By Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog
It’s an unusual prediction, but the coronavirus may kill the “neoliberal Trotskyist” projects of the Eurozone and the European Union because the pan-European project has, sadly, always cared more for itself than for the well-being of its constituents.
Briefly: the major theoretical contribution of “Daddy Stalin” (to quote Che) to socialism was to insist that nations can indeed go their own way and implement “socialism in one country”; Trotskyism insists that socialism must sweep universally in a perfectly-coordinated movement. It’s clear who has prevailed – the Trotskyists remain winless. While Stalinists just roll their eyes at the bitter Trotskyist refusal to cooperate with them, the latter attempt to denigrate everyone else’s socialist victories as a victory of “Stalinism”… which is no denigration at all, but it does give fodder to socialism-ignorant capitalist-imperialists. Anyway….
The EU and Eurozone run on both the secular, earthly fervor of Trotskyism as well as the religious fanaticism that neoliberalism actually does work (despite all the lack of factual proof).
Both projects also run on capitalism of course, but the corona shutdown has destroyed modern capitalist ideology: there is no demand-side economics possible (how can there be normal demand in a shutdown?), and there is no supply-side economic solution (deregulation and tax cuts are going to work, LOL?). There is now – as socialists already knew – only the government.
This reality is what the corona crisis is laying bare (and does not logically automatically translate into totalitarianism), and this is also why “capitalism with Western characteristics” is recklessly charging towards Great Depression 2 – their ideology is fundamentally incapable of addressing such a situation.
Europe’s safety net means that they won’t be charging into astronomical unemployment, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t already a hot mess: The Eurozone is into an underreported second Lost Decade; the Yellow Vests were proving weekly that anti-European sentiment is not proof of a far-right ideology; the European Union’s handling of Brexit was showing – as they openly intended – that it was more vengeful and punitive than a wronged woman.
The mega-bailouts which will be required due to the corona economic shutdown: once these are finished the only logical fiscal remedy, per neoliberalism, will be “mega-austerity”, right? But that’s another column….
When a crisis hits and nobody can help, a nation-state can only reap what it has sown; nobody is coming to your lockdowned house to help… except if you are in a socialist-inspired nation. Thus, the corona crisis is going to not just end messianic neoliberal projects but also reveal the dignity, and superior performance of the existing socialist-inspired projects.
However, the West will continue to do all they can to obfuscate this via their propaganda. The New York Times just published Australia Says Goodbye to the World’s Longest Boom, but that is inaccurate: socialist Vietnam has had the world’s best economic growth rate since 1981. Not only has their growth rate been double that of Australia’s, but Vietnam has never had a year of negative growth whereas Australia has had three. Knowing this about Vietnam is about as basic a global, objective economic fact as it gets, but since when did capitalists and their shills ever report honestly about economics?
If the Great Recession does become the Great Depression 2 then government isn’t going to disappear nor became hyper-localised – it will become even more prevalent: it will force the return of the nation-state.
Why on earth should we suppose that Europeans will accept “more Europe” when their big, (neoliberal empire) pan-European government has been so inequality-inducing? Socialists, however, are all on board with this, but with a key twist – big government, not big neoliberal capital.
My upcoming book is called Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism and I explained why it is first Iranian, second Islamic, third socialist and in that precise order. After much public debate, and signed off on by then-Supreme Leader Khomeini, Iran decided that the needs of the nation must come before the dictates of Islam. Don’t like it? Move to Saudi Arabia. Iran’s government controls, according to many estimates, about 90% of the non-Black Market economy – more than Cuba’s government. Don’t like it? Move to the US. I am not being aggressive nor xenophobic – I am pointing out that none of this is going to change without a huge fight from the majority of Iranians.
Maybe the West won’t veer from neoliberalism and capitalism-imperialism without a huge fight either?
If so, that will only ensure ever-deepening inequality: the West’s post-corona economic future looks too bleak to put into words yet, but history shows Westerners should expect years of economic hardship for those nations who continue to sacrifice their well-being at the altar of the free market.
How many busts will it take before capitalists are as market-disillusioned as socialists?
Marx proved that capitalism is an endless cycle of boom to bust; central planning, central ownership of key industries, a vanguard party and repression of fascist speech is what socialist-inspired nations use to provide stability during the tough times and to increase mass prosperity during good times.
The corona economic hysteria – which I recently paralleled with the Y2K and 9/11 panics – is only giving us even more data about “capitalism with Western characteristics”. In short: because inflating Everything Bubble 2 was the West’s solution to Everything Bubble 1 (which popped during the 2008 crisis), we can bookend a new Western economic era without accusations of being overly premature.
Boom 1: 1865-1914 – The formative years of modern capitalism, which included covered-up, denied, and unknown holocausts of famine, epidemics and poverty in non-Western countries/colonial subjects. These were all wilfully created: historians know that “we must allow the rules of the free-market to reign no matter how many die in a famine or epidemic” was the open official justification time after time by ruling colonialists. Socialism had difficulties during its formative years, as well; however, the Late Victorian Holocausts and the Making of the Third World were not provoked by Cold War, and its highest ideal was “the White rich should have the freedoms required to rule unopposed”. Booms for the West during this era, but busts for everyone else that were so terrible that many nations have still not recovered.
Bust 1: 1914-1921 – WWI and aftermath: A war started by Western bankers & imperialists to forestall anti-banker socialism.
Boom 2: 1921-1929 – the “Roaring Twenties”
Bust 2: 1929-1945 – the Great Depression and WWII
Boom 3: 1945 – 1975 -The “30 glorious years” for the West, but not for their imperial-turned-neo-imperial (ending direct rule to replace with local puppets) subjects.
Bust 3: 1976-1991 – Widespread recession: blame the Arabs for finally exerting some control over their natural resources; blame the Japanese for increasing expectations of better quality.
Boom 4: 1991-2001 – Dot.com boom; banker entrapment of Eastern Bloc boom; stupid actions/investments caused by alleged “death of socialism”/TINA; Iranian Islamic Socialists defeat Western puppet Iraq and say, “Hey, where did everyone go?”
Bust 4 – 2001-2008 – War on Terror good for Pentagon’s contractors, not for anyone else. For the 99% this Bust era has continued until 2020.
Boom 5 – 2009-2019 – This boom was limited to the Western 1%. They got “socialising the losses” bailouts, QE Infinity and ZIRP; the 99% got minijobs, austerity and stagnant wages.
Bust 5 – 2020-? – Corona crisis and incredible overreaction by countries which believe in “Capitalism with Western characteristics” launches Great Depression 2. 1% and 99% now on same cycle together. News flash: there will be no quick ‘V’ recovery (see “Boom 5”).
Pretty, pretty bad record for the 99%, eh?
Now compare this with socialist-inspired countries:
China: “Century of Humiliation” ends in 1949: Seventy years later they are the undisputed #2 superpower.
Vietnam: Since the end of the French & American Wars and the victory of socialism: Says Hello to the World’s Longest Boom.
Iran: Since end of Western-forced war with Iraq: second-highest increase in UN Human Development Index from 1990-2014. Inhuman triple sanctions in 2012 (UN, US, EU) go unopposed by fake Western leftists; Washington’s attempt at “$0 in oil sales” force Iran to rely on 25 years of gains as Great Depression 2 starts (although that war-era command economy experience will surely come in handy now).
Cuba: Since 1994 (the “Special Period” – caused by the Soviet elite’s wilful, undemocratic implosion of global socialism) Cuba’s annual growth rate has never been negative and almost always superior to that of US ally Mexico. Cuba is perhaps the most solidly-united socialist nation despite a decades-long, genocidal Western blockade.
North Korea: No nation was more decimated by the West, so they had nowhere to go but up. And they did – up until the late 1960s the West was embarrassed by how much smaller North Korea outshined their southern brothers and sisters. Solid growth continued until the Special Period disaster, which lasted a full decade. Despite the endless and enormous war games, (semi-)genocidal blockade, efforts at provoking starvation (North Korea isn’t Cuba, with its well-organised, lush agricultural fields outside of Havana — it’s 80% mountains and only 17% arable land) North Korea has almost always posted solid economic growth prior to ruthless Trump.
The data couldn’t be clearer: the faith-based system of neoliberalism has obviously been led by false messiahs, whereas despite disasters both natural (corona) and unnatural (sanctions, blockades, Cold War, Hot War) socialism has provided more stable economic growth.
Want stability and progress? It’s the socialist-inspired nation-state, stupid.
Trotskyists, of course, are not a huge problem like neoliberal-neoimperial capitalists but a minor part of the obvious solutions.
China was blockaded for decades, but they are a continent – just imagine what the smaller nations could do if the West called off their Cold Wars and didn’t need so spend so much preparing/cleaning up Hot Wars? The answer is obvious: widespread emulation would ensue, spelling the end of Western capitalism-imperialism.
Many smart (semi-)dissidents in the West just can’t break free to get to that point above, sadly – they insist that reformism of capitalism-imperialism is all that is necessary. Nonsense, and unproven.
Similarly: In my lifetime I will wait for the revealing of the Mahdi before I wait for the arrival of Trotskyism’s universal victory – the needs of the nation-state simply cannot wait.
What socialist-inspired politics has always concluded is that a drastic change to the perpetually-busted system I briefly outlined is needed, not yet another bailout for that system’s rich profiteers.
The West’s corona panic led to an immediate rush to bail out their parasitic class with the money of the victims of economic parasitism, yet again. Will the corona bailouts permanently bust the Western system?
Or will the West actually sufficiently bail out their debt-slave citizenry this time? To use a lazy journalistic phrase which I detest: it remains to be seen.
Socialists (of all the different varieties) however, have seen enough.
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Corona contrarianism? How about some corona common sense? Here is my list of articles published regarding the corona crisis, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!
Capitalist-imperialist West stays home over corona – they grew a conscience?
Corona meds in every pot & a People’s QE: the Trumpian populism they hoped for?
A day’s diary from a US CEO during the Corona crisis (satire)
MSNBC: Chicago price gouging up 9,000% & the sports-journalization of US media
Tough times need vanguard parties – are ‘social media users’ the West’s?
If Germany rejects Corona bonds they must quit the Eurozone
Landlord class: Waive or donate rent-profits now or fear the Cultural Revolution
Corona repeating 9/11 & Y2K hysterias? Both saw huge economic overreactions
(A Soviet?) Superman: Red Son – the new socialist film to watch on lockdown
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the upcoming ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’.
Good work again Ramin: I find Michael Hudson to be very helpful in understanding the depth of the West’s ideological entrapment. As I understand it the problem lies in the West’s entrapment in its narrow concept of freedom and liberty. Ever since the collapse of the Central authority of Kings in the Bronze Age Near East there has never been a central authority which manages the collective economic system for the benefit of the whole. What took its place was free individualism and private control of banking, finance and debt based economics. Individuality without benefit of group coherence.
This was solidified in ancient Rome under the Senate who abhorred Kingship as it feared that their oligarchic dictatorship would be regulated by a central authority that subordinated the power of the oligarchs to the greater good. Caesar was assinated because he was working for the greater good. And lies about him have flowed like a river. The source of course being historians in thrall to this oligarchic aristocratic world view.
So we have an ideology of individual liberty that has a mantra that all government is inherently oppressive. It is really a concept of freedom based upon egoism. The freedom of my ego to rape the collective.
This is oligarchic ideology which is false and self serving. This ideology became a fundamental mantra of the modern capitalism bourgeoisie. “All government is by definition oppressive, hence freedom and liberty is best measured by a minimum of government.” – Libertarianism anyone. Now all of this is a component of the incomplete development of the understanding of individual liberty. Ramin does us all a service by opening up the discussion to include the concept of the sharing of liberty through liberated group association. That being socialism.
So the collapse of the West is the collapse of an idea of freedom that precludes by definition a healthy role for government. But that is actually a collapse of the hegemony of egoism, the hidden poison in the West’s concept of freedom. Socialism is predicated upon the supersession of the primacy of individual egoism.
In America this bourgeois concept of freedom is going to die hard, and in its hard death a fire will come that transforms the world. In our Western culture there is a word for this and it begins with the letter “A” Right?
Its a double whammy. Freshly printed trillions in the West (US) while at the same time there are record foreign outflows from TBills, and the world is turning its back on the Petrodollar. The US is consuming its own smoke. Zimbabwean economics with a predictable outcome.
Right on the money!
“Briefly: the major theoretical contribution of ’Daddy Stalin’ (to quote Che) to socialism was to insist that nations can indeed go their own way and implement ’socialism in one country’. Trotskyism insists that socialism must sweep universally in a perfectly-coordinated movement. It’s clear who has prevailed – the Trotskyists remain winless. While Stalinists just roll their eyes at the bitter Trotskyist refusal to cooperate with them, the latter attempt to denigrate everyone else’s socialist victories as a victory of ’Stalinism’”.
Trotskyists and anarchists are forever busy slandering countries, peoples, and leaders with some revolutionary capabilities to show for them. Since Stalin and the USSR that he led fit this criterion, accusing peoples’ wars as manifestations of ’Stalinism’ is ironically appropriate, but try explain that to an infallible Trot or anarchist, LOL.
”/…/ the White rich should have the freedoms required to rule unopposed. Booms for the West during this era, but busts for everyone else that were so terrible that many nations have still not recovered.
That’s very much what lies at the heart of Trotskyism and anarchism alike. Granted, today’s adherents of these bankrupt creeds don’t bother too much with active sabotage anymore; parroting CIA slanders in the service of Western imperialism about struggling countries, peoples, and leaders gives them enough satisfaction in most cases. Their obsession with offering ahem, crucial ”leadership” to other peoples’ struggles irrefutably proves their fear of the prospect of Western imperialist defeat.
”Or will the West actually sufficiently bail out their debt-slave citizenry this time?”
No, as the Zionazis in charge simply can’t afford to do that, and I don’t think they want to do that.
Yes, Ramin is right on the money (best journalist in the world). You (Nussiminen) are even more outspoken.
The West is increasingly turning into a banana republic, not unlike the ‘glorious’ Nazi Ukraine.
Hi Ramin
This quote is from Michel Clouscard
https://comptoir.org/2015/02/21/clouscard-et-la-volonte-de-refonder-le-communisme/
“L’État a été l’instance superstructurale[iv] de la répression capitaliste. C’est pourquoi Marx le dénonce. Mais aujourd’hui, avec la mondialisation, le renversement est total. Alors que l’État-nation a pu être le moyen d’oppression d’une classe par une autre, il devient le moyen de résister à la mondialisation. C’est un jeu dialectique. » Voilà pourquoi Clouscard, comprenant le danger de la monnaie unique, s’engage avec le PCF contre le traité de Maastricht et pour la défense de la souveraineté nationale, seul fondement de la souveraineté populaire.”
However, I think the current exercise might be some kind of all out attempt to anhihilate what remains of the nation state as we know it. Governance by surveillance and mind control, both on steroids. That’s what William Engdahl suggests in the following interview (Or maybe it’s just another excuse for a huge heist like in 2008)
The Dystopian Scenario Arising From COVID-19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzGL4tJAQc&feature=emb_title
Thanx for the link … great vid!
Anonymous, I have known of Bill Engdahl’s work since the 1980’s and met him personally a few times.
His work is valuable.
Although 10% of the video confirms what I expected to see: That it would be quite a bit on the pessimistic side of all perspectives. And that’s not that bad…if it motivates people to get active…whereas optimistic reports can cause complacency!
I will finish the video later tonight.
For now, I am more optimistic than Bill…..because I think the globalists CAN fail. I don’t think they are invincible or that all the sheeple are impossible to humanize….with a great deal more intelligence and courage than they have shown in the past half century. Not ALL of them. All is never realistic…nor required. Enough of them!!
Yet, I don’t know as I am quite as optimistic as Ramin…..about the coming victory of “socialism”.
I still find that a somewhat quaint formulation….although I do hold that a collective social conscience is evidence of the moral fitness of peoples to survive …… and that the General Welfare Clause in the Preamble to the US Constitution……..does not mean…and was never intended to mean permanent food stamps and welfare checks for tens of millions of idle, unproductive persons living in housing projects in broken families with no fathers
Where I agree with Ramin 100% is on the desirability of this that he says:
“Similarly: In my lifetime I will wait for the revealing of the Mahdi before I wait for the arrival of Trotskyism’s universal victory – the needs of the nation-state simply cannot wait.
In that regard I just read an article Engdahl the Pessimist would find very hard to swallow ……..Ramin maybe a little less so (but certain parts he doubtlessly would want to set aside…..like one’s least favorite vegetable.
That’s fine!
I don’t find the theme impossible (though I am slightly less optimistic, less thrilled!) but since ideologies are strongest and most resilient if they are stretched…..tested…and evolve…what harm can there be in sharing it???
Get ready guys! . This optimism is going to be very very difficult for most of you to stomach, which can only “tighten your abs”:
https://orientalreview.org/2020/03/31/putin-and-trump-vs-the-new-world-order-the-final-battle/
A few zinger appetizers:
“The unknown that lays ahead for all of us is both exhilarating and scary. Exhilarating in the long term, but rather scary in the short term. All empires eventually die and we’re in the terminal phase of the New World Order that will not recover from the Russian roulette game it has been playing, for Vladimir Putin handed it a loaded gun and it pulled the trigger.”
Moves and counter moves. NWO moves first:
“In order to prevent this upcoming hyperinflation, they (the NWO gang) generated a virus attack on four countries (China, Iran, Italy and now the United States) to spread panic in the population, with the precious help of their ignominious medias.”
The Counter-move:
“So far, so good, but everything else went wrong in this desperate and ultimate banzai. The top virologist on the planet confirmed that chloroquine was being used by the Chinese with spectacular results to cure patients, then he improved his magic potion by adding a pneumonic antibacterial called azythromicin, and saved everyone of his first 1000 cases, but one. Donald Trump immediately imposed the same treatment through a fight against his own Federal Drug Administration, bought and owned by the deep state. ”
What went wrong?? Their first “black swan” a couple decades ago was Putin:
“International bankers couldn’t see it coming in 1991, when they dominated 95% of the planet after the fall of the Soviet Union. It seemed that nothing could halt their ultimate mission to complete their Orwellian dream: destroy a few countries in the Middle East, enlarge Israel, and get the total control over the world oil market, the last piece of their Xanadu puzzle that they’ve been working on for a whole century, starting with the Balfour declaration in 1917.
When Vladimir Putin got charge of Russia, there was no sign that he would do better than the drunk he had replaced.”
The Oil jugular:
“Ending in the conclusion that Putin now controls the all-mighty oil market, the unavoidable energy resource that lubricates economies and armies, while the banksters’ NATO can only watch, without any means to get it back. With the unbelievable results that Putin has been getting in the last five years, the New World Order suddenly looks like a house of cards about to crumble. The Empire of Banks has been terminally ill for five years, but it’s now on morphine, barely realizing what’s going on.”
Plenty of optimistic zingers between that paragraph and the end but click on the artilce for the full read:
https://orientalreview.org/2020/03/31/putin-and-trump-vs-the-new-world-order-the-final-battle/
If you have yet to develop even the slightest immunity to TDS..(Trump Derangement Syndrome) …..it is highly doubtful you’ll be able to finish the article. LOL.
But if you’ve by any chance had enough of pessimistic , dark motivation to strap on the Full Armor of the Lord…and are already equipped for the Final Battle………..finishing just might give you a new burst of fighting energy:
The Concluding two short paragraphs:
The New World Order is facing the two most powerful countries on the planet, and this fake pandemic changed everything. It showed how desperate the banksters are, and if we don’t want to end up with nuclear warheads flying in both directions, Putin and Trump have to stop them now.
“Terminate the BIS, the World Bank, the IMF, the European Central bank, the EU, NATO, now. Our world won’t be perfect, but it might get much better soon.
Easter resurrection is coming. This might get biblical.”
The US nuclear deterrent is 30+ year old and more of a danger for the US than anyone else. Literary, the rockets might not fly at all and fall on the heads of the operators. So I never really feared a nuclear war. More so, this corona bs is actually proof that the elites decided to rebalance at the expense of inner stability. Putin will help that the US stays outward stable. That’s all.
Besides being a health pandemic (this is real; the world is not overreacting), this coronavirus promises to destroy many capitalist foundations. It may well go on to undermine the very concept of money most people have in their minds. World economics will be forever changed. Boom, bust, bailouts, balance sheets, accounting et. al. are quickly becoming baloney as they have to be erased, or at least reset to mitigate the oncoming global economic meltdown. Think, how does the U.S. Fed suddenly conjur up two trillion dollars? Simple; they made it up all out of thin air. How does Russia simply tell its population to go on a health holiday for a month, and still balance their budget? Simple; they just say so, and its done. Truth is governments can simply make money up at a whim, and they will do so to get done what is needed. Governments can balance accounts, erase foreclosures, bankrupcies, provide wages to whomever they choose, and so on. Capitalists act like money is some natural commodity like a piece of gold, or a gallon of fuel. Capitalists act like money is a finite commodity that can neither be created or destroyed, and in doing so, they are able to manipulate people at thier pleasing. In reality money is a manmade thing that governments use to manipulate their populations. Once people come to realize that it is the government, or rather those who rule the government, who are the ones that create finacial situations we people are put in, that all finacial situations are human creations, and not some natuaral economic phenomeom like the weather or something, the capitalist facade that currently rules over us will indeed evaporate.
Robert – Extremely well said and most to the point. You are saying pretty much exactly the same thing that I, in my philosophically long winded way, was trying to say above. Government needs to be liberated from the thrall of the traditional money masters. That being the merchant class. I believe all of the major religions have traditionally held an admonition against letting Government be controlled by the merchant class. If that is allowed to happen we end up exactly where we are now.
Yes, Mr. Ramin has put us on an interesting thread. Continuing on, in economic terms, this paradigm we have of having to work to get money, e.g. the hourly wage, or the monthly salary appears to me as the essence of the capitalist trap so many of us are put in. In today’s situation, at least here in the U.S., but also in many other parts of the world, most folks make only enough money to tend to their daily needs, and not enough to save for any enlightened future. So, for most people there is little hope of jumping out of the trap, and in the perspective of neo-liberal, a.k.a. Chicago school/Milton Freidman economic thinking it is all very natural, and we should accept it.
But anyone who has been around more than forty years knows different. Our economic structures were very different back then. “Entitlements” were available to a greater part of the American population. Entitlements in the form of real retirement plans, and also higher rates of interest on money such that if one amassed a small amount, one would receive a fair amount of money just for having money. So, forty years ago, people lived in a gilded trap, and life was OK. Over the years that gilded trap has been turning into a hell hole. It has gotten so wild that instead of making money to do things, people are doing things to make money. All perspective has been lost.
One can break entirely from the concept of paid work in a society, and simply a lot money to people in a society as an entitlement for simply being a member of that society. Oh, but that would be socialism, or worse one could call that communism. Those are curse words in the U.S.A. But then again, that is all that the western governments are in essence doing already; only the money is not going to the general public, but rather through corporations, and banks to a favored few.
The problem with this current pandemic is not so much the way the world is handling it. Sequestering populations is probably the only way science has in confronting such a threat. Rather it is the inability for capitalist systems to handle such cures. There is really no reason why a society can’t hunker down for a while. Societies in the face of dangers have done so many times in the past, and will do so many more times in the future. So, long as there are sufficient provisions for a society to hold out, it really should be no problem; at least it should be no economic problem. It becomes obvious, socialist orientated economies are much better oriented to handle threats that require curtailment in human activity. Neo-liberal capitalism depends on infinite growth, but on a finite planet such growth cannot be maintained without the eventual destruction of the planet itself. This pandemic is in all likelihood just a warm-up for what is to come.
Ramin: “Bust 1: 1914-1921 – WWI and aftermath: A war started by Western bankers & imperialists to forestall anti-banker socialism.”
Ramin, this is your master piece.
Only the statement was a little bit obscure, until I realized you were compressing two facets of WW1 into one sentence.
The first facet 1914-1918: WW1 was indeed an Anglo-Zio-Capitalist resource war, and it was indeed declared by Great Britain in order to destroy Germany as a rising industrial competitor, to take the Mesopotamian oil from Germany’s ally Turkey, and to take over the Holy Land as a Zionist colony for “Dear Lord Rothschild”.
The second facet 1919-1921: Destruction of the Democratic Socialist German Republic of Weimar was indeed the aim of postwar bankers of the AZC; firstly by imposing starvation conditions on defeated Germany, then by “controlling the currency” to balloon inflation, and finally — the coup de grace — financing the rise of the Nazi party as “our bulwark against communism”.
I hope this may help some other reader who might have been a little puzzled by that particular point of Ramin’s. Sorry to be a nitpicker.
Dr NG Maroudas – Very good clarification. Would you not include in your second point that the Western banking empire facilitated Jewish capitalist take over of Germany in the immediate aftermath of 1918? In order to facilitate the very goals you articulate. Thus giving rise to the German perception that they had a serious problem with being colonized by international Jewry. We all know what followed from Germany’s attempt to dig themselves out of that hole.
Vietnam, like many other countries on the ‘Frontier’ at certain times (Greece, Turkey were two), gets an economic leg-up from the West due to its stratiegic position on China’s southern border. Doesn’t matter then what your politics is, we will throw money at you to ease you away from your neighbour. Simply, the playing field gets tilted your way, you get ‘lucky’, you get given an F1 Grand Prix, a Football World Cup. My 2c.
Ramin,
I am interested in History of Iran.
Could you provide advise? the language could be french or english.
Thanks
Australia’s boom economy was built on the backs of wage slaves, gutted unions and middle class welfare.
Exploitation of the Australian underclass is as UGLY here as anywhere in the world.
Many of the folks receiving a Newstarve (Newstart in Gov spin) unemployment allowance have had their payment doubled with the impact of this event.
Ironic, ain’t it?
“Iranian Islamic Socialism”
A/k/a NATIONAL SOCIALISM
Finally Ramin has written something I can unequivocally get on board with.
Thanks for concise history lesson Ramin !
Dear Ramin,
I do enjoy reading your articles and am thankful for the fact, that you as an intellectual have the maturity and the wisdom not to sacrifice your entire nation for a fistful of dollars or the promise of a greencard by the colonial imperialist enemies of our people. 400 000 000 million dollars a year for 40 years has bought our enemies the loyalty of a few intellectuals in our country. In this regard you have my respect and I am as an iranian proud of you. But since you have thrown a stone at us shia in your article, when you write: ” In my lifetime I will wait for the revealing of the Mahdi before I wait for the arrival of Trotskyism’s universal victory …..”, i would like to give you a reply even though writing this comment is an exercise in folly, since it is as we iranian say “tofe sar bala”, since we both are supporters of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. I just hope for you, that if you as a marxist socialist will stay revolutionary and be an other Golsorkhi, who in the shahs court compared his struggle not with Che, Marx or Lenin but with Imam Hussein!
It is a tragedy of magnitude, when we in our culture have Hussein and Ali, the like of which history has never seen before and after their murder, when you write in the comment section of your article about the ridiculous red superman movie, that “I’ll take what I can get.”! how poor the puny history of communism is! Reading Anderson´s biography of Che, the only thing that stayed with me was how lucky, stupid and unwashed the man was. The stinking doctor, who hated taking a bath and stank like a skunk! Revolutionaries like Eghbal and Shariati talked of returning to our own roots and rich culture and remind ourselves, whom we really are. Who needs the monstrous Stalin, when you have Ali, a flesh and bone super human, if there ever was any and the most righteous ruler, that has ever walked the earth!
Mahdi about whom you seem to wiki, is if nothing else the constant in human history and the symbol of the everlasting struggle of the wretched of the earth for a better life against the oppressors of all ages. From Marx´s illusory first communist utopia to his absent communist victory at the end of history and his Utopian communist society, to all man made cult and ideology to all religions in the history of mankind, you find the promise of an other life, the promise, that one day someone will put an end to the injustice in the world! What is the point of the suffering if not for that promise of a just world?! As Shariati pointed our, those who are in a state of awaiting for justice, are in rebellion against the existing conditions! And even then as he wrote, there is the battle between the Red Shia and Black Shia, or as it is known today the British Shia! What is the point of it all being communist or the Shia struggle, if there is no promise of a better life, It seems, that the difference is between Ali and the utilitarian Red Superman!
I am not an stranger to marxists ideas. I was reading Lenin, when I was 15 and was blacklisted as a communist! Stalin´s socialism or what was communism before his verbal trick is nothing but the other side of the capitalist monopoly. In fact Soviet Russia was nothing but a capitalist experiment in social engineering in constant crisis, which was being mitigated again and again by their socalled capitalist enemies, without whom the soviet union would had collapsed in its infancy! And when it comes to Trotsky,you couldn´t be more wrong. He did and suggested exactly, what his jewish background dictated!
Your grasping for straws aside with regards to your analysis of the Red Superman, it is flawed regardless, because you lack an understanding of how memory and acquisition of knowledge works. if you understood Hermeneutics, you would probably reach the opposite conclusion. But blinded by your ideas, you do not realize, that the greatest trick in the western propaganda is the idea of FREEDOM. it is always a loose loose proposition, when being portrait as standing against freedom! In the final analysis of any movie, I suggest you look at hermeneutics!
Personally I despise the word freedom. It is the most tragic word in the human vocabulary. Freedom has never filled an empty stomach or paid for the doctors bill for some poor child. It has never payed for the education of a man or his burial expenses. Freedom is the weapon of the intellectuals, who are willing to sacrifice entire nations at the alter of their own ego!
With regards
>Or will the West actually sufficiently bail out their debt-slave citizenry this time?
This is a joke or sarcasm, isn’t it?:) The Fed said they have no limit to the money they can provide. But they are buying up giant corporations, choosing those who survive and those who don’t. For the public, they say they will send a ‘bail out’ of $1200 which is less than $20 per week, and $500 per child. So, there is your answer. Slavery is was and greater slavery it will be.
Thanks Ramin, for a comprehensive article listing the booms, busts and wars of the imperialist system and for your predictions that this Covid-19 crisis could well lead to the collapse of the scourge of neo-liberalism and globalism which has plagued the world since the times of Thatcher and Reagan, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the WTO in 1995, after which the globalist, open borders, borderless world, unfettered free markets mantra swept the world through the Internet and through various mouthpieces around the world.
Also, I like your criticism especially of the western Trotskyites and Anarchists, who comfortable in the bellies of the liberal-democratic, imperialist heartlands, criticise and denounce remaining countries with really existing socialist systems, whilst supporting liberal-imperialist aggression and interference in the affairs of countries which are resisting imperialism, either directly or through domestic proxies such as NGOs and so forth.
Apart from the role which Trotsky played as head of the Red Army during the time of the October Revolution in Russia, Trotskyites and Anarchists have not played a leading role in the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of colonised and neo-colonised people, whilst it was the much maligned (by them) “Stalinists” who either led these struggles to victory and took power, or at least played a significant role in them.
However today, where some of these former colonies have risen into the ranks of middle-income nations, with a larger middle-class, Trotskyite and Anarchist ideas have gained traction amongst some sections of the “left” in these countries and some of these “left” are funded directly or indirectly by the likes of the NED and Soros.
Anyway, real socialism is not dead but has suffered a major setback after the collapse of Soviet Union and the proverbial phoenix will rise again from the proverbial ashes as the global capitalist/imperialist staggers on from crisis to crisis.
Just some questions here:
Is there now on the earth any nation that’s either purely capitalist or purely socialist?
Isn’t the ideal that we seek an optimal balance of socialism and capitalism?
Meanwhile, isn’t it also the case that in light of the reality that we live on a finite spaceship called Planet Earth and that our current tech+resource paradigm is reaching its limits, we need to be turning our minds to creating stable, zero-growth earth-resource-sustainable economies (Herman Daly’s ideas)?
…Socialist-capitalist hybrid with zero-growth and ER-sustainable…That sounds like what we need to be setting as our goal, and not arguing which is better: socialism or capitalism…They are both expressions of our human nature that’s a combo of altruistic and egotistic. The best path overall in life is striking the optimal balance between the two…Good is found in the balance between love of self and love of others.
{“…..the Soviet elite’s wilful, undemocratic implosion of global socialism” }
http://www.ponarseurasia.org/article/how-soviet-elite-lost-faith-socialism-1980s
raised here once again by simple reference, trying to dig into the issue leads to a flood of western commentary that has far has been quite unsatisfactory. Looking for Russian analysis produces paltry results so far
In these pages no one examines Soviet Russian failure…the failure that led to Yeltsin and Putin..and soon Putin as president for the remainder of his life. how to trust Russia now given that ‘willful implosion’ and the awful Russian leadership up to Putin?
Can there be popular revolution without the need for ‘Vanguard’ Political Parties and great intellectuals. most of whom turn out to be traitors of one sort or another?
and what is the stage of advancement of the clandestine capitalist infiltrations that is allways on to corrupt all governments/elites in the world, capturing them for capitalism. have the Chinese been penetrated..the Russian?
of course we know of the Russian fifth thats right there, involved in the Russian process.. but is there a Chinese one. should we anticipate further Willful Russian implosion…and a Chinese one?
the Chinese elites are doing really well..is there any need..or do they see any need.. for them to join up long-standing western bankster elites running the world..or work to subsume and replace them in time?
and is the socialist/communist state an impossibility.. cannot be achieved in existential social/environmental conditions?