In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God save the King” than of stealing from a poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were “decadent” and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. Both the New Statesman and the News-Chronicle cried out against the Munich settlement, but even they had done something to make it possible. Ten years of systematic Blimp-baiting affected even the Blimps themselves and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.
It is clear that the special position of the English intellectuals during the past ten years, as purely negative creatures, mere anti-Blimps, was a by-product of ruling-class stupidity. Society could not use them, and they had not got it in them to see that devotion to one’s country implies “for better, for worse”. Both Blimps and highbrows took for granted, as though it were a law of nature, the divorce between patriotism and intelligence. If you were a patriot you read Blackwood’s Magazine and publicly thanked God that you were “not brainy”. If you were an intellectual you sniggered at the Union Jack and regarded physical courage as barbarous. It is obvious that this preposterous convention cannot continue. The Bloomsbury highbrow, with his mechanical snigger, is as out-of-date as the cavalry colonel. A modern nation cannot afford either of them. Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again. It is the fact that we are fighting a war, and a very peculiar kind of war, that may make this possible.
George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.
December 12, 2021
December 10, 2021
Shovel-ready infrastructure we’re already busy working on … the superhighway to serfdom
Jacob T. Levy considers the warning about authoritarian solutions to societal problems given by Friedrich A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and shows just how little we heeded his concerns:
It is well-known that the classical liberal economist F.A. Hayek dedicated The Road to Serfdom to “socialists of all parties”, and wrote the book “as a warning to the socialist intelligentsia of England.” I suspect we now understate the importance of these facts. After decades of the Cold War and self-conscious conservative-libertarian “fusionism” in both the U.S. and Britain, what sticks in our memory of The Road to Serfdom is its defense of liberal open markets against economic planning and regulation of the sort advocated on the left. That is of course how it was wielded in the post-2008 surge in interest in it, in the wake of the financial crisis and the subsequent bailouts and stimulus packages: as a weapon of the right.
But if Hayek’s argument characterized socialist planning and regulation as a slippery slope, the slope did not only slope down toward the left. Fascist Italy and Germany figure even more prominently than the USSR in the book’s image of the despotism being risked:
It is necessary now to state the unpalatable truth that it is Germany whose fate we are now in some danger of repeating … students of the current of ideas can hardly fail to see that there is more than a superficial similarity between the trend of thought in Germany during and after [World War I] and the present current of ideas in the democracies … And at least nine out of every ten of the lessons which our most vociferous reformers are so anxious we should learn from this war are precisely lessons which the Germans did learn from the last war and which have done so much to produce the Nazi system … [A]t an interval of fifteen to twenty-five years we seem to follow the example of Germany.
In the face of resurgent right-wing populist and nationalist authoritarianism in the world, it is worth reconsidering the legacy of The Road to Serfdom and of Hayek’s work to bolster liberalism.
Hayek warned of centralizing and authoritarian urges of both the left and the right, but it’s in the “permanent” government — the civil servants who remain in office regardless of electoral outcomes — that much of the danger to individual liberty lies:
Throughout Hayek is concerned for constitutional parliamentary government and the rule of law, and their protection against arbitrary government. The idea that freedom requires clear and general rules of conduct anonymously applicable to all — that government run by ad hoc edict is oppressive — was to be the major theme of his subsequent works in political theory, The Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legislation, and Liberty; but it is central to the argument of Road to Serfdom as well.
In the preface to the 1956 edition, Hayek described the postwar Labour government as having created a bureaucratic “despotism exercised by a thoroughly conscientious and honest bureaucracy for what they sincerely believe is the good of the country. But it is nevertheless an arbitrary government, in practice free from parliamentary control; and its machinery would be as effective for any other than the beneficent purposes for which it is now used.”
Here one hears a predecessor of the widespread classical liberal “we told you so” after the election, blaming the Obama administration for increasing the presidential power that the Trump administration would now inherit. But it is worth emphasizing that Hayek still called the purposes pursued by the left-wing bureaucratic state “beneficent”.
The tone Hayek adopts here is not the schadenfreude of contemporary whataboutism. Now that “hot socialism is probably a thing of the past” (hardly what one would expect Hayek to say were he the determinist caricature sometimes embraced by fans as well as critics), the welfare state calls for “careful sorting out” in the pursuit of its “practical and laudable” aims. He calls for the welfare state and social insurance to be implemented through general rules and fiscal policy rather than administrative coercion, nationalization, and direct economic planning, because the latter instruments “are not compatible with the preservation of a free society.”
H/T to Tamara Keel for the link.
November 29, 2021
Giovanni Gentile, “the ideological father of Fascism”
Emmanuel Rincón on the Italian philosopher who created the ideological underpinnings of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist movement:
Giovanni Gentile
Undated photograph probably before 1930 via Wikimedia Commons.
Giovanni Gentile, a neo-Hegelian philosopher, was the intellectual author of the “doctrine of fascism”, which he wrote in conjunction with Benito Mussolini. Gentile’s sources of inspiration were thinkers such as Hegel, Nietzsche, and also Karl Marx.
Gentile went so far as to declare “Fascism is a form of socialism, in fact, it is its most viable form.” One of the most common reflections on this is that fascism is itself socialism based on national identity.
Gentile believed that all private action should be oriented to serve society. He was against individualism, for him there was no distinction between private and public interest. In his economic postulates, he defended compulsory state corporatism, wanting to impose an autarkic state (basically the same recipe that Hitler would use years later).
A basic aspect of Gentile’s logic is that liberal democracy was harmful because it was focused on the individual which led to selfishness. He defended “true democracy” in which the individual should be subordinated to the State. In that sense, he promoted planned economies in which it was the government that determined what, how much, and how to produce.
Gentile and another group of philosophers created the myth of socialist nationalism, in which a country well directed by a superior group could subsist without international trade, as long as all individuals submitted to the designs of the government. The aim was to create a corporate state. It must be remembered that Mussolini came from the traditional Italian Socialist Party, but due to the rupture with this traditional Marxist movement, and due to the strong nationalist sentiment that prevailed at the time, the bases for creating the new “nationalist socialism”, which they called fascism, were overturned.
Fascism nationalized the arms industry, however, unlike traditional socialism, it did not consider that the state should own all the means of production, but more that it should dominate them. The owners of industries could “keep” their businesses, as long as they served the directives of the state. These business owners were supervised by public officials and paid high taxes. Essentially, “private property” was no longer a thing. It also established the tax on capital, the confiscation of goods of religious congregations and the abolition of episcopal rents. Statism was the key to everything, thanks to the nationalist and collectivist discourse, all the efforts of the citizens had to be in favor of the State.
November 4, 2021
QotD: The “Righteousness Fallacy”, California style
The Righteousness Fallacy (also known as the fallacy of good intentions) is described by author Dr. Bo Bennett as the idea that one is correct because their intentions are pure.
It recently occurred to me that California is a perfect example of this fallacy. Consider these three facts about the Golden State:
- California spends about $98.5 billion annually on welfare — the most in the US — but has the highest poverty rate in America.
- California has the highest income tax rate in the US, at 13.3 percent, but the fourth greatest income inequality of the 50 states.
- California has one of the most regulated housing markets in America, yet it has the highest homeless population in American and ranks 49th (per capita) in housing supply.
That politicians would persist with harmful policies should come as little surprise. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once observed the uncanny proclivity of politicians “to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results”.
In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman described the danger of such thinking.
[The threat comes] from men of good intentions and good will who wish to reform us. Impatient with the slowness of persuasion and example to achieve the great social changes they envision, they’re anxious to use the power of the state to achieve their ends and confident in their ability to do so. Yet … Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Jon Miltimore, “Data Show California Is a Living Example of the Good Intentions Fallacy”, Foundation for Economic Education, 2019-01-09.
September 15, 2021
Narendra Modi apparently doesn’t inspire mere biographies … he gets hagiographies
Scott Alexander reviews Andy Marino’s gushingly admiring Modi: A Political Biography:
The author begins by writing about how Modi let him ride with him in his private helicopter and gave him unprecedented access to have “open-ended conversations” about “every aspect of his life”. The cover promises an objective evaluation, but on page 2, the author notes that “Objectivity does not mean flying in the face of incontrovertible evidence”, adding that “Modi has been the subject of the longest, most intense — and probably the most vituperative — campaign of vilification.” Marino promises to replace this campaign with “a narrative that is balanced, objective, and fair — but also unsparingly critical of [Modi’s] foibles” — which is an interesting construction, given how it contrasts criticism with fairness — and also pre-emptively declares the flaws he will be criticizing “foibles”. I’m not sure we ever get around to the criticism anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
I am still going to summarize and review this book, but I recommend thinking of it as Modi’s autobiography, ghost-written by Andy Marino. I hope to eventually find another book which presents a different perspective, and an update for the past six years (M:APB ends in 2014, right when Modi was elected PM). Until then, think of M:ABP as a look into how Modi sees himself, and how he wants you to see him.
[…]
In 1975 the Emergency happened.
For thirty years, since its independence, India had been a socialist state. Not the cool kind of socialist where you hold May Day parades and build ten zillion steel mills. The boring kind of socialist where the government makes you get lots of permits, then taxes you really heavily, and nothing really ever gets done. “Even today the Representation of the People Act requires all Indian political parties to pledge allegiance not only to the Constitution but also to socialism.” The RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] and its collection of associated right-wing nationalist parties supported Hindu nationalism plus socialism. Their arch-enemy, the center-left-to-confused-mishmash Congress Party, supported secularism plus socialism. Non-socialism was off the table.
In unrelated news, there was a food shortage. Indians took to the streets protesting Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (no relation to Mahatma Gandhi). Gandhi was heavy-handed in crushing the protests, which caused more protests, one thing led to another, and finally Gandhi declared martial law, a period which has gone down in history as the Emergency.
Gandhi immediately moved to arrest all her political enemies and shut down all newspapers that criticized her. The RSS was one of Gandhi’s main enemies and had to go underground quickly. Gujarat became a center for the resistance. So Modi, as an official in Gujarat’s RSS, ended up right in the middle of this. He remained a paper-pusher, but now he was a paper-pusher for freedom, scheduling meetings of resistance leaders, maintaining a master list of safe houses and trusted operatives, and keeping lines of communication open.
During a capital-e Emergency even paper-pushers can have greatness thrust upon them, and Modi ended up with responsibilities way outside his formal job description:
Chhayanak Mehta tells of how, after Deshmukh’s arrest, it was discovered that the papers he was carrying were still with him. These contained plans for the future actions of the [resistance], and it was essential to somehow retrieve them. To this end, Modi planned a distraction with the help of a female swayamsevak from Maningar. They went to the police station where Deshmukh was being held. While she posed as a relative and contrived a meeting with the prisoner, Modi somehow took the documents from under the noses of the police.
Or:
Modi was also responsible for transportation and travel to Gujarat of those opponents of Indra still at liberty … Modi too, in the course of his duties, was compelled to travel, often with pamphlets that could have got him arrested. To minimize the risk he became a master of disguise, something that came naturally to one who always paid attention to his appearance. On one outing, he would appear as a saffron-robed sanyasi; on another, as a turbaned Sikh. One time he was sitting in a railway carriage, hiding behind a thick black beard, when his old schoolteacher sat down next to the grown-up “urchin”. The disguise worked perfectly, but some years afterwards the teacher attested that as Narendra disembarked, he introduced himself and offered a hearty saluation.
Still, the Emergency ground on. One aspect the book doesn’t stress, but which I was surprised to read about when Googling the period, was the forced sterilizations. Under pressure from the US and UN to control exponentially rising populations, Indira had started various population control efforts in the 60s, all ambiguously voluntary. Over time, the level of pressure ratcheted up, and during the Emergency the previously-ambiguous coercion became naked and violent. “In 1976-1977, the programme led to 8.3 million sterilisations, most of them forced”.
How did this end? Gandhi called an election — during which she was predictably voted out completely and her party lost more thoroughly than any party has ever lost anything before. Her opponents’ campaign was based on things like “she just forceably sterilized 8 million people and you could be next”, which is honestly a pretty compelling platform. The real question is why she gave up her emergency dictatorship and called an election at all. According to the book:
It is more likely that in ending the Emergency Indira was thinking of herself, not India. She was aware of her growing international reputation as a tyrant, the daughter of a great democratic leader whose legacy she had damaged. As the journalist Tavleen Singh points out, the pressure to end the Emergency came simply from Indira Gandhi finding it unbearable that “the Western media had taken to calling her a dictator.”
(but before you interpret this as too inspiring a story of the victory of good over evil, Indira Gandhi was voted back in as prime minister three years later. We’ll get to that.)
Modi came out of the Emergency a rising star, appreciated by all for his logistical role in the Resistance. In the newly open political climate, the RSS was devoting more attention to their political wing and asked Modi to come on as a sort of campaign-manager-at-large, who would travel all around India and help friendly politicians get elected. He turned out to be really good at this, and rose through the ranks until he was one of the leading lights of the new BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, “Indian People’s Party”). He spent the next two decades running campaigns, traveling the country, and getting involved in internal backstabbing (which he had a habit of losing in ways that got him kicked out of the party just before something terrible happened, leaving him as the only person untarnished by the terrible thing when they inevitably invited him back). Finally some of Modi’s political enemies failed badly in the leadership of Gujarat — one was expelled for corruption, another suffered several natural disasters which he responded to poorly. Modi had been accepted back into the party. He was beloved by Gujaratis, who still remembered his heroic work during the Resistance. He was the only person untarnished by various terrible things. By the rules of Indian politics, it was the party’s choice who would replace the resigning incumbent as Chief Minister of Gujarat, and as Modi tells it, everyone else just kind of agreed he was the natural choice (his enemies say he did various scheming and backstabbing at this point). So on October 7 2001, Narendra Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister of Gujarat, India’s fifth-largest state.
August 25, 2021
Louisa May Alcott’s childhood experiences in a utopian socialist commune
At the Foundation for Economic Education, Lawrence W. Reed recounts the author’s family’s time in one of the many utopian settlements of the early United States:
The original farm house of Fruitlands farm community in Harvard, Massachusetts, founded by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in 1843. Now a museum to the experiment.
Photo by Midnightdreary via Wikimedia Commons.
Alcott was just 11 when her father moved the family to the experimental village of Fruitlands in Massachusetts. It was not a promising place. Elizabeth Dunn at History.com writes,
Fruitlands was founded in Harvard, Massachusetts, as a self-sufficient farming community by Charles Lane and Bronson Alcott, two men with no practical experience in either farming or self-sufficiency … Settlers were forbidden to eat meat, consume stimulants, use any form of animal labor, create artificial light, enjoy hot baths or drink anything but water. Lane’s ideas later evolved to include celibacy within marriage, which caused no small amount of friction between him and his most loyal disciple, Bronson Alcott, who had relocated his wife and four daughters [Louisa being one of them] to Fruitlands in a characteristic fit of enthusiasm.
At least 119 utopian, communal or socialist settlements were founded in the early 1800s in America. As most of the country reveled in newly won freedoms and a market economy that allowed the enterprising to create wealth, a few malcontents sought a different life. They spurned private property in favor of sharing material things in common. They preferred a “planned” community over the supposed “chaos” of the market’s spontaneous order. They thought if they just worked out on paper what their preferred society would look like, everything and everybody would just fall into place.
Like many idealists, Alcott’s father and many others believed that it was possible to “plan” everything successfully so that nothing was wasted and there was no economic inequality. Like many others since then, they quickly discovered that human nature does not work that way:
Lofty pledges of equality that fell far short of reality. Women, for instance, were promised they would have to work no harder or longer than men, but the Alcott girls were among the Fruitlands women who were stuck with most of the labor.
Goofy, fringe notions about life. At Fruitlands, these notions included a general abstinence not only from sex but from most of what its architects regarded as “worldly activities” — like most commerce and trade, the raising of livestock, and the planting of vegetables that grow down (like turnips and carrots) instead of up (like lettuce and tomatoes).
A weird disdain for private property. The mere desire to acquire property for oneself (even by serving others as customers) was regarded as repugnant. Lane and Alcott once visited a nearby settlement of Shakers and while admiring the Shakers’ practice of property held “in common”, they condemned them for engaging in commerce by selling their homemade furniture.
August 3, 2021
1848 – The Year of (Failed) Revolutions I GLORY & DEFEAT
realtimehistory
Published 7 Jul 2021Support Glory & Defeat: https://realtimehistory.net/gloryandd…
The year 1848 was pivotal in European history. All across the continent revolutionary movements erupted and demanded a new order. This would be no different in France and in the German states.
» OUR PODCAST
https://realtimehistory.net/podcast – interviews with historians and background info for the show.» LITERATURE
Engehausen, Frank: Die Revolution von 1848/49. Paderborn, München 2007Gall, Lothar (Hrsg.): 1848 – Aufbruch zur Freiheit: Ausstellungskatalog zum 150-jährigen Jubiläum der Revolution von 1848/49. Berlin 1998
Gouttman, Alain. La grande défaite de 1870-1871. Paris 2015
Siemann, Wolfram: Die deutsche Revolution von 1848/49. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985
Wollstein, Günter: “Scheitern eines Traumes”. In: Informationen zur politischen Bildung, Heft 265 (2010) o.S.
» SOURCES
Carrey, Émile: Recueil complet des actes du Gouvernement provisoire. Première partie n° 281. Paris 1884Haupt, Hermann (Hrsg.): Quellen und Darstellungen zur Geschichte der Burschenschaft und der deutschen Einheitsbewegung, Band 1, Heidelberg 1910
N.N.: Die Staats-Verträge des Königsreichs Bayern von 1806 – 1858. Regensburg 1860
» OUR STORE
Website: https://realtimehistory.net»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Cathérine Pfauth, Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand, Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Above Zero
Editing: Toni Steller
Motion Design: Philipp Appelt
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Maps: Battlefield Design https://www.battlefield-design.co.uk/
Research by: Cathérine Pfauth, Prof. Dr. Tobias Arand
Fact checking: Cathérine Pfauth, Prof. Dr. Tobias ArandChannel Design: Battlefield Design
Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2021
August 1, 2021
Christopher Hitchens on George Orwell
DailyHitchens
Published 22 Jan 2010Aug 7, 2009. Christopher Hitchens talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about George Orwell. Drawing on his book Why Orwell Matters, Hitchens talks about Orwell’s opposition to imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism, his moral courage, and his devotion to language. Along the way, Hitchens makes the case for why Orwell matters. For more videos, updates and info on Christopher Hitchens, please visit http://www.dailyhitchens.com
July 19, 2021
George Orwell: The Uncompromising Visionary
Biographics
Published 29 Nov 2019This video is #sponsored by NordVPN.
Credits:
Host – Simon Whistler
Author – Morris M
Producer – Jennifer Da Silva
Executive Producer – Shell HarrisBusiness inquiries to biographics.email@gmail.com
Source/Further reading:
Britannica’s Orwell Bio: https://www.britannica.com/biography/…
Excellent, very informative ONDB biography (paywall for non-UK users. UK users need only enter library card number to access): https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.109…
Spanish civil war: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/conten…
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h…
Orwell’s mistakes on the Spanish Civil War: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201…
Orwell at the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainmen…
June 1, 2021
What Orwell wrote about in The Road to Wigan Pier applies just as well to the modern Labour Party
David Starkey points out that while the best contemporary analysis of the collapse of the Labour vote may come from Rod Liddle, he is in many ways just echoing the words of George Orwell in The Road To Wigan Pier:
“The first thing that must strike any outside observer,” Orwell’s analysis begins, “is that Socialism in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes.” “The typical Socialist is not”, he explains, “a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik … or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job … [and] a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.”
He — and even more it must be said she — is also likely to be odd. Here Orwell is unsparing. And spot on. “There is,” Orwell declares, “the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together.” “One sometimes get the impression,” he continues, “that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.”
Oh and vegetarians. And beards. And “high-minded women”. And homosexuals, like the two “dreadful-looking old men”, clad “in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple”, whom Orwell encountered on a bus in Letchworth. And so — effortlessly out-Liddling Liddle — on.
Above all, Orwell identified the same disdain for the working class. “Are these mingy little beasts,” he reflected after attending one Socialist conventicle, “the champions of the working class?”
“For every person there”, he recalled, “bore the worst stigmata of snobbish middle-class superiority. If a real working man, a miner dirty from the pit, for instance, had suddenly walked into their midst, they would have been embarrassed, angry and disgusted; some, I should think, would have fled holding their noses”.
“The truth is,” Orwell concludes, “that to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which ‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose upon ‘them’, the Lower Orders.”
But Orwell was writing in 1937. Not 2021. So how on earth did the Labour party, with even then such a freakish, repellent cadre at its core, survive and thrive as the great mass movement that, for a time, it became and whose passing Liddle laments?
May 7, 2021
Scott Alexander reviews David Harvey’s A Brief History Of Neoliberalism
[Update: In the comments, “gunker” explains that this is another of Scott’s reader-contributed book reviews, not one of his own work. My apologies for the mistake.] After a quick rundown of the conventional explanation for the decline and fall of the comfortable post-WW2 US economy in the 1970s, Scott gives an overall appreciation of Harvey’s arguments:
… This treatment is almost the opposite of the way ABHoN describes events. Telling the story this way makes me feel like Jacques Derrida deconstructing some text to undermine the author and prove that they were arguing against themselves all along.
Harvey is an extreme conflict theorist. The story he wants to tell is the story of bad people destroying the paradise of embedded liberalism in order to line their own pockets and crush their opponents. At his best, he treats this as a thesis to be defended: embedded liberalism switched to neoliberalism not primarily because of sound economic policy, but because rich people forced the switch to “reassert class power”. At his worst, he forgets to argue the point, feeling it so deeply in his bones that it’s hard for him to believe anyone could really disagree. When he’s like this, he doesn’t analyze any of the economics too deeply; sure, rich people said something something economics, to justify their plot to immiserate the working classes, but we don’t believe them and we’re under no obligation to tease apart exactly what economic stuff they were talking about.
In these parts, ABHoN‘s modus operandi is to give a vague summary of what happened, then overload it with emotional language. Nobody in ABHoN ever cuts a budget, they savagely slash the budget, or cruelly decimate the budget, or otherwise [dramatic adverb] [dramatic verb] it. Nobody is ever against neoliberal reform — they bravely stand up to neoliberal reform, or valiantly resist neoliberal reform, or whatever. Nobody ever “makes” money, they “extract” it. So you read a superficial narrative of some historical event, with all the adverbs changed to more dramatic adverbs, and then a not-very-convincing discussion of why this was all about re-establishing plutocratic power at the end of it. This is basically an entire literary genre by now, and ABHoN fits squarely within it.
Harvey’s theses, framed uncharitably, are:
1. Embedded liberalism was great and completely sustainable. The global economic system collapsing in 1971 was probably just coincidence or something, and has no relevance to any debate about the relative merit of different economic paradigms.
2. Sure, some people say that the endless recession/stagflation/unemployment/bankruptcy/strikes of the 1970s were bad, but those people are would-be plutocrats trying to seize power and destroy the working class.
3. When cities, countries, etc, ran huge deficits and then couldn’t pay any of the money back, sometimes the banks that loaned them that money were against this. Sometimes they even asked those places to stop running huge deficits as a precondition for getting bailed out. This proves that bankers were plotting against the public and trying to form a dystopian plutocracy.
4. Since we have proven that neoliberalism is a sham with no advantages, we should switch back to embedded liberalism.
Let’s go through these one by one and see whether I’m being unfair.
January 15, 2021
QotD: Capitalism and socialism, viewed from Harvard in 1942
The idea that socialism would ultimately prevail over capitalism was quite a widespread view — especially in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It persisted throughout the Cold War. “The Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and even thrive,” wrote Paul Samuelson, Schumpeter’s pupil, in the 1961 edition of his economics textbook — a sentence that still appeared in the 1989 edition. In successive editions, Samuelson’s hugely influential book carried a chart projecting that the gross national product of the Soviet Union would exceed that of the United States at some point between 1984 and 1997. The 1967 edition suggested that the great overtaking could happen as early as 1977. By the 1980 edition, the timeframe for this great overtaking had been moved forward to 2002–12. The graph was quietly dropped after the 1980 edition.
Niall Ferguson, “Capitalism, Socialism and Nationalism: Lessons from History”, 2020-02.
January 6, 2021
QotD: George Bernard Shaw’s views on eugenics
The Irishman’s opinions are, however, coming back to mangle and even smash his reputation. A group of students at RADA have called for Shaw’s name to be removed from the drama school’s theatre as part of an anti-racism action plan. This matters, because Shaw provided for the school in his will, and last year the royalties from his work contributed more than £78,000 to RADA. Yet the accusation that the renowned theatre college “celebrates historical figures who embraced racist ideologies” does have a certain merit. Problem is, as has been debated myriad times: do, can, and should we separate an artist’s work from their period, character and ideas? If the ghosts of anachronism and historical assumptions are never to be exorcised, there are an awful lot of people who will fail and fall to the wide-awake litmus test.
Shaw did indeed write, that, “The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man” and, chillingly, “A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.” He lectured for the Eugenic Education Society, praised Stalin (naturally) the early Mussolini, and even Hitler as late as 1935. He abandoned most of all this in his old age but never made any formal apology.
He was also an incisive critic of imperialism, mercilessly exposed establishment hypocrisy, opposed war and oppression throughout his career, and cared passionately about actors and writers – the very people at RADA trying to expunge his name from their place of learning. And here’s another challenge and even embarrassment for those who would remove the social engineers from the litany of the great and the good: many of their harshest opponents were not others on the left but, in Edwardian Britain and in the 20s and 30s, conservative Roman Catholic writers led by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.
Michael Coren, “Eugenics and the intellectual left”, The Critic, 2020-09-16.
December 10, 2020
QotD: Italian Fascism and “corporatism”
From Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
This quote is often misconstrued nowadays by leftists who view profit-making corporations under capitalism (especially multinational corporations) as instruments of the devil. They love the implied image of capitalist fat-cats and fascist dictators conspiring in gilded opulence. Alas for them that this quote actually doesn’t imply anything like that; the terminological ground under it has shifted.
The “corporatism” Mussolini to which was referring had, actually, nothing to do with corporations, joint-stock or otherwise (in the 1920s the word “corporation” did not yet have its modern sense, either in English or Italian). His use of the word had to do with a feature of fascist theory forgotten by almost everybody but specialist historians.
In fascist theory, “corporations” were bodies like unions, craft guilds, professional societies, and grange associations. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism for discussion; see especially the section “[F]ascist corporativism” [section name changed since 2009].
What Mussolini was actually enunciating was a sort of organic statism in which the state would bless or admit representatives of various “corporations” into its governing councils — and no, that didn’t mean Fiat or Beretta but (say) the Abruzzo Building Trades Association, or the Society of University Professors.
While corporations-in-the-modern-sense were not outright excluded from being legitimized “corporations” in the fascist sense, neither did they have any special status or power in the system. Actually, it was rather the reverse …
It’s worth remembering that the founders of fascism were mainly Leninists like Mussolini with a sprinkling of anarcho-syndicalists (George Sorel being the best known of those). Actual fascism retained the founders’ doctrinal hostility to what modern leftists would call “corporate power”, never renouncing its state-socialist roots and being (in fact) hostile to all centers of power other than the state itself.
The modern idea that German and Italian fascism were conservative or pro-business ideologies is essentially a fantasy constructed by pro-Soviet propagandists during and after World War II. In fact, classical fascism never wandered very far from its left-wing origins; corporatism can be seen as an elaboration of the theoretical role of worker’s soviets in Leninist theory.
Eric S. Raymond, “Misconstruing Mussolini”, Armed and Dangerous, 2009-06-29.
December 3, 2020
New York Prohibits Booze and Socialists | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! | E.06 – Winter 1920
TimeGhost History
Published 2 Dec 2020Science and technology is marching on as the world enters the 1920’s. But Americans have more to reckon with than just a new decade: every state in the country has gone “dry”.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Image Research by: Daniel Weiss
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations:
Daniel Weiss – https://www.facebook.com/TheYankeeCol…
Spartacus Olsson
Mikolaj UchmanSources:
Some images from the Library of Congress
Image from the Holocaust MuseumFrom the Noun Project:
Baker – by Wichai
Protest – by Juan Pablo Bravo
Store – by FahmiSoundtracks from Epidemic Sound and Frédéric Chopin
– “One More for the Road” – Golden Age Radio
– “Dark Shadow” – Etienne Roussel
– “Heroes On Horses” – Gunnar Johnsén
– “That’s How I Like It” – Oakwood Station
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “Dark Beginning” – Johan Hynynen
– “Chopin Sonata no2” – 3rd movement
– “Faith in Truth” – Oakwood Station
– “Innocence of a Child” – Rupert Sachs
– “Endlessness” – Flouw
– “First Responders” – SkryaArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
