by Francis Lee for The Saker Blog
The road to the future, to a new expansion as is always close to the heart of capital, led outwards, to the still pleasantly unregulated world of a borderless global economy in which markets would no longer be locked into nation-states, but nation-states locked into markets. (1)
The golden age of post-war capitalism which lasted from the Bretton Woods arrangements of 1944 ended definitively with the great 1971 counter-revolution; a process which began with the removal of the US$ from the gold standard. Since the rest of the world’s currencies were fixed to the dollar these currencies were automatically detached from gold. What emerged, whether by accident or, more likely by design, has defined the contours of the 21st century and this has borne witness to the emergence of a New World Order (NWO) of a neo-liberal, globalization settlement and conjointly the collapse of actually existing socialism. This realignment was by no means accidental and represented fundamental policy changes rather than unconnected random events.
THE RISE OF NEOLIBERALISM AND THE NWO
This NWO has been established on the basis of deep structural changes in the nature of actually existing capitalism and qualitatively different to the welfare, inclusive capitalism of the immediate post-war period. However the counter-revolution caught the left unprepared and who have seemingly been unable to grasp this fact. Moreover the collapse of actually existing socialism ended the historical period of political ascendency of the left – a process which dated back to the Russian revolution of 1917 – and transmuted into the great neo-liberal counter-revolution which began in 1971.
This eclipse of socialism – or anything resembling socialism – has been the feature of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Both social-democratic and even communist parties have been politically marginalised by their theoretical inability to discern the deficiencies in their political agendas. The counter-revolutionary wave of the late 20th century began in stages to sweep all before it. The decline of a moribund social-democracy and even eurocommunism with their entrenched and seemingly immovable policies of an earlier period – Progress through Parliamentary Reform – were found to be wanting, out of date and out of time, running out of steam with their economies plagued by stagflation and declining growth. By the late 60s early 70s Le Trente Glorieuses were no more and this gave rise to the surge of counter-revolution initially led by the Reagan-Thatcher axis. This move into the future was – if anybody noticed – a backward movement. Winners included the then Head of Siemens, Heinrich Von Pierer, to triumphantly proclaim: ‘’The wind of competition has become a storm, and the real hurricanes still lies ahead of us.’’(2)
THE EFFECTIVE DEMISE OF THE LEFT
To think that the Left which had once occupied and dominated Western Europe and consisted of mass parties of social-democrats and communists, and moreover, even in 1945 there were armed communist partisans operating in Albania, Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, and France, including a large Parliamentary representation.
But the Left capitulated and adapted to the new order and for better or worse – actually worse – and was to imbibe the fashionable doctrines of neo-liberalism.
I vividly remember being a student delegate at Labour Party Annual Conference in the seaside town of Blackpool in 1976. Conference was always a rather tedious and dispiriting affair but this time it was historic. James Callaghan the then Prime Minister gave the following address. The key passage was as follows:
‘’We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. Higher inflation followed by higher unemployment. We have just escaped from the highest rate of inflation this country has known; we have not yet escaped from the consequences: high unemployment.’’ Apparently, Keynes was now passe and Von Hayek was flavour of the month.
What Callaghan was in fact articulating was the demise of social-democracy in the UK, and for that matter everywhere else; it was over, finished, and now a complete political racket infested with careerists and parvenus on the make. So Orwell was right even before then to describe the Labour Party as being ‘pale pink humbug’(The Road to Wigan Pier 1937). The neo-liberals had won, and it was an Atlantic-wide victory. Be advised that a party which calls itself a party of the Left, but which adheres to the neo-liberal orthodoxy is simply a fraud. Ex-centre-left parties have simply moved over to the centre-right en bloc. This project was definitively operationalised with considerable success by Blair (New Labour) and Clinton (political centrism) in the 90s.
TAKE A KNEE TO THEM NOW
This political about-face where the ashes of the left and the emergence of the neoliberal right was presided over by a new goddess known as TINA—There Is No Alternative. The long list of her high priests and priestesses extends from Margaret Thatcher via Tony Blair down to Angela Merkel and Bill Clinton. Anyone who wished to serve TINA, to the accompaniment of the solemn chorus of the united economists of the world, had to recognize the escape of capital from its national cages as both inevitable and beneficial, and would have to commit themselves to help clear all obstacles from its path. Heathen practices such as controls on the movement of capital, state aid and others were to be tracked down and eradicated; no one must be allowed to escape from ‘global competition’ and sink back into the cushioned comfort of national protections of whatever kind. Free-trade agreements were to open up markets and protect them from state interference, global governance was to replace national governments, protection from commodification was to be replaced by enabling commodification, and the welfare state was to give way to the competition state of a new era of capitalist rationalization. By the end of the 1980s at the latest, neoliberalism had become the de rigeuer for both the centre left and the centre right—with haemorrhaging membership and a declining electoral participation, disproportionately so at the lower end of the social scale. Additionally, a beginning in the 1980s this was accompanied by a meltdown of trade-union organization, together with a dramatic decline in strike activity worldwide—altogether, in other words, a demobilization along the broadest possible front of the entire post-war machinery of democratic participation and redistribution The old political controversies were now regarded as being obsolete by the PTB.(3)
THE ROAD TO NEMESIS
But history is full of surprises. In their hubris the new ruling elites were to become victims of their own propaganda, a customary and predictable human failing. Cracks were beginning to show in the neo-liberal paradigm during the holding period of 2008-2020 and the model was, whether they liked it or not, beginning to show deep structural fault-lines. The new economic system was becoming increasingly obsolete and unstable, the elephant in the room is now beginning to make its presence felt. This has been the result in the build-up of problems which were occasioned by the 2008 blow-out.
At the present time, however, the cracks which had papered over the post 2008 bodge and the distribution of national income was increasingly tilted away from the 99% to the 1%. Such a polarization of wealth and income cannot possibly endure without economic and political chaos. The process is in its early stages and represents the most severe trial of the new order since the 1971 establishment. In effect democracy is being sacrificed by the requirements of capitalism. This Great Reset is the Hayekian wonderland of a 21st century slave state.
‘’If capitalism of the consolidation state can no longer produce even the illusion of equitable growth, the time will come when the paths of capitalism and democracy must part. The likeliest outcome would be the completion of a Hayekian social dictatorship in which the capitalist market economy was protected from democratic correction. Its legitimacy would depend upon whether those who once were its citizens would have learned to equate market justice with social justice and to think of themselves as members of a unified marktvolk. Its stability would further require instruments for the ideological marginalization, political disorganization, and physical restraint of anyone unwilling to accept this lesson. Those who refused to bow to market justice, in a situation where political institutions economically, would then be left with what used to be described in the 1970s as extra-parliamentary protest: emotional, irrational, fragmented, and irresponsible. And this is what we would precisely expect if the democratic channels for the articulation of interests and the formation of preferences are blocked, only because the same outcomes can never emerge or because what emerges no longer makes any difference to the markets … The alternative to capitalism without democracy is democracy without capitalism. (4)
So now we are living in a period of what Antonio Gramsci described as the interregnum. “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.”(5) Its outcome can only be guessed at.
La Lotte Continua.
NOTES
(1) Wolfgang Streeck – New Left Review – 104
(2) Der Spiegel 1996
(3)Wolfgang Streeck – New Left Review 104
(4) Grace Blakeley – Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialization -pp.172/73.
(5) Prison Notebooks – Antonio Gramsci.
a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
How about this?
On the front page of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, there appeared a story. It read as follows:
A gruesome little ditty called “Suicide Song” intended as a parody for a Parent – Teachers Association skit was briefly Number One on the third grade Hit Parade in the Beach community’s schools. Teachers were aghast when they heard the words:
“Oh come with me to the kitchen,
to the kitchen, to the kitchen.
Oh, come with me to the kitchen and there a date with death we both will keep.
Turn on the gas in the oven, in the oven, in the oven.
It will gently lull us both to sleep.
Listen to the hissing sound.
Listen to the hissing sound.
they are calling, gently calling you and me,
Listen to the hissing sound.
Listen to the hissing sound.
we’ll say goodbye and die in ecstasy.”
It was sung to the tune of “Listen to the Mocking Bird.”
While some American children sang such songs of tradgedy, across the other side of the ocean in the USSR, school children were singing, “The Blight of the World is Jesus.”
Cantelon pg 128
Morbid symptoms indeed. Good Gramsci. But then I once had to listen to a 12 year old American boy, with his eyes all lit up, pronounce with sublime confidence the formula “When the worlds change first everyone starts crying and then everyone starts laughing. It always happens that way. It has to happen that way. It is the law. It is the law.” Six years later I saw Malcom on the International News picketing for peace outside the White House.
That evil song seems to have been a hit in the US during the 1930s:
“Hundreds of children gather every Sunday in the U.S. Communistic Sunday Schools. One of their songs, a parody to “The Light of the World is Jesus” https://archives.ifphc.org/pdf/LatterRainEvangel/1930-1939/LRE%201934/1934_07.pdf
Edgar Hoover also laments that fact – https://books.google.rw/books?id=UA4mM-7NXeEC&pg=SL1-PA6030&lpg=SL1-PA6030&dq=%E2%80%9CThe+Blight+of+the+World+is+Jesus.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=Qu79XNhwGf&sig=ACfU3U0fA1oOwwB8qFCLp-XI2jZRADmdfQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi29vfar8vuAhUDTTABHRS0CwMQ6AEwA3oECAsQAg#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CThe%20Blight%20of%20the%20World%20is%20Jesus.%E2%80%9D&f=false
Also:
@RMM
You touched a nerve with me RMM and a serious one given that essay by Romanov.
If America is the insane Messiainc nation that it is today it is because of the two world wars which caused so much suffering. Too many lost everything sons, daughters, fathers, grandsons etc etc etc. For many the issue was the End of the World kind of stuff and for many their world did indeed come to an end and that on both sides of the water. In the churches of the nation which tried desperately to come to some understanding of it all the rise of communism and fascism was especially horrifying. That is why we find in America the belief that Russia and Germany were looked upon as the great Magog and Gog of Ezekiel 38 and 39. No preacher anywhere in America taught different and when WW2 broke out it solidified that belief socially, religiously and politically. Fear ruled the day and sadly continues to rule the day. Is it any wonder the talk about Vietnam was to stop the communists? They learned it was a lie though didn’t they and as more and more information comes to light that light is being turned upon their own leaders and what is being learned is finally starting to cause the right kind of questions to be asked? There is a great deal of truth to the words we have found the enemy and he is us.
What ultimately is causing me many sleepless nights and the writing of the book Lies all Lies is that Russia and Germany have got nothing to do with the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 and 39 Magog and Gog. This is a serious misinterpretation of scripture and it has to be repudiated immediately. It’s happening but not as quickly as I desire let me tell you. Neither Israel nor America has got anything to fear from Gog and Magog. Try telling that to Bush Jr. however, who told Macron that Gog and Magog is at work in the Middle East currently? Russia and Germany however, in the eyes of many in the west are demonized as these very nations and it started with the rise of communism in Russia! O how i wish for an international conference of Church leaders to once and for all remedy our differences and point the finger where it really belongs!!! This divide and conquer in the Church has to stop it just has to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“The Interregnum”.
This is the perfect definition for this passage of history in which we are living. Thanks Francis Lee. Thanks Antonio Gramsci.
I’ve kept an old copy of “Prison Notebooks” with me since the mid-70s, even during 12 years of sailing around the world. Gramsci has never been more relevant .
Good work Mr Lee.
I disagree on the “The Interregnum”. It is Gramsci’s other quote that is far more apt for the present:
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”
Yes, a “monster” I’m afraid is indeed about to arrive but thankfully we were warned about its coming and what will happen.
What comes as a bigger shock however, for me is that an Italian Gramsci would say and believe this:
“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.” ~ Antonio Gramsci
Wow, what a frightening thought.
Know and understand well that where politics is concerned the single ****greatest political statement**** ever made by anyone at any time in mankind’s entire history is found here:
****Mathew 6:7-15****
By rejecting this Gramsci makes a fatal error and so welcome soon to a world where a coming psychopath will create a government of the worst kind imaginable. I love how Cantelon puts it:
“I had seen wars bring debts and rationing. I had seen certain natural circumstances contribute to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. I had witnessed the computer age transform our world into IBM cards where men were filed as digits rather than people. I had viewed the skylines of the world’s leading cities, where bank buildings rose heavenward like giant cathedrals
Unbelievable, I said, as I studied these superstructures dominating the horizons of the world. Unbelievable that some of these great banking houses will be devoid of vaults. They will have no need of such, for in place of money will be only computers which carry a man’s number and determine his allowance in a world-wide ration system. Even while I thought on these truths, I was moved with the knowledge that banking houses were perfecting thenon-toxic ink with which a number could be implanted for life on man’s flesh. {Written in the 70’s}
The world system will be praised and promoted by brilliant men. With eloquence and apparent logic they will
persuade men that this is the path to peace and security. {Social Credit ie China?????!!!!} The world leader will rise to power with flattery and gain complete control of the military and monetary powers of all nations.”
The prophet John tells how this world leader who will have power over “all kindreds and tongues and nations”
(Rev. l3:7) will cause that as many as will not worship shall be killed. (Rev. 13:15).
And again I recalled the fantastic passage of scripture that I had repeated so many times before,
He causeth all small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their
foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark-or the number.
(Rev. 13:16-17)
All my life people laughed at me about the 666. Well guess what it is now staring us all in the face. Here’s a quote to chew on by the one man who understood really what the future holds.
Colonel Edward House
“[Very] soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a National system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging.
By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a chargeback for our fiat paper currency. Every American will be forced to register or suffer not being able to work and earn a living.
They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges.
They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two would figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability.
After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges. This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor to this fraud which we will call “Social Insurance.”
Without realizing it, every American will insure us for any loss we may incur and in this manner; every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and, we will employ the high office of the President of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America.”
Imagine in this quote one can see the reference from the bible:
{‘FORCED TO REGISTER OR SUFFER NOT BEING ABLE TO WORK AND EARN A LIVING.’ Col. House}
unless he had the mark, which is the number of his name.” {Rev. 13:16}
Social Security lol which I’m afraid goes back to the temptation of Christ and how Satan said all the kingdoms of earth has been given to me. Wow, what computerization has provided that piece of trash!
As for Gramsci he i guess would have loved the words of U Thant:
“I believe in the philosophy of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. From its present antithesis, I believe the world is moving toward a new synthesis.”
Gramsci should have paid attention to the gospels.
Have a glimpse at the future and have a look at Microsoft’s sinister and diabolic patent from 2020 number 060606 (yes you read it well that’s the number…): To be paid by a future cryptocurrency we will be enslaved to accomplish certain preconditioned physical tasks which will be captured by body sensors etc:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606
‘” Abstract
(EN)
Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified. ”
San Juan 13:18: ” 15And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 16And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. “
Patents were listed by # and started in 1836, your #, would have put you in 1870, (yeah you said it, but that’s the fact).
https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/issuyear.htm
The document referred to by Davidoff is an International Patent Application filed on June 20, 2019 under International Application Number PCT/US2019/038084. The application was published by the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Office on March 26, 2020 under International Publication Number WO 2020/060606.
By going to this website: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/advancedSearch?locale=en_EP
and typing this number: WO2020060606
in the Publication Number field, you can see the document for yourself.
Since this document is a pending International Patent Application, the Applicant (Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC) will have until March 21, 2021 to convert the International application into national (or regional) applications in individual jurisdictions, although some jurisdictions permit extensions of 1 or a few months to this deadline.
Once the application has been filed in national (or regional) jurisdictions, the applications in these individual jurisdictions will be examined by Patent Examiners at respective Patent Offices under their respective national (or regional) patent laws. It will take between 1 and 10 years from that time before patents start to issue in the national (or regional) jurisdictions, unless, of course, the Patent Offices reject the application.
By the way Schwab announced the Great Reset on the 3rd of June 2020 : 03 / 06 3 sixes : 666 :
https://www.weforum.org/press/2020/06/the-great-reset-a-unique-twin-summit-to-begin-2021/
““The Great Reset” will be the theme of a unique twin summit to be convened by the World Economic Forum in January 2021 bla bla bla etc”
Christine Lagarde on her bizarre “drop the zero” (by the way!) numerology speech in 2014 announced something between the lines for 2021 (the Davos agenda 2021?) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3OvugEbbrc
Am I conspiranoic? I believe these people are so childish and perhaps truly evil as to play with such symbols on purpose et nous prendre tous pour des cons!…
@ Davidoff, Jason and Alabama
Interesting. Thanks!!
Whatever form it finally takes is still the mystery. I can only look back to where it all started for me with not only Cantelon but a dear lady named Dr. Mary Stewart Relfe who wrote the book The New Money System which can be found here:
https://leagueofprayer.com/shop.asp?action=details&inventoryID=57015&catId=10620
It is interesting how the number 6 is the perfect compound number. Does its divisibility have something or anything to do with 6 being the number of man I don’t know but it is certainly interesting. If so then the number 7 is the divine number isn’t it?
Ultimately however for me it all boils down to computer technology. I mean really for the world of banking which was being buried under a mountain of paper the IBM machines and electronic computing changed everything.
Dr. Orville G. Brim, Jr. head of the Russell Sage foundation, said:
“There is no doubt that we can run society better with this information but doing this could well be in conflict with all our fears of having privacy invaded.”
And Hitler and IBM worked closely to did they not?
A couple of years ago our company had to store and liquidate some 400 hundred boxes of files and paperwork. We shredded some 140 boxes while the rest have to be stored. Take that and think about the world of banking and one will laugh really because for a Rothschild’s the slavery to paperwork would simply be utterly mind boggling meaning lol there are all kinds of slavery yes? Even for governments the slavery to paperwork creates the enormous bureaucracy. But along comes computers and voila a new world and paradigm opens itself up doesn’t it? What I discovered on my own though is surely more troubling about accounting and that is peoples names. I would think a bankers worst nightmare would be a Moslem country for example where everyone practically has the same name. How does one differentiate between people when everyone is Muhammad or something similar even with their last names. Or go to India or any other in that region and try imagining being a banker opening accounts for the myriad of people. What banker wouldn’t be going home at the end of the day or week with ones nerves completely frazzled and scratching their heads in disbelief as to how this is going to pan out really? Modi I read and hear is trying all kind of things? For me there is no question to the thought why don’t we just treat them like livestock and number them on their person? You add to this the control of behavior like China’s Social Credit System is doing and voila you have what is taught in Rev. 13 surely.
So for those among us who laugh and ridicule which in some ways i guess is warranted. i mean over the centuries everyone has their own interpretation of scripture and have been proven wrong and so the ridicule. What was said to Daniel however, is or will be proving true:
“Go your way Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end ” 12:9
It is written to them to whom it would be applicable to.
Now that’s interesting!
Isn’t that what sets the bible apart we have the future already told to us. We know the end of the story!!!
Interesting comments Gerry.
In my youth, Gramscian theory was prescriptive, but now l find it descriptive. Like Machiavelli, for example.
Like yourself and many commentators I’m sensitive to the many monstrous things happening in the west, and I was recently baptised into Christianity. Evil is too commonplace, and Jesus’ life was an address to evil. I imagine Gramsci was concerned with similar things in his own place and time, (and yes, that is an historical, materialist, Marxist way of looking at it) and his response was a socialist theory. Socialism and Christianity are not incompatable.
The gospels have a mysterious simplicity. Revelation, however, is dramatically descriptive, and it’s takeaway is, I guess, “warning!”. John of Patmos doesn’t seem to be channeling Jesus in Revelation. His Revelation shares a foreboding that can also be gleaned from the writings of Gramsci.
‘The alternative to capitalism without democracy is democracy without capitalism.’
Capitalism without democracy is wealthy selfishness wereas democracy without capitalism is the original christian concept that embraces ‘commune’ … ism which in turn is predicated on a unit called the ‘family’.
‘So now we are living in a period of what Antonio Gramsci described as the interregnum. “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.” Its outcome can only be guessed at.’
The new has already been born. It has been born many, many times in history yet not given a name or the recognition it deserves due to its inherent nature as part of the human condition.
Given the ‘commune’ is based on the amalgum of families and the state is based on the amalgum of communes and the country is based on the amalgum of states its singular unit is that which would unite. This is particularly apparent in some of SE Asian countries and in particular China.
When you listen to China’s president consider how many times he refers to China as a ‘family’ … rather than a collection of individuals or businesses all with differing ‘hopes and desires that need to be satisfied’ for the society to work as do ‘western political operatives’.
That ‘capitalism’ or the accumulation of money cannot exist within such a system is where the truly greedy and selfish individuals make their play. Of course it can and so can a democracy. Accumulation of wealth and democracy are not mutually exclusive to neoliberalism.
What confused many philosophers was the belief that a family structure could not be maintained within a huge population. Presently China is proving it can both with their infrastructure success and the manner in which the virus has been contained.
What exactly defines the ‘family structure’ is the essential question and why and where did it alter if at all?
Examine that and consider its relevance to all religions and philosophical treatises and you will be on the path to discover the place we are now occupying has been occupied previously.
Most themes in Shakespear’s plays revolve around the ‘family’. Or families of kings and queens and family disputes. This short video gives and idea of some of the themes I have undertaken.
https://youtu.be/FKbv1Dw0CA0
I promised the Merchant of Venice Part 2. How long it will last on youtube is anyone’s guess ….
The Merchant of Venice part2: Part 1 was all satire. Part 2 is a little different. I used some clips from the excellent Al Pachino as Shylock preformance. I could not make this otherwise. Make of it what you will.
the last two frames say it all. https://youtu.be/O5yr5yJ2i9A
A Quote by Hannibal Lecter:
“We live in a primitive time—don’t we, Will?—neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon
Half measures are the curse of misery in a world today. Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, the whole Middle East in fact, the Balkans,…
“This eclipse of socialism – or anything resembling socialism – has been the feature of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Both social-democratic and even communist parties have been politically marginalised by their theoretical inability to discern the deficiencies in their political agendas.”
Because they are not conspiracy theorists.
Excellent ovservation. That a mix if systems is impossible is merely a construct of the vanity of philosophies. China with Mao began at point zero. Then, because they were adaptable and not entirely dependent of the constricts of the jargon yet more concerned to feed and improve the life of their citizens they have moved into a system that has …. from the western view become a pot-puri of inconsistencies … yet for them has led them to become the largest economy in the world with the best infrastructure and the best social security that support their citizenship.
Thus they have moved beyond the constraints of the ‘systems’ and delevoped a more adaptable mode.
Intrestingly enough the Americans cannot see beyond the dicotomy that one system needs to be right and the other wrong. Particulary in every facet of their society and thus such will lead to their eventual demise.
Humanity’s greatest thinkers always entertained doubt.
“. Its stability would further require instruments for the ideological marginalization, political disorganization, and physical restraint of anyone unwilling to accept this lesson.”
Its stability would require conspiracy.
‘the left’: all-powerful unification of corporations under state control, a tiny oligarchy controlling and dictating everything.
‘the right’: all-powerful unification of corporations and the state under corporate control, a tiny oligarcht controlling and dictating everything.
free yourselves from this false choice! the left versus right has always been a one-way trap, oh look those evil corporations have too much power, we need more power in the state to rein them in! oh look those evil politicians have too much power, we need more powerful corporations and ‘privatization’ to rein them in! the result: left hand and right hand collaborate to enslave everyone and everything.
Power and wealth concentrated to such an extreme no matter what you call it is still corrupt and tyrranical. individual liberty, small holdings of private property by individuals and families, limited and LOCAL government with full sovereignty.. those are the real meaningful ingredients to justice and freedom and self-reliant communities. Neither the left nor the right wants anything to do with that though, because both left and right are obsessed with POWER.
I think this thesis requires one adjustment:
“This eclipse of socialism – or anything resembling socialism – has been the feature of the late 20th and early 21st centuries,” in the West.
Western discourse, subjugated by the American boot and degraded by imperial delusions, continues to put itself at the center of history. It confuses the obvious material and moral decline of the West as that of humanity as a whole.
I don’t think the Communist Party of China cares that what passes for Western “intellectualism” thinks socialism is dead. No one told them, as they subjugated the fiction known as the “market” for the greater good of their population, that the Communist project was over because some drunk named Yeltsin said so.
I am a US citizen, finishing my 4th decade on this world, and in this time I’ve witness crumbling of the both the physical and social infrastructure of my country. Having done some travelling, I can imagine a Chinese citizen of a similar age could sit back an look in awe at the progress his nation has made in that same time frame.
We sit here, in quarantine, waiting for our governments to perform their basic duty of protecting the lives of their citizens, and we debate as to whether the Chinese are capitalists because they use the “free market”. That its like debating whether someone is a Catholic because they use a hammer. Both are tools. At its most simple, in America society is a subject of Capital. Profitable activities are determined by what aggregates more societal power to Capital. That is why you can find dozens of brands of bottle water, but can’t get a vaccine for a disease that has ground normal daily life to a halt. In China, and other communist nations Capital is a servant of the population. Again, the pandemic is the great clarifier, you not only see this in body counts; but even small, “poor”, Communist Cuba is leading global pandemic fighting efforts.
So this isn’t an Interregnum, history always moves, it’s just moved so far away from the West, that we can’t imagine how far behind we are.
I think the Dems are heading for capitalism without democracy. In one of the comments above democracy was linked to the concepts of ‘family’ and ‘community’.
Now we see the cynical background of the late tsunami on woke ideas, from gender equality, LBGT idealisation, critical race theory, inclusivity and diversity, safe spaces, microagression towards ethnomathematics and beyond.
They don’t want to unite us, on the contrary, they want to divide us and break down societal structures and even family ties. Divide and conquer. We should be slaves without bonds and ‘happy’. Expendable assets.
Just read this article of F. William Engdahl about the Great Reset, I sense his anger and sarcasm while normally he writes in a sober way: https://www.globalresearch.ca/after-covid-davos-moves-great-reset/5735441
The associations I get are the movie ‘Soylent green’ and the hallucinant project of the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot, though in this respect we could better call it the Green Khmer.
Do we really think that nations like Russia, China, Iran and more will just roll over belly up, moaning ‘okay then’? That’s dangerously naive. Even the other halve of the USA won’t. I guess. Hard for me to estimate that from Europe at the other side of a large ditch.
Just to name a ‘morbid symptom’. The officer who killed Ashli Babbitt in what I can only see as a cold stone sober execution will most probably not be prosecuted: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9212393/Capitol-Police-officer-shot-dead-rioter-Ashli-Babbitt-not-charged-investigators-say.html
Dark and psychotic times ahead. Be safe and healthy, cheers, Rob
I am not sure what the author of the article was trying to say and what his point was. Another muddled article that talks a lot but says very little of actual value and information.
It took only 20 years for Neo-Liberalism in BOTH USA and Europe to totally destroy itself and the systems it was used in. Another 10 years and the Neo-Liberal capitalism almost collapsed the system to the extend that the governments had to intervene by pouring literally trillions into the Banks to save them. By last calculations Obama and Bush combined poured 75 trillions into the banks. USA is now being saved by QE and REPO and more parlor tricks. Without it, the so called “Capitalist” system of USA/Europe would have disintegrated. if this is what “free market Capitalism” is, I’d take Communism any day of the week.