So, the article below was published December 8th, 2015.
The pull quote is:
Neo-liberalism is nearing the end of its cycle. It will kill a lot of people dying, but its death is now ordained and can only be slowed by fanatical levels of police state repression in a few countries. And its death convulsions and the birth pangs of the new system will create a new age of war and revolution which will kill far more.
This is now as close to inevitable as human affairs, endlessly complicated and subject to unexpected shocks, can be.
Nothing has changed, the process has simply continued. Notice the repression going on in the US right now. Since I wrote it, the UK left the EU, there was massive resistance to Macron in France, and so on. We have massive fires all over the world: Australia, California, South Africa the Amazon and more. Wealth continues to concentrate at the top, etc, etc…
These convulsions take time. Slap the start of the actual fall as 2020, with the UK’s Brexit, and we’ve got 12 to 20 years to go. This one’s going to be bad, really, bad, simply because of climate change and our vast over-exploitation of limited resources. There’s going to be a lot of real hunger and lack of water, and so on.
The next age is undetermined, but one possibility is a centrifugal period. It is hard to imagine a future in which, India, for example, survives as a unified nation. For that matter, I’m not sure I’d put my money on China holding together over the middle run: 50/50 it’s fallen into warlordism by 2050 to 60.
The simple way to make your guesses is ask if a country can feed itself with domestic production AFTER the effects of climate change. If it can’t even feed itself now (or only barely); or if it is going to have serious water issues (water, obviously affects agriculture, so it’s not really two things), then the smart money is that it’s going to break up or lose effective control of various hinterlands.
And if you’ve got resources a more powerful nation on your border wants, well, that could go very badly for you. (My fellow Canadians, who seem clueless about how violent Americans are, should take note here.)
On the upside, this will be a very interesting period to be alive, if you can stay that way.
Natalie Nougayrède writes in the Guardian about The Front National’s victory in France:
Marine Le Pen has no solution for France’s problems, her economic programme is all about retreating from the outside world and Europe. Her social vision is of a mythical, homogeneous France that never existed. What she has to sell is an illusion. It’s only because so little else is on offer that people are buying.
This analysis is, there is no kinder way to put it, delusional.
And Nougayrède should know it, because she writes:
The impact of globalisation marked the end of what the French demographer Jean Fourastié coined Les Trente Glorieuses (The Glorious Thirty), the 1945-1975 period when France was modernising and increasing its international influence. There is much twisted nostalgia in the rise of the National Front.
Nougayrède blames this on the oil shocks, which the entire West failed to handle (note that Japan, far more vulnerable to the oil shock, DID handle it. Their later failure had other causes). She notes that France’s elites have not, since 1975, been able to turn things around, something I have noted as well.
But she is wrong about a retreat from globalization being delusional. The simple fact is that in France and almost every other country (including, by the way, most African countries), growth was better before globalization, and the proceeds of that growth were distributed to their populations much more evenly.
This is a fact, and you can only argue against it by invoking China (which used classic mercantalist policies, and was not meaningfully party to the 1945-1975 consensus economy.)
There will always be trade. There will always be global movement in goods, capital, and ideas, but more is not always better. In fact, one can easily argue that more is rarely better.
As for “Europe,” the fact is that increased integration has not been to the benefit of most Western Europeans. That assertion is, again, extraordinarily hard to argue against and is especially true of the creation of the Euro.
Nougayrède wants France’s leaders to fix things, and not to fail, but she is very nearly as delusional as them. She admits that their failure has led to the rise of Front National, but cannot admit that their policies have failed, economically, along the lines that Marie Le Pen says they have.
Just because someone is a near-Fascist does not mean they are wrong about everything. I have no tolerance for LePen’s brand of Imperialism and cultural supremacy, but she, like Trump, is telling a lot of truths to a lot of people who feel like their country has been on the wrong track for a long time. (In the U.S., white, working class male salaries peaked in 1968. No matter how much you scream about white privilege, you are a fool if you expect white males to gravitate towards anyone who doesn’t at least pay lip service to reversing that.)
As an economic project, the EU is a failure for many of its members, including France. There are exceptions (Germany, Poland, etc.) but the losers cannot be expected to just sit there and take the beating forever. The “beating” has been exacerbated by Europe’s deliberate imposition of austerity. It is not just that Europe’s elites have failed to create a good economy, it is that they have deliberately made the economy worse for the majority of residents in many of its countries.
Until we can honestly evaluate the failures of neo-liberalism, and gut globalist cant which claims more trade and capital flows are always a good thing (and, even if they aren’t, are “inevitable”) we cannot fix the economy.
France, like about half of the EU, should leave the Euro. It should re-impose tariffs on a wide variety of goods and produce them in their own countries. Yes, they would cost more, but wages would be higher. It should also move radically to non-oil-based energy (as is true of, well, almost everyone).
These basic policies are not difficult. Corbyn is not wrong to say “make the necessary adjustments so it will work today, and go back to post-war policies.” It failed, yes, but it was the last economy which spread money evenly through the economy. Make sure it’s not sexist and racist, update it for new energy technology, and try it. It may not be the best solution (I’d like some fairly radical changes), but it’s certainly not crazy, given that it did give France those 30 great years.
The failure to deal with the oil price shock doomed the post-war world, yes. But it is 40 years later and we have technology and knowledge they did not have.
Until the developed world’s sanctioned intellectuals (as opposed to pariahs like myself and my ilk) and their masters come to grip with these facts, the population will continue to turn elsewhere. They may turn to sane and reasonable people like Corbyn, or they may turn to people like LePen and Trump, but people will not put up with “it’s going to get worse for the forseeable future” forever.
We can have reasonable policies, which will make the world better for everyone (even if that means there will be a lot less billionaires–the Corbyn solution), or we can have the rise of fascists and their left-wing equivalents.
The room in the mushy middle for those who aren’t willing to do something radical to fix the economy and other problems is narrowing. It will continue to narrow.
Our current elites will not adjust, so the question is: Who will we get? Corbyn and FDR? Mussolini, LePen, Trump?
Neo-liberalism is nearing the end of its cycle. It will kill a lot of people dying, but its death is now ordained and can only be slowed by fanatical levels of police state repression in a few countries. And its death convulsions and the birth pangs of the new system will create a new age of war and revolution which will kill far more.
This is now as close to inevitable as human affairs, endlessly complicated and subject to unexpected shocks, can be.
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V. Arnold
Trumps fascisti act is getting a lot of support as a result of failed neo-liberal policies and the baked in racism rampant in the U.S..
I’m waiting for the equivalent of Kristallnacht to happen there.
Germany is very close at this time for a rerun it would seem.
It would appear the U.S. is ripe for for it as well…
V. Arnold
I would add; the sower’s of fear are now starting to reap the benefits of their efforts.
Voters are casting fear support/votes, which is exactly the tactic used by historic, well known despots.
Apparently it still works…
Jessica
Ian, I agree with your basic diagnosis: the advanced economies have been failing their working classes for decades with an impressive consistency across time and across national borders. Now they are failing much of their middle classes too. The current elites have nothing at all to offer for a solution, just more of the same.
Yes, on our current track, we are making our way to much harder times. I have more hope than you that we can turn away from that fate. I doubt either you or I really knows and how we project things forward speaks more to our individual minds than anything else.
One seemingly minor, but possibly crucial point of disagreement: I don’t think the oil shock was actually that critical. It does mark the change in the slope of the curve effectively, but more as symptom than as cause.
The more (northern Europe) or less (US) social democratic version of comparatively benign capitalism definitely reached some kind of internal obstacle by the 1970s. It seems to be something that becomes an issue at a certain level of development. As you pointed out, Japan adjusted to the oil shock well and keep on growing, but then ran even more thoroughly into the same kind of wall in the mid-80s. That was a time when oil prices were low, a reverse oil shock actually.
Now China, having followed Japan’s footsteps in playing catch-up with the earlier advanced economies, seems to be running into the same wall at a somewhat similar point.* This is the point at which the material infrastructure, plant and equipment, and education for a mature industrial society are enough in place. Exactly what “enough” means in this case, I am not sure, but it is something that makes further industrial development no longer adequate as the focus of society.
Why do economies that reach a certain level run into this wall? (And for later exploration, why do none of them recognize the actual situation?) Two possible explanations. Perhaps a certain level of widespread prosperity demotivates people. Perhaps a generation that has grown up free of fear for its survival just naturally starts to move up a rung on the Maslow hierarchy of needs and wanting things that industrial society can not provide. It starts wanting things that aren’t things, including more space for personal development than the power-concentrating hierarchies of industrial capitalism can allow.
Alternatively, perhaps the problem is more structural. Perhaps once industrial society has been built and the driving force of further growth shifts from infrastructure and plant and equipment (=capital) to knowledge, the way society is organized simply can not handle the necessary changes. This theory explains a number of features of the neo-liberal era. The now obsolete elites can not recognize the wall society has run into because doing so would be to hear their own death-knell (as elites). Because they no longer have any function in society, they can not provide any alternative vision, any path of reform.
One of the striking features of the crisis phase of neoliberalism is the absence of any ability to make even reforms that would help keep the system alive and the dearth of alternative vision from outside the system as well. The one thing that our obsolete elites and their well-paid minions are capable of is to block the progress of understanding of society.
If this is true, then it is crucial to get a clear view of exactly how constipated our societies have become and to create understandings that allow people to see where we are. This includes seeing to what degree our sense of doom is itself a product of the current social constipation.
*I think that Japan made it to more or less European levels before hitting the wall, but China is hitting the wall still far short of that. Perhaps this is because the distribution of power within Chinese society is so much more uneven than in Japan or perhaps because the more advanced degeneration of the advanced economies infected it with financialization earlier. In both cases, an early sign of the wall being hit is that elite shifts from projects that do have some benefit to the broader society (for example, improved transportation or better housing) to projects that have no broader benefit or are actually parasitical (zero sum game) or even destructive (negative sum game). This would include pretty much all financial innovation and all monopoly fees and charges.
Socialiast
Oh, the cute little bourgeois politicians vying for their spot in the sun, promising the proles to end the constant inevitable cyclical crises of capitalism and its inherent inequality and disgusting exploitation as well as imperialism, while servicing the bourgeois elite. What else is new?
Spinoza
These days recall a poem:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Justin
Great analysis Jessica.
Z
“The failure to deal with the oil price COLLAPSE doomed the post-war world, yes.”
I believe you wrote this in error.
Z
Ian Welsh
ahahaha. Thanks Z.
gnokgnoh
Jessica,
These two assets – infrastructure and knowledge – are not equal. Our knowledge (what is often called service) economy is not less reliant on infrastructure. In fact, it is far, far more dependent on infrastructure. Manufacturing plants, consumption of energy, smog, and pollution did not go away, just because we think they did by some magic. We just exported them. We are left bewildered about how to sustain our roads and bridges.…which we cannot export, nor do we want to pay for their upkeep. Digital and communications networks are not critical infrastructure. Water, electricity, natural gas, and sewers are.
What is happening in the Western world is deeply interwoven with massive growth and expansion driven by cheap access to fossil fuels. That is why what happened in the 70’s (peak oil in the U.S.) and what is happening today is relevant. Just because all of the consumption and waste and externalities associated with that economy have been globalized, so we can sustain our lovely knowledge economy, does not mean that it is sustainable or that it is not necessary for our Western standard of living. Increasing globalism (slavery was a form of cheap, imported global labor) since the start of the industrial revolution and increasingly today is running into its limits. The only way this train stops is de-growth and localized, sustainable practices.
Capitalism does not hit a wall. Capital goes looking for more profits, until there simply aren’t any more. Then, power and money retrench – they’re skimming now in vast quantities from their own working and middle class. 1945-1975 was a hiatus in the trajectory of of industrial capitalism, driven by strong political leadership and regulation, and cheap oil.
Ian is correct. He writes about the political consequences of the same issue. Pre-1975 growth was driven by easy access to cheap fossil fuels. Perhaps today, with slow or de-growth and renewable technologies, we might find some of that again, but I am not a cornucopian. I am skeptical, as much about our religious belief in growth and expansion as inevitable, as about our political future, which is very dim indeed.
Jessica
gnaggnaix,
Thank you for the detailed critique.
I totally agree that knowledge is even more dependent on industrial infrastructure, just as industrial infrastructure is dependent on agriculture.
You are correct that the actually existing ‘knowledge economy’ is part of why 1st world infrastructure is being neglected (except in Japan, where concrete seawalls play the role that fighter jets do in the US).
You are also correct that from the 70s onward, 1st world capitalism increasingly shifts out into the former periphery. Growth rates in China and other such nations soar while they stagnate in the 1st world. That is a reversal of the pattern for more than a century before. The first world left the third world grew much faster than the third world. That is how differences in military power gave rise to such a gap in living standards.
One question: if “Pre-1975 growth was driven by easy access to cheap fossil fuels” and the end of cheap fossil fuels explains the end of that growth, then why did Japan keep growing until the mid-1980s when fossil fuels were cheap again and why does China seem to be hitting a wall right now just as oil prices have collapsed?
When I say “capitalism hit a wall”, I mean that growth within the heretofore leading economies slowed down and slows down in any of the catching-up economies that manage to actually catch up.
Clearly, the incorporation of the Chinese working class and peasantry and the former Soviet bloc economies are major developments of recent decades. One could cast an alternative theory that places that movement at the center of things. I am placing the slow down in the 1st world as the center point, partly because I think that initially the 3rd world acceleration flows from the 1st world stagnation (although clearly they feed each other once both are underway) and partly because a theory centered on first world stagnation seems to me to explain more, for example the sterility of 1st world politics, the way that all 1st world economies have become less humane for their working classes (even ones that are very different from the US).
When I say that there was a shift from plant/infrastructure (capital) to knowledge as the driving force, I am not saying that the actually existing “knowledge economy” is good or represents a solution anything. It just demonstrates that a capitalist-run “knowledge economy” will suck in new, innovative ways. Or at least claim to.
What I am saying is that if it is true that knowledge has become the driving force, but only within a system that can not possible make proper use of it, then that would have huge implications for pretty much everything and might be the root cause of a large number of seemingly unrelated problems. Even more important, it might point us to new solutions.
Jessica
Correction
Clearly, the incorporation of the Chinese working class and peasantry and the former Soviet bloc economies into global capitalism are major developments of recent decades.
gnokgnoh
Jessica again,
Unlike in the U.S., Japan is a completely managed economy, and Japan never had direct access to its own fossil fuels. Peak crude (not shale) oil in the U.S. had an immediate, short term impact on our economy. These are not orchestrated, simultaneous events; but they are inevitable.
I offered three dimensions to widespread growth in the U.S. in the thirty-year, post-war period – strong leadership, regulation, and access to cheap fossil fuels. There are more dimensions. One of the most important Ian identifies as “spreading money evenly through the economy,” which is critical to long term sustainability. Concentrated wealth has a perverted effect, sort of like having all your blood rush to the head. The rest of the body goes numb.
By the way, our economy has continued to grow, at least by absurd GDP measures, albeit at a slower pace. The beneficiaries, though, are not the working and middle class. Nor is very much of it being invested in infrastructure, let alone alternative energies or local sustainability, certainly not close to what is needed. Neglect and abuse by leadership are like rust. Rust starts off as cosmetic, but then real corrosion sets in.
Ian Welsh
I wrote in more detail about the fall of the post war era here: https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-decline-and-fall-of-post-war-liberalism/
fddv
Pre-1975 growth was driven by easy access to cheap fossil fuels” and the end of cheap fossil fuels explains the end of that growth, then why did Japan keep growing until the mid-1980s when fossil fuels were cheap again and why does China seem to be hitting a wall right now just as oil prices have collapsed?
In Japan’s case, that wall was called the Plaza Accords.
In China’s…well, let’s just say a MIC relative of mine openly boasted once that preventing the emergence of a Chinese middle class is seen as priority #1 among his crowd.
fddv
Well, maybe “boasted” goes a bit too far, but he certainly seemed enthusiastic enough.
hvd
Well its too late for your relative. The Chinese middle class is huge and growing rapidly. Already larger than American middle class per http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/14/news/economy/china-middle-class-growing/.
Bill Hicks
I think the real danger of Trump’s candidacy is not that he will win in 2016 but that he is laying the political groundwork for someone much worse to follow in his footsteps. Four more years of unfettered neoliberalism under Hillary Clinton ought to just about do it, especially if there is another major economic crash in the meantime.
Hugh
I have been looking for a place to park this for a few days now. The Fed is expected to raise interest rates in a couple of days. It is doing this despite the world economy being in a slowdown. Japan is in recession. The China data, as dubious as they often are, are nevertheless showing substantial weakness and slowed growth. Emerging markets are mired in chaos and recession. Europe is stalled. And the US? This just never gets reported, but job growth in the private sector January through November 2015 lags the same period in 2014 by a half a million jobs –and this is true whether you look at the data seasonally adjusted or unadjusted (496,000 vs 517,000)–and 2014 was not a great year economically. Meanwhile if we look at the bottom 80% of workers, seasonally unadjusted their average weekly wages have increased a dismal 1.7% YOY (November-November). So the US isn’t doing well either. Why then is a rate hike even on the table? I mean Yellen and policymakers at the Fed and in government can read the tables as well as I can, and they are paid a lot, lot more to do so. So what gives? We speak of the failure of our elites, but it isn’t really that they have failed us. It is that they have betrayed us. The bottom 80% of us may be going under, but the top 20% is doing fine, and the top 1% is doing astronomically well. We live in a world where heads they win and tails we lose. This has been going on for the last 35 years. And it isn’t just about oil. Fed policy over this period has been the largest engine of transfer of wealth upward. Tax policy has followed suit. And let’s not forget “free” trade and yes, globalization. Disinvestment at home, offshoring, financialization. And finally the relentless class war the rich and elites have waged against us, setting those of us in the bottom 80% against each other, making us fearful and dismissive of each other, anything to keep us distracted and from uniting to oppose them. Demagogues like Trump and paper progressives like Sanders are just part of the show. They know how to push our buttons, but those buttons are not attached to any real solutions (and how to effect them). They are not meant to lead to any real change, no real opposition. They talk and talk is cheap. And nothing changes. So it goes.
Spinoza
@Bill Hicks
No truer words than yours. Trump is not worthy of fear. He is John the Baptist; a sign of what is coming. Watch for a disaffected officer able to unite disparate trends into one mass frenzy. The clever, vicious military man watching the way of modern politics and convinced that what this nation lacks is Leadership. I have long suspected that the man on horseback would come galloping from California with anti humanist green austerity fanatics, Silicon Valley libertarian technocrats, and good old boy white supremacists in one incoherent force.
Declan
Interesting discussion on this one.
I’m reminded of the lyrics to ‘Gillis Mountain’ by the Rankin Family:
“On our way up Gillis Mountain
On that sunny summer day
There were spruce trees growing on the fields
Where our forefathers once made hay,”
It seems that, in so many respects, the most advanced societies are in retreat. Like the Gillis Mountain in the song, I grew up in land that had once been within the sphere of human cultivation and expansion, but had since mostly seen humanity retreat away. I remember my surprise as a child when we visited another part of the province where farms were actually still worked instead of sitting mostly, if not entirely, abandoned.
Technological progress has slowed in the advanced economies, the willingness/ability of people to raise children has fallen well below what is needed to maintain the population, the hinterlands are increasingly abandoned (aside from a few select areas), with paved roads reverting to dirt, fields left untended, buildings and infrastructure worn and aging, the population supported by transfers from the central areas.
Within the central areas, infrastructure fails to keep up with the crowds of people who have no alternative, the dream of the detached house and the car is replaced by ever smaller condos and car sharing (if that) and people made surly by their long commutes, insecure jobs, pay that fails to keep up with expenses and stressed out lives look for someone to take their anger out on.
Is it that we lost our will to keep expanding, pace Jessica above? Studies suggest that economic growth past a certain point of GDP/capita doesn’t being any additional happiness.
Is is that ‘true growth’ (whatever that means) beyond a certain point is simply beyond our inherent means as a species given our inability to deal with collective action problems and suppress corruption. Or is that the ever-present ‘war of all against all’ (in Le Pen’s words) corrodes everything in its path including our morality, our traditions and our institutions?
Or, in a world with a trillion pounds of humanity, is there simply not enough room to do anything/much more without being overwhelmed by blowback or are there simply too many resources needing to be diverted to mitigating the impacts of our current economy?
Is it that the period through the 70’s marked our exploitation of all the gains that could be made from the transition to the oil age, and stagnation since then reflects our inability to come up with a better, or even equivalent resource. Recent decades show energy use stagnating or declining across most advanced countries, but it doesn’t seem like people really no longer would *like* to travel all over the world, drive big fancy (flying if possible) cars, have enormous houses and so on, if they were given the chance, economically.
Are we simply following a well worn process of ethical decay, as set out by Plato in ‘The Republic’, where democracy (following oligarchy and feudalism) marks a state where people’s lack of discipline and unwillingness to be bound by any constraint, leads first to totalitarianism and then collapse? It’s hard to read Plato’s description of how morality decays as civilization goes along and not feel a chill of recognition with our own society and our past. Try reading speeches from politicians from 50, 100, 150, 300, even 2000 years ago and compare to what you will hear from politicians today, the comparison does not flatter us, trust me.
Is it that the medium is the message, and the message of TV (cool medium couch potato passivity and tolerance) is being replaced by the message of the Internet (hot medium anger, divisiveness and elimination of respect for authority)? I remember (way back) when I first received a usenet account in undergrad and it came with a warning against all sorts of uncivilized behaviours. In my naivety at the time, I was puzzled, even insulted by this, thinking – do they think we are all barbarians? – but of course all the behaviours warned about then (trolling, flaming, etc.) are now so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice them any more much.
Well, it beats me, but things sure do seem to be moving in an ominous direction these days, almost no matter where you look. Existing and coming troubles seem, if anything, overdetermined.
Peter*
@Bill
I think Trump is a much more transformational force than many people are willing to admit. He has shown that the Crooks and Liars Political Class are nothing more than parasites and the parasites are scurrying around like cockroaches when the lights come on. This election has been transformed from a boring Party placement exercise into a bloody cage-fight with the elites of all persuasions freaking out because the People/Mob might have some say in its outcome.
His rhetoric may be rude and crude but many people are fed up with the PC BS they are fed daily by the Parties and their minions. They call him a fascist for wanting to restrict Muslim travel into the US while the congress almost unanimously begins the same process with new visa requirements. He may be wrong about many things but he is honest, unlike any of the Political Class, about what he thinks and people are responding to that, his poll numbers increased after this latest incident.
If you are looking for a neo-Fascist HRC is a prime example and possibly a psychopath also even if she uses Liberal PC language to cover her priorities.
Jessica
Declan,
Where did you grow up that agricultural land is no longer being worked?
If the medium is the message, I would suggest that the message of the Internet is not anger per se, but fragmentation. Some of those fragments are angry ones. Others are “I don’t want to know, more cute kitten pictures, please”.
Lisa
Jessica: “One seemingly minor, but possibly crucial point of disagreement: I don’t think the oil shock was actually that critical.”.
I agree. That ‘shock’ was more like 9/11, it was used politically to justify a return to pre ’45 social and economic policies (heck pre Adam Smith) . It wasn’t actually that big a deal, some countries struggled for a bit, some made real bad decisions for awhile, but in the end the there were two answers (one good and one bad): (a) improve energy efficiency, especially the use of oil (b) find other sources, like the North Sea.
Japan got through that ‘shock’ quite quickly because it went on a massive efficiency drive.
gnokgnoh : ‘built on cheap oil’. Actually if you check the numbers and either on an inflation adjusted measure or relative to average weekly earnings the cheapest periods of oil were the mid 80s through to the 90s and now. Oil pre that time was actually pretty expensive in the world, it appeared cheap in the US because of low direct taxes and massive cross subsidies (hence its horrible energy efficiency).
‘Neo-liberalism has failed’, who is this ‘we’ Kimo Sabe? The fact is that it has been incredibly successful…for the elites.
if you dump the nonsense that this is some sort of ‘economic’ theory and look at it as political/social ideology virtually every political aim has been achieved. There are a few remnants like bits of the NHS to kill off, but they are nearly there.
Slowly people are realising the ‘political’ part (taken long enough, sigh) but even now the ‘social’ part is largely ignored. By its very design it encourages sociopathy, in fact in virtually every ‘model’ it uses there is the underlying assumption that every person acts in that way. Those models are then used to create actual societal systems.
Yes the dominance of the economic elites is a key aim and has been achieved, but so is the very foundation of human interactions. In a very real sense it has attempted to create a ‘new economic person’ by social engineering, sociopathic, short term thinking, cruel, a world of winners and losers…where those who are seen as ‘weak’ become endless victims of the powerful, essentially playthings for their amusement. ‘There is no such thing as society’ as Thatcher stated.
Take a simple model for illustration, that horrible school bully many remember. Under neo-liberal social thought he (nearly always a he) is feted at school, patted on the back by teachers, given school awards, held up as a role model to others, those who try to stop him are punished. Then he leaves school with ringing endorsements and gets a very good job…and carries on from success to success……. At every point cruelty to others is rewarded, by giving them more power and more people to be cruel to.
And cruelty for cruelty’s sake is an aim, for a fair proportion of the population (at least 25%) the suffering of others is actually enjoyable to them. Just like the dark secret of bullies, they enjoy what they do. To have the power over someone else and make them suffer is real fun.
Think of this as a ‘social wage’.
Fiction? There was a Canadian study recently examining this and the bullies were the happiest people in the school ..and tragically nowadays, the most highly regarded by others.
Where and when I grew up, bullies were largely seen as scum.. how far we have fallen.
You just have to look at many policies undertaken (and advocated and supported) in most countries these days and they make no sense whatsoever, except as to deliberately create suffering to those perceived of as weak. Enormous amounts of money, time and resources are spent on this aim. At just about every point where a cheaper, kinder alternative could be applied the more expensive and crueler one is chosen. And it never ends, those weak keep getting more and more piled on them, ever greater restrictions and petty (and not so petty) cruelties being applied (eg Greece, US nonwhite people or Australian boat people).
Of course there is a counter reaction to this, eg Sanders and Corbyn. But this is really at the last moment now. they are probably the last chance to avoid totalitarianism and/or total economic collapse …or nuclear war.
* Notes in the Margin:
Social wage is very important, another dark secret.
If we take the US white working (and increasingly middle) class males where their (mimicking the USSR) death rates are skyrocketing, they have been hammered in two ways, their economic wages have been crushed and the social wage of their perceived superior societal position (and carte blanch to inflict petty cruelty, remember that fun part again) over women, LGBTI, nonwhites, etc has been perceived by them as being eroded as well.
Sadly many in privileged positions see equal rights as less rights for them. In a sense this is very true, they lose the ‘right’ to be cruel to others, the fact that so many jump up and down fighting against equal rights is very telling.
Trump is clever in that he is not promising any real improvement in their economic wages, but on their social ones. To return those cis/white/etc males back to their perceived socially privileged position.
He is more clever than the other GOP contenders, because they have sold their souls to the Christian religious extremists, which even in the US form only a minority of the white working/middle class males, with many policies that they abhor.
This is a viable political strategy, not promising that ‘you’ will actually get any better, but that ‘they’ will get worse relative to you. Add in promised lots of cruelty to ‘them’ and you have a winner.
In the end there will be a stark choice for the US, Sanders or Trump, with two distinct societal models on offer. I expect the white working/middle males to mostly vote for Trump and everyone else (and fortunately a majority) for Sanders.
The real risk for Sanders is from the Democratic party sabotaging him to let Trump in. In the end, most of the Dem elites (representing the economic elites) will agree far more with Trump.
As for HRC? Low probability but if she makes it then she will be the last President as the chance of nuclear war then approaches unity. Either Trump or Sanders could quite easily stumble into war, but HRC will most definitely actively seek it.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Lisa was making sense to me until she declared that Sanders stands a better chance of receiving the Democratic nomination than Clinton. Why would that be?
As for anyone starting nuclear war–the elites would die, too. They may not give a flying duck about anyone besides themselves, but they give a whole flock of flying ducks about themselves. If one does start, it’ll come from a 1983-type misunderstanding, not from a deliberate start.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Clarification (sorry, Ian, but we need an edit feature–then I wouldn’t need to make so many posts.):
Lisa’s post made sense to me, OTHER than making Sanders the favorite in the Democratic horse race. I still find it mostly a good, sensible post.
Declan
“Declan,
Where did you grow up that agricultural land is no longer being worked?
If the medium is the message, I would suggest that the message of the Internet is not anger per se, but fragmentation. Some of those fragments are angry ones. Others are “I don’t want to know, more cute kitten pictures, please”.”
Grew up in Central Ontario. Used to toboggan through the (abandoned, but still there) corn stalks in the winter… but there are lots of other places where this is the case. Gillis Mountain is in Eastern Canada, for example.
Yes, fragmentation is part of the message of the media for sure. As for anger, just for fun, I googled ‘youtube kittens’ and the most popular comment on the first hit that came up was “WHO THE HELL DISLIKES KITTENS???” (all caps in the original – First response, ‘Obama’). People may try to escape the anger on the internet, but it’s in your face, even on kitten videos.
Can you imagine someone screaming the word ‘Hell’ on Mr. Rogers or The Friendly Giant?
Jeff Wegerson
Yes much of New England and I presume eastern Canada has reverted back to forest after the plowing of the prairies. But “abandoned cornstalks” does not indicate abandoned farm land quite the contrary.
Jeff Wegerson
The “medium is the message” coined by McLuhan mostly refers to his ideas of hot versus cold media. Print and TV were hot as the receiver had to fill in a lot of blanks from their own imagination whereas film with its copious detail already present was cold In that sense the fragmentation of the Internets, and here the plural makes sense, would illustrate its ability to be a true multi-media of hots and colds.
Jeff Wegerson
I was about to suggest to @V Arnold that the edit feature here is called rereading before hitting submit. But I see I missed a period and capitalized internets.
someofparts
“Until the developed world’s sanctioned intellectuals (as opposed to pariahs like myself and my ilk) and their masters come to grip with these facts, the population will continue to turn elsewhere.”
fwiw – http://symbalitics.blogspot.com/2015/11/challenging-oligarchy.html
Lisa
Ivory Bill Woodpecker : re Sanders. Oh, hence my “Democrats sabotaging’ statement.
The issue is whether or not they can sabotage him before the nomination or afterwards. My guess is that they will try, but probably fail for the nomination, he’s got a pretty good chance.. Then they will work hard to sabotage the the election.
“1983-type misunderstanding,” Well we are close to (or at) that now. HRC will push that well past the ’83 point to actual military conflict, at first conventional then nuclear..
Yes the elites want to protect themselves, but they have their own fragmentations. The ones that count on this, that have their hands on those decision levers, are sure they (a) it will not happen because Russia will back down/be beaten conventionally or (b) The US can win a nuclear exchange.
Yep the Wall St elites do not want that to happen, but they are far too greedy and stupid to do anything about it or even really understand it, so the neo-con type elites are in the driving seat.
Take the GOP candidates and HRC and all their war talk…see any reduction in money from the elites over that? Nope. If they were really concerned those most aggressive would have all the money pulled from them. HRC would be begging on the street, instead of her being showered by elite money.
In fact it is the two semi-independent fundng ones that are the most ‘dovish’.
Never ever depend on the economic elites being rational or sensible, they are not and never have been, especially as regards war. They are too full of hubris to think it can affect them personally, except to make them richer.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Uh, Hillary is General Jill D. Ripper? Oooookayyyyyy… 🙄
Lisa
Ivory Bill Woodpecker: Lol, good one. If she ever makes a comment about ‘precious bodily fluids’ then ‘duck and cover’.
Jeff Wegerson
I’m not saying Sanders can’t win nom. But dem delegates are distributed proportionally and Clinton likely has a strong lock on super dels. Obama’s team caught Clinton’s team by surprise last time. Not this time.
So military geeks out there. Compare and contrast the radiation levels between depleted uranium and tactical nukes. What the U.S.left and Russia migkt drop on the Turks in Iraq. Or do we not want to go there. We being blog commenters.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
The Democratic Establishment caught Clinton’s team by surprise when they put their thumbs on the scale for Obama’s team.
FIFY.
Jeff Wegerson
So the dem establishment might do that again you think?
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I don’t know. To make any kind of prediction, I would need to know why the Democratic Party establishment found HRC so unacceptable in 2008.
Lisa
Tick, tick,, tick…
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/11/cornering-russia-risking-world-war-iii/
“Cohen again: “The false idea [has taken root] that the nuclear threat ended with the Soviet Union: In fact, the threat became more diverse and difficult. This is something the political elite forgot. It was another disservice of the Clinton Administration (and to a certain extent the first President Bush in his re-election campaign) saying that the nuclear dangers of the preceding Cold War era no longer existed after 1991. The reality is that the threat grew, whether by inattention or accident, and is now more dangerous than ever.””
“Russia’s call to co-operate with Western states against the scourge of ISIS; its low-key and carefully crafted responses to such provocations as the ambush of its SU-24 bomber in Syria; and President Putin’s calm rhetoric, are all being used by Washington and London to paint Russia as a “paper tiger,” whom no one needs fear.
In short, Russia is being offered only the binary choice: to acquiesce to the “benevolent” hegemon, or to prepare for war.”
V. Arnold
@ Lisa
December 11, 2015
Yes. And this is not understood by the western ubermenschen ([false] super-men).
Which is why I’m not optimistic about the immediate future; the west is delusional at best and impotent in the end…
Ten Bears
Fascinating.
Chiron
The EU becoming a federal country is that last chance for Europe to regain relevance, I actually see the world very different. More countries will unite, North and South Korea union, United Ireland inside the EU, Quebec joining the EU while the rest of Canada rejoins the UK and West Indies, etcetera…. the future is more unions between close countries.
someofparts
As to why the U.S. turned to neoliberalism after the oil shocks of the 70s, there is no need to speculate. Rick Perstein has documented the entire sorry spectacle in great, lengthy detail. His histories very much include a breakdown of how the soon-to-be oligarchs laid the groundwork for their takeover decades before their hour of opportunity arrived. Kevin Phillips also documented these transitions in a good bit of detail.
Jan Wiklund
No, it didn’t have anything to do with the oil shock.
It was simply that the postwar economy built on mass markets of cars, aircraft and household equipment. At a certain level of market saturation you can’t go on with that, you have to find out something new. And they didn’t. So the economy slowed down.
Yes, the environmental movement did. It suggested to replace oil with solar panels and replace car ownership with decent public transport and a settlement pattern adapted to that. But that was met with vehement opposition from the ruling oil-and-car combine. And the political elite hurried to comply.
So we didn’t have the upsurge we had when the railways were built, when electricity was introduced, and when the car ownership was spread out.
That is one way of looking at it, the middle-run way, the way which is building on Kondratiev cycles. The other way, the long-run way, deals with the rise and fall of civilizations. Any civilization rises as a consequence of technological spurts and introduction of markets for consumer goods, which make everyone richer, freer and more equal. It falls as a consequence of factor markets, i.e. markets for land, labour and capital, which tend to increase inequality and make the majority poorer and less able to sustain consumer markets. You can see that happen when speculation takes the place of production and rich people begin to buy land instead of investering in industry. That is what happens now.
I don’t say the future is settled, though. The same development was in full speed in the 20s, but all the havoc it brought made the rulers decide, in Bretton Woods 1944, about brining the factor market under a political regime that favoured production. That brought us 30 years of progress – but at last US and UK broke the agreement and let the finance markets loose again.
I don’t say they can’t be reined in again, as they were in 1944.
someofparts
What’s up with all the comments from 2015?
someofparts
Nevermind. I checked Ian’s post more carefully and see what happened.
GlassHammer
To adhere to an ideology (Neoliberalism in this case) you have to become a certain kind of person. You must undergo a transformation or drop away from it, sticking with it while resisting it would drive you mad.
This is why talking someone out of an ideology once they have been in it for a significant length of time is nearly impossible, it is too deeply embedded within them. No line of argument is up to the task, no appeal to their interest is sufficient, speaking to their morality is not compelling, and no sensory data (what they can see, touch, hear, etc…) is enough. If they fall away from the ideology it won’t be because of anything you said or did.
Your only option is to keep them out of it to begin with, to prevent the transformation from occurring. This is why current ideologies are vehemently opposed to rival ideologies and outright public rejection. Halting converts is their biggest weakness.
Until enough of the public is socially reinforcing the shunning of Neoliberalism it’s going to stick around and make the emergence of an alternative difficult. We are nowhere near that point because most people are not only unaware of its harm they are unaware of its existence and influence.
bruce wilder
@GlassHammer
the thing about ideologies is that most people who adhere to them do not actually believe in them so much as they simply learn to swim in them. the ideology becomes like a language, complete with dialect and registers, that convey meaning in routine social interaction. to argue someone out of neoliberalism is like trying to argue her out of French.
gnokgnoh
Bruce, totally agree. It’s more than just a language, it’s a religion, in this case the religion of perpetual growth. You can change either by necessity or will, but learning a new language and becoming conversant in it requires necessity. You need to live there for awhile. Otherwise, it’s just academic. The loss of religion requires a rupture (it happened to me) strong enough to cause you to change your life, your habits.
Anthony K Wikrent
“Until the developed world’s sanctioned intellectuals (as opposed to pariahs like myself and my ilk) and their masters come to grip with these facts, the population will continue to turn elsewhere.”
One of the ideas of the world’s sanctioned intellectuals is that authoritarianism and nationalism are joined at the hip. This idea make me very uneasy. Because if national institutions of government are not the best means yet devised to represent and put into effect the will of masses of people, then what institutions are better?
It’s easy to understand, after World Wars One and Two, the revulsion against the nation state cultivated and propagated by western intellectuals and elites. The United Nations is a great idea, as an institution of global cooperation among sovereign nation states. But as an instrument of world government?
I have grave doubts and misgiving about any scheme for world government? What if a one world government simply decides, and is backed up by the desire of the vast majority of the world’s population, that in order to solve global climate change, the Chinese must relinquish any nationalist claim to the deposits of rare earth minerals within China? Would that be “fair” even if there were some institutional means for the world’s majority to express this desire? If it is not fair, what world institutions would adjudicate the competing claims and counterclaims, arguments and counterarguments? Who decides what “fair” is?
I simply do not see any alternative to the institution of the sovereign nation state. The neoliberal attempts to force that institution to conform to the idea that economic markets are better arbiters of resource decisions than political institutions, and the dismal results we all decry, only reinforce my point. In fact, how can you be against neoliberalism and against nationalism at the same time?
The problem with nationalism arises when it shades over into xenophobia and jingoism. I’m not sure there is any way to guard against this happening except through a thorough civics, history, critical thinking education provided to everyone. We have clearly failed in this. Not just USA apparently, but a bunch of nations. My conclusion remains that what is needed above all is a paradigm shift in elite and popular thinking that incorporates republicanism, including the ideas of consciously acting on the stage of world history as both a national patriot and a world citizen, and a commonwealth of humanity. I greatly fear that western intellectuals and activists are not up to this task. Both conservative and socialist theorists appear to be brain dead at this point.
GlassHammer
“the thing about ideologies is that most people who adhere to them do not actually believe in them so much as they simply learn to swim in them.” – Bruce wilder
Yes, given some time a person does not have to make a conscious effort to stay in an ideology. It requires less effort and thought as it becomes a lived habit. (Liberals and conservatives are not constantly running through a mental checklist to make sure they are properly adhering to their ideology.) When we talk about people not updating their priors we are bemoaning the automatic process that governs them.
What’s more problematic than one troublesome ideology is that people operate with multiple ideologies running them at the same time and the interplay between them is extremely messy. (Scratch a Democrat and you will find a utilitarian.)
bruce wilder
gnokgnoh, ideologies let people coordinate their behavior with others (especially of their own class) and let them feel good about the part they are playing, even when they are practicing cruelty and (social) stupidity.
there are also elements of a theory of political action embedded in an ideology — notions of political cause-and-effect, of good and evil — but as idealism fades into hypocrisy, the fact that people continue to mouth the words long after they believe them, begins to matter more and more.
it also matters, if along with the moral hypocrisy or ennui, confidence in social mechanisms fades. late neoliberalism has begun to act recklessly, as if war or financial collapse remain unlikely. at a moment in time when every indicator i can see screams for radical and fundamental reform, the political establishment in Washington stumbles forward as if nothing needs to change
someofparts
I’m recently back in touch with a relation I haven’t seen much over the last two decades. It turns out to be someone immersed in neolib ideology as described above. Frustrating and fascinating.
First conversation it came up, he had never even heard the term neoliberal. Shocking to me, but makes sense that someone doesn’t know there is a name for the ideology they live in.
Latest development is an agreement never to talk about politics because he finds any criticism of Obama unbearable and thinks voting Green is voting for the tooth fairy.
Meanwhile, it is stressed for my careful edification that the NYT is the holy grail of honest, responsible information, while it is apparently shocking that I read Greenwald and Yves Smith and watch Rogan. They are wisely understood to be no better than Breitbart and anyone who reads them is an ignorant hayseed.
I read that impressive post at interfluidity about politics as a business. I know that my relative, and the nice PMC set he lives among, are kept clueless about where their wealth really comes from. I also know that it is easy for them and that is the part where my empathy fails me.
To me it looks hard. For me it would be hard to only read the NYT and never read NC. But the obvious answer is that when my relation hangs out with the people in his cohort all of them are close-minded in the same ways so it feels natural and reassuring.
It feels wierd but clarifying to understand that all the prosperous people around me are blind like that, but it makes sense. That’s why they are jumpy the same way prize livestock is around human handlers, because they have no idea where they will be taken or what will be done to them and they know it. But their handlers have taken lavish care of them so far, and their wild cousins are being slaughtered, so it’s a good bet.
Hugh
Deck chairs on the Titanic. This group wants them here. That group wants them there. That’s their world. That’s how they see their world: Who gets to say where the deck chairs go. Icebergs are not part of their world. Some will deny their existence even staring straight at them. Some will say the danger of icebergs is much exaggerated, and besides an iceberg is unlikely to affect them. A few may hit the roof about icebergs, but they won’t agree among themselves and they will be ignored or ridiculed by both sides of the deck chair community.
Substitute Republicans and Democrats, Labor and Conservatives, Europhiles and Brexiteers, they create and inhabit a context. And if a problem, even an existential one, does not exist in that context, for them it really doesn’t exist.
GlassHammer
“never even heard the term neoliberal” – someofparts
In the minds of most Americans, 1980-2000 was a period in which nothing changed politically or economically.
“NYT is the holy grail of honest” – someof parts
Yeah it’s like the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where staring at the holy grail of honest results in your face melting off.
GlassHammer
“Deck chairs on the Titanic” – Hugh
Nothing can be allowed to end, even the shuffling of deck chairs.
It would stop to the “constant now”, the “endless present”, the “midlife crisis” of our nation.
The moment when the past is reconciled and the future revealed can never come to be.
No, America’s “midlife crisis” should just continue for a few more decades.
nihil obstet
As the White Star owners and designers said, “God himself couldn’t sink this ship”. Some advertisements for the Titanic’s voyage noted that 40% fewer lifeboats mean 40% more deck space. When you’ve paid a lot of money for that deck space, of course you have the right to say what goes where.
different clue
About the next-few-decades future . . . the China PartyGov perhaps think they can hold China together with enough force and control and surveillance. Time will tell.
Water shortage? China controls the headwaters of several major East and SouthEast Asian Rivers. The China PartyGov will decide who gets what water. The shortage will be divided among the downriver countries.
About a threat to Canada from American violence and violent Americans . . . . Canada can protect itself ( or at least try) by offering itself to China as a protectorate. In return for sending significant amounts of food and water to China, the China PartyGov will deter the AmeriGov from mounting an organized invasion or takeover or protectorization of Canada.
If the Americonomy collapses into mere anarchy, then Canada will face millions of hungry desperate Americans surging over the border. If the Canadians are prepared to let China kill all the American border-surgers at the border in Canadians’ name, then perhaps China can protectorize Canada against that threat too. Mexico and Central America will also be collapsed enough that millions of Mexicans and Central Americans will try entering Canada too. There won’t be enough organized “America” left to stop them along the way. If this scenario plays out that way.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
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mago
different clue: time to give the pipe a rest.
someofparts
diff clue – it did sound like you were channeling Cormack McCarthy toward the end there, but it doesn’t seem out of place in this community
I just spotted this and I was surprised at how much it cheered me up.
https://www.labornotes.org/2020/08/overturning-austerity-101-californias-prop-15-will-tax-rich
It seems big unions and local organizers have been working for a decade to craft something that will be an antidote to Prop 13.
Prop 13 is a dogwhistle for me. I remember when it passed. It felt terrible watching all the things that started changing then. It has been sad and hard living with those changes over a lifetime.
But if Prop 15 passed and it was a belleweather the way Prop 13 was, that would be something to look forward to.
Gaianne
Good to see this essay re-published.
Think about what has changed in five years. People’s moods are much more ugly. The mood of the media to whatever it disapproves of is much more ugly as well, while the adulation of neo-liberalism becomes even more strident.
Everyday “news” makes less and less sense, and people are sliding into incoherence.
The deterioration of everyday life continues and accelerates.
We are right on track for the disasters described–back in 2015–which yet lie before us.
Food, shelter, water: These things matter. How well can you manage them? How well are you prepared? People are not doing enough–then what? You are not doing enough, either–you know this. But what can you do? It may not be possible to do enough–yet you either succeed or fail: Excuses mean nothing.
Success is more likely if you can form competent, working groups. This is hard: People do not want to do this. They do not think it is needful. They don’t want to think about it. One by one, people come around: Too little, too late. But no complaints: Just bring them in as you can, and do the work.
This is why it is grim. The best you can reasonably hope for now is to choose actions that acquit you. Success per se lies beyond reasonable hope, and requires the benevolence of things outside our knowledge and understanding.
–Gaianne
different clue
@mago,
Thank you for your interest in my welfare.
@someofparts,
The essay itself is offers an open door to Cormackoidally McCarthiform trend-forward envisioning.
I think my speculative predictions for China are very reality based. Our host raised the specter of American violence against Canada for Canadian resources. If he truly considers that to be a live possibility over the next 30-40 years, then perhaps some hard cold dispassionate thinking about how to protect Canada from America would be in order. If he really feels that America will really need to be protected from. I don’t think America will be that kind of threat and menace to Canada. But then I would think that, wouldn’t I? Being American and all . . .
Anyway, we could still avert the worst pain of the worst runaway breakdown, if everybody did all the right things in all the right ways for as long as it takes to slow the decay process down to a stop-in-place.
nihil obstet
A society based on private property depends on stability. What happens to our food supply when privately owned farms no longer produce reliably because of drought? What happens to individual security when his home goes permanently under water? What we’ve been doing as these natural disasters increase is provide public assistance to the individuals to put them back to pre-disaster wealth. That will overwhelm the social resources and eventually we’ll have to figure out how to produce and distribute resources in an unstable world. My imagination fails to get beyond neo-feudalism or socialism. I, of course, would welcome the latter. But I don’t think I’m seeing enough concern for what kind of social framework we’ll need.
elkern
I agree that we’re headed for a very painful period of Collapse, but not with the analysis of the failure of Globalism.
IMO, the main problem with Globalism has been that we (humans in Western “Civilization”, represented – badly – by our Governments) stupidly out-sourced the control of the process to the Banksters, who – surprise! – chose to suck all they could out of both sides (Developing Countries and previously Advanced Economies). And that “choice” – Banksters controlling Globalization – largely occurred because of a prior “choice”, the Reagan/Thatcher Revanch, where US & British Oligarchs clawed back power lost since the collapse of Monarchism. Big Money controls the politics, so our Governments allowed Big Money to control Globalization.