Posted with the author’s permission
Boos German interview Dec 15 2022
Dear Prof Hudson,
Once again: Herzliche Grüße aus Berlin!
Last time we spoke for German print magazine “Four” in June. Right now I also work for MEGA Radio, a radio news station for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We broadcast from Vienna and are located in Berlin, Bavaria and Austria.
Hereby I would like to invite you to another interview via ZOOM to record it for our radio program. It would be an update on our last interview. Maybe around 20-30 Minutes long.
See also our last talk: https://www.vierte.online/2022/06/03/ukraine-a-trojan-for-germanys-us-dependence/
I don’t know if that’s too short notice, but would you have time for such a conversation next week or the week after?
Otherwise, also at the beginning of January.
Here are my questions:
(1.) You made some predictions in our last interview for “Four” magazine which became true.
You talked about crisis for German companies in the production of fertilizer. This just hit the headlines weeks after our interview.
You also said: “What you characterize as “blocking Nord Stream 2” is really a Buy-American policy.” This now also became more than clear after the destroyed Nord Stream pipelines.
Could you comment that?
MH: U.S. foreign policy has long concentrated on control of the international oil trade. This trade is a leading contributor to the U.S. balance of payments, and its control gives U.S. diplomats the ability to impose a chokehold on other countries.
Oil is the key supplier of energy, and the rise in labor productivity and GDP for the leading economies tends to reflect the rise in energy use per worker. Oil and gas are not only for burning for energy, but are also a basic chemical input for fertilizers, and hence for agricultural productivity, as well as for much plastic and other chemical production.
So U.S. strategists recognize that cutting countries off from oil and its derivatives will stifle their industry and agriculture. The ability to impose such sanctions enables the U.S. to make countries dependent on compliance with U.S. policy so as not to be “excommunicated” from the oil trade.
U.S. diplomats have been telling Europe for many years not to rely on Russian oil and gas. The aim is twofold: to deprive Russia of its major trade surplus, and to capture the vast European market for U.S. oil producers. U.S. diplomats convinced German leaders not to approve the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and finally used the excuse of the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine to act unilaterally to arrange the destruction of both Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.
(2.) For our audience, our listeners: In your new book “The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism”
You state that the world economy is now fracturing between two parts, the United States and Europe is the dollarized part.
And this Western neoliberal unit is driving Eurasia and most of the Global South into a separate group. You just stated this in an interview from November.
https://michael-hudson.com/2022/11/the-rentier-economy-is-a-free-lunch/
Could you explain this for our outlet?
MH: The split is not only geographic but above all reflects the conflict between Western neoliberalism and the traditional logic of industrial capitalism. The West has deindustrialized its economies by replacing industrial capitalism with finance capitalism, initially in an attempt to keep its wages down by moving abroad to employ foreign labor, and then to try and establish monopoly privileges and captive markets or arms (and now oil) and high-technology essentials, becoming rentier economies.
A century ago, industrial capitalism was expected to evolve into industrial socialism, with governments providing subsidized basic infrastructure services (such as health care, education, communication, research and development) to minimize their cost of living and doing business. That is how the United States, Germany and other countries built up their industrial power, and it also is how China and other Eurasian countries have done so more recently.
But the West’s choice to privatize and financialize its basic infrastructure, dismantling the role of government and shifting planning to Wall Street, London and other financial centers, has left it with little to offer other countries – except or the promise not to bomb them or treat them as enemies if they seek to keep their wealth in their own hands instead of transferring it to U.S. investors and corporations.
The result is that when China and other countries build up their economies in the same way that the United States did from the end of its Civil War to World War II, they are treated as enemies. It is as if U.S. diplomats see that the game is lost, and that their economy has become so debt-ridden, privatized and high-cost that it cannot compete, that it simply hopes to keep making other countries dependent tributaries for as long as it can until the game finally is over.
If the U.S. succeeds in imposing financial neoliberalism on the world, then other countries will end up with the same problems that the United States is experiencing.
(3.) Now the first terminals for LNG from the US are opened in Germany. How will this effect trade and interdependence / dependency between Germany and United States?
MH: The U.S. sanctions and destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2 have made Europe dependent on U.S. supplies, at so high a cost of LNG gas (about six times what Americans and Asians have to pay) that Germany and other countries have lost their ability to compete in steel making, glass making, aluminum and many other sectors. This creates a vacuum which U.S. affiliates home to fill from their investments in other countries or even from the U.S. itself.
The expectation is that German and other European heavy industry, chemical and other manufacturing will have to move to the United States to obtain oil and other essentials that they are told not to buy from Russia, Iran or other alternatives. The assumption is that they can be blocked from relocating in Russia or Asia by imposing sanctions, fines and political meddling European politics by U.S. NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy satellites in, as has been the case since 1945. We can expect a new Operation Gladio to promote politicians willing to sustain this Global Fracture and the shift of European industry to the United States.
One question is whether Germany’s skilled labor will follow. That typically is what occurs in such situations. This kind of demographic shrinkage is what the Baltic states have experienced. It is a byproduct of neoliberal policies.
(4.) What is your view on the current military situation in the Russian/Ukrainian war?
MH: It looks like Russia will easily win in February or March. It probably will create a Demiliarized Zone to protect the Russian-speaking areas (probably incorporated into Russia) from the pro-NATO West in order to prevent sabotage and terrorism.
Europe will be told to continue to boycott Russia and its allies instead of seeking mutual gains by reciprocal trade and investment. The U.S. may urge Poland and other countries to “fight to the last Pole” or Lithuanian, emulating Ukraine. It will put pressure on Hungary. But most of all, it will insist that Europe spend an immense sum to re-arm, mainly with U.S. arms. This expense will crowd out social spending to help Europe cope with its spreading industrial depression or subsidies to revive its industry. So a militarized economy will become a rising overhead – while consumer and industrial debt increase, along with government debt.
As this occurs, Russia may demand that NATO roll back its borders to pre-1991 boundaries. That is the most likely flash point of conflict.
(5.) What is your view on the current financial situation in this war. The G7 and EU governments talk already about rebuilding and reconstruction of Ukraine after the war. What does this mean for Western businesses and finance capitalism?
MH: Ukraine hardly can be rebuilt. First of all, much of its population has left, and is unlikely to return, given the destruction of housing and infrastructure – and husbands.
Second, Ukraine is owned mainly by a narrow group of kleptocrats – who are trying to sell out to Western agricultural investors and other vultures. (I think you know who they are.)
Ukraine is already debt-ridden, and has become a fiefdom of the IMF (meaning in practice, of NATO). Europe will be asked to “contribute,” and the foreign reserves seized from Russia may be spent on hiring U.S. companies to make a financial killing rebuilding a pretense of an economy in Ukraine – leaving the country even more debt ridden.
A new Democratic Party secretary of state will echo Madeline Albright and say that the killing of Ukraine’s economy, children and soldiers “was all worth it” as the cost of spreading democracy U.S.-style.
(6.) I’ve read lots of background reports on the sanctions against Russia. It seems more and more the sanctions hit Russia hard, because they cannot produce all products, esp. technology, by themselves. On the other hand Russia have now more stable business and buyers with and in China, India.
What real effect do the sanctions have according to your analysis?
MH: The U.S. sanctions have turned out to be an unanticipated godsend for Russia. In agriculture, for instance, sanctions against Lithuanian and other Baltic dairy exports has led to a flowering of a domestic Russian cheese and dairy sector. Russia is now the world’s largest grain exporter, thanks to the Western sanctions that have had much the same effect as protective tariffs and import quotas of the sort that the United States used in the 1930s to modernize its agricultural sector.
If President Biden were a secret Russian agent, he hardly could have helped Russia more. Russia needed the economic isolation of protectionism, but was still too entranced by neoliberal free-trade policy to do this by itself. So the U.S. did it for it.
Sanctions oblige countries to become more self-reliant, at least in basic needs such as food and energy. This self-reliance is the best defense against U.S. economic destabilization to force regime change and similar compliance.
One effect is that Russia will need to buy much less from Europe even after the fighting in Ukraine ends. So there will be less need for Russia to export raw materials to Europe. It can work these up themselves. The industrial core that was Europe may end up more in Russia and its Asian allies than in the United States.
That is the ironic result of NATO’s new Iron Curtain.
(7.) How would you describe China, Russia and India: Do you see Industrial Capitalism or Socialism there?
MH: RIC was the original core of the BRICS, now greatly extended to include Iran and much of Central Asia and the roads involved with China’s Belt and Road initiative. The goal is for Eurasia no longer to have to rely on Europe or North America.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld often referred to “Old Europe” as a shrinking dead zone. It failed to follow its plans a century ago to evolve into an increasingly socialized economy with government subsidy of rising living standards and labor productivity, science and industry. Europe rejected not only Marxism but the basis of Marxist analysis in the classical economics of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and their contemporaries. That path has been followed in Eurasia, while the right-wing anti-government liberalism of the Austrian and Chicago Schools has destroyed the NATO economies from within.
As the locus of industrial and technological leadership moves eastward, European investment and labor probably will follow.
The Eurasian countries will still visit Europe as tourists, as Americans like to visit England as a kind of theme park of post-feudal gentry, the posting of the palace guards and other quaint memories of the days of knights and dragons. European countries will look more like that of Jamaica and the Caribbean, with hotels and hospitality becoming the main growth sectors, with Frenchmen and German waiters dressed in their quaint quasi-Hollywood costumes. Museums will do a thriving business as Europe itself turns into a kind of museum of post-industrialism.
(8.) Currently we saw the collapse and bankruptcy of the crypto exchange FXT. The management of this company seems to be highly criminal. How do you judge that?
MH: Crime is what made crypto a growth sector for the past few years. Investors bought crypto because it is a vehicle for the fortunes being made in international drug dealing, the arms trade, other crime and tax evasion. These are the great post-industrial growth sectors in Western economies.
Ponzi schemes often are good investment vehicles in their take-off stage – the pump-and-dump stage. It was inevitable that criminals would not only use crypto to transfer funds, but actually set up their own currencies “free of oppressive government regulation.” Criminals are the ultimate Chicago School free market libertarians.
Anyone can create their own currency, much as U.S. wild-west banks did in the mid-19th century, printing currency at will. When one went shopping in the early 20th century, the stores still had lists of the shifting valuations of various bank notes. The best designed ones tended to be the most successful.
(9.) Do you have any knowledge about business relations between FTX and Ukraine, the government in Kyiv? There were some rumours and press articles in the alternative media about it?
MH: The IMF and Congress have paid large amounts of money to the Ukraine government and its kleptocrats in charge. Newspapers report that much of this money has been turned over to FTX – which has become the second largest funder of the Democratic Party (behind George Soros, who also is said to be trying to buy up Ukrainian assets). So a circular flow seems to be at work: U.S. Congress votes for funding for Ukraine, which puts some of this money in FTX crypto to pay or the political campaign of pro-Ukrainian politicians.
(10.) Some months ago there were articles in the US press about plans by the FED: They are planning to establish a digital Dollar, a Central Bank Digitcal Currency (CBDC). Also in Europe ECB president Madame Lagarde and the German minister for finance, Lindner, talk about an introduction of the digital Euro.
Here in Germany some critical experts are warning this will only push the total surveillance of the population and customers.
What is your take on digital currencies?
MH: It’s not my department. All banking is electronic, so what does “digital” mean? To libertarians, it means no government oversight, but in government hands, the government will have a record of everything that anyone spends.
(11.) What is your view on the current weakness or strength of the US dollar, the Euro, the British Pound, Gold and Silver?
MH: The dollar will remain in demand, thanks to its success in making the Eurozone dependent on it. The British pound has little means of support, and little reason for foreigners to invest in it. The euro is a junior satellite currency to the dollar.
Without a dollar or other currency to hold their monetary reserves in, governments will continue to increase the proportion held in gold, because it doesn’t have government liabilities attached to it – so U.S. officials can’t simply grab it, as they did with Russia’s foreign reserves. Eurozone countries cannot be trusted not to follow U.S. orders to grab foreign countries’ reserves, so it will be shunned.
As the euro’s exchange rate declines against the dollar, foreign investment will decline, because investors will not want to invest in (1) a shrinking market, and (2) companies that earn domestic euros that are worth fewer and fewer dollars or other hard currency for head offices.
Of course, gold will have to be kept at home, so that it can’t simply be grabbed, as the Bank of England grabbed Venezuela’s gold and gave it to the right-wing U.S. proxy. Germany would be wise to accelerate its airlift of its own gold supply from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank vaults in New York City.
(12.) What is your current analysis of the energy and financial crises in the world?
MH: No real crisis as much as a slow crash. Rising prices paid for what America exports: oil, food and IT monopoly goods, with living costs for consumers rising faster than wages. So there will be a tightening squeeze or most families. The middle class will discover that it really is the wage-earning class after all, and will go deeper into debt – especially if it tries to protect itself by taking out a mortgage to buy a home.
I’ve been studying the 11th and 12th centuries for my history of debt, and I came across a story that may have relevance to the questions that you’ve asked. NATO keeps claiming that it is a defensive alliance. But Russia has no desire to invade Europe. The reason is obvious: No army can invade a major country. More important, Russia does not even have a motive to destroy Europe as a U.S.-puppet adversary. Europe already is self-destructing.
I am reminded of the battle of Manzikert in 1071, when the Byzantine Empire lost to the Seljuk Turks (largely because its general on whom the emperor had depended, Andronikos Doukas, defected, and then overthrew the Emperor. Crusade of Kings, a game supplement, covers the battle extensively, and claims the following conversation took place between Alp Arslan and Romanos:[52]
Alp Arslan: “What would you do if I were brought before you as a prisoner?”
Romanos: “Perhaps I’d kill you, or exhibit you in the streets of Constantinople.”
Alp Arslan: “My punishment is far heavier. I forgive you, and set you free.”
That is the punishment that Europe will receive from Eurasia. Its leaders have made their choice: to be a U.S. satellite.
Hudson makes a good point here I’ve tried to share with many a hardhead: the fears about CBDCs is vastly overblown; they can already cut you out of the economy completely already, unless you’ve stockpiled a LOT of cash, and cash is still very difficult to use online.
Correct. Fear is an effective control mechanism. The truth is every bit of technology can either benefit society or be used to harm society. What matters is the “authority” which holds the levers. Like a axe, it can be used to build a log home or kill a person. People need to focus on the “present and history” of their authority and ask the simple question; has your needs and your families needs been met?
We’ve read or heard every interview, articles, and speeches Dr. Hudson has made in the last 6+ years.
Yet not one interviewer has ever asked questions about the desperate citizens in the US. Multiple millions are hugely in debt – about $14 billion. Inflation is around 14-15%; unemployed citizens are in the millions while the government doesn’t even figure in the desperately impoverished citizens: about 40 million. They’ve since disappeared from the scene. Most jobs are part-time, low wage jobs. Millions of 20+ year old citizens are having to live with their parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
Multiple millions go without any health/medical care because we can’t afford the astronomical costs of that service. University costs have skyrocketed leaving the nation with only a trickle of new physicians, nurses and veterinarians. That void is filled by post-university folks with 3-6 years of formal education.
Other much higher costs have been seen with Insurance: auto/mortgage/medical insurance. Big Tech cost rises are 2-3x higher than in Western Europe.
Yes, there are millions of world citizens suffering very badly: Ukranians, Russians, Latin Americans, African, and Middle Eastern nations, too.
We heartily wish someone out there would ask Dr. Hudson pertinent questions about the dire straits multiple millions of average US citizens are in.
Sorry, but citizens of a country who elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims – but accomplices.
Lol. You think we choose our leaders!
Our election process has been totally bought & paid for by Gates, Soros & other so-called “elites.”
Corrupted Dominion voting machines change counts in real time: how else do explain thousands — even 10s of thousand — of votes *disappearing* in front of our eyes, live on tv.
If the computer algorithms can’t keep up, they just stop the process for hours or days, calculate how many ballots with the approved “choice” they need, & cartons of pre-filled, illegal ballots appear out of thin air. Election laws regarding ballots are ignored.
The judges also are bought & paid for, up to the Supreme Court.
Dozens of lawsuits re: 2020 were dismissed: if they were filed before the election was “certified” they were dismissed because no actual damage (had yet) occurred. If they were filed after certification, they were dismissed because they should have been filed before certification.
The lawsuit that made it to the Supreme Court was refused because “lack of standing” of the American people.
And they just did it again in ’22 midterms. It doesn’t matter that this time we were prepared & collected mountains of evidence.
America “land of the free” is done. Stick a fork in it. The US a totalitarian state of the crooks, run by the crooks, for the crooks.
@ Mary you are right.
And:
Mr. Hudson seems to avoid the influence of Totalitarian Regimes like Fascism and Communism like the plague. He use new names like Neo-Liberals to obfuscate the century old evil, that humanity are up against.
The current situation is not new.
When the Roman Empire neared its collapse it turned to Fascism.
So did the European Holy Roman Empire in 1908.
Since 9/11 the entire west have been hijacked by Fascist.
@A.Dane
Just me but I beg to differ… IMO MH does nothing of the sort… indeed he explains all of these misnomers far better than anyone else on the planet.
Because Hudson has the humility and good sense to find the working solutions, in what the West would regard as some of the most unlikely places, he worked out the blueprint decades ago that could have saved the western imperial oligarchy from its own self-mutilation and now imminent demise.
I find it absolutely astonishing that anyone could possibly accuse him of “obfuscating the century old evil”… he is in fact doing precisely the opposite.
This link might explain to you the root cause of most of the current wave of confusion regarding labels and terms…
https://thesakeris.global/2022/12/09/oligopoly-unchecked-michael-hudson-interview/
Cheers and regards from the south seas
Col
I have read you link, and realized MH´s background which I previously did not know.
However it explains his view.
Just to clarify my view:
Human rights Laws is necessary to counter Libertarianism.
Communism is necessary to counter Feudalism.
Socialism is necessary to counter Capitalism.
Libertarianism is necessary to counter Fascism.
When either of these ism´s turns into Totalitarian Regimes we have a problem.
But we also have a problem when Communists, Feudalists, Socialists and Capitalist join forces in a Totalitarian Regime to plunder their fellow man. (According to Mussolini, this is Fascism).
And that is what Michael Hudson will not recognize, because it counters the Lock Step control of society historically conducted by both Communists and Fascists.
Cheers and regards from the North Seas.
We are in total agreement with you, “Col.”
Col: “I find it absolutely astonishing that anyone could possibly accuse him of “obfuscating the century old evil”… he is in fact doing precisely the opposite.”
Or how about: “When the Roman Empire neared its collapse it turned to Fascism.” ????
Wow.
Uh…..it’s slightly more complex than a society being vastly (politically/financially) Illiterate.
Ever heard of Greenspan, Larry Summers, Fed Chair Volcker?
Stop treating your polititions as celebrities they are public servants, remind them of that .
On the contrary, Hudson has wrote entire books about debt.
A famous quote from him “debts that cannot be repaid, wont’ be”
oops I should have written, “has written”. English is supposed to be my first language :-)
Another sensational tour de force from Dr Hudson.
But the preceding interview, (link in text above) is also excellent. This takeaway grabbed my attention (machine translation)
Q: Could the war in Ukraine will be a landmark to show a new geopolitical map in the world? Or is the neoliberal New World Order on its rise? How do you see it?
MH: As I explained in your Question #1, the world is being split into two parts. The conflict is not merely national by the West against the East, but is a conflict of economic systems: predatory finance capitalism against industrial socialism, aiming at self-sufficiency for Eurasia and the SCO
The non-aligned countries were not able to “go it alone” in the 1970s because they lacked a critical mass to produce their own food, energy and raw materials. But now that the United States has de-industrialized its own economy and outsourced its production to Asia, these countries have an option not to remain dependent on $US Diplomacy.”
[emphasis mine]
Note: I’ve said previously that now the “Double Helix” of Russia-China (to quote Larch445) has been established a critical mass has been reached which will allow the developing nations of the Global South an escape hatch from US financial blackmail via the World Bank, IMF loans & WTO trade restrictions.
Now, there’s no turning back for the 88% of humanity.
@Uncle Davey
Your comments provide a great summary of the key points in this conflict of systems.
The train has left the station and the self-mutilation of the West will continue to accelerate. What a blessing it is that Zone B has organised all of these systems well in advance of the final crisis. This provides the luxury of a workable alternative for countries to escape the old reality of perpetual imperial blackmail.
Michael Hudson has for decades spelt out the solutions that would have saved the western train wreck… to no avail. They tried to isolate Putin from 90% of the world, and the boomerang returned to hit them right behind the ear.
With their utter nonsense, they finally woke up the sleeping giant (China) who finally realised that this war was essentially existential for their culture as well. The incredible bungling of everything the West touched has provided precisely the opposite result of what they sought … they have effectively isolated themselves from the global 90%.
Of course, the 10% is basically Natostan and as soon as the reality of the Ukraine debacle sinks in, NATO is gone too. The rats will then scurry from the sinking ship and even that 10% will erode further as the most stubborn remnants have no alternative but to go cap in hand and beg to join the new cooperative bloc.
These remnants of a bygone era of blatant predatory finance capitalism will have zero bargaining power as they scurry to find a new home. The world will hear the echo of “rats’ feet over broken glass” as a brand-new financial/security reality establishes its dominance.
Welcome, humanity, to a brave new world
Col
He doesn’t mince words, and they would be very wise to heed what he says.
Of course, Europe will just double down on stupidity.
Haven’t you noticed? The citizens in the West have no power vs their elected/un-elected officials. There are protest all over Europe (usual media blackout) but the people don’t have any “real power” to force change. In the USA, people have guns yet they also don’t have the power to force change. Some say the reason is because there is no majority in both cases. Perhaps true, but I think the real reason (truth) is regular people (sheep) have never had the ability to force change. They just look at each other and scream at the establishment. Any serious change requires “a leader” to lead the sheep but in the West there is no such person…so it seems. The Elite who control the game of “democracy” only present “false” leaders (i.e. Trump) so the sheep get conned into running around circles while screaming. IMO, the West will going down even if they somehow conquer the world (WW3) because the underlying formula results in extinction (i.e. man + man = no babies).
You’d be right there Ron.
We the people have never had any real power to force change.
Definitely not without an oligarch or two on board.
I think our best hope lies with identifying a disaffected elite clique, who have the ability to successfully challenge their status quo peers for control.
We’d need to work out our symbiotic relationship then cast our lot with them.
Oh, and hppe they don’t lose their heads.
Enjoyed reading this interview and thanks for posting it. MH says that EU will still be an attractive tourist destination like Jamaica for visitors from other regions. But as it seems the future doesn’t bode well for the EU countries if the current woke narrative of the finance capitalism establishes itself more firmly across Europe. In that case the tourist destination will quickly transform into a heaven for all kinds of sick travel tourism. In short it will become a modern version of the good old ancient Sodom and Gomorrah recorded in the holy books. Perhaps this is the price the Europeans are willing to pay just to be accepted as a poodle in the dollar zone.
I am going to start to push back against this foolish invocation of ‘woke’. This term has a real history of genuine awareness, not some puerile recitation of liberal hegemony. We who use words should know that ‘budh’, the Pali root of ‘Buddha’ has the meaning of ‘awake’, i.e. ‘woke’. Shakyamuni Buddha is known as ‘The Awakened One’. To seek awakening is the best use of revolutionary zeal–all else devolves from it.
Yes of course woke means what you say, an awareness. But in the current neoliberal world of finance capitalism it is all about lgbtq type of awareness.
Tedder & maskazar: It is good to see intelligent observations regarding the “woke” issue from you both.
Woke, as I understand it, involves a conceptional development of the original ideas found in the Marxist philosophy of liberation. There the key to the awakening and liberation process was to be found in the journey out of entrapment in the limitations of the individual mind (read ego), which was materialized en masse in the form of bourgeois (capitalist) ideology. The journey required a quest for the realization of wholeness, or the discovery of the Self. Both Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell clarify this process with the following question. How does the ego mind find the Self (Wholeness of Being)? They both answer – In the life of the Body. This requirement, in the Marxist philosophy, obliges an opening to the real lives of the common people; i.e., the “proletariat.” Another way of saying it is that we are all on a great journey. From the mind to the heart. The class issue and the liberation of the masses is the material core of collective liberation.
All of this requires a movement to re ground the Western mind in the real life of the body. This requires a culture and politics that honors the liberation of the working class, who just happen to live much closer to reality than the egoistic life styles of the rich.
Where the Woke agenda gets into serious trouble is that it involves a distortion of this understanding to deny the central reality of the liberation of the working classes. So Woke becomes turned on its head as it is now usurped by the bourgeois class to posture a commitment to liberation of all the various bourgeois elements other than that of the working masses. So, in the hands of its bourgeois narrative controllers “Woke” becomes a distorted distraction that serves bourgeois capitalist control as it employed to drain all of the living energy away from authentic liberation and confine the concept to an exclusively bourgeois capitalist variation of individualism. In this way, in the hands of the narrative controllers “Woke” now becomes a weapon against liberation.
Standard bourgeois mind control programming is to twist the popular understanding of liberation until it becomes a tool of distraction and oppression. The “Woke” distortion is far from the first time they have activated this technique. Cultural Marxism being a variation upon the pattern.
So there is nothing wrong in principle with “Woke” as long as it centers itself on the central issue of being awakened. That being the liberation of the shared lives of our bodies. But give the concept to the controllers of the established narrative and it becomes a confusing toxic poison. Mission Accomplished.
@Snow Leopard
You make many excellent points and observations here… so much food for thought.
Best wishes and seasons greetings to my neighbour
Col
Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
Slavic Studies Panel Addresses “Who Promised What to Whom on NATO Expansion?”
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
Have not verified that the article has not been edited (messed with) lately.
An archive can be found here, and is probably a safer read.
https://archive.ph/5QKEA
Hudson got it wrong when he blamed the Chicago and Austrian School of Economics for the West’s ruin.
The West is following Keynesianism not the Economic school of Ludwig Von Mises.
I’m getting suspect of any ism, including finance capitalism, industrial socialism, communism, fascism, terrorism, etc. I know the terms are meant to and do reference specific concepts, behaviors, and organizations. I myself must answer to a charge of having used such terms for many decades. Still, the analytical methodology behind these terms feels flat and flavorless to me and I think always has. I miss in such terms the sense of the transcendent, the vertical dimension of life. This is to say, I miss in such terms the warmth of experience and the unpredictable powers of impulse.
Yes, ways to stockpile money/wealth drive men and women. But it’s a relatively superficial driver, IMO. Even for criminals.
The deepest driver of human behavior — the one which unites high and low, rich and poor, all colors, all families — is the sense of the holy, a sense most of us can describe by reference to experience we have had or by reference to a work of art someone has created from experience they have had and that we experience when in its presence.
The holy attracts us because it is us. What is unlike us does not attract us. We want to understand because our nature is truth. We want to be aware because our nature is consciousness. We want to be happy because our nature is bliss. Only what is like us attracts us. This includes also things we abominate and should avoid.
I think the sense of the holy — and willingness to admit having it — is what, if anything, distinguishes the nations today. A group of nations (US-UK-centric) is hag-ridden by families who think of blocs of nations competing for global hegemony. A group of nations (now BRICS+/SCO-centric) comprises leaders and citizens who think of nation states as sovereign peoples with serious needs for mutual benefit through fair trade and reliable communications. It’s pretty clear there which group of nations is free to enjoy the experience of holiness and which is not.
Before 1949 — Hudson puts it at 1945 — The USA was a rough-and-tumble nation centered in the deep and broad sense of the holy. (“It must be off the spirit if we are to save the flesh.” – Douglas Mac Arthur) This was the basis of our extensive friendship then with Russia. It was also the basis of our Civil War Between the States: holiness does not secede from itself.
By 1949, aggressive messianic deniers of holiness — that is, of the divinity of human nature, even their own human nature — took control of USA powers of government and are just now evident as having been abandoned to self-destruction. Like their ancestors, Sicarii, they “do not go gentle into that good night” – Dylan Thomas.
Many works of art draw one to them using their sense and depiction of the holy. It is what makes them loved through centuries and catastrophes. As familiar in these parts, I offer one which I too love very much: in Bondarchuk’s cinematic translation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the scene of the veneration of Our Lady of Smolensk Icon at Borodino.
It depicts Kutuzov, the Russian Field Marshall, kneeling in the dirt before the Icon in view of his Army. Even more to the point, it depicts serfs, soldiers, and officers together and equally immersed in feelings of heart-felt humility and painfully sweet self-abnegation given the presence of holiness in the Icon and the pastoral courage of clergy bringing this precious treasure to be right among them on the battlefield they know soon to be miserable and bloody yet also heroic and sublime, that is, always completely holy.
Bondarchuk made this film in 1965 with strong assistance from The Soviet Union’s Red Army:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kHJg3t8eDM
Russians have never lost their sense of the holy. That feeling makes Russia feminine and strong. Neither have Americans lost their sense of the holy. America also is feminine and strong in consequence. Like The USA since 1949, Russia too endured durations of time under ululation by holiness deniers. Having ripped and thrown those hags from off their backs, presently Russians await Americans’ reemergence from under ululation by grandchildren and children of the same families who oppressed them, Russians, for years from 1916 and again after 1991.
To help restore Americans’ sense of holiness to rightful practice, I suggest new standards of USA statecraft, to restore Americans’ native sense of the holy in all their affairs:
https://therevdavidrgraham.substack.com/p/standards-of-usa-statecraft
Sense of the holy? How about Patton and his call for a weather prayer which he had the entire 3rd Army praying about!!!!
https://youtu.be/X5XKkyABe_M
You might find this interview interesting :
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/11/28/pope-francis-interview-america-244225
That was the start of the Vatican’s racial epithet about some in Russia, followed by an open apology, which Zakharova noted :
“The ability to admit one’s mistakes is increasingly rare in contemporary international communication. This situation shows that behind the Vatican’s calls for dialogue stands the ability to conduct this dialogue and to listen to the interlocutors. I can tell you right now that this approach evokes sincere respect. We think that this incident is over and we hope that we will continue constructive cooperation with the Vatican.”
It’s a well concealed fact that trade unions, cooperatives and socialist guilds are nearly identical organisations. A cooperative guild can have a sector monopoly and create wealth in exactly the same way as a privately owned corporation (except of course they then share the wealth and spend it). If capitalist governments gave the same advantages to their worker owned organisations as they give to their oligarchs then they would quickly take over, because their communal business model actually works. Just four laws are required to cure nations of oligarchy; a debt jubilee, a maximum national wage, one hundred percent inheritance tax, and land nationalisation (which is needed anyway for soil conservation).
Maybe Michael Hudson knows Patrick Lawrence, who put this very astutely :
Germany & the Lies of Empire
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/12/13/patrick-lawrence-germany-the-lies-of-empire/
““Germany is Hamlet,” Gordon Craig once wrote. The great historian of that nation (1913–2005) was noted for pithy summations of this kind, insights that cast light into the innermost recesses of the German psyche, the what-makes-them-tick of its people.”
Merkel abandoned Germany’s foreign policy of strategic ambiguity, not quite western and not quite eastern pursuing NATO while also Ostpolitik.
Did Merkel, Macron, Scholz “Hamlet out”? Swashbuckling NATO war-hawks, ready to thrust the sword at the man behind the curtain before he knew who was there, terrified of ghosts and ideas?
Somewhere, somehow, the math doesn’t add up.
If the American/EU Politburo is capping Russian Energy prices then will the EU request the same terms & conditions on US products arriving in Europe? Did the penny not drop on Macron, the would be heir to the Euro Crown?
You’ll find that behind the scenes a few grifters are cornering the black market at the expense to slow-joe public who’s always guaranteed to be last to the party, always bearing the brunt of their overlords transgressions, in layman’s terms, slow-joe is more frequently than not caught with trousers around ankles, most vulnerable position grasshoppers.
Thanks to the Saker for regularly posting Dr. Hudson’s articles.
I have a stack of his books, including the latest one; I have read dozens of his articles over the years. He is over 80 years old and still sharp as a razor. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts called him “the best economist alive” years ago, which is saying something if you know who Roberts is.
If you start with his seminal work Super Imperialism (1972) and work your way to the present, one will realize that he has indeed been ahead of the curve for decades. I would also call him the most accurate economist, (at least in the English-speaking world). He is also the most knowledgeable person about the history of economics and economic thought.
I noticed a comment here that said Hudson got it wrong. No he didn’t. The comment just reflects ignorance of his work and ignorance of economic history. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but some need to “crack open a book” and do their homework. Most people on this site are well-informed and comments are thoughtful.
Hudson is right – although it should be emphasized that Keynes and Hayek (Austrian School) are BOTH London School of Economics Professors – the proverbial Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee of Alice in Wonderland.
The American System of Hamilton, Carey, List are fundamentally opposed to the London School of Economics :
The National System of Political Economy : Friedrich List : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/NationalSystemOfPoliticalEconomyFriedrichList/mode/2up
Right, or another way to put it, there is a difference between classical economists (Smith, Mill, Marx, Veblen) and neo-classical (neoliberal and monetarist versions). The so-called Austrian school is just another brand of neo classical nonsense that has been thoroughly discredited by empirical reality and historical research. Hudson has written extensively about that as well
Another economist who has torn the so-called Austrian school to shreds is Steve Keen
What is your take on digital currencies?
MH: It’s not my department. All banking is electronic, so what does “digital” mean? To libertarians, it means no government oversight, but in government hands, the government will have a record of everything that anyone spends.
Will it not “mean” total control? Control not only of your bank account but your very behavior making ultimately your behavior the sum and substance of whether you will eat tomorrow or not. Your conscience and what you believe will now belong to a coming world government. Think Noahide laws?
Did you get your personal invitation to join a party
where fascists and nazis meet?
https://www.vox.com/world/2022/12/16/23507640/dc-party-invite-military-contractors-money-ukraine-russia-war-us
(scroll to invitation)