Confucius is winning the Covid-19 war — Pepe Escobar

In the context of history, the primary factors that shaped Western civilization are Judaeo-Christian religion, Greek thought, Roman organization and law, and modern science. The primary factors that shaped Chinese civilization are Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, with Marxism-Leninism being a blip on the screen. This is revealed in the differences in response to crisis.

Asia Times
Confucius is winning the Covid-19 war
Pepe Escobar

The Opium War — Martin Armstrong

Short video backgrounder. 

Virtually no one in the West remembers this and those that do likely don't consider it a major historical event of the period. All Chinese are intimately familiar with the Opium War as the onset of a century of humiliation for their country, and the Chinese are extremely nationalistic.

Armstrong Economics
The Opium War
Martin Armstrong

The Secret Sources of Populism — Bruno Maçães

I think this article is partially true as an articulation of one factor in a complex and emergent challenge. It is from a conservative think tank and was published in Foreign Policy (CFR organ behind a paywall).

My take is as a have been saying, following Alexander Dugin. The underlying dynamic of the 19th century was socialism-capitalism and its political manifestation as communism-fascism versus liberalism. The fundamental dynamic in the early 21st century is the historical dialectic unfolding between liberalism and traditionalism. This being a dialectical process historically, aspects of the communist-fascist-liberal dynamic are incorporated, but the fundamental dynamic characterizing the Zeigeist has shifted after the defeat of the Axis powers, subsequent collapse of the USSR, and the liberalization of China under Deng Xiaoping. Vladimir Putin recently referred to his in his interview with the Financial Times where he observes the excess of liberalism leading to its decline, along with the resurgence of traditionalism as a major factor. He seems to be echoing Alexander Dugin.

Bruno Maçães views the cause of the rise of populism as chiefly international, involving the decline of the Western hegemony and the unwelcome influence of other cultures across borders. I see that as only a partially true and reflective of a deeper dynamic between liberalism pushed to its extreme and the resurgence of traditionalism, which was the original target of liberalism in the 18th century. Now that dynamic is returning in force, as the conflicting world views clash. 

This is not only an international phenomenon, but also a domestic one. For example, in the US Christianists were tolerated in the GOP "big tent" as a political wing of the party, but for the most part they were thrown only crumbs. Dissatisfied with the rate of progress on their political goals, they have reasserted their political power and are a big force behind the Trump-Pence phenomenon. There are similar phenomena in the resurgence of Islamism in the Muslim world, Orthodox Judaism as a political factor in Israel, and radical Hinduism in India as a mixture of a particular viewpoint on traditional religion not merely as a system of doctrine, ritual and observance but also as a cultural model. The return to an alliance between the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church after the collapse of the USSR is another manifestation of this phenomenon.

The fundamental paradigm of liberalism is the naturalism of the scientific revolution in the West that replaced the Great Chain of Being that is in essence supernatural. While the great chain of being is generally thought of in the West as Judeo-Christian, it was also characteristic of the Greek, Roman and other "pagan" religions. It is found in some from in most traditional cultures were the wisdom of the ancients is regarded as authoritative based on a supernatural pedigree.

It would not be correct to claim that contemporary populism is "caused by" this dynamic, even through it is a fundamental factor. There are many factors in plays and the different in different nations, regions, localities and cultures. What seems to be happening is that the entire world is now caught up in the "melting pot" that once was characteristic of the US as the first liberal democracy with enough space to support large waves of immigration. This was always a challenge socially and culturally, and I am old enough to remember similar dynamics regarding immigrants as are happening now. 

This is inevitable as the world shrinks owing to innovation in communications and transportation technology, especially the Internet, as well as the expansion of economic globalization and global supply chains. This brings out the good side of liberalism in tolerance and emphasis on popular sovereignty, but it also brings out the bad side in terms of neoliberal globalization, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism, as well as the "excesses" of liberalism as perceived by the various traditionalisms. This leads to "populism" as circling the wagons against being forced to accept difference that is unacceptable.

While values can be applied to this depending on one's point of view, it is a historical and sociological process that can be viewed objectively in terms of phenomena and their causal factors. From this perspective it is history taking its path-dependent course. Hegel look at this as an observer and analyst, whereas Marx went further and added an activist perspective to shape the process. The liberal West has also taken an activist role in spreading the message and often imposing it on other who may not be willing to receive it. This has led to the present dynamic developing between liberalism and traditionalism.

Hudson Institute
The Secret Sources of Populism
Bruno Maçães | Non-resident Senior Fellow

Branko Milanovic — “We had everything before us, we had nothing before us”.

Some philosophy in the broad sense that is neither MMT nor economics-related but important owing to its contemporary relevance in determining the social, political and economic dialectic that the world is experiencing at this point in time and which is shaping the future for some time to come.

Are we in another Gramsci interregnum?

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying but the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. — A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 3

Global Inequality
“We had everything before us, we had nothing before us”.
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

A quick search on the Internet shows that, in the past few years, a spike occurred in the frequency of references to Gramsci’s famous quote about “morbid symptoms”: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

I myself have contributed to this spike by borrowing the phrase “morbid symptoms” for the title of my 2016 book on the counterrevolutionary phase that followed the Arab Spring, and by quoting the whole sentence as epigraph to the book.

The obvious reason for this spike in uses of the quote is that it provides a clue to the emergence on the global scale, in recent years, of various phenomena that are unmistakably “morbid” from a progressive perspective: from the sad fate of the Arab Spring to the so-called Islamic State, to the reinvigoration of the European far right, to Donald Trump, and so on and so forth. However, before dwelling on the relevance of the above sentence to our present condition, it is appropriate to start by making sure that we correctly understand what Gramsci meant when he wrote it. For this, we need to reinsert the quotation in the text from which it was lifted and replace this text in its own historical context in order to grasp Gramsci’s intention, which may be different from what we instinctively attribute to him in retrospect....

ISR — International Socialist Review
Morbid Symptoms?
Gilbert Achcar

Andrei Martyanov — Hm, Something Is Missing....

How the West rewrites history. Andrei Martyanov sets the record straight.

Reminiscence of the Future
Hm, Something Is Missing....
Andrei Martyanov

What America can learn from the fall of the Roman republic — Sean Illing interviews Edward Watt, author of Mortal Republic

If you were a Roman citizen around, say, 200 BC, you probably would have assumed Rome was going to last forever.

At the time, Rome was the greatest republic in human history, and its institutions had proven resilient through invasions and all kinds of disasters. But the foundations of Rome started to weaken less than a century later, and by 27 BC the republic had collapsed entirely.
The story of Rome’s fall is both complicated and relatively straightforward: The state became too big and chaotic; the influence of money and private interests corrupted public institutions; and social and economic inequalities became so large that citizens lost faith in the system altogether and gradually fell into the arms of tyrants and demagogues.
If all of that sounds familiar, well, that’s because the parallels to our current political moment are striking. Edward Watts, a historian at the University of California San Diego, has just published a new book titled Mortal Republic that carefully lays out what went wrong in ancient Rome — and how the lessons of its decline might help save fledgling republics like the United States today.

I spoke to Watts about those lessons and why he thinks the American republic, along with several others, are in danger of going the way of ancient Rome. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Vox
What America can learn from the fall of the Roman republicSean Illing interviews Edward Watt, author of Mortal Republic 

Pepe Escobar — Get over it: Asia rules

The greatest merit of Parag Khanna’s new book, The Future is Asian, is to accessibly tell the story of a historical inevitability – with the extra bonus of an Asian point of view. This is not only a very good public service, it also blows out of the water countless tomes by Western “experts” pontificating about Asia from an air-con cubicle in Washington....

Good backgrounder.

Asia Times
Get over it: Asia rules

Pepe Escobar

See also

The American Conservative
Beltway Warriors Target China as the Next Global ThreatLeon Hadar

Ugo Bardi — Should we Prepare for a New World War? Answers from the Patterns of Past

Systemic uncertainty in a complex adaptive system. Spontaneous natural order is messy.

Cassandra's Legacy
Should we Prepare for a New World War? Answers from the Patterns of Past

Ugo Bardi | Professor in Physical Chemistry at the University of Florence

See also

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Hey! Here’s what to do when you have two or more surveys on the same population!
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

See also

Strategic Culture Foundation
We Are Heading for Another Tragedy Like World War I
Eric S. Margolis

Nicolai Starikov — Who Really Put up the Berlin Wall?

Again, follow the money, here the conversion of the Reichsmark to the DM. Very interesting from the monetary point of view — who controls the money, and all that.

I think some of you may have heard on more than one occasion about how that bloodthirsty tyrant Stalin set up a blockade of West Berlin in 1948 and how the freedom-loving nations organized the Berlin airlift to circumvent it. But today we’ll let you in on what really happened....

Russia Insider
Who Really Put up the Berlin Wall?

Nicolai Starikov

Tony Norfield — Indian Boots on the Ground

British policy was to depend upon alliances with others, rather than to maintain a large standing army itself. So it was important to be able to draw upon a force of colonial troops when needed, including for the policing of the British Raj.

Important though they were for British power, Indian troops commonly faced racial discrimination, were looked down upon by white officers and were often used as cannon fodder, while also being given worse grade arms and equipment than regular British troops. Attractive as a cheap military resource for the Brits, these men could nevertheless see enlistment in the army as a reasonable option. There was regular pay and regular food, something not always available in the Indian economy dominated by British Empire interests….

Still going on in a modified form. Now they are mostly proxies and mercenaries rather than subjects.

Of course, the same goes for the "cannon fodder" recruited from domestic resources on the same basis, given the alternatives at the low end of the socio-economic scale.

Economics of Imperialism

Indian Boots on the Ground

Tony Norfield

Bill Mitchell — The abdication of the Left – redux – Part 1

Former Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky was quoted as saying during the 1979 Austrian election campaign that: “I am less worried about the budget deficits than by the need for the state to create jobs where private industry fails”. That is the statement of a social democrat. That is a progressive Left view. In June 1982, with French unemployment at 7.2 per cent (having risen from 2.4 per cent in 1974 after a near decade of austerity under the right-wing Prime Minister Raymond Barre), the French Minister of Economy and Finance cut 30 billion francs from government spending so that the fiscal deficit would remain below 3 per cent. In March 1983, the same Minister pressured his colleagues including President François Mitterrand, into imposing a further bout of austerity, cutting another 24 billion francs and increasing taxes by 40 billion francs. These were very deep cuts. The austerity under the so-called ‘Barre Plan’ had failed to reduce inflation. When the turn to austerity was repeated under Mitterand’s so-called Socialist government, France was already in a deep recession. Under the Socialist austerity period unemployment rose sharply to further to 9.3 per cent by 1987. By then the architect of that austerity, one Jacques Delors, was European Commission President and starting work on his next exercise in neoliberal carnage – the Eurozone. None of his behaviour during that period remotely signals a position we could call progressive or Left. Like his austerity turn (“tournant de la rigeur”), Delors had turned into just another neoliberal obsessed with fiscal surpluses, free markets (he oversaw the 1987 Single European Act), and privatisation (which he claimed was necessary to attract foreign direct investment) (Source). This is Part 1 of a two-part series on the abdication of the Left, which some still choose to deny....

Bill goes heavy on fact today. He has a firm grip on the history of the period. If you are looking for the blow by blow, here it is.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The abdication of the Left – redux – Part 1
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Pepe Escobar — Rome: A Eulogy

If you are a fan of Pepe Escobar.

Counterpunch
Rome: A Eulogy

Pepe Escobar

Bart Klein Ikink — Multiculturalism Is One Of The Greatest Successes Of All Time

One of the most successful ideas ever is multiculturalism. For thousands of years it has seen an endless sequence of victories. Indeed there were a lot of temporary setbacks, but the long term historic trend is unmistakable. Multiculturalism was initially thought of by kings who conquered an empire of different peoples and wanted to rule them all. These different peoples could keep their own customs and settle most of their own affairs as long as they didn't pose a threat to the social order. This brought peace and stability, which improved trade and prosperity. For example Cyrus the Great, who ruled [the Persian Empire] around 550 BC, was one of the first to use multiculturalism to rule his vast empire. He respected the religions and traditions of the peoples he ruled....

Mr. Hegel's scheme for historical progress can be helpful. Reason overcame religion in Europe and so many social, economical and political experiments have been tried out in Europe that have not taken place anywhere else. The Europeans made more historical errors than anyone else simply because they had so many ideas they could try. In this way the Europeans had more opportunity to learn from their mistakes than anyone else. You can call that cultural superiority if you like, but it is better to call it experience. And it would be a waste of time and tears to go through all these historical processes, including all the wars, again everywhere around the globe, only to discover what you could already have learnt from studying history. So in this sense Europe can guide the world.

Short and worth a read.

OpEdNews
Multiculturalism Is One Of The Greatest Successes Of All Time
Bart Klein Ikink

Branko Milanovic — How I lost my past

Yet it is very difficult to tell these other stories. History is written, we are told, by the victors and stories that do not fit the pattern narrative are rejected. This is especially the case, I have come to believe, in the United States that has created during the Cold War a formidable machinery of open and concealed propaganda. That machinery cannot be easily turned off. It cannot produce narratives that do not agree with the dominant one because no one would believe them or buy such books. There is an almost daily and active rewriting of history to which many people from Eastern Europe participate: some because they do have such memories, others because they force themselves (often successfully) to believe that they have such memories. Others can remain with their individual memories which, at their passing, will be lost. The victory shall be complete.…

Global Inequality
How I lost my past
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Thomas H. Greco, Jr — The decay of western civilization

It's impossible to hold back the march of time and the working out of the historical dialectic, the moments of which culminate in excess and reaction to it.

Beyond Money | Devoted to the liberation of money and credit, and the restoration of the commons
The decay of western civilization
Thomas H. Greco, Jr.

William R. Polk — MAYDAY KOREA!

Part one of backgrounder on Korea. It's a must-read for understanding the situation today.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
MAYDAY KOREA!
William R. Polk

Roberta A. Modugno — The Levellers: The First Libertarians

Some interesting history.

The Levellers were one of the inspirations for classical liberalism and laissez-faire. Libertarianism is a contemporary manifestation of classical liberalism, in contrast to neoliberalism, which incorporates a role for the state in promoting commerce and capital formation.

Mises Institute — Mises Wire
The Levellers: The First Libertarians
Roberta A. Modugno

Marcelo Gullo — The Structure Of Hegemony

Short summary of world history since 1492 and the rise of the West to prominence and dominance.

Katehon
The Structure Of Hegemony

Marcelo Gullo

Edward Gibbon on public virtue and the collapse of the Roman Empire

Gibbon quote from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Incidentally,  historically, the Roman Empire includes the Byzantine Empire although most people in the West don't realize this.

Gedanken our Geschichte (Thoughts on History)
Edward Gibbon on public virtue and the collapse of the Roman Empire

Fabius Maximus — Fabius Maximus Good news: the singularity approaches

Summary of singularity.

Fabius Maximus
Good news: the singularity approaches
Editor