In his latest book, economist Michael Hudson pits socialism against finance capitalism and tears apart the ‘dream civilization’ imposed by the 1 percent.
By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and cross-posted with The Cradle
With The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism, Michael Hudson, one of the world’s leading independent economists, has given us arguably the ultimate handbook on where we’re at, who’s in charge, and whether we can bypass them.
Let’s jump straight into the fray. Hudson begins with an analysis of the “take the money and run” ethos, complete with de-industrialization, as 90 percent of US corporate revenue is “used to share buybacks and dividend payouts to support company stock prices.”
That represents the apex of “Finance Capitalism’s” political strategy: to “capture the public sector and shift monetary and banking power” to Wall Street, the City of London and other western financial centers.
The whole Global South will easily recognize the imperial modus operandi: “The strategy of US military and financial imperialism is to install client oligarchies and dictatorships, and arm-twist allies to join the fight against designated adversaries by subsidizing not only the empire’s costs of war-making (“defense”) but even the imperial nation’s domestic spending programs.” This is the antithesis of the multipolar world advocated by Russia and China.
In short, our current Cold War 2.0 “is basically being waged by US-centered finance capitalism backing rentier oligarchies against nations seeking to build up more widespread self-reliance and domestic prosperity.”
Hudson presciently reminds us of Aristotle, who would say that it is in the interest of financiers to wield their power against society at large: “The financial class historically has been the major beneficiary of empires by acting as collection agents.”
So inevitably the major imperial leverage over the world, a true “strategy of underdevelopment,” had to be financial: instrumentalizing IMF pressure to “turn public infrastructure into privatized monopolies, and reversing 20th century pro-labor reforms” via those notorious ‘conditionalities’ for loans.
No wonder the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), established in Belgrade in 1961 with 120 nations and 27 observers, became such a threat to US global strategy. The latter predictably fought back with a slew of ethnic wars and the earliest incarnations of color revolution – fabricating dictatorships on an industrial scale, from Suharto to Pinochet.
The culmination was a cataclysmic Houston get-together in December 19, 1990 “celebrating” the dissolution of the USSR, as Hudson reminds us how the IMF and the World Bank “laid out a blueprint for Russia’s leaders to impose austerity and give away its assets – it didn’t matter to whom – in a wave of ‘shock therapy’ to let the alleged magic of free enterprise create a neoliberal free-for-all.”
Lost in a Roman wilderness of debt
To a large extent, nostalgia for the rape-and-pillaging of 1990s-era Russia fuels what Hudson defines as the New Cold War, where Dollar Diplomacy must assert its control over every foreign economy. The New Cold War is not waged only against Russia and China, “but against any countries resisting privatization and financialization under US sponsorship.”
Hudson reminds us how China’s policy “followed almost the same path that American protectionism did from 1865 though 1914 – state subsidy for industry, heavy public-sector capital investment…and social spending on education and health care to upgrade the quality and productivity of labor. This was not called Marxism in the United States; it was simply the logical way to look at industrialization, as part of a broad economic and social system.”
But then, finance – or casino – capitalism gained steam, and left the US economy mainly with “agribusiness farm surpluses, and monopolies in information technology (largely developed as a by-product of military research), military hardware, and pharmaceutical patents (based on public seed-money to fund research) able to extract monopoly rent while making themselves largely tax-exempt by using offshore banking centers.”
That’s the current State of Empire: relying only “on its rentier class and Dollar Diplomacy,” with prosperity concentrated in the top one percent of establishment elites. The inevitable corollary is US diplomacy imposing illegal, unilateral sanctions on Russia, China and anyone else who defies its diktats.
The US economy is indeed a lame post-modern remake of the late Roman empire: “dependent on foreign tribute for its survival in today’s global rentier economy.” Enter the correlation between a dwindling free lunch and utter fear: “That is why the United States has surrounded Eurasia with 750 military bases.”
Delightfully, Hudson goes back to Lactantius, in the late 3rd century, describing the Roman empire on Divine Institutes, to stress the parallels with the American version:
“In order to enslave the many, the greedy began to appropriate and accumulate the necessities of life and keep them tightly closed up, so that they might keep these bounties for themselves. They did this not for humanity’s sake (which was not in them at all), but to rake up all things as products of their greed and avarice. In the name of justice they made unfair and unjust laws to sanction their thefts and avarice against the power of the multitude. In this way they availed as much by authority as by strength of arms or overt evil.”
Socialism or barbarism
Hudson succinctly frames the central issue facing the world today: whether “money and credit, land, natural resources and monopolies will be privatized and concentrated in the hands of a rentier oligarchy or used to promote general prosperity and growth. This is basically a conflict between finance capitalism vs. socialism as economic systems.”
To advance the struggle, Hudson proposes a counter-rentier program which should be the Global South’s ultimate Blueprint for responsible development: public ownership of natural monopolies; key basic infrastructure in public hands; national self-sufficiency – crucially, in money and credit creation; consumer and labor protection; capital controls – to prevent borrowing or denominating debts in foreign currency; taxes on unearned income such as economic rent; progressive taxation; a land tax (“will prevent land’s rising rental value from being pledged to banks for credit to bid up real estate prices”); use of the economic surplus for tangible capital investment; and national self-sufficiency in food.
As Hudson seems to have covered all the bases, at the end of the book I was left with only one overarching question. I asked him how he analyzed the current discussions between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and the Chinese – and between Russia and China, further on down the road – as being able to deliver an alternative financial/monetary system. Can they sell the alternative system to most of the planet, all while dodging imperial financial harassment?
Hudson was gracious enough to reply with what could be regarded as the summary of a whole book chapter: “To be successful, any reform has to be system-wide, not merely a single part. Today’s western economies have become financialized, leaving credit creation in private hands – to be used to make financial gains at the expense of the industrial economy… This aim has spread like leprosy throughout entire economies – their trade patterns (dependency on US agricultural and oil exports, and IT technology), labor relations (anti-unionism and austerity), land tenure (foreign-owned plantation agriculture instead of domestic self-reliance and self-sufficiency in food grains), and economic theory itself (treating finance as part of GDP, not as an overhead siphoning off income from labor and industry alike).”
Hudson cautions that “in order to break free of the dynamic of predatory finance-capitalism sponsored by the United States and its satellites, foreign countries need to be self-sufficient in food production, energy, technology and other basic needs. This requires an alternative to US ‘free trade’ and its even more nationalistic ‘fair trade’ (deeming any foreign competition to US-owned industry ‘unfair’). That requires an alternative to the IMF, World Bank and ITO (from which Russia has just withdrawn). And alas, an alternative also requires military coordination such as the SCO [the Shanghai Cooperation Organization] to defend against the militarization of US-centered finance capitalism.”
Hudson does see some sunlight ahead: “As to your question of whether Russia and China can ‘sell’ this vision of the future to the Global South and Eurasian countries, that should become much easier by the end of this summer. A major byproduct (not unintended) of the NATO war in Ukraine is to sharply raise energy and food prices (and shipping prices). This will throw the balance of payments of many Global South and other countries into sharp deficit, creating a crisis as their dollar-denominated debt to bondholders and banks falls due.”
The key challenge for most of the Global South is to avoid default:
“The US raise in interest rates has increased the dollar’s exchange rate not only against the euro and Japanese yen, but against the Global South and other countries. This means that much more of their income and export revenue must be paid to service their foreign debt – and they can avoid default only by going without food and oil. So what will they choose? The IMF may offer to create SDRs to enable them to pay – by running even further into dollarized debt, subject to IMF austerity plans and demands that they sell off even more of their natural resources, forests and water.”
So how to break free from dollarized debt? “They need a critical mass. That was not available in the 1970s when a New International Economic Order was first discussed. But today it is becoming a viable alternative, thanks to the power of China, the resources of Russia and those of allied countries such as Iran, India and other East Asian and Central Asian countries. So I suspect that a new world economic system is emerging. If it succeeds, the last century – since the end of World War I and the mess it left – will seem like a long detour of history, now returning to what seemed to be the basic social ideals of classical economics – a market free from rent-seeking landlords, monopolies and predatory finance.”
Hudson concludes by reiterating what the New Cold War is really all about:
“In short, it is a conflict between two different social systems, each with their own philosophy of how societies work. Will they be planned by neoliberal financial centers centered in New York, supported by Washington’s neo-cons, or will they be the kind of socialism that the late 19th century and early 20th century envisioned – a ‘market’ and, indeed, society free from rentiers? Will natural monopolies such as land and natural resources be socialized and used to finance domestic growth and housing, or left to financial interests to turn rent into interest payments eating into consumer and business income? And most of all, will governments create their own money and steer banking to promote domestic prosperity, or will they let private banks (whose financial interests are represented by central banks) take control away from national treasuries?”
Pepe and Hudson are both much too kind in describing the world conflict as a competition between alternative systems. This is actually a conflict between altruism and selfishness. Or, if you will, between Satan and Jesus Christ. Jesus will win.
There is never a shortage of people selling an economic Disneyland.
Here is my idea. Instead of making loans denominated in currency, make loans denominated in shares of your country and trade those on an exchange. If you lose controlling interest, it is because you borrowed too much money and the controlling interest can take over the country and install a new government.
People can then bet on which country has the best system of government and the people can vote on which country has the best management. If the people riot and take over the government then you lose your investment in that country. The new country can then do an initial public offering and start over.
This could make world politics fun and interesting again, rather than the boring stalemates we have now.
You’re proposing “odious debt”, an illegal loan that the lender’s hoping the borrower can’t repay, and thus forfeit his collateral. That has always been a crime, until recently. That’s what Hudson means by ancient “debt jubilees”. After ~7 yrs, a debt is dissolved, paid or not, and business continues. A borrower can make a business error, but so can a lender. It was one of the themes of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”: Can you extract a pound of flesh for a failed debt, thus killing the debtor? No. It’s immoral, a rare word these days in the West.
“This is actually a conflict between altruism and selfishness.”
Richard, I think you’ve nailed it there.
I’ve long been a critic of neo-Darwinism, which has presented evolutionary progress as a story of the benefits that flow from selfishness.
The effort they put into their propaganda has been extraordinary, and very successful, in the process sidelining cooperation as being irrelevant to evolution when in fact it is the driver.
Man would not have survived tens of thousands of years if he did not have capacities for mutual aid, solidarity and cooperation.
Humans are born social, they are not determined by a competition where the best wins. Besides, the best would have died very quickly if he had won against the others !?
We can say that competition is a violence against human nature.
“We can say that competition is a violence against human nature.”
OK then, it seems to be human nature to have sports teams and celebrate by rioting when they win. Should we then ban sports? Government is chosen by the winning team. Should we then ban government? Life is made having winners and losers.
If competition is violence, then we can eliminate the competition through violence and solve the problem.
Since humans have survived tens of thousands of years, they will still be here in another tens of thousands of years, unless we have a mass extinction event.
Some of us just cannot rid themselves of the false notion that violence is a dominant feature of human nature.
“Since humans have survived tens of thousands of years, they will still be here in another tens of thousands of years…”
The fact that we have been here that long shows that violence cannot have been as frequent as many assume.
The fact that even the most primitive of societies traded with neighbours and rivals shows that violence cannot have been as frequent as many assume.
The reason for this false assumption is that those recording history focus on the notable, the exceptional, the dramatic. There is very little recorded about periods of prolonged peace, because there’s little to record.
Which is why I’m so hopeful that the stated aim of the Russians and Chinese to develop a world order based on cooperation and mutual prosperity, if successful, will finally break the back of the Anglo-Norman vision of perpetual competition and chaos.
G’day Steve from Oz,
Arguably what you refer to as the ‘Anglo-Norman vision of perpetual competition and chaos’ is really the Khazarian Mafia’s doing.
The money lenders financed William the Conqueror and arrived in England with him in 1066. King William then organised the Doomsday Book in 1086 entrenching taxation without representation. Subsequently King Edward I banished the money lenders (i.e. the name stealing Talmudists who adopted the name ‘Jews’ around 1775) from England in 1290.
Jews ought to finance Oliver Cromwell in 1647. A letter from Manasseh Ben Israel to Cromwell. The Jews, like in many parts of Europe, had been forbidden entry into England, for over 300 years by this time. But:
Lord Alfred Douglas, who edited a weekly review known as Plain English published by the North British Publishing Company, in an article which appeared in the issue of Sept. 3rd 1921, explained that he and his friend, Mr. L.D. Van Valckert of Amsterdam, Holland, had come into possession of a missing volume of records of the Synagogue of Muljeim. This volume had been lost during the Napoleonic Wars . The volume contained records of letters written to and answered by the directors of the Synagogue.
They are written in German. One entry dated June 16th, 1647 reads : From O.C. (i.e.) Oliver Cromwell to Ebenezer Pratt.
‘In return for financial support will advocate admission … to England ; this however impossible while Charles living . Charles cannot be executed without trial, adequate grounds for which do not at present exist . Therefore advise that Charles be assassinated, but will have nothing to do with the arrangements for procuring an assassin, though willing to help in his escape.’
In reply to this dispatch the records show E. Pratt wrote a letter dated July 12th, 1647 addressed to Oliver Cromwell.
‘Will grant financial aid as soon as Charles removed and … admitted.(26) Assassination too dangerous . Charles should be given an opportunity to escape . His recapture will then make trial and execution possible . The support will be liberal but useless to discuss terms until trial commences.’
In 1666 the banksters organised the fraudulent Strawman mechanism enslaving the entire English population. See Democracy, Deception, Deceit – they’re all the same https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/126430-democracy_deception_deceit/
In 1688 Jews financed William of Orange to stage his invasion of England and the ‘Glorious Revolution’. William became King William III. That cemented the bankster’s covert control in Westminister and in 1694 King William III granted them a licence to establish the usurious Bank of England. The rest is history.
The return of the ‘name stealers’ into England was key because their finance enabled the Industrial Revolution, and all the extremes of exploitation that it is infamous for. Excesses that were conveniently “exposed” by Marx, to rile the exploited masses to grant further power to their hidden masters
The reason that Anglos appear to be the problem is that the Talmudists assiduously intermarried with the English elite and suborned them. See eg: England’s Jewish Aristocracy – https://www.savethemales.ca/englands_jewish_aristocracy.html
See also: The Great Reset Crowd’s Overreach Will Come Back to Bite Them http://abundanthope.net/pages/True_US_History_108/The-Great-Reset-Crowd-s-Overreach-Will-Come-Back-to-Bite-Them.shtml
Thanks for that Ron!
I use the label “Anglo-Norman” because too many people the world over use “Anglo-saxon” which is lazy thinking I believe.
You’re probably on the money with the Jewish connection, (pun intended) but it was Anglo-Norman Britain that gave us the cult of individualism that has undermined community values and given us the liberal world of chaos and anguish that we see about us.
Economics begins with the simple assertion that resources are scarce in comparison to people’s wants. Choices thus have to be made about what goods and services to provide, how to provide them, and for whom to provide them. Competition in one form or another is thus inevitable as people vie for scarce items and positions that allow them to influence outcomes.
Competition (as well as cooperation) takes place in more capitalistic societies and in countries with more state ownership and control. Soviet consumers competed with one another in securing positions in queues for scarce items. People also competed for positions of political influence; this competition included exiling or killing political opponents.
According to the Fraser Institute (Vancouver), Switzerland and New Zealand are very capitalistic. Sweden, Finland, and Norway are somewhat less capitalistic, but still are rated at about 7.5, plus or minus a decimal point or two. Venezuela, Iran, and China, are more socialist. China has grown fast primarily because of its previous backwardness, and its average living standards are still below Mexico’s (Penn World Tables, Version 10.0). Do Switzerland or New Zealand fit Hudson’s categories? Are they bad places to live in comparison to hard-core socialist countries? Why does the US have a rapacious oligarchy while some other capitalist countries do not? Hudson does not do enough to tell us why.
Greg,
You said “Economics begins with the simple assertion that resources are scarce in comparison to people’s wants.”
But is that assertion correct?
When I went to school we were taught that economics is the study of the production and distribution of goods and services. Now it is the study of scarcity. As you suggest. Which begs the question as to how this change in emphasis came about.
I suspect it was the victory of neo-liberalism (which is actually just liberalism in its essential form) in the 1980s.
Liberalism is the political arm of the economics of individualism, and what are individualists concerned with? They see others merely as a means to satisfy their own selfish wants, so to change the economic narrative to a false perception of scarcity of resources suited their predatory agenda.
” (…) unless we have a mass extinction event.”
As Darwin would say “May the best win and misfortune to the loser” but Kropotkin would answer him “if there is woe, it will be for the loser and for the winner”.
Now, it’s only “The Beginning of the End” and after, what will the Earth be ?
Some links (in french):
1) Darwin and Kropotkin, competition or solidarity ?
(Video from the exhibition “Beasts and men”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss4kNrxCllM
2) Isabelle Stengers, a Belgian philosopher, explains to us how the capitalist imagination endangers sciences, democracy and the environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTHVqvH2Bvg
G’day bertdilbert,
You say: ‘Government is chosen by the winning team. Should we then ban government? Life is made having winners and losers.’
Arguably governments are only chosen by the winning team in dysfunctional systems like our duplicitious so-called “democratic” systems.
Governance needs to be organised at grass roots representative council levels using honest, audited Republican mechanisms including rapid recall of any representative who fails to actively implement the local policies of his/her constituents and/or to properly espouse the views of his/her constituents about issues decided in higher councils.
Life is NOT made by having ‘winners and losers’.
That is Talmudic bullshit foisted on humans here along with the Talmudists’ false and diabolical Darwinian ideas about survival of the fittest.
Life is bestowed by the Creator (no one else can do it) For instance clones have no soul. Every ensouled human being is a winner by reason of that fact. Eternal life can only be lost by choice by those who insist on achieving that negative personal outcome by consciously refusing to love.
Humans thrive in communities and communities thrive on love and cooperation. Like loving families, real communities seek to love all members and thus make every member a winner. Communities in which members do not love one another do not survive as communities. Similarly, nations that live egocentrically by the dictates of the egocentric winner/loser philosophy do not survive. For instance communities that embrace homosexuality and abortion are committing societal suicide. Examination of social life in Anglo-US-EU nations today evidences that truth. THAT is the outcome the Talmudists seek to impose on gentiles and it will only be overcome by increasing consciousness.
Russia’s leadership knows that – that’s why it has only instituted the SMO as a last resort and is causing as little loss of life as possible while doing it.
Richard: Would there be any logic to the possibility that for, to use your mythological term, “Jesus will win”, this being the esoteric truth of the matter then would “Jesus” not be inclined to honor the vision of Dr Hudson by applying that victory in the direction of validating Socialism? Some say Jesus was the first communist. If this is the direction of the times then we can perhaps imagine a process whereby this “Jesus” spiritual movement can eventually create a culture wherein psychopathic power seekers can be purified from the organs of state power. How could this “Jesus” winning be any less?
Socialism or barbarism was the great pre World War One cry. It has only been delayed for 100 years.
The well hidden truth is that Marx was a passionately dedicated Christian humanist and his entire economic philosophy was founded upon a radical critique of the Roman distortions in Christian culture. This is the real reason why it has resonated so powerfully with so many millions of people.
Pepe is so right in the above book review to anchor our understanding of the current situation as having its true origins in the terminal depravity of the original Roman Oligarchy. Marx saw his critique as being driven by radically authentic Christianity. So the phrase Socialism or Barbarism is really a call for a genuine Christian social order as opposed to the sick Roman distortion of Christianity in the name of Patriarchal imperialism.
The original Romans carried patriarchal egoism and it pathological drive for exploitative control to its highest possible extreme during the classical era. Modern Capitalism is a linear continuation of that original Roman exaltation of spiritually alienated individualistic egoism.
But first must come the clean out. Courtesy of the SMO that appears to have a solid Christian leadership.
Snow Leopard: I certainly do support what you are saying here. Jesus’ action in casting out the money changers from the temple represents well, IMHO, his attitudes on economics. But I do believe that his teachings require interpretation due to the accretion of many mixed messages over millennia. I would refer readers to the writings of Bo Yin Ra for some of that interpretation.
Jesus did not come to earth to give a lesson on economics. His entire focus was on the salvation of man.
I believe that Jesus’ teachings encompass every aspect of human life, not by laying down rules but by helping us see truth within ourselves. Again I refer to the teachings of Bo Yin Ra.
Yes Richard. Well said. It is a peculiarity of the Western mind to get trapped into thinking of these matters in mutually exclusive binary either or terms. I call that mind entrapped in egoism. The mind differentiates, but it takes the soul to integrate opposites. For this reason a central purpose of the current world crisis is to engender mass soul awakening. That is going to help out our struggling minds enormously.
I will never forget reading Karl Marx’s description of communist economic relations in his Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. What struck me straight away was Marx’s portrait of communist economic relations was in fact a description of how a community of spiritually enlightened people would conduct their mutual economic relations. Essentially, each would see him/her self in the other and pursue economic relations accordingly. For me nothing could be more convincing proof of the Christian foundations of Marxism.
Richard : ” I believe that Jesus’ teachings encompass every aspect of human life, not by laying down rules but by helping us see truth within ourselves. ”
Discover the “faith in oneself”, what Marcel Legaut called “absence of being”
https://youtu.be/AYHVBCzgyVc
Jesus didn’t cast out the moneychangers because of ecconomics but because they were doing ‘it’ in the wrong place … the outer court was reserved for gentile worshippers , the term ‘den of thieves’ referred to God being robbed of worship of the gentiles , as the court was polluted by the ecconomics noise ie bleeting of sheep, mooing of cattle , clatter of coins etc , since the Jews had no respect for gentiles it didnt bother them to usurp the area for their own convience.
it bothered God!!
Early Christianity did not support communism. It said, “You are in need. What’s mine is yours and I want to give it.” Communism says, “All are in need. What’s yours is ours and we’re going to take it.”
“You are in need. What’s mine is yours and I want to give it.”
Yes, but we mustn’t forget a family is a family no matter how big a nation is and Christianity was in the beginning all Jewish. When in Acts 2 and 4 they had everything in common was for all intents and purposes a logical thing to do. Strange that capitalism so – called was in evidence in the book of Acts as in the Levite Joseph called Barnabus selling his land and bringing the money to the apostles next to the other history we find in the book of Acts.
This kind of communion though was never actualized among the Gentiles to any large degree now was it? Too many I fear went about taking the good things of religion while neglecting and even rejecting the hard things it has to say.
What I find shocking to is this view I heard too many years ago that character is something one is born with its not something you learn. This is what freemasons believe and so casting aside sin they live thinking they are born better and thus have some God given right to rule and own? Is this why America is the way it is today? The blatant idolatry is right there in ones face and most are sadly oblivious to it.
Gerry: I agree It’s ridiculous to say character is something you are born with rather than something you develop through how you live your life. We all have the capacity to change and improve, as does a society and a nation. With the US, I believe our nation is controlled by terrorists, but there are many good people who can work for change nevertheless. But we have to overcome our animal nature to become authentic human beings
There is no consensus about not thinking about oneself (collectivism) will make the world good.
What I see promoted is there should be a balance about taking care of oneself and taking care of others.
I agree and I would add that the rise of financial capitalism came as Christianity waned from the West to be replaced by some religion of extreme individualism that is labeled as “freedom.” As others already pointed out, human beings can’t survive long in isolation and we also need social values. In some ways rhe ÙS administration agenda shows a very narrow view of social order.
I personally see financial capitalism as an aberration. Michael Hudson tells a story from the ancient near east that the devil was racking his brains for the best way to enslave human beings. After a while one of his imps came up with the idea of compound interest. The devil was delighted. “That’s perfect,” he said.
I suggest not joggling with spiritual values if it comes to the economy, its logic and ultimate well being of nations. Let me quote the most visionary economist who had predicted long time ago what inevitably will have happened with broken, irrational and utterly inhuman fiat money system the author of the post has alluded to (or rather Mr Hudson whose book was kind of reviewed). In this context it is also worth remembering 15 August 1971 when Nixon closed the so called Gold Window…………
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only wheter the crisis should come sooner as a result of voluntary abandonment of credit expansion, or later as final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved” – Ludwig von Mises
G’day Richard,
Indeed God (i.e. consciousness) has won…as the Quantum Financial System (however described) will soon attest.
Excellent analysis, but I think mankind’s perennial problem remains. Removing one corrupt power system requires another power system, and who controls that? Corrupt people are drawn to power like flies, no matter the form. And the favored trick of using “People’s” or “Democratic” in the name changes nothing, as recent history proves so well.
Multipolarity, or multi-power system, means that there is a variety of feedback loops. Existence of a feedback loop, with appropriately designed control function, is essential (necessary condition) for a stability, (also, optimality, robustness, flexibility, etc). This is a basic fact in the study of control theory, mathematical and biological.
That is why RF, or China, could not do it alone, since it would be just like you said: one corrupt power system replacing another corrupt power system. Together, however, they already form two-power system, and its functioning so far does provide insight into a degree of success of mutually corrective operations. For example, joint military exercises, joint military productions, joint redesign of new financial systems etc.
Naturally, both RF and China realize perfectly well that they alone might not suffice to accomplish all the desired criteria and ultimately change the current paradigm. They need others as well. Attempts to extend multipolarity to BRICS, SCO, etc, have so far mixed results, some definitely positive, others not so much. It is hard to build a fair global economical system. Especially surrounded by mortal enemies trying to block every move.
The fact that most African, Asian and South American countries refused to sanction RF and China and are vitally interested to change the current debt-based post-colonial system of exploitation, signifies to me that the critical mass might soon be reached, after which comes, with some delay, the critical commitment to change and finally, in analogy to physical phenomena, we might see power ‘phase-change’.
Best regards, Spiral
Thanks for your good analysis, Spiral. I agree with you in some respects. The dream of multipolarity, does in principle solve many problems. Like many good ideas, reality can be another matter. The point seldom discussed is that the major partners must be ever vigilant against another gaining more power. Even now, Russia has better arms, but China outnumbers everyone else massively.
Corrupt officials in the US and Europe gave away key resources over the past couple of decades. How easily they were bribed, blackmailed, and threatened. The lust for power, along with the weakness of human nature, mean that good leaders are needed along with a good morality in the population.
Clearly, we are on the threshold of a world transformation. A couple notes on the optimistic side to balance my previous comment: usually, after a big conflagration, there can be more peace, as people are intolerant of he attitudes that led to the war.
Secondly, many of the Orthodox prophecies, going back centuries, speak of a horrendous war between the major world powers followed by a time of peace and abundance (before the AC appears).
That is a good point and one of humanities’s ultimate challenges. IMHO, a good start point is István Mészáros last book “Beyond Leviathan: Critique of the State”: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Leviathan-Critique-Istv%C3%A1n-M%C3%A9sz%C3%A1ros/dp/1583679502
Albert Einstein penned an interesting paper entitled “Why Socialism ?” back in 1949.
https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
Interesting that the world bows at the feet of Einstein in the field of science but totally ignores his support of socialism.
Excellent reference, thank you.
As usual with this great thinker, re-reading carefully is necessary.
This is from ~1949, and I wonder if he ever came across Vernadsky’s work at that time?
Industrial capitalism has shifted in the same direction, e.g. Grundfos now shifting to a built-in obsolescence model (traditionally, such equipment provides continuous income to the manufacturer through maintenance parts, but recently they have resorted to semi-bricking VFDs (remotes ‘updated’ to no longer work, and stand-in older replacements e.g. R100 no longer will write to flash memory (including after new flash memory IC soldered in), so no diagnostic information on new problems), and forcing replacements of pressure regulator valves that require complete replacement of (recently purchased new) chemical dosing skids.
Industrial capitalism has shifted to a rentier model.
The maxist term for ROI (return on investment) is the derogatory term (half criminal) “rentier model” – from orthodox USSR ideology.
Do I get it right?
Goeorge Orwell also used the term rentier.
Mostly money investments are about saving money for own pension. This is especially true in China, when also the cleaners will buy stocks for retirement.
Of course a marxist will tell: Trust the State, forget saving for pension. We take care of that
– Are you able to manage positive ROI?
– Of course
– Isn’t that illegal?
– Not for us. Everything we do is legal.
– You can buy US treasuries?
– Of course
“In short, it is a conflict between two different social systems”. Disagree with this statement. It is a conflict between the Financial Empire and Sovereign nations. The Financial Empire is pursuing Monetary Imperialism and dreams of a global empire. It is not a conflict between “isms”. The Empire is okay with monarchies in the Middle East as long as they support petrodollars. It didn’t have issue with Yeltsin’s Russia. The Empire is investing in the communist Vietnam now. It is okay with China as long as China uses $ and serves the Empire by helping it manage its inflation and generating super profits.
Many articles have been published with narratives that don’t answer the fundamental questions correctly:
– What is the global strategic construct?
– What are the overarching driving forces of geopolitics?
– What are the essential elements that define the essence of global competition?
Finally, the truth…
“The Vice-President of the EU Commission, Margrethe Vestager, is preparing Europeans for permanently high prices. A large part of European industry is based on “very cheap energy from Russia, very cheap labor from China and highly subsidized semiconductors from Taiwan,” she said in an interview with Handelsblatt. Europe was not naive about these risks, but greedy.”
https://app.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/margrethe-vestager-im-interview-eu-kommissionsvizin-vestager-bereitet-die-europaeer-auf-dauerhaft-hohe-preise-vor/28372438.html
But these are fragments.
The overall picture is parasitic usury finance who dream of depopulation to maximise profit.
This parasitic usury dream is even psychopathic as it penetrates and poison all human relations by its slow joy of destruction of family and society structures, promotion of perverts and lgbt, bioweapons, abortions, m.m..
There is only one way to live under the heaven, serve each other the way Christ described. https://youtu.be/sMmTkKz60W8 Simple man.
Here is Vladimir Putin validating that this is a conflict between the Financial Empire’s colonies and sovereign nations.
“There is no in-between status. Either a country is sovereign, or it’s a colony, no matter what you choose to call it. But if a country, or a group of countries is unable to make sovereign decisions, it is already, to a certain extent, a colony, which has no historical prospects of surviving in the current geopolitical struggle.”
– Vladimir Putin
Russia, China,… are sovereign and want to remain sovereign. It is great to see another theme of “SOVEREIGNTY” that we have been promoting getting wider acceptance in addition to themes of “Private Money”, “Financial Empire”, “Monetary Imperialism,” “Suzerainty/Vassal/Colony”, “Currency Swaps”, “National Currencies”,…
Name a democracy that isn’t a suzerainty. Any nation where majority (50+%) of money is PRIVATE MONEY is not sovereign.
https://www.rt.com/russia/556895-putin-colonies-sanctions-boomerang/
Everything in this article sounds well-reasoned and plausible right up until the end. Socialization of land and real estate? Hasn’t that been tried before and spectacularly failed?
Also, at least in the US economy, the largest economic sector is traditionally been construction. You socialize land, you kill the construction trades. Not to mention all of the other downsides of government being involved in property ownership.
yes, was just going to comment on that. It is the recipe for: you will own nothing and your will be happy.
Punishing people for achieving success has never ended well.
TempoNick, with respect to “Socialization of land and real estate?” (not personal possessions):
How can anyone own privately what God has given to us all for free?
We need to understand where the concept of private property originated. The monarchies stole the land & have employed thugs to keep it! At first, from the monasteries, see: Whatever Happened to Catholic England? and then from the people’s Commons, on which people used to grow subsistence crops & graze cattle & sheep to live. In England, these laws were called the Enclosure Acts (1830; 1835) & in Scotland: “the Clearances”. No longer able to feed themselves or their families, people were forced to sell the only asset they had – their personal labor, i.e. wage slavery.
In addition, after England’s King Edward I’s Edict of Expulsion (1290) expelling all Jews, Usury>b/> i.e. debt slavery, was reintroduced to England with the establishment of the Bank of England (1694) & Bank of Scotland (1695): see William Cobbett A History of the Protestant Reformation who stated:
“I set to work to read the Act of Parliament by which the Bank of England was created in 1694. The inventors knew well what they were about. Their design was to mortgage by degrees the whole of the country, all the lands, all the houses, and all other property and even all labour, to those who would lend their money to the State – the scheme, the crafty, the cunning, the deep scheme has produced what the world never saw before – starvation in the midst of plenty.”
Now read: one of the best-selling books in its category of all time, The Creature from Jekyll Island how, after the Titanic’s 1912 sinking in which, the 3 richest & most vocal opponents of a US central bank drowned (in spite of 700+ others being rescued) and how, in 1913, the “Federal Reserve” (which is neither federal, nor a reserve) was created allowing private London bankers to gain control of the US’s money supply – the lifeblood of an economy.
In June 1914 WWI started. Sponsored by the Rothschilds, JP Morgan (owner of the shipping line White Star) earned a 1.25% commission on all of the provisions he made available for the US war effort & set up his banking empire in the US.
As US Senator Ron Paul recently observed:
“It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking”
“All wars are bankers wars” – US 5 Star (twice) Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler in War Is a Racket
Somewhat relevant to this article is an interesting bit of analysis by Scott Ritter who brought up some possibilities about the future of denazification based on Lavrov’s most recent speech. It will give us armchair analysts some things to chew on. Essentially, denazification may be militarily limited to Eastern Ukraine and it may hopefully be pressed for economically by the EU itself in the rest of Ukraine. Check out his interview from this morning to learn more:
https://t.co/V7RXAlHIxw
I have been wondering for a while about what would happen if the global south decided to default, collectively, at the same time…
Only if Underwritten by CHN and RUS
By the way, the term Dollar Diplomacy was a program pushed by President Taft. It was the United States encouraging countries with weak governments to go into debt. While going into debt, the going into debt part would be good because it would be money going into the country. But then they were in debt and paying interest. They could renounce the loans, but that would cut off trade, and because they would be deadbeat borrowers, nobody else would help fund them. The economic decline would cause the government to fail. Thus we had the local leaders in our pocket and could get favorable treatment for American investments.
A current example of how it works is in Honduras. So many decades ago a couple of rich people, most of them foreigners I think (??), bought up a lot of the small scale farmers and produced very large plantations of the oil palm trees. Because the value of oil has gone up, these orchards have become very profitable. The locals, seeing this money being made, quite naturally are not happy about it because somebody else is making a bundle of money and they are not sharing.
Currently we don’t have to use military force to keep the arrangement going — I assume — because the local government is corrupt and bought off.
Now if one wishes to express this situation in the most negative possible way, it can be said that the rich guys are stealing their profits from the local population. This isn’t quite true because in the absence of the rich guys, the return wouldn’t be there. The subsistence farmers — defined as such because they consume what they produce — were living at a subsistence income level. The people who developed the orchards had to first buy out the farmers and then bear the expense of growing an orchard while going for several years with zero income, something that for want of income the local subsistence farmers couldn’t do even in the unlikely event they even wanted to. They couldn’t stand to do it financially. Thus left to their own devices there would be no high income oil palm orchards. As is said in the Bible, you reap what you sow, and the rich guys are reaping a generous harvest.
It would be possible to invent a more generous system. But if improvements are to be made, that requires intellectual honesty, not hyperbolic half-truths intended to have a political effect by inflaming the local population with anger. The so called theft exists only of funds that were earned at the expense of those who are alleged to be the robbers. Without them the productivity and resultant money would not be there. That is why the socialist-handout system doesn’t work. It doesn’t redistribute income, it kills it.
– The subsistence farmers — defined as such because they consume what they produce — were living at a subsistence income level.
It is a good question whether subsistence farming is profitable or not.
Portugal is full of subsistence farming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBIUORU8ptE
The usual pattern of subsistence farming, not city people doing it for fun, is that the subsistence farmer will produce something for income. A cash crop, or a half dozen cows, or pigs that they sell off in the fall. A wild guess here is that often that will be around 20% of their total output and will furnish the cash income they need for manufactured products. Small scale farming can be done for income, but that requires a specialty product or a specialty location, like on a road near a big city, with the income coming from marketing. Not that I am against gardening, I did it for years for the fresh produce that is often better than store bought. But the income doing it is nominal. People who are not born into it will not stay with it except as a hobby.
Case 1: Our Portuguese Homestead – 48.9K subscribers (poor)
Case 2: The Indie Projects – 346K subscribers (average)
The only income they have are from YT advertisement – and nothing from farming
Case 3: Real Algarve Living – 14.5K subscribers
He makes income from properties he buys, restores and sells – profitable and safe income.
You wrote, “As is said in the Bible, you reap what you sow, and the rich guys are reaping a generous harvest.”
Know for sure that God does not settle all accounts on this side of judgment day. Jesus also said, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
fz-mod: please use an open thread or the Feast Cafe for theological and religious discussions
How I wish people understood that a government of God does indeed exist over this world. And God does it primarily with Climate Change. The Book of Job lays the foundation for it and to find paleo-archaeology proving the truth of it is a fascinating read and study. That is why for me particularly when those three sacrificed Inca children were exhumed from the top of mount Lullucouca and transferred to a morgue in the capital there was a huge lightning thunderstorm over the city. That was’t a coincidence given the Bible teaching on the subject which is huge. And that civilization suffered terribly due to climate change! Indeed, to the shock and surprise of the exhumers one of the children exhumed was found to be damaged by a lightning strike penetrating some 5 feet into the top of the mountain striking the child! The burnt smell of flesh even after 500 years entombed over- powered the archaeologists. Just a coincidence? Nope!! And I wrote and proved more in my book.
So contrary to what we have been told by ignorant people God in fact can be observed to exist after all!!!!!
But O how we enjoy being lied to!!! I would love to know what Dr. Hudson given his studies in Biblical Economics would think about the consequences of a vengeful Creator? And I must say to thise 14 years of climate change with Joseph in Egypt was supposed to teach us all something but alas the terrible ignorance?
A theocratic government is not conjecture, is not nonsense but alas where is the human leadership to teach us so? Am I really the only one on this entire planet?
According to Pepe Chile 1973 is a product of CIA
– fabricating dictatorships on an industrial scale, from Suharto to Pinochet.
Not a product of the South American nazis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q6zVNBYbxs
South American nazis we find in Argentine / Paraguay / Chile / Peru / Brazil / Columbia.
Chile has most “UFO incidences” in the world
Neocons and nazis are both fascists.
“Neo-con” is fraction of the Liberals of course: – Neoconservatism is a political movement that was born in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party
Are neo-con Marxist? Not that different. “Neo-con” are “hawks” who will weaponize everything.. like the Leninists
The Pinochet coup was explicitly called for by Nixon and Kissinger and planned by the CIA. There is a load of documentation of this fact. Many Nazis got to South America after WW-II with assistance from the US and the Catholic Church. Lots of documentation for that is available as well.
Hudson
– “In short, it is a conflict between two different social systems, each with their own philosophy of how societies work. Will they be planned by neoliberal financial centers centered in New York, supported by Washington’s neo-cons, or will they be the kind of socialism that the late 19th century and early 20th century envisioned – a ‘market’ and, indeed, society free from rentiers?
Nothing new here. The adversary is “neo-con” (the Liberals) [today nothing more than an office with a phone answering machine] and “marketliberalism” (according to Hudson the world is “free market”).
Logically, more gun control, more capital control, more control of people’s money … the better.
In brief, if I may attempt to summarise, it is a question of which philosophy will win: “everyone for himself, and devil take the hindmost”; or “we are all in this together, and we can prosper if we work as a team”.
It’s a pleasure to read Pepe Escobar’s articles that do not spend inordinate amounts of time on the military conflicts between Ukraine, Russia.
Instead, using Dr. Hudson’s expertise in world finance, Pepe hits the nail on the head in what US Capitalism is frantically trying to do to maintain its hegemony ’round the world.
Many, it seems, have little or no memory in how Western Europeans and Americans functioned so well before the onslought of “Neo-Liberalism”– launched in the 70s during the Reagan/Thatcher administrations. Most had good-paying jobs. Others sought college educations with little costs paid for higher education. Small businesses did well. Health care, insurance, mortgages were minimal compared to today’s “financialized” services led by the Very Wealthy.
One could earn degrees in teaching, the health field, or in businesses with good salaries that could feed their families; being able to buy a home, and a new car once in awhile. Health care in the US was minimal, too with qualified nurses and doctors. Or you could be a public servant in individual states or on the Federal Level.
All that has been wiped out by US/EU capitalism. Most states in the US are deeply in debt to the tunes of billions. (Monopolists have literally “bought off” every State/County/Federal politicians.) US health care has skyrocketed to extreme levels. Many nations in the EU now pay a pittance salary for their public servants. Private health care is now eating into W. Europe with it’s extreme costs. Few citizens are able to invest in a small business. Retirement benefits have been severally curtailed, or totally destroyed.
We clearly recognize the radical changes seen in both the US & W. Europe in the last 40+ years. But now, the US/EU “oligarchs” have reached a plateau and are fighting back with every mechanism they have.
Their behaviors are even more extreme than the Roman Empire’s aristocracy.
Our hope is to live long enough to see all these oligarchs start eating their own partners in crime.
That would be the ultimate experience for those who understand what is really going on.
The destruction of national self reliance has been around for centuries – at least 500 years.
Spain, England/UK, US & EU.
But it has become more acute since 1990.
The Third and Second World has been the main target and the latter includes Russia/USSR.
Even in Roman times it was an aspect of trade and military strategy.
And its the banking elite who are culprits and who also feast on their domestic populations.
Time to deal with this.
Not a fan of Gandhi, but when the British empire was still in place, he want off to England and noticed that the average citizen of England wasn’t better off than other people, and were in some ways not as well off. The English people weren’t the beneficiaries of their own empire. It looks like we are headed in that direction. Our wellbeing diminished even by the successful foreign exploits. Hell, if we are going to be exploitive, we aught to at least benefit from our own behavior. Currently it doesn’t rise to even that level.
Few recognize the nuances between the internal struggle we all experience; moving from the chaos of selfishness to the order of selflessness is Devine. I believe it is commonly referred to as Holy Communion. Repentance is a return to spiritual order. There is a difference between a revolution and a rotation. Both turn to the point of origin, but one turns upon itself, the other turns around another. Both socialism and corporatism risk reducing individual human persons to dehumanized units of production. That’s the struggle; to remain fully human.
China could purchase the debts of all foreign nations and own the world putting the USA out in the cold.
Who is this “Bo Yin Ra” you speak of? I don’t remember seeing his name in the Bible. Therefore, anything he might say regarding becoming a Christian or living as one is without the authority and approval of God. In other words, if he teaches anything at all that can’t be found in the Bible, then he is a false teacher.
Anyone teaching from the bible is a false preacher. God does not come from the ‘bible’ humans put God in the Bible. The bible is not the end all be all of human existence on this planet.
Cheers M
The Bible was written by men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. It contains the plan of salvation. If you reject it, then you reject the plan. If you reject the plan, then you reject Jesus as the sacrifice for your sins. If you reject Jesus, then you can not be saved. You will die in your sins.
Real Socialism – as opposed to the literary fairy tale version fed to naive simpletons – has always been and will always be an ubercorrupt aberration of the materialistic and corrupted soul, same as usurious capitalism. Same mindset, same materialistic fixation, just different preference on distribution. Taking the competitive joy out of humans will turn them into depressed zombies. Exaggerating the competitive spirit results in stupified ant colonies. Both are amputated transcendentally, aiming for subhuman outcomes and destined for eventual extinction. Once amputated as in the painful process of European selfdestruction over the last 500 years, there is no easy fix or reattachment anymore, everything becomes a false surrogate.
Bringing Jesus into this equation shows a total lack of spiritual understanding and amounts to nothing less than sin against the holy spirit.
Once the apple was bitten the Angel guards the entrance to paradise and any and all man made solutions are simply more doses of the same poison…
@AEIOU
Please go on:
Accepting what you say as only part of a story or path unfolded, what do you propose as next in terms of a solution or resolution?
You say: “Once the apple was bitten the Angel guards the entrance to paradise and any and all man-made solutions are simply more doses of the same poison…”.
And whether man-made, borne thru man, or otherwise, what then or how is the way or solution you suggest? And how does it fit, fit into, shape, re-shape, or otherwise dynamically form and sustain fruitfully?
There is no solution since the brain functions via duality: up/down, hot/cold, light/dark, etc.
The point: there is no bad without good, no good without bad, therefore all proposed utopias, heavens on earth, are pipe dreams.
All external goals are dead ends: wealth, power, fame, etc. that everyone thinks will bring lasting peace of mind are vanity.
The correct path is internal as the mystics of all religions (not the simplistic fundamentalists) have pointed out. That requires ignoring all thoughts until the mind becomes silent, then you are at the door. Whether you transcend duality and experience reality is then possible but not guaranteed. The task is taming the mind (the root of any person’s unhappiness)…an internal/individual path.
In The Zen Teaching of Huang Po he complains over and over about his students: why won’t they just stop thinking?
Ps: the Garden of Eden might well be the story of the first humans, i.e. when the animal became the human animal…acquired thought. Without thought the Garden can be re-entered.
There is, of course, a daring and powerful financial law. Simply make, ‘interest, imposed upon money, to be illegal’.
This is not a new concept, and these laws have been imposed, many times, throughout history.
Humanity will then hastily find alternative asset banking systems, including the monetisation of customer collateral, as interest-free customer assets, with the Titles to their collateral, held in Trust, for the customers, during the loan periods.
After all, the debt bankers simply convert the value of their customers’ collateral, into cash, through their Tap&Go credit cards, in a fraud imposed upon their customers.
Most of the world’s problems vanish, when usury has disappeared!
A loan of $100,000 and 10% inflation and 0% interest
0 year debt = $100,000
1 year debt = $90,000
??
Net equity of debtor has increased with $10,000
Agree with the authors vision of equality and ousting the finance parasites, however lets not fool ourselves that there still will not be an elite, private or government based, still living the lives of luxury to which they feel entitled. As we saw from the Chinese tennis player disappeared, those that rule that communist nirvana still can do whatever they like without fear of censure, they still rule as emperors. Where that degree of elitism and corruption flourishes a truly egalitarian system will never be allowed.
Well, I remember back in the 70s, they printed business cards that said, ” Things are tough, times are hard. Here’s your fucking Christmas card.” Looks like a bleak winter. Or as in Game of Thrones, winter is coming. Peace to all here. As far as a perfect society or financial structure, there is none. What comes from all of this is anyone’s guess.
A big thank-you to Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar for their intellectual work on behalf of humanity.
Thank-you very much, Pepe, for this overview of Hudson’s book and arguments.
The twentieth century really was a nightmare, despite the prosperity it provided for some.
But the price was very high.
The Dawn of Everything, a recent bid to rewrite human history from the late anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow, argued that the emergence of hierarchical societies and freedom-quashing states was not inevitable. People have long cherished their freedoms and experimented with a wide variety of social and political arrangements. The book trawls the depths of human history, meandering from Neolithic Ukraine to the Sumerians of Mesopotamia to the Harappan civilization of the Indus River basin to the Olmec, Yurok, and Wyandot peoples of the Americas and on even to the European Enlightenment. The pathways of history, the authors insist, were actually rather tangled, full of twists and forks and detours. The world may now consist of deeply unequal societies and states that can exert once unimaginable degrees of control over their citizens, but it didn’t have to be this way—and maybe it doesn’t have to be this way in the future.
The authors imagine that once properly appreciated, the richness of the human experience and the contingency of historical outcomes will inspire people in the present to reconsider their own options. After the great financial crisis of 2008, the battered masses failed to shake up the late-capitalist order and forge a more righteous path. That came as a disappointment to Graeber, an anticapitalist scholar with anarchist sympathies, known for his spirited critiques of debt and “bullshit jobs.” A seasoned activist, he was involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, which eventually fizzled out after months of grabbing headlines.
But if Graeber couldn’t maintain an occupation of the present, perhaps the past would make a more obliging subject. He set out to show that grassroots democracy—the freedom for people to associate, deliberate, and decide how to lead their lives—had long been common around the world before uncompromising bureaucrats came on the scene to snuff it out. And better still, rediscovering those buried traditions could inspire people today to give it another try, armed with the knowledge that civilization and popular self-determination had once thrived side by side.
Graeber joined forces with Wengrow, a well-known archaeologist of the ancient Middle East, to get the ball rolling. They completed their project only days before Graeber’s untimely death in September 2020, just as it was becoming clear that the revolution had once again been postponed. Central banks, scientific breakthroughs, and Zoom were taming the effects of COVID-19, which hopeful pundits had initially talked up as a possible catalyst for progressive political transformation. What remained, just as it did after the 2008 financial crash, was a lingering craving for change, or at least for an uplifting vision of a better world. Graeber and Wengrow seek to address that desire with a seductive story in which human agency rules supreme. In the process, they sideline powerful material drivers of social change—such as ecology, demographics, and technology—to offer readers a welcome escape from modern anxieties about global warming, immigration, and job-stealing robots. Materialistic explanations of the past might interfere with their goals, since such interpretations might persuade people that they are pinned down by forces and circumstances beyond their control. Self-styled myth busters, Graeber and Wengrow eagerly lay the foundations for a new, more upbeat myth, one of ancient human self-determination ready to break free once again. The result is a dizzying mix of subtle feints, playful conjectures, and strategic silences, far less revolutionary than promised, yet strewn with snares for inexpert and unwary readers.
This furrough was plowed and very thoroughly turned over years ago in the classic study by an anthropologist-archaeologist team of Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery in The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire.
https://www.amazon.com/Creation-Inequality-Prehistoric-Ancestors-Monarchy/dp/0674064690
One review:
“The authors did an excellent job of summarizing archeological and anthropological studies to provide a picture of the transition from roving bands of hunter gatherers to more complex societal structures such as chiefdoms and monarchies. The authors compare research for societies at similar levels of complexity but at different periods in time to look for general patterns. I found the approach worthwhile and interesting although some of the archeological detail could be tedious. Highly recommend if you’re interested in the earliest stages of social organization.”
I am just reading Clive Ponting’s excellent The New Green History of the World (2009).
He traces the transition from hunter-gatherers to settled societies employing irrigation and agriculture while noting that the diet and general health of hunter-gatherers was far better than that of people in settled agricultural societies, but provides no hypotheses on why /how this transition occurred if it resulted in worse quality of life and health for the majority. (Whether the fact that the rise of “civilization” was a result of this transition justifies the transformation of most human existence to be less enjoyable and less healthy is I guess an open question . . . )
I speculate that the reason this transition occurred is because certain Big Men gained control of hunter-gatherer groups through violence or other coercion and forced them to realign themselves to create surpluses to support the Big Men and their families. Since the advent of agriculture it has basically been all downhill for the vast majority of humanity, as Ponting vividly chronicles.
Concerning the current food crisis in, among other locations, Africa, Ponting writes (pp. 340–41) “[International agencies’ such as the IMF] impact can be seen clearly in the case of Morocco. In the 1950s it adopted a World Bank/IMF programme to concentrate agricultural production on fruit and tomato exports to Europe rather than wheat for the home market. This involved dam construction and irrigation (all on the land of large landowners). The debt accumulated to pay for this programme was $16 billion by 1984—more than the country’s GDP. ****Per capita wheat production was lower than in the 1930s**** and food imports, which took up most of the limited foreign exchange reserves, more than tripled between 1970 and 1983. . . . An IMF rescue package was needed to allow the country to go on paying the interest on its debts.”
Can the phrase “rescue package” be read with anything but deepest bitterness and a will to get revenge?
I think it is fair to say that international agencies dominated by the USA are responsible for the current food crisis. Of course land reform and training for local farmers to increase their production of basic food with the least environmental impacts are dirty words in the suites of elites.
“The key challenge for most of the Global South is to avoid default:”
Why bother, they can simply look at the “money” received from the Financial Monetary Complex as charity and walk away. Who cares about credit rating? If they all “default” together there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Idealist purism traps of “western radicals” in a cage of their own making. Acknowledgment
of materialist perspectives would have helped “western radicals” draw more meaningful connection between past and present. If it was their mobile lifestyle and hybrid mode of subsistence that made it easier for Holocene foragers to step in and out of different forms of cooperation than it was for full-blown farmers who found themselves tied to their lands and crops, how do we compare? Do service economies, digital tools and globalization hold out the promise of a new dawn? Materialism is not the enemy of historical understanding: it is essential to it. Nor is it the enemy of social activism. It might even be its best friend.
We have wittnessed “Occupy Wall Street” kind disappointments (run by romantic fools) but the looming real change is happening all the time run by demographics and materialism. Don’t trust too much on any nation like Russia or China changing game.
When it comes to money the thumb rule remains: individuals, especially professionals tend to keep good money for themselves but spread bad money to public and poor people.
Hudson advances socialism as the cure for the world’s ills {capitalism}. Socialism is no better than crony capitalism {or “financial capitalism” as he calls it}. The problem with public ownership is that it is a lie, a contradiction in terms. The illusion that the people own the land, when in fact it is the government {who seldom have it’s people’s best interest at heart}. Land taxes? We already have that, and the higher the rate, the more it hurts the common citizen, not the oligarchs. To get the food supply stable do two things: Remove government controls on farmers and ranchers, and simply forbid corporations from owning over 1,000 acres of farm land. Progressive tax? I’m ok with that. If you make less than $50k a year, you pay none. Go up in tiny increments until you arrive at the Bezos, Gates and other billionaire class, tax them at 90% like was done in the 1950s, when America’s prosperity was at it’s zenith. Disallow public labor unions, but allow private. Return control and issuance of currency to the Treasury department where it rightfully belongs and abolish the Federal Reserve. Change MANY of the existing banking regulations to hold them accountable, and stop protecting them from failure with taxpayer money. In cases of fraud, throw bankers in jail instead of rewarding them with multi-million dollar retirements, and in cases of failure to provide due diligence, make the CEO’s personally financially responsible. Allot more than mentioned here could also be done, but know this: Socialism is NOT the answer. That’s like saying the best cure for a headache is to shoot yourself in the head with a shotgun.
A SIZE tax might work.
The ‘progressive’ income tax doesn’t address the power accumulation via multiple locations.
Examples:
*No income taxes on a business with 1-3 locations, but an income tax with 4-10, and a higher tax on 10-20, 50, 100 etc.
*A land tax that increases based on the amount of land owned and number of locations, i.e. more tax comes with more locations, more farmland, etc.
Goal: decentralization of power
@theobsoleteman
To a limited extent, the US does already have some socialist programs like social security retirement and disability benefits, food stamps for the needy, unemployment benefits, Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid for low income earners, and free education up to and including high school.
I would agree with you that returning control and issuance of the currency to the Treasury department would be a major improvement. I would also suggest that capital gains be taxed at the same rate as earned income with a personal allowance of $50,000 per year.
What is also needed is free university education instead of having students in debt for a least $100,000 before they even have a job.
Then you go on to say that socialism is not the answer. Perhaps you are conflating socialism and communism.
“Then you go on to say that socialism is not the answer. Perhaps you are conflating socialism and communism.”
Most anglos do for some reason. But then many of them also believe Russia is still communist, so what to expect?
– To a limited extent, the US does already have some socialist programs
Add Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google and Apple – all essential for implementing “social credit score” [perfect socialism]
The effect on “third world” countries differ. Some of them produce enough oil and gas for themselves and “wheat” is not a factor for causing famine, in part because they produce enough wheat to get by. Maybe Bolivia is an example of that. Gasoline prices are now less than a third of what they are in the United States. Meat is like five times less expensive there. I think you can say everybody (poor and rich) eats steaks daily, in some regions they don’t even like their breakfast without it.
I digress to say that meat is much tastier in South America. I guess you have to go to Morton Restaurant in the U.S., or to some place where you pay $100 to eat a steak like you should (the Tri-Tip cut saves the day). A Bolivian man who raised and sold cows explained to me why it’s so. Conversation went like this: First, I should say that he had gone through Texas in a bus and was horrified. “There’s no grass for the cows!” he said. In countries like Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil, there’s a lot of grass for cattle! They only give them corn if it didn’t rain. “They’re killing the cows here when they’re calves,” he said while eating a steak. “This is why the steaks are so soft and tasteless.” He explained that cows are killed for meat after they have finished growing because that’s when they have the best taste. I don’t know how right he was, but that was his experienced evaluation.
Famine is definitely roaming, and a major emergency.
A Russian spokesman said this week that NATO views Ukraine the way a beef-lover views a cow.
That makes NATO a cannibal.
There is something more than economics and finance going on, unnoticed.
To quote two famous Ukrainian scientists, Vernadsky (parents Kiev Cossacks) and Alfred Lotka of Lvov.
Vernadsky wrote that at the WWII time, the noösphere was asserting itself, almost unnoticed, and Lotka posed the riddle : Thought is not a form of energy. How then can it change material processes? Lotka could not solve it.
Planetary-wide Noösphere is after all the realm of economics, the subsumed biosphere being the realm of ecology.
So again the riddle – how can thought change material and biosphere processes (agriculture, energy generation, economics, society, and of course war)?
Here is Vernadsky’s Bosfera, in English :
The Biosphere and the Noösphere
https://larouchepub.com/other/2005/site_packages/vernadsky/3207bios_and_noos.html
The Green movement is an attempt to wind the noösphere back to the biosphere, as also is financial imperialism – two sides of the same coin, a huge diversion, as Hudson writes. Defying laws of nature, the noösphere, is not good for business!
“Lotka posed the riddle : Thought is not a form of energy. How then can it change material processes?”
Thought is a manifestation of life; it is a form of energy.
Energy is essential to life. The earth receives electromagnetic radiation from the sun using the fusion of Hydrogen atoms to produce Helium causing a small loss of mass. Plants convert this incoming energy to food, using the process of photosynthesis of water and carbon dioxide in the gas atmosphere and dissolved in the oceans. Animals then eat plants in a symbiotic relationship.
Without CO2, life on earth as we know it, would not be possible
Vernadsyk took a scientific approach – the biogenic migration of atoms, biogeochemistry, is a faster process than the aeons-long geologic process. Noöspheric processes speed this up again by an order of magnitude.
The Great O2 event when the biosphere discovered photosynthesis – using the Sun not just oceanic thermal vents, was vastly faster, so fast all other species became extinct (providing us with vast mineral deposits).
Harnessing fire we made a huge jump from any animal species. Now with petrochemicals, and fertilizer, we sped up the biosphere. With Nuclear even higher energy densities.
It requires Riemann to get a handle on this – a new idea of a universal principle, like gravitation, fire, has enormous power to change the world. He called these geistes-massen, thought masses, which one could paraphrase as thought-energies, considering mass-energy equivalence and quanta.
We have long left Aristotle’s “energeia” behind.
God willing we’ll all get away from a usury-based financial system somehow. Christianity had it banned for a reason, but of course Calvinists decided they knew better.
If states in South America opt for BRICS, what will happen to the debt they still have with IMF? Do they still have to pay it? will they go on a default? It is not clear to me “how” they can change alliance and solve their debt situation.
«State of Empire: relying only “on its rentier class and Dollar Diplomacy,” with prosperity concentrated in the top one percent of establishment elites.»
While many of Hudson’s argument I use too, the struggle is not with the top 1% of rentiers, but with the top 10-40% of rentiers. What reaganism and thatcherism invented has been *mass* rentierism, to support elite rentierism, thanks to 40 years of huge residential real estate profits.
The extractive rentier classes are no longer a small number of big company owners, bankers and top executives, but include many upper-middle class people whose houses having been doubling in price every 7-10 years for 40 years, entirely at the expense of the lower-middle and lower classes.
It is this large block of voters who enthusiastically support extractive rentierism, the people who write as a commenter on a newsmagazine blog did, implicitly defining neoliberalism/centrism:
“I will put it bluntly I don’t want to see my home lose £100 000 in value just so someone else can afford to have a home and neither will most other people if they are honest with themselves”
This apposite cartoon is more than 30 years old: https://dilbert.com/strip/1989-04-18
Indeed are we facing into the end of that international Liberal-Democratic Order that was always a US-UK card trick.
Examined here, in the context of The Ukraine US-NATO-UK Proxy War, where The Ukraine provides the bodies, the Russian Armed Forces provide the munitions and thus so weakened that they invite in the crusading liberators from The Great and Good West to install an era of Peace and Prosperity for the poor Ukrainian people and the oppressed Russian people . . . Good luck with that failed strategy.
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-proxy-war?s=w