Sunday, August 19, 2018

Yanis Varoufakis — On the Deep State – an audio essay in seven parts

Is there a Deep State in our western liberal democracies? If so, is it a conspiracy or something more ‘interesting’ than that? These are questions that the Left has been traditionally engaged with, especially when facing undercover campaigns to prevent progressives from winning power or, on occasion, to unseat or destabilise left-wing governments. However, more recently, the Alt-Right has begun waging a war of words against the Deep State, with Donald Trump and his supporters doing so most boisterously.
Is this a figment of the imagination on those on the extremities of the political spectrum (left and right), as this BBC Radio 4 program ends up concluding? Or is the Deep State something real, tangible – a clear and present danger for democracy? In this audio essay I argue that the Deep State is inevitable in contemporary, corporate, financialised capitalism and constitutes democracy’s greatest foe.
After exploring the space between markets and formal state institutions in which the Deep State ‘lives’ as a Private-Public Technocracy, I outline the four manufacturing ‘processes’ that constitute it:
  • Manufacturing prices (i.e. subverting the very market mechanism that capitalism is supposed to rely on)
  • Manufacturing desires
  • Manufacturing money (e.g. the black magic by which central and private banks conjure up the supply of money)
  • Manufacturing consent
Touching upon the great misconception of the establishment’s liberal individualist political philosophy regarding the limits of the state (and what it means to be an autonomous individual), I define the Deep State as a conspiracy without conspirators, as a grand design without a designer (i.e. not too dissimilar to the manner in which Darwinian evolution produces complex systems without a grand designer, or how – according to Adam Smith – a market regulates supply and demand without any human actually regulating them).
Finally, I return to the 1920s and 1930s, in order to highlight the manner in which Donald Trump and the new Nationalist-Fascist International is copying Goebbels and Mussolini in attacking the Deep State only in order to take it over and use it against those whose votes and attention they seek to appropriate.
 Lastly, I put forward a radical idea of what to do about the Deep State: Nothing! Progressives must simply fight for democracy, reason and humanism and, as long as we manage to unite across countries and to break down antiquated party-political divisions, the Deep State will recede.

9 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“subverting the very market mechanism that capitalism is supposed to rely on”

There is no such thing as “capitalism” either...

Both “deep state” and “capitalism” are figures of speech representing 2 abstractions created by non Science Degree people to help them think about what material systems oriented people are actually doing..

Noah Way said...

A primer on the Deep State and Shadow Government.

https://www.fortheloveoffreedom.net/

Tom Hickey said...

A primer on the Deep State and Shadow Government.

And Kevin Shipp not only has an impressive bio with the CIA but also holds a couple of science degrees.

Matt Franko said...

Yeah try submitting this beauty beauty right here in a science field:

“Manufacturing money (e.g. the black magic by which central and private banks conjure up the supply of money)”

You’d get laughed right out of the discipline....

Matt Franko said...

Moron 1: “Hey! How are we gonna pay for it?!?!?”

Moron 2: “I know! Let’s conjure up some money by black magic!”

Noah Way said...

Moron 1: “Hey! How are we gonna pay for it?!?!?”

Moron 2: “I know! Let’s conjure up some money by black magic!”



2008: Investment bank fraud and malfeasance in cooperation with insurers are rating agencies collapses the economy.

The government - which is $10 trillion in debt - bails out the banks with $14 trillion.

Where did that money come from?

Abracadabra!

Tom Hickey said...

Ledgerdemain.

Actually "ledgerdemain" is a common misspelling of "legerdemain" meaning "sleight of hand" stage magic.

Pun intended on accounting.

Matt Franko said...

Hey douche, when they “conjured up” the additional $1t of Reserve Assets in 2008 “to lend out!” the “money!!” they put the depository system in violation of their regulatory ratio and halted operation of the credit system...

sidchem said...

I think if the deep state or the deep shmate that tries to keep Trump from ending civilization through his denial of climate change, I say bring it on. Trump is a threat to civilization, others may be too, but in his case its quite acute.

Playing the fiddle while California and the rest of the world burns down will not accomplish anything.