Bill Mitchell — Progressive political leadership is absent but required

One of the themes that has emerged in the discussions of the British Labour Party Fiscal Credibility Rule (which should be renamed the Fiscal Incredulous Rule) is when is the right time for a political party to show leadership and start educating the public on new ideas. The Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) project has been, in part, about educating people even if our ideas have been strongly resisted by the mainstream. The mainstream (New Keynesian) paradigm in economics is degenerative (meaning it has little empirical validation) and eventually it will fade into historical obscurity. For many of us that cannot come quickly enough.

The defenders of the Rule argue that progressive politicians have to tread carefully or else the amorphous financial markets will turn on them and destroy their initiatives. The problem is that by kowtowing to the City or Wall Street, the progressive political forces become captured and redundant. Witness the electoral demise of social democratic parties over the last several decades.

The conditions are ripe (see below) for a courageous head-on attack on these financial market elites and educate the public so that they allow elected governments to legislate for all rather than serving the interests of the elites, which has become the norm over the last several decades. The problem is that progressive political forces are also taking advice from mainstream economists who use the tools of neoliberalism. The upshot is that progressive political leadership is absent but desperately required....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Progressive political leadership is absent but requiredBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — The conservative polity is fracturing – an opportunity for the Left

Regular readers will know that I have spent a lot of time writing about the demise of the Left political parties as they became subsumed with neoliberal economic ideology, which blurred the political landscape as the ‘centre’ moved to the Right. That topic was the focus of our current book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, September 2017). The neoliberal infestation has left these parties with declining electoral support, fractured internal organisations and cultures, and a seeming inability to abandon their flawed economic narratives. But there is a mirror image to this demise and that is playing out on the conservative side of politics. In Australia in the last week (but building for years) the far right conservative elements from within the government have brought down their own leader and our Prime Minister in a spiteful clash of ideologies between the more moderate elements in their party and the extremes out on the right. The internal tensions that drove this suicidal mission is being played out around the world. Think about the way that Trump is compromising the Republican party. Think about how Brexit is splitting Tory ranks in Britain. And so on. The problem for the conservatives is that citizens are realising that the neoliberal economic approach has failed to deliver on its promises. And that economic model is ‘owned’ by the conservatives. The adoption of neoliberal economics by social democratic parties is not part of their DNA. It is largely because their ranks have been infested by careerists who have come from the ‘elites’ and have little resonance with workers. The gaps in the policy space that these fractures have created is being occupied by extremist groups. It will be much easier for progressive parties to reclaim that space than it will be for the conservatives who are in the process of a death spiral. But to do that, the social democratic movements has to abandon every vestige of neoliberal economics – the concepts, policies and language and framing. That is the challenge.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The conservative polity is fracturing – an opportunity for the Left
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Graham Barnes — Democracy In Chains : A review of Nancy MacLean’s book subtitled ‘The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America’

The book is not an easy read but it is compelling. The last 80 pages are notes and bibliographies and the text is densely referenced. It is academic in its nature but determinedly so – as if MacLean knew that the neoliberals would come after her (as indeed they have) when it was published, attempting to undermine her thesis and destroy her reputation; and that providing links to all the background material and quotes was a vital defence against such future attempts to trash her work.

A number of sub-strategies reoccur throughout the book and are worth summarising, because each on its own may seem to an extent innocuous and/ or reasonable and the casual observer may not recognise them as part of a more sinister whole:

– the devaluation of the public service ethos.…

– the fragmentation of non-elite society...

– disempowering universal franchise…

– the move to privatize education.…

– the avalanche of thinktanks, separate but interconnected, and persistently available to mainstream media….

The program of conservatives is based on distrust of democracy —social and political liberalism — as the tyranny of the majority. The plan is to gain control of democracy though institutional dominance so as to impose economic liberalism as a social and political standard.

Economic liberalism tends toward hierarchical organization based on wealth, as the standard of "liberalism" in order to sidetrack political liberalism understood as government of the people, by the people and for the people.

However, this is not economic liberalism as such but its imposition though control of the levers of power through capturing the governmental apparatus. This is neoliberalism as the harnessing of government rather than excluding government as a force from the economy and society, which is the objective of anarchism. Neoliberalism is about using government control though control of the levers of power in a society.

The neoliberal objective is plutocracy, a plutonomy ruled by an oligarchy of private ownership.

Somewhat disappointingly MacLean does not much discuss measures that can be taken to counter this toxic direction of travel.… She offers no possibility of incremental change, and reading between the lines seems to anticipate catharsis through catastrophe.

FEASTA
Democracy In Chains : A review of Nancy MacLean’s book subtitled ‘The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America’

Graham Barnes

See also

Salon
Historian Nancy MacLean: We’re under attack “by a right-wing machine”
Chauncey Devega

Sputnik — Society Should 'Filter' Information Based on Moral Principles - Putin

Putin puts his finger on a key issue without naming explicitly.

This is the classical question about what it means to be a good person in a good society.

Under Anglo-American liberalism, this question is not to be asked because the market is the arbiter of truth and value equates to prices. In this view, culture is based on utilitarianism, with its stimulus-response model of human behavior, and law exists chiefly to provide security and protect private property.

Traditionalism disagrees. In this view, human behavior involves moral responsibility and genuine freedom is impossible without moral responsibility.

Morality is about how people should behave, and law is about how people must and must not behave.

Morality and ethics are evolved culturally, and law is decided institutionally.

Classical conservatism is traditionalist. It looks to tradition for guidance in such matters.

Classical liberalism is rationally based. It looks to reason and evidence for justification.

Classical conservatives generally favor government taking a moral role and exerting moral authority where the need arises owing to conflict of views.

Classical liberals generally hold that this is is not a question for government to answer, although law makers must deal with it in legislating. Reason and evidence should be the guide rather than tradition and custom.

Putin is taking a liberal position for Russia, albeit traditionalist in Western liberal eyes. However, traditionalism and classical conservatism predominate strongly in Russian culture and politics.

Sputnik International
Society Should 'Filter' Information Based on Moral Principles - Putin

Also

It’s up to the creative community to filter tele-and internet content as the government’s influence in this sphere should be reduced to minimum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday at a meeting with participants in the Tavrida educational youth forum, commenting on an idea of establishing a kind of a filter for television and internet content to reduce aggressive and crime-related information that is adversely impacting the younger generation.

"What is prohibited by law must be outlawed everywhere - both in the internet and in television, and in other mass media," he stressed. "But everything else must be done only by one way - through filtering by the creative community. If the community elaborates a system of moral and ethical filters it would be right. The government’s say in this process should be if not excluded, then minimized. But better excluded."

The president called to "think together on the establishment of such mechanisms." He said he is in contacts with the CEOs of Russia’s leading television channels and with those "who influence this or that way what is going on in the internet" and these people, in his words, understand the situation and "are trying to change it for the better." "It is difficult to do it - to filter information torrents - in the present-day world. There are grounds to fear that such filtration could be ideologized and society would be stripped of the possibility to receive reliable, open and direct information," Putin added.

TASS
Putin says government’s say in filtering info content should be reduced to minimum

Robert W. Merry — Stop poking the Russian bear

New sanctions are coming, whether he wants them or not. NATO expansion and the West’s Ukraine meddling will continue. Encirclement is firmly in place.

It’s difficult to envision where this could lead, short of actual hostilities. Russia’s fundamental national interests, the ones Trump was prepared to accept, will almost certainly render such hostilities inevitable.

The National Interest
Stop poking the Russian bear
Robert W. Merry | Editor of the American Conservative

Sam Kriss — The Myth of the Alt-Left

After Trump announced the existence of the alt-left on live TV, media outlets scurried to tell the world exactly where the term emerged from. CBS explains that it “came out of the conservative media.” CNN, quoting a director at the Anti-Defamation League, describes it as a “made-up term used by people on the right.” Heavy.com writes that “the term ‘alt-left’ began being used by the online conservative media in 2016 before it slowly migrated to more mainstream conservative voices, like Fox News’ Sean Hannity.” (Hannity, who repeatedly uses the term on his TV show, seems to be getting widespread credit.) The British Telegraph newspaper, meanwhile, flatters the president with a power of logodaedaly he definitely doesn’t have, claiming the phrase was “coined by Mr Trump” himself.

None of these explanations is really true. The term “alt-left” was probably simultaneously invented hundreds or thousands of times, always bearing a slightly different meaning depending on its inventor. But up until now, the people who most forcefully pushed the idea of an alt-left weren’t Nazis or 4chan posters or anyone else in the orbit of Trump and pro-Trump Republicans trying to invent a mythical opposite to the alt-right. The alt-left is, first and foremost, a figment of centrist Democrats....

The invention of the alt-left allowed centrist liberals to pretend that something entirely different was going on: They were sandwiched between two sets of frothing fanatics who secretly had a lot in common with each other. It established their particular brand of liberalism, possibly encompassing a few “moderate Republicans,” as the only reasonable ground, besieged by alts....

Politico
The Myth of the Alt-Left
Sam Kriss

Philip Pilkington — Utilitarian Economics and the Corruption of Conservatism

Weekend reading on economic and political economy. Phil always has interesting things to say as a philosophical economist or economic philosopher.

American Affairs
Utilitarian Economics and the Corruption of Conservatism
Philip Pilkington

Brad DeLong — David Brooks: The G.O.P. Rejects Conservatism

David Brooks is wrong, I think, in his claim that the current crop of Republican politicians have no vision of American society. I think they do have a vision....

WCEG
David Brooks: The G.O.P. Rejects Conservatism
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Jada Thacker — Deep History of America’s Deep State

The idea of an elitist Deep State – erasing a “mistake” by the people – pervades current efforts to remove buffoonish President Trump, but the concept has deep historical roots dating from the Founding, writes Jada Thacker.

Does the sudden presence of an American Deep State – loosely defined as an unelected elite that manipulates the elected government to serve its own interests – pose a novel, even existential, threat to democracy?

Not exactly. The threat seems real enough, but it’s nothing new. Consider these facts: 230 years ago, an unelected group of elite Americans held a secretive meeting with an undisclosed agenda. Their purpose was not merely to manipulate lawful government in their own interests, but to abolish it altogether. In its place, they would install a radically undemocratic government – a “more perfect” government, they said – better suited to their investment portfolios.

History does not identify these conspirators as the Deep State. It calls them the Founders. The Founders did not consider themselves conspirators, but “republicans” – not in reference to any political party, but rather to their economic station in society. But their devotion to “republicanism” was transparently self-serving. A current college text, The American Journey: A History of the United States, explains though does not explicate “republican ideology”:

“Their main bulwark against tyranny was civil liberty, or maintaining the right of the people to participate in government. The people who did so, however, had to demonstrate virtue. To eighteenth century republicans, virtuous citizens were those who were focused not on their private interests but rather on what was good for the public as a whole.

“They were necessarily property holders, since only those individuals could exercise an independence of judgment impossible for those dependent upon employers, landlords, masters, or (in the case of women and children) husbands and fathers.” [Emphasis supplied]

Republicanism was a handy idea if you happened to be a master or a landlord, who were the only persons this ideology considered “virtuous” enough to vote or hold political office. Thus, “republicanism” – virtually indistinguishable from today’s “neoliberalism” – created the original Deep State in the image of the economic system it was designed to perpetuate....

The Founding Fathers were bourgeois (property-owning) liberals that held fast to the fundamental conservative principle that some are better than others and deserve to govern. The basis of classical liberalism is private ownership of property, which combined with conservatism results in a property requirement to hold office. The chief domestic adversary is "the rabble," now called "the little people."

How this was accomplished is not a comforting tale. But it cannot be related nor understood without an appreciation of the historical context in which it occurred....

The history behind the myth of American democracy.

Consortium News

Deep History of America’s Deep State

Jada Thacker, history teacher at Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, TX

Graham E. Fuller — Forget Liberalism, Let’s Redefine Conservatism

Is it time for liberals to rebrand?

Graham E. Fuller

Forget Liberalism, Let’s Redefine Conservatism

Graham E. Fuller | former senior CIA official and author of numerous books on the Muslim World

David Glasner — Why Hayek Was not a Conservative

At the end of his classic treatise The Constitution of Liberty, F. A. Hayek added a postscript entitled “Why I am not a Conservative.” Like everything he wrote, what Hayek has to say about the weaknesses of conservatism can be read with profit even by those who disagree with his arguments. The following passage, for a number of reasons, seems especially apt and relevant now, some 55 years after it was written.…

Uneasy Money
Why Hayek Was not a Conservative
David Glasner | Economist at the Federal Trade Commission

Robert Oscar Lopez — Let California Go

The American Thinker is very conservative. The author of this post identifies California with everything that is wrong with American politics and culture from the conservative point of view and recommends that California become what it already is, it's own country with greater territory, population, resources and wealth that most other countries.

I realized a long time ago that California is a bell weather for both the rest of the US and the world. It is a creative place and what begins there spreads throughout the world over time. Look to California for what the world will look like over time. This makes conservatives blanch. But separating California from the rest of the United States won't slow down the process much at all. It's what's happening.

The American Thinker
Let California Go
Robert Oscar Lopez

Reuters — China regulator to curb news that promotes 'Western lifestyles'

China is not alone. Traditional societies will not tolerate Western liberalism, which they view as "degenerate," having lost their moral compass in the pursuit of fame, fortune, power and pleasure at the expense of traditional values.

Interestingly, this reflects the view of the early Christians about Rome that the West maintained until after WWII and especially after the commercial exploitation of the Sixties counterculture and the rise of celebrity. 

What Western liberalism views as propaganda, censorship and repression, the traditional world views a preventing corruption. A significant portion of Western liberal society agrees that things have gone too far and is pushing back. It's even got a name — "culture war."

Reuters
China regulator to curb news that promotes 'Western lifestyles'
Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore

Mike Lofgren — Blaming ‘Too Much Democracy’ for Trump

The latest lament of the neocon establishment is that America is suffering from too much democracy – leading to Donald Trump – but the opposite is more to the point, how elite manipulation set this stage, explains Mike Lofgren.…

British expatriate writer Andrew Sullivan recently returned to the public eye with a piece that has aroused considerable comment, some of it reasonably on point, and some bloviatingly incoherent.

What is all the fuss about? Sullivan, in critiquing the Donald Trump phenomenon and the political factors that gave rise to it, makes a few good points, but buries them under a ridiculous premise: The culprit responsible for Trump is too much democracy, and the cure is more elite control of the political process.…

The basis of conservatism is that some are better than others and ought therefore to rule over all. Conservatives are opposed to actual democracy and what they call "democracy" is some type of oligarchy, at present plutocracy and old boy networks.

Blaming democracy is actually rather funny since there is a deficit in actual democracy in the US.

Worth reading the whole piece. Mike Lofgren is a gifted writer in addition to being experienced in US insider politics as a veteran congressional staffer (GOP).

Consortium News
Blaming ‘Too Much Democracy’ for Trump
Mike Lofgren

Tyler Cowen — What the hell is going on?

Donald Trump may get the nuclear suitcase, a cranky “park bench” socialist took Hillary Clinton to the wire, many countries are becoming less free, and the neo-Nazi party came very close to assuming power in Austria. I could list more such events.

Haven’t you, like I, wondered what is up? What the hell is going on?

I don’t know, but let me tell you my (highly uncertain) default hypothesis. I don’t see decisive evidence for it, but it is a kind of “first blast” attempt to fit the basic facts while remaining within the realm of reason.…

Marginal Revolution
What the hell is going on?
Tyler Cowen | Holbert C. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center

Elizabeth Prezza — Trump Quietly Hires a Hardcore Anti-Abortion Crusader, Christian Right Delivers Heavy Applause

Forget about Bernie fans supporting Trump. He is turning hard right to secure the base before tacking to capture the center. But Trump had already begun this strategy with his promising to appoint and Alito clone to SCOTUS, cozying with Ben Carson, and including Mario Rubio, Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin on his leaked VP shortlist. These are deal killers for progressives. 

In addition, the ones that paying closer attention realized that Trumps close political advisers are Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. Now they will be joined by John Mashburn as campaign’s policy director. 

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the prominent anti-choice organization Susan B. Anthony List, heralded the move as an “excellent hire, especially for the pro-life movement and our legislative priorities.”…

“If elected, no doubt John Mashburn will serve you well as you fulfill your campaign promises to defund Planned Parenthood, advance and sign into law the popular Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, and appoint Justices to the bench who will protect and defend the Constitution,” Dannenfelser wrote.

Progressives remember all too well how they got taken in by Obama's campaign rhetoric only to be shocked by his appointment in quick succession of Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of White House Staff, Larry Summers as Chief Economic Advisor, and Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. They were further disillusioned by the appointment of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State, as well as the retention of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. 

It's difficult to see how Trump could pivot enough to the center to attract many Bernie supporters without losing his right wing base. The dilemma Trump faces is that he cannot win without that base and he may not be able to win with it.

AlterNet
Trump Quietly Hires a Hardcore Anti-Abortion Crusader, Christian Right Delivers Heavy Applause

Elizabeth Prezza

Michael Maiello — The Republican Civil War Has Begun

You can't build a small-government movement on the backs of people you think are welfare cheats

The Rolling Stone
The Republican Civil War Has Begun

Michael Maiello

Robert Vienneau — Conservatism According to Corey Robin

The basic principles of conservatism are 1) some are better than others and 2) conserving the past, when #1 applies. Therefore, governance needs to be hierarchical and "traditional." No "risky" new experiments. 

How this is expressed results in different varieties of conservatism historically.

Thoughts On Economics

Conservatism According to Corey Robin
Robert Vienneau

Richard Bourke — Burke was no conservative

Edmund Burke, one of the great statesmen and philosophers of the 18th century, is the founder of modern conservatism. Or so it is commonly held: authorities, from Corey Robin on the left to Niall Ferguson on the right, agree that conservative ideology can be traced to this original source. The view has in fact been commonplace in the United States since the 1950s and has steadily been gaining currency across the globe. Admirers of Burke’s ‘traditionalism’ can be found in numerous countries, as different as the Netherlands and Japan. Yet there is something deeply misleading about this view of conservatism’s origins. Burke was a reforming Whig of the 18th-century British parliament whose ideas were not developed with modern politics in mind.

Even if we imagine Burke as our contemporary, his commitments are not in any way compatible with conservatism. For example, he was a defender of colonial rights against the British Empire during the period of the American Revolution. In lending his support to American defiance, he opposed the reigning tenets of British imperial policy and took a stand against successive ministries at Westminster. His defence of colonial rights included support for insurrection, for violent resistance against established authority. It is hard to reconcile this endorsement of revolt with what are usually regarded as conservative ideals.…

Conservatives have either ignored Burke’s support for colonial rebellion, or maintained that his career was split between two phases: an early period of support for the ‘liberal’ cause of America and a later ‘conservative’ reaction to the Revolution in France. Burke certainly changed his opinions over the course of his career, but these shifts cannot be captured by presuming a contradiction between his support for American resistance and his aversion to the revolution in France. Representations of Burke as a renegade from early idealism are based on the dogmatic assumption that the American and French revolutions were fundamentally ‘the same’. Yet for Burke these two events were absolutely different, and in fact he had good reasons for insisting on their difference.…

For anyone concerned to focus on what matters in politics, they would be better off evaluating the substance of particular issues than reaching to enlist canonical thinkers in contemporary causes by branding them with complacent and misleading categories.

Aeon
Burke was no conservative

Richard Bourke

Interesting tidbit of contemporary relevance:

Burke’s view was that Westminster confused its authority with its power. In being affronted by the audacity of the Americans, the British ministry began to fear for its own dignity. Instead of bolstering its standing by public acts of goodwill, the government resorted to shows of strength. As a result, each time Westminster tried to demonstrate its potency, it compromised its standing in the eyes of the colonists. The underlying irony was that the more the metropole opted to display its might, the more it undermined its moral authority. Imperial militancy thus led to imperial impotence.

Eric Schliesser — Trump Panic; On "the Breakdown of Trust between Elites and Base..."

Elites don't like democracy because it threatens the rule of the few, nor do conservatives trust it because it threatens rule of the rabble. These fears are now converging with the rise of populism.

This is another paradox of liberalism. Economic liberalism is incompatible with social and political liberalism.

Digressions&Impressions
Trump Panic; On "the Breakdown of Trust between Elites and Base..."
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences