Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: June 2022

Spring of Down, Chapters VII-IX, By Stirling Newberry

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On June 8, 2022

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קטרילבקה קידמה

The show must go on. There must be progress – in costumes for example.[xi] She twirled to see the whole of the outfit. Serafina was truly unhappy.

Not that she didn’t have reasons – unhappy from inside to outside. Ukrainian in a country being overrun by Russian forces, Jewish in an Orthodox Christian nation; acting in a town of straights, and an atheist in a land of believers. The president’s face looked at her from his portrait stuck on her mirror.

She looked at her face. Did it show? Jewish did – there was a lilt to her features – nothing so gauche as a crooked nose but a sweep to her cheekbones. Some of the young men worshiped that. She thought: everywhere there are those who want something different. She was thin and there were those who felt she was attractive. Who is she to judge? She glanced at the other chair that had a man’s sweater.

“Are you ready?” The voice came from behind. It was the techie – the man who could get you anyone, but for himself, nothing. The paunch said it all. Likes women but indulges in latkes. The second let you down easily and was eager for late nights. Unlike Serafina. He had tried. Repeatedly.

“I’m only me when I’m acting.”

“Limelight is in 5.” He placed his fingers like a pistol.

She thought: “What an Imaginary Invalid.” But out her mouth came: “Break a leg.”

“Toi, Toi, Toi.” He tried to pinch her … anywhere.

She looked to the stage at Kolesca Theater -it was an Academic, part of the gaggle of theatre, schools, churches, museums, coffee bars, and wine hangouts. People needed to be picked-up or gently let down. She glanced over at the audience, who were quieting down. The pale-yellow bricks with white arches had attracted the weary to the street curved near the thicket of woods. She blinked.

And within the blink, she remembered coming up the Funicular – a cable car that went up and down. It was a freezing day, it was січень, the month when the Orthodox Christians celebrated what they wished to be on a child. She saw a young man reading a novel, patiently lost in thought. She envied the book – to inspire such attention.

But then, in the present, she moved to her position. The wheel of dialog had begun. The nylon curtain had begun. A steam whistle from stage right called. She waited while the lead played out the opening with his pharmacist then the lead rang a bell. It was almost time for her entrance – but she had to wait for him to shout. The script had an exact number but the director left the exact number to the lead. The director thought it would be more pressure she had to listen; she rememberedthe director admonished during the first rehearsal “She comes out of her room only when it is clear she must go.” To have a room of our own – she thought that would be heavenly.

As her left hand waited to make an entrance, she again recalled the young man and the very moment that he looked up with his narrow dark-rimmed specs. It was an inner event in her mind, a flight that still had shades.

Back in the present, she saw the tiny audience and then turned to the lead and said. With. Dead. Pan. “Coming, coming.” She waited for the lead’s abuse, which was more than an act. He had tried, too. He tried cold Northern tears to get his way but in theatre, everyone knew what was live and what was Memorex. He wanted the “Ohs” to be with exclamation points.[xii]

“Oh.” She acted in the present. With deadpan.

“Oh.” When her line came up. With sarcasm.

“Oh.” Remember a different moment. It was later and night wrapped its dirty blanket as they went inside to the bedroom which she borrowed. Here were all the exclamation points. They went out. She wanted to show him where she worked.

“So, what do you think, Kuzma?”

He examined the building. He nodded. “Lots of yellow going up the slope.” He looked at all the quaint builds out of a different century, and an age of asymmetry with arches.

“I come every day from below to see the tree in the backdrop.”

But the present interrupted her memories of lines that were read. Then another verse, a little bit louder and a little worse, of the refrain: “Oh!” With feeling.

She knew that she was a bit player. She knew she was not doing well tonight but the memories kept intruding. Earlier that night they had wandered. Up a gentle hill, they reached a statue – of a clown. A tear ran down the statue’s cheek. His paperback book, all torn from reading, was upon his chest, it read: Demons – in Russian of course.

He turned to her looking at the statue: “Do you know who he was?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes. He was Aleksandr Vertinskiy, the Russian clown.”

“A Jewish clown.”

“Are you Jewish?”

She looked up and down, then giggled. She covered her mouth with both hands. “As the saying goes: only on my parent’s side.”

“What does that mean?”

“I am descended from Israel, but I do not believe.”

He closed his mouth rightly. She could see a decision being made. He straightened in his pinstripe pants and there was a tightening in his navy jacket.

“I do believe either.” His breath left a frost in the air.

“When did you make up your mind?”

“Now.” He waited with an intense gaze. “It is a struggle.” He held up his book. “My favorite author believed.” Then he put it into his jacket pocket.

She dropped her hand, finding another close to hers. They linked and then she said: “Do you want to see where I work?”

Then in the present again, they were taking their bows. She was acting by rote.

Then the ultimate memory: if it was in the acting room she borrowed, again.

She roused herself from the quilted bed. It was morning and sunlight gazed through. There was straightness to her midsection.

“May I ask you something, my Kulbaba?”[xiii]

She looked around at him with suspicion.

“Why do you have no curve?” Though it was intimated there was no hint of evil in either his face or words.

“It is a secret. But like Screwtape, it is obvious if you think about lower down.”[xiv]

“If you tell me that, then I will as well.”

She halted. She hesitated. Then she began: “I was pregnant. My father insisted that I keep it. They are Orthodox and my father’s position is that it is forbidden. Then he gave the child away. I left. Now you know.”

He straightened to sitt. There was no hesitation. “I got a letter yesterday. I have been called up.” He reached out and snagged a sweater and offered it to her.

“If I come back, I will offer you a room of your own.”

She look away towards the promenade, her heart skipped in five, and dreamed of the day.[xv]

 

Собор[xvi]

You will not find this in any Encyclopedia of the world.[xvii] Try as you may, it will elude you. And yet it is – existence as yours, as unreality. And yet by habit, it will sound strange to you when I tell this story. On a road with many writers, one of them stopped to capture the dull brown grass at his feet. It was wartime and he realized that many people would not recognize the subtle shades that brown could muster. Brown sky over the city made of brown smoke.[xviii] Pounding with violence on the Sea of Azov.

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Is Capitalism Near Its End?

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On June 7, 2022

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In the book Does Capitalism Have a Future?, Emmanuel Wallerstein argues that capitalism cannot be saved because capitalism requires the endless pursuit of profits, and the world system is at a stage where there is no room for another wave of exploiting people who are largely outside the system, which capitalism, in its modern form (from about the late 15th century), requires.

The ur-rule of capitalist behaviour, per Wallerstein, is that one must pursue ever-higher profits. If one doesn’t, they’re out of the game. (You and I, dear reader, are not in the game and never were, unless some billionaire or CEO is reading this.)

If you don’t pursue endless profit, you fall behind those who do, and they buy you out, or you go bankrupt, or even you become a small or medium business and have no real power. To have power in capitalism, one must be ever striving for the apex. It’s a red-queen’s race, as in “Alice in Wonderland.”

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Now, the next thing is that capitalists actually don’t like workers who fully depend on them for survival: they want workers who have other supports; generally some sort of subsistence or government support. Traditionally this would be workers in hinterland regions (in Europe or Britain to start) who still had some land or animals and took the work only to get some extra money.

Other arrangements did exist: You could pay them less than they really needed to survive (the early British proletariat, as can be seen from accounts at the time), or, in the modern world, you can be Walmart and instruct your workers how to get food stamps, welfare, and medicaid, as you pay them less than they need to survive.

Various other companies, including Amazon, who rely on similar supports and school, which is a form of babysitting, can be seen this way as well; workers who have to care for their own children 24/7 can’t work. Extended families, in countries which still have them, do the same thing — grandparents or other relatives care for the children while the parents work.

Each wave of capitalism has gone out to places where there were still people with extended families and means of subsistence, and brought them into capitalism. At first it was cheap, then wages rose as workers became proletariatized and wanted their wages to cover their actual expenses.

Getting government to step in and subsidize workers is a poor substitute, which can’t work in the longer run, because the workers still have to be supported. Even if a specific company is dodging all its taxes, someone is paying, and if that someone is the workers, well, that strategy is only viable while there is wealth to steal from the poor and middle class, because – obviously — taking wealth from the rich defeats the point.

The last wave, to Wallerstein, was this last wave: There are no countries of significance not in the capitalist system, and there is no significant group of people with extra-subsistence to bring into the system to support cheap labor.

Without this, the current form of capitalism is doomed. Profits can only be increased by impoverishing societies as a whole, which destroys the wealth customers need to buy goods.

Though Wallerstein doesn’t emphasize it, there’s also the issue of simple depletion of minerals and of climate change. There are plenty of hydrocarbons in the world, but using them is destroying subsistence, food production in general, and drawing down water, and so on. We are running out of other materials, almost exactly as “The Limits To Growth” report predicted five decades ago.

The reason people like Bezos and Musk are obsessed with space and automation if that if space mining, colonization, and automation are the only viable solutions can the resource constraints and the expansion constraint be broken. It’s the only way that this style of capitalism continue, possibly nearly forever, by expansion to new worlds, the asteroid belt and so on.

Unfortunately, with our current technology, space colonization is a no-go. We can’t even create a biosphere (a closed environment) capable of supporting anything more complex than mold slimes. We can’t deal with the radiation in space. Mars colonization without terraforming will be very limited; it’s a more hostile environment than Antarctica, which we haven’t been able to colonize either.

So, assuming you agree with Wallerstein’s model of modern capitalism, at least in its broad strokes, there’s no way for capitalism to survive.

If it is near the end, what you’ll see is a structural crisis with wide fluctuation. Change to a new equilibrium generally happens with snaps to the new equilibrium, then snaps back. At first, the snaps to the new equilibrium are brief — over time, they become longer and eventually there are no snaps back.

This is also likely to be the case for climate change, the question is where the new equilibrium will be, which is not as easy a question as some people think, because while earth has had high carbon in the past, conditions then were quite different. One example is that atmospheric pressure 2.7 billion years ago was half what it is today.

In any case, whatever the new equilibrium will be is unclear, both socially and environmentally, and how the social equilibrium sets will work is also dependent on where the climate stabilizes.

So at this point, we can say, if we find Wallerstein persuasive, that the modern form of capitalism, which has run progressively larger parts of the world for about five centuries, is on its last legs. What we can’t say is what will replace it.

The goal of those of us who see what is happening is to create ideas; ideologies, which will be available when change becomes so imperative that people are desperate, and reaching for new options. If we don’t, the worst people will dominate with their worst ideologies, and the new system could be even worse in many ways.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 5, 2022

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On June 5, 2022

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 5, 2022
by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 6-1-2022]

“Those who had to choose between material goods and France’s soul, the material goods made the choice for them. The wealthy are possessed by what they possess.”

[Twitter, May 29, 2022]

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[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 6-2-2022]

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Electric vehicles accelerate China’s looming dominance as a car exporter

[Financial Times, via Naked Capitalism 6-2-2022]

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Open Thread

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On June 4, 2022

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

The EU As The Epitome Of the Iron Cage of Bureaucracy

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On June 3, 2022

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A couple years ago I read “The Dawn of Eurasia” by Bruno Macaes. Macaes was a member of Portuguese government, very neoliberal and fairly awful while in office, but his book proved quite insightful in most areas outside of Russia, where what seems to be fear and contempt for Russia distorts his vision. (I thought this when I read it before the Ukraine invasion.)

He’s most worth reading about Europe and the EU, and one example and one passage particularly struck me at the time.

This is the formula for accepting immigrants during the refugee crisis.

Macaes writes:

I was reading the account of the meeting in my office when it suddenly hit me. The European Union is not meant to make political decisions. What it tries to do is develop a system of rules to be applied more or less autonomously to a highly complex political and social reality. Once in place, these rules can be left to operate without human intervention. Of course, the system will need regular and periodic maintenance, much like a robot needs repair, but the point is to create a system of rules that can work on their own. We have entered the end of history in the sense that the repetitive and routine application of a system of rules will have replaced human decision.

Maçães, Bruno. The Dawn of Eurasia (p. 228). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Weber famously called bureaucratization an iron cage: rule by rules and not people, everyone in the same circumstance was supposed to be treated the same, and who the bureaucrat was didn’t matter: once the rules (in modern terms, the algo) had been set up, the human was just a piece of machinery.

It’s for this reason that technocrats love computers and algorithms so much; they make it almost impossible for ordinary humans to override the rules.

Many years ago I moved from Ontario to BC. My Ontario health care coverage was ended. I applied for BC coverage, but then, unexpectedly, I returned to Ontario. I had no coverage. I went to the provincial health office in person, told the person at the desk, they summoned their boss and it was explained to me that there was a six month wait, but they would fix it.

How? The only way was to finangle the system so it thought I had never stopped having Ontario coverage. There was no human discretion, just a flaw in the system which allowed them to do something they really shouldn’t have done. (This is over 30 years ago now, which is why I feel free to mention it.)

If they hadn’t, I’d have had no coverage anywhere in Canada and I was extremely sick and needed health care right away. (Which is probably why they did jiggle the system.)

The idea of bureaucratization was a good one: previous to that offices had been filled by people with a great deal of latitude, which many of them abused to help their friends and family and to enrich themselves. Even when they didn’t abuse the office, they were inconsistent, and no one knew what the rules really were and thus couldn’t plan. As Weber points out repeatedly, you need calculable law and administration to allow modern capitalism. Decisions don’t necessarily have to be good, but they do have to be consistent, or you can’t plan and one unexpected decision can destroy your business.

We moderns will note that the promise of bureaucratization hasn’t really worked out: it’s been subverted. The rules are made and somehow they always favor the rich.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

—Anatole France

Now, the law has always favored the rich, but the idea of bureaucracy combined with democracy was that it would do less of that. In some time periods it did, and does, but in most all it did was change the type of rich it favored, moving from aristocrats and clergy, to oligarchs.

The EU, however, firmly believes in bureaucratization, as Macaes notes. It is what is good. The rules exist, they are followed, humans intervene only to set up the rules and occasionally tweak them, but otherwise it’s a big machine algo, and it runs like that. If it hurts or harms someone, so be it, it is fair, because the rules are being followed.

Macaes has a lovely little anecdote about Brexit and immigration which highlights the issues:

I particularly remember a conversation in Manchester with Ed Llewellyn, David Cameron’s chief of staff, where we tested different ways to reduce immigration numbers, some of them quite feasible. This was during the renegotiation process leading up to the referendum. Llewellyn seemed hopeful for a moment, but then shook his head: ‘These are ways to reduce the numbers. What we need are ways to increase the feeling of control.’

Maçães, Bruno. The Dawn of Eurasia (pp. 231-232). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

What the Brits wanted, in other words, was to have humans regularly making decisions, rather than one algo set up by a committee making the decisions, even if the algo was more favorable to them. Basically, can the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary decide how many immigrants come in? No? Then forget it.

It seems to me that the algo-ing of government, the bureaucratization, is a good thing up to a point: people should be treated about the same in the same circumstances. But as a practical matter,  bureaucratization, the iron cage, is used to elude responsibility. “The algo did it!” or, “That’s what the law says!”

Every algo was created by people, and while there are sometimes unforseen effects, what the algo does is the responsibility of people. If it is producing injustice, or poverty, or massive inequality those who created it, or those who are letting it run are responsible.

The more you hard-code an algo, and take people out of its implementation, or create systems which force people to become machines unable to make exceptions, the more the dead  hand of the past rules the future, and the more that the few people at the top rule everyone else. When middle and low level bureaucrats can’t actually make decisions, injustice inevitably occurs because virtually ever law or algo has blind spots: events and circumstances it did not and cannot deal with.

The evil of three strikes laws and mandatory sentencing, for example, was meant to prevent the evil of judges using their judgment to let people people off if there were mitigating circumstances. Sometimes that discretion was misused, and it would be a big story, but even more often there would be a case of someone’s third crime being stealing a bicycle or a banana.

The ultimate problem is that there’s no getting away from the fact that humans have to make decisions about humans lives. Even if we wound up in a Wall-E world, served by machines, those machines’ initial programing would have been created by humans.

The principles that exceptions need to be made and that humans need to have some control, and that over-bureaucratization removes low and middle level control don’t change the idea that people should be treated equally in the same circumstances. Provincial laws didn’t intend for any Canadian to not be covered by some provincial health care plan; the algo; the rules, had a gap, and a low level bureaucrat could make it work, at least back in the early 90s (today, who knows?)

The same is true at higher levels. There is no escape from human judgment. Attempts to bind everyone with trade deals which are immune to popular sovereignty; with treaties, and to have secret courts and central banks and so on, are all ways to try to avoid responsibility for results.

The problem with our societies is that elites aren’t held responsible for the harm they cause, nor, by and large for any good they do. We have elections without being democratic, because the feedback systems are broken.

All that has happened with bureaucratization, is that the rich still get taken care of, and the poor still get fucked, and it’s done in a way that seems “fair”.

“The algo said” is just a modern version of the “the law says” and it’s just a way to disempower almost everyone while making sure power and money are concentrated at the top.

Any algo or law which doesn’t allow for human discretion to override the algo, with a review mechanism for people who do it often, will do more evil and prove more anti-democratic than even venal spoils systems, which at least don’t pretend that office-holders and other powerful people don’t make decisions and aren’t responsible for their results.

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Spring of Down, Chapters IV-VI, By Stirling Newberry

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On June 1, 2022

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На крилах пісень[i]

The soldier came knocking upon the Queen’s door.[ii] With the twiddly branches of old white oak trees planted a long time ago on wide boulevards hanging delicately over streets whose names had been forgotten. The streets were brightened by crossings lattice lines of electrical round lights with the patina of old bulbs – the new kind which made less heat were still being debated in the council chamber. Now one spoke over these wires. In the distance large rectangular office buildings humped in the skyline. It was the largest creation of humanity in the land now called Ukraine.

The soldier came knocking with ill intent. In the soldier’s mind, he was a conquering hero who would be venerated by his citizens. But the citizens did not see him that way and so the soldier came crashing down on the Queen. A Queen that had been known for her wit. Many thought that she would bend and break when threatened by so much as a glower. Threads across the boulevards were no match, so it seemed, for the brutality and bluster of the soldier.The sun rose, and the day woke up clear. It was the kind of spring where the buds start their inexorable march towards unfolding. A man looked up from the sidewalk and merely stared at the loveliness that surrounded him. Spring does not care for the goings-on of soldiers.

A ray is where a spark pours but Aleksander was not in tune with the season, instead he brooded on the days yet to come when the Russians would strike with all their might against Kyiv. He knew he would be at the front because of his long days of training over the last several years. In that time, he had grown used to an overbearing demeanor and crisp sharp commands. He had also been given trust over those he commanded because there was nothing that he asked of any man that he would not do himself.

He looked down at the sneakers and stretched out his toes. It was a morning off before he went back to the area that had become the base. But Aleksander found nothing but time to brood on the coming night’s events. Though he would not pass the words over his lips, he was afraid, deeply deathly afraid. So, would be any man who knew rivals were trying to find their foes and that rockets were landing a higgedly piggly to turn over the earth and scatter its contents hither and yon.

He looked up and down the boulevard with no cars, people, trucks, or dogs. Only the cats were scattered over the asphalt, and most of them were retiring. It felt serene. And it was serene most of the time, but rockets’ red glare had intruded a few times in the night. They ripped down concrete walls and huge windowpanes. He saw one just down the street.

Then up ahead, he saw a young man with black hair. He would see that man in uniform very soon because the young man was part of his company.

Of course, being an officer, he spoke. “Greetings.”

Leo looked up; it was clear that he had been distracted by his thoughts. “Kapitan.” A clear smile lit up the young man’s face. “I would not have taken you as a man who would spend any time wandering the street. Are you going to be ready for tonight?” And then hastily: “Sir.”

Aleksander smiled. Leo had only been promoted to Serzhant recently. It was still a junior non-commissioned officer rank.

“Serzhant, I will tell you a small secret: we must be ready to do our duty but realize that we are never truly prepared for any eventuality.” The words came out of his mouth, and they formed a regular type of dialogue that he had mastered in his time in the Army.
Leo nodded.

Sometime later Aleksander was controlling a tank, and Leo had the helm. It was dark, and dark clouds still overhead. They were in the woods with trees crowded around them. It was auiet, and the wind did not blow on Aleksander. It was is reaching for other lives: a pot on the fir git ground; a ripped up pooh now distend out of pooh corner; lingerie divinized with no one left to wear it.[iii] Shredded bags and torn blankets skiterred. Only the hut is white.

There was an urgency. Into the night munitions fired and detonated. Aleksander looked up, down, and all around.

In a flash, he saw a weapon. In the bushes. Aiming; aiming for him. There was a moment of panic. But only one, because without realizing it his pistol was locked and loaded. Both men fired. His enemy missed.

Aleksander did not.

The soldier was killed.[iv]

Off in the distance, a helicopter bloomed white and exploded. Crash, beep, beep.[v]

Without realizing it, he went through the motion of halting the tank. Then he slung over the side with Leo watching his commander’s coolness under fire.

Aleksander went on all fours and examined the kill. It was a Yefréytor – a private first class. He too was young. As were the young men he protected. Waste of life otherwise. But his charges would come home, to their mothers and sisters.

“Sometimes nothing happens like on the wing of songs.”[vi]

Then looking down at his work.

“Sometimes I dig the grave.”

[i] On the wings of song.
[ii] An allusion to Vega, “The Queen and the Soldier”.
[iii] An allusion to Milne , “A House at Pooh Corner.”
[iv] An allusion to Vega, “The Queen and the Soldier”.
[v] The Playmates,“Honk, Rattle, Crash, Beep Beep”
[vi] Lesya Ukrainka (Леся Українка) – Book of poetry. Title.

Вечер накануне Ивана Купала[i]

There are moments that un-terrorize visions of horror. Twisted metal burned on a stroad with houses, one touched to another, in this, the East of the West. Bucha was a name that few people heard of; it was a point on a map outside of Kyiv. Even the few who had heard it had heard it almost recently on charts of a faintly military hue. Gogol would be proud of the objective – all Slavs.

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