor, predominately black neighborhoods blighted by rundown buildings and vacant lots. For Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a white Kansan mother and an African father and who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, it was a perfect fit. ..."
"... "He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, his former law professor and a mentor. "It's a place where you don't have to wear a label on your forehead. You can go to a bookstore and there's the homeless person and there's the professor." ..."
Now that 0bama is about to exit as US Pres, perhaps it is time to revisit the Who Is Worse: Bush43
v 0bama question.
Conventional wisdom among "Progressive" pundits, even good ones like SecularTalk, seems to be
"yes, 0bama is better than Bush43, but that is a very low bar, & not a real accomplishment. 0bama
still sucks".
IMHO, 0bama's relentless pursue of 1 Grand "Bargain" Ripoff & 2 TPP, may alone make him Even Worse
than Bush43, as far as to damage inflicted on USians had 0bama been successful in getting these 2
policies. 0bama tried for years getting these 2 policies enacted, whereas Bush43 tried quickly to
privatize SS but then forgot it, & IIRC enacted small trade deals (DR-CAFTA ?). Bush43 focus seemed
to be on neocon regime change & War On Terra TM, & even then IIRC around ~2006 Bush43 rejected some
of Darth Cheney's even more extremish neocon policy preferences, with Bush43 rejecting Cheney's desired
Iran War.
IMHO both policies would've incrementally killed thousands of USians annually, far more than 1S1S
or the Designated Foreign Boogeyman Du Jour TM could ever dream of. Grand Ripoff raising Medicare
eligibility age (IIRC 67 to 69+ ?) would kill many GenX & younger USians in the future. TPP's pharma
patent extensions would kill many USians, especially seniors. These incremental killings might exceed
the incremental life savings from the ACA (mainly ACA Adult Medicaid expansion). Furthemore, 0bama
could've potentially achieved MedicareForAll or Medicare Pt O – Public Option in ~2010 with Sen &
House D majorities, & 0bama deliberately killed these policies, as reported by FDL's Jane Hamsher
& others.
Bush43 indirectly killed USians in multiple ways, including Iraq War, War On Terra, & failing
to regulate fin svcs leading to the 2008 GFC; however it would seem that 0bama's Death Toll would
have been worse.
"What do you think?!" (c) Ed Schultz
How do Bush43 & 0bama compare to recent Presidents including Reagan & Clinton? What do you expect
of Trump? I'd guesstimate that if Trump implements P Ryan-style crapification of Medicare into an
ACA-like voucher system, that alone could render Trump Even Worse than 0bama & the other 1981-now
Reganesque Presidents.
It does seem like each President is getting Even Worse than the prior guy in this 21st Century.
#AmericanExceptionalism (exceptionally Crappy)
You hit the right priority of issues IMO, and would add a few bad things Obamanation did:
1). Bombing more nations than anyone in human history and being at war longer than any US President
ever, having never requested an end but in fact a continuation of a permanent state of war declared
by Congress.
2). The massive destruction of legal and constitutional rights from habeas corpus, illegal and
unconstitutional surveillance of all people, to asserting the right to imprison, torture, and assassinate
anyone anytime even America children just because Obama feels like doing it.
3). Austerity. This tanked any robust recovery from the 2008 recession and millions suffered because
of it, we are living with the affects even now. In fact Obamanation's deep mystical belief in austerity
helped defeat Clinton 2016.
HAMP. And not just ignoring bank mortgage fraud, but essentially enabling it and making it
the norm.
Deporting more people than Presidents before him.
Passing the Korea and Columbia free trade pacts, even lying about what the pact did to get the
Columbian one passed. KORUS alone made our trade deficit with Korea soar and lost an estimated
100,000 jobs in the US (and not those part time ones being created).
Had the chance to pass a real infrastructure repair/stimulus package, didn't.
Had the chance to put the Post Office in the black and even start a Postal Bank, didn't. Didn't
even work to get rid of the Post Office killing requirement to fund its pension 75 years out.
Furthering the erosion of our civil rights by making it legal to assassinate American citizens
without trial.
Instead of kneecapping the move to kill public education by requiring any charter school that
receives federal funding to be non-profit with real limits on allowable administrative costs,
expanded them AND expanded the testing boondoggle with Common Core.
Libya.
Expansion of our droning program.
While I do give him some credit for both the Iran deal and the attempt to rein in the Syria
mistake, I also have to take points away for not firing Carter and demoting or even bringing Votel
before a military court after their insubordination killing the ceasefire.
Should I continue. Bush was evil, Obama the more effective one.
Was that a disastrous choice? Certainly and it is a big one, but it also ignores how much of
the disastrous choices attached to that decision Barack H. Obama has either continued or expanded
upon. It also ignores how that war continues under Obama. Remember when we left Iraq? Oh, wait
we haven't we just aren't there in the previous numbers.
And what about Libya? You remember that little misadventure. Which added to our continued Saudi/Israeli
determined obsession with Syria has led to a massive refugee crisis in Europe. How many were killed
there. How much will that cost us fifteen years on?
I get that the quagmire was there before Obama. I also get that he began to get a clue late
in his administration to stop listening to the usual subjects in order to make it better. But
see that thing above about not firing people who undermined that new direction in Syria, and are
probably now some of the most pressing secret voices behind this disastrous Russia Hacked US bull.
But I think only focusing on the original decision also ignores how effective Obama has been
at normalize crime, corruption, torture and even assassination attached to those original choices
– something that Bush didn't manage (and that doesn't even consider the same decriminalization
and normalization done for and by the financial industry). Bush may have started the wheel down
the bumpy road, but Obama put rubber on the wheel and paved the road so now it is almost impossible
to stop the wheel.
As mentioned, Bush is a very low bar for comparison, and if that's the best presidential comparison
that can be made with Obama, then that says it all.
Mr. O long ago received my coveted Worst_President_Ever Award (and yes the judging included
Millard Fillmore and Andrew Johnson).
Handed the golden platter opportunity to repudiate the myriad policy disasters of Bush (which
as cited above cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives) he chose instead to continue them
absolutely unchanged, usually with the same personnel. Whether it was unprosecuted bank crime
in the tens of billions, foreign policy by drone bomb, health care mega-bezzle, hyper-spy tricks
on everyday Americans, and corporo-fascist globalist "trade" deals, Mr. O never disappointed his
Big Wall St, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Surveillance-Industrial Complex constituents.
Along the way he reversed the polarity of American politics, paving the way for a true corporo-fascist
to say the slightest thing that might be good for actual workers and get into the White House.
History will remember him as the president who lost Turkey and The Philippines, destroyed any
remaining shreds of credibility with utterly specious hacking claims and war crime accusations
of other nations, and presided over an era of hyper-concentration of billionaire wealth in a nation
where 70% of citizens would need to borrow to fund a $400 emergency. Those failures are now permanently
branded as "Democrat" failures. The jury is unanimous: Obama wins the award.
"HAMP. And not just ignoring bank mortgage fraud, but essentially enabling it and making it
the norm."
Exactly. That is #1 on my list making him worst president ever.
I would question "ever" simply because I know I don't know enough about the history of previous
presidents, and I doubt any of us do; even historians who focus on this kind of thing, supposing
we had any in our midst, might be hard put to it to review all 44 thoroughly.
I vote the mortgage fraud situation (see
Chain of Title by David
Dayen -not really a plug for the book) as the worst aspect of the Obama Administration. What
to say about it? Regular readers of this site are well versed in the details but one aspect of
it needs to be expounded upon; stand on the housetops and shout it kind of exposition: the mortgage
fraud worked on millions (3, 5, 7, maybe 12 million) shows that rule of law is now destroyed in
the land. Dictionary .com says this about the phrase
Rule of Law: the principle that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable
to law that is fairly applied and enforced; the principle of government by law.
* The government and its officials and agents as well as individuals and private entities
are accountable under the law.
* The laws are clear, publicized, stable, and just; are applied evenly; and protect fundamental
rights, including the security of persons and property and certain core human rights.
* The process by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced is accessible, fair,
and efficient.
* Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent representatives and neutrals
who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities
they serve.
I would invite the reader to take a moment and apply those principles to what is known about
the situation concerning mortgage fraud worked on millions of homeowners during the past two decades.
The Justice Department's infamous attempts to cover up horribly harmful schemes worked by
the mortgage industry perpetrators involved the cruel irony of aiding and abetting systemic racism.
Not a lot was said in the popular press about the subject of reverse redlining but I'm convinced
by the preponderance of evidence that overly complicated mortgage products were taken into the
neighborhoods of Detroit (90% Black or Latin American, Hispanic) and foisted off on unsuspecting
homeowners. Those homeowners did not take accountants and lawyers with them to the signing but
that's how those schemes should have been approached; then most of those schemes would have hit
the trashcan. Many a charming snake oil salesman deserves innumerable nights of uncomfortable
rest for the work they did to destroy the neighborhoods of Detroit and of course many other neighborhoods
in many other cities. For this discussion I am making this a separate topic but I realize it is
connected to the overall financial skulduggery worked on us all by the FIRE sector.
However, let me return to the last principle promulgated by the World Justice Project pertaining
to Rule Of Law and focus on that: "Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent
representatives and neutrals who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect
the makeup of the communities they serve." Now hear this: "are of sufficient number" for there,
and gentle reader, please take this to bed with you at the end of your day: we fail as a nation.
But look to the 'competent, ethical and independent' clause; we must vow to not sink into despair.
This subject is a constant struggle. Google has my back on this: Obama, during both campaigns
of '08 and '12, took millions from the very financial sector that he planned to not dismay and
then was in turn very busy directing the Attorney General of The United States, the highest law
officer in the country, to not prosecute. These very institutions that were in turn very busy
taking property worth billions. 12 million stolen homes multiplied times the average home value
= Trillions?
Finally, my main point here (I am really busy sharpening this ax, but it's a worthy ax) is
the issue of systemic racism- that the financial institutions in this country work long hours
to shackle members of minority neighborhoods into monetarily oppressive schemes in the form of
mortgages, car loans, credit cards and personal loans (think pay day scammers) and these same
makers of the shackles have the protection of the highest officials in the land. Remember the
pitchforks Obama inveighed? Irony of cruel ironies, two black men, both of whom appear to be of
honorable bearing, (Holder moved his chair right directly into the financiers, rent takers of
Covington & Burling ) work to cement the arrangements of racist, oppressive scammers who of
course also work their playbooks on other folks.
To finalize, the subject of rule of law that I have worked so assiduously to sharpen, applies
to all of the other topics we can consider as failures of the Obama Presidency. So besides racism
and systemic financial fraud we can turn to some top subjects that make '09 to '17 the nadir of
the political culture of the United States of America. Drone wars, unending war in the Middle
East, attempts to place a cloak of secrecy on the workings of the Federal Government, the reader
will have their own axes to sharpen but I maintain if the reader will fervently apply and dig
into the four principles outlined above, she, he, will agree that the principles outlining Rule
of Law have been replaced by Rule of the Person.
Here's one of many scholarly articles that reviews the subject of systemic racism in the finance
and mortgage industries.
Am Sociol Rev. 2010 October 1; 75(5): 629–651. doi:10.1177/0003122410380868
Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis
Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
Arghhh, the server is apparently napping-more caffeine please for the cables.
Here's one of many scholarly articles that reviews the subject of systemic racism in the finance
and mortgage industries.
Am Sociol Rev. 2010 October 1; 75(5): 629–651. doi:10.1177/0003122410380868
Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis
Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
I dunno. President Obama is not great but the comments here make me feel like it's time for
me to skedaddle. Thinking he might be worse than Shrub? 6″ tall, smh
Oh I admit it can be a tough choice, but you might really want to add up the good and the bad
for both. Not surprisingly there is little good and a whole lot of long ongoing damage inflicted
by the policies that both either embraced, adapted to or did little or nothing to stop.
Even if the list of bad was equal, I have to give Obama for the edge for two reasons. First
because Bush pretty much told us what he was going to do, Obama campaigned on change and vague
promises, but still change. Instead he normalized atrocities that most of us had been screaming
about in the Bush administration AND he didn't just squander the opportunities he had to change
our course domestically because of the crash and the majorities in Congress, no he couldn't throw
those away fast enough.
Your position is obviously different.
And I don't give a damn what height either of them are, both are small people.
Indeed. Bush was a known quantity. "Compassionate conservatism" was was blatantly hollow
jingoism. My only surprise under W was how virulently evil Cheney was.
The big O, though, was handed the opportunity to change the course of history. He took
power with Wall Street on its knees. The whole world hungered for a change in course. Remember
"never let a crisis go to waste". O turned Hope into blatantly hollow jingoism.
In the end, the black activist constitutional lawyer turned his back on all that he seemed
to be. Feint left, drive right.
With W we got what we expected. With O we got hoodwinked. What a waste.
Look, if you don't like some of the comments you see, say so. We have some thick skinned people
here. A little rancorous debate is fine. If some reasoned argumentation is thrown in, the comments
section is doing it's job. (I know, I know, "agency" issues.)
Obama can be legitimately described as worse than Bush 43 because Obama ran as a "progressive"
and flagrantly broke almost all of his promises and governed like a "Moderate" Republican.
At the least, Bush, Sr. and Jr. ran as right wing politicos. The people basically got what
they voted for with them.
Finally, " it's time for me to skedaddle." WTF? I'm assuming, yes, I do do that, that you are
a responsible and thoughtful person. That needs must include the tolerance of and engagement with
opposing points of view. Where do you want to run to; an "echo chamber" site? You only encourage
conformation bias with that move. The site administrators have occasionally mentioned the dictum;
"Embrace the churn." The site, indeed, almost any site, will live on long after any of we commenters
bite the dust. If, however, one can shift the world view of other readers with good argumentation
and anecdotes, our work will be worthwhile.
So, as I was once admonished by my ex D.I. middle school gym teacher; "Stand up and face it.
You may get beat, but you'll know you did your best. That's a good feeling."
Picking the #1 Worst Prez is a fallacy inherent in our desire to put things on a scale of 1
to 10. It's so we can say, in this case, #1 was the WORST, and then forget about #2 thru #10.
It's like picking the #1 Greatest Rock Guitar Player. There are too many great guitar players
and too many styles. It's just not possible.
Even so, I'd like to see the Russian citizen ranking of Putin vs. Yeltsin. Secret ballot, of
course.
I don't think he's worse than Bush but I agree he was horribly dishonest to run as a progressive.
He's far from progressive.
I think the ACA, deeply flawed as it is, was/is a good thing. It wasn't enough and it was badly
brought out. I hope many thousands don't get tossed off health insurance.
My major criticism of him and most politicians is that he has no center. There is nothing for
which he truly stands and he has a horrible tendency to try to make nice w the republicans. He's
not progressive. Bernie, flawed also stands for something always has, always will.
Obama is highly deceptive, but I think that Bush (43) was worse. I doubt that Obama would have
performed many of his worst deeds if Bush hadn't first paved the way. But we'll never know for
sure, so it's possible to argue on behalf of either side of the dispute.
I have to tell you it is inaccurate in material respects, and many of the people who played
important roles in the fight were written out entirely or marginalized.
GW Bush sort of had two administrations. The first two years and the last two years was sort
of a generic Republican but sane administration, sort of like his father's, and was OK. The crazy
stuff happened in the middle four years, which maybe not coincidentally the Republicans had majorities
in both house of Congress.
Obama signed off on the Big Bailout (as did GW Bush, but my impression is that the worst features
of the Big Bailout were on Obama's watch(), and that defined his administration. Sometimes you
get governments defined by one big thing, and that was it. But I suspect he may have prevented
the neocons from starting World War III, but that is the sort of thing we won't know about until
decades have passed, if we make it that long.
Obama promised hope and change and delivered the exact opposite – despair and decline. Obama
should be remembered as the Great Normalizer. All of the shitty things that were around when he
was inaugurated are now normalized. TINA to the max, in other words.
It should be no shock to anyone that Trump was elected after what Obama did to American politics.
You got it. Obama was hired to employ "The Shock Doctrine" and he did. He was and is "a Chicago
Boy"; the term Naomi Klein used for the neoliberals who slithered out of the basements of U of
Chicago to visit austerity on the masses for the enhancement of the feudal lords. It is laughable
that he said last week that he could have beaten Trump. As always, He implied that it was the
"message" not the policy. And that he could "sell" that message better than Hilary. For him it
was always about pitching that Hopey Changey "One America" spleel that suckered so many. The Archdruid
calls this "the warm fuzzies". But the Donald went right into the John Edwards land of "The Two
Americas". He said he came from the 1%; but was here to work for the 99% who had been screwed
over by bad deals. We will see if the Barons will stand in his way or figure out that it might
be time to avoid those pitchforks by giving a little to small businesses and workers in general.
Like FDR, will they try to save capitalism?
The Donald has the bad trade deals right, but looks like he doesn't know what havoc Reagan
wreaked on working people's household incomes and pension plans by breaking any power unions had
and by coming up with the 401K scam; plus the Reagan interest rates that devastated farmers and
ranchers and the idea of rewarding a CEO who put stock price above research and development and
workers' salaries. But again, I believe it was a Democratic congress and a Democratic president
Carter who eliminated the Usury law in 1979. From then on with stagnating wages, people began
the descent into debt slavery. And Jimmy started the Shock Doctrine by deregulating the airlines
and trucking. But he did penance. Can't see Obama doing that.
And once usary laws went away, credit cards were handed out to college students, with no co-sign,
even if students had no work or credit history and were unemployed.
It took until just a few years ago before they revisted that credit card policy to students.
dont want to burst your bubble(or anyone elses) but obama is not and was not the power to the
throne it was michelle and val jar (aka beria) it was a long series of luck that got that krewe
anywhere near any real power mostly, it comes from the Univ of Chicago hopey changee thingee was
a nice piece of marketing by david axelrod..
the grey lady
5-11-2008
In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin
Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the
country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz
greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians.
Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known
in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to
walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year
later in the Congressional race - branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard
than in the rough wards of Chicago politics.
But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States
senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on
a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer,
Mr. Obama was its grand marshal.
but to capture the arrogance of hyde park (read the last line)
A tight-knit community that runs through the South Side, Hyde Park is a liberal bastion
of integration in what is otherwise one of the nation's most segregated cities. Mayor Washington
had called it home, as did whites who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wealthy
black entrepreneurs a generation removed from the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
At its heart is the University of Chicago; at its borders are poor, predominately black neighborhoods
blighted by rundown buildings and vacant lots. For Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a white
Kansan mother and an African father and who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, it was a
perfect fit.
"He felt completely comfortable in Hyde Park," said Martha Minow, his former law professor
and a mentor. "It's a place where you don't have to wear a label on your forehead. You can go
to a bookstore and there's the homeless person and there's the professor."
also note how the lib racist grey lady can not bring themselves to name the parade it is the
bud billiken parade
peaceful, fun, successful
heaven forbid the world should see a giant event run by black folk that does not end in violence
might confuse the closet racists
There are enough examples of such things for it to be a reasonable expectation.
The parade also hasn't always gone without a hitch:
The 2003 parade featured B2K.[9] The concert was free with virtually unlimited space in
the park for viewing. However, the crowd became unruly causing the concert to be curtailed.
Over 40 attendees were taken to hospitals as a result of injuries in the violence, including
two teenagers who were shot.[38] At the 2014 parade, Two teenagers were shot after an altercation
involving a group of youths along the parade route near the 4200 block of King Drive around
12:30 pm.[39][40]
Twenty-five years ago, Bill Clinton almost single-handedly sold the Democratic Party to Wall Street
making it the second neoliberal party in the USA (soft neoliberals) and betaying interest of working
class and middle class. The political base of the party became "neoliberal intelligencia" and minority
groups, such as sexual minorities, feminists (with strong lesbian bent) deceived by neoliberals part
of black community (that part that did not manage to get in jail yet ;-) , etc. Clintonism (aka "soft"
neoliberalism) as an ideology was dead after 2007, but still exists in zombie stage. and even counterattacks
in some countries.
The author is afraid using the term "neoliberalism" like most Us MSM. Which is a shame. In this
sense defeat of Hillary Clinton was just the last nail in the coffin of "soft neoliberalism" (Third
Way) ideology. Tony Blair was send to dustbin of history even earlier then that. Destruction of jobs
turned many members of trade unions hostile to Democrats (so much for "they have nowhere to go" Bill
Clinton dirty trick) and they became easy pray of far right. In this sense Bill Clinton is the godfather
of far right in the USA and he bears full personal responsibility for Trump election.
In foreign policy Clinton was a regular bloodthirsty neocon persuing glibal neoliberal empire led
by the USA, with Madeline Albright as the first (but not last) warmonger female Secretary of State
Notable quotes:
"... Twenty-five years ago, Bill Clinton almost single-handedly repositioned the Democratic Party
for electoral success, co-opting and defusing Republican talking points ..."
"... "New Democrat" he'd once exemplified was now extinct, a victim first of Clinton's own successes,
and then of the economic and social dislocations of the globalism whose inevitability he foresaw when
he predicted that Americans would one day "change jobs four or five times in their lifetimes!" ..."
"... Bill Clinton's "Third Way" ideology was also undone by sheer geopolitical realities ..."
"... ..."People thought she'd been conceived in Goldman Sachs' trading desk," says one veteran Clinton
aide ..."
"... his personal and sexual misconduct in office, and his and his wife's tendency toward legalistic
corner-cutting-a point Sanders also drove home, even as he disavowed any interest in "her damn emails."
..."
their quarter-century project to build a mutual buy-one, get-one-free Clinton dynasty has ended
in her defeat, and their joint departure from the center of the national political stage they had
hoped to occupy for another eight years. Their exit amounts to a finale not just for themselves,
but for Clintonism as a working political ideology and electoral strategy.
Twenty-five years ago, Bill Clinton almost single-handedly repositioned the Democratic Party
for electoral success, co-opting and defusing Republican talking points and moving the party
toward the center on issues like welfare and a balanced budget, in the process becoming the first
presidential nominee of his party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two consecutive terms.
... ... ...
"New Democrat" he'd once exemplified was now extinct, a victim first of Clinton's own successes,
and then of the economic and social dislocations of the globalism whose inevitability he foresaw
when he predicted that Americans would one day "change jobs four or five times in their lifetimes!"
Bill Clinton's "Third Way" ideology was also undone by sheer geopolitical realities --
there are almost no Blue Dog Democrats left after a generation of redistricting, primary challenges
and electoral defeats in the South
...while Hillary Clinton recognized the change intellectually, she seemed unable to catch up to
the practical realities of its political implications for her campaign
..."People thought she'd been conceived in Goldman Sachs' trading desk," says one veteran
Clinton aide
...Obama had not only largely overlooked the concerns of white working-class voters but, with
his health care overhaul, had been seen as punishing them financially to provide new benefits to
the poorest Americans. Fairly or not, he lost the public argument.
...Bill Clinton himself was far from an unalloyed asset in Hillary's campaign this year. The rosy
glow that had come to surround much of his post presidency, and his charitable foundation's good
works around the world, receded in the face of Trump's relentless reminders of his personal and
sexual misconduct in office, and his and his wife's tendency toward legalistic corner-cutting-a point
Sanders also drove home, even as he disavowed any interest in "her damn emails."
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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Cover to the paperback edition
The world's leading thinkers and policymakers examine what's come apart in the past year, and anticipate what will define the year ahead.
Prof. Cohen: Not One Piece of Factual Evidence That Russia 'Hacked the Election'
