Thomas Piketty’s New Book Brings Political Economy Back to Its Sources — Branko Milanovic

In the same way that Capital in the Twenty-First Century transformed the way economists look at inequality, Piketty’s new book Capital and Ideology will transform the way political scientists look at their own field.

ProMarket — The blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Thomas Piketty’s New Book Brings Political Economy Back to Its Sources

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

The road to serfdom before Hayek (Knight, Lippmann, and a note on Weber today) — Eric Schliesser

So, here's my hypothesis. The road to serfdom thesis was if not inspired by Lippmann, at least prompted, in part, by him. But Lippmann did not hold the thesis; it is articulated by Knight in his review of Lippmann and (mistakenly) ascribed to Lippmann. Knight, however, thinks there is nothing inevitable about the thesis because he thinks the future is still very much open. I cannot prove that Hayek read Knight's review of Lippmann. (Knight was later a somewhat ambivalent referee for The University of Chicago Press of Road to Serfdom.) But Knight articulated several major challenges to liberal self-reflection in his review of Lippmann. And some of Hayek's major contributions to the liberal self-imagine, for good and ill, can be fruitfully interpreted as responses to that review.

Digressions&Impressions
The road to serfdom before Hayek (Knight, Lippmann, and a note on Weber today)
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Yanis Varoufakis — Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia – 2019 Taylor Lecture, Oxford University

Big! We really need to be talking about this and examining assumptions and presuppositions that act as hidden assumptions. Yanis is a systems thinker.

The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. I chose the topic of Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – my aim being to highlight the manner in which really-existing capitalism is marketed as a utopian science fiction that has nothing to do with… really-existing capitalism. Behind this elegant utopian mathematical the powers-that-be hide a dismal dystopia that is failing humanity in a variety of ways.…

The emperor has no clothes.

Pure capitalism and pure socialism are both based on utopian thinking. They are ideal rather than real, based on models whose stipulated assumptions are not achievable in the real world given existing conditions. It is questionable whether those conditions could ever be met. 

This doesn't imply, however, that more ideal society as a functional utopia is not achievable by getting from here to closer to there, that is, getting from where we are now to where would like like to be and doing so realistically through iteration and incrementation. This is an evolutionary process in a complex adaptive system characterized by reflexivity and emergence, hence, affected by synergy with the implication of uncertainty. Conversely, trying to impose an ideal structural system constructed from assumptions is folly.

Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia – 2019 Taylor Lecture, Oxford UniversityYanis Varoufakis

Barkley Rosser — Who Is Really A Socialist? [Updated]

Barkley Rosser either makes a bad mistake in starting with Marx's definition of "socialism" as state-ownership of the means of production as exclusive, or he is carrying water for the ownership class that uses this arbitrary definition to demonize the opposition to its rent-seeking and parasitic rent extraction, e.g., by socializing negative externality, the result of which is now climate change. I suspect that he was shooting from the hip and shot himself in the foot instead of hitting his target. Disappointing for a smart guy. On the other hand, I often disagree with his analysis when it exceeds the scope of his field, which is economics within the scope of the conventional approach to it. Such is the case here, in my view, although he does bring it non-economic factors.

Wikipedia:

Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and workers' self-management of the means of production[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperativeownership, or citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.[5][14][15]

Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms.[16] Non-market socialism involves the substitution of factor markets and money with engineering and technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing an economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws from those of capitalism. Non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system.[25]By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of socially owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm, or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend.[26][27][28] The socialist calculation debate concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a socialist system.

Socialist politics has been both internationalist and nationalist in orientation; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions, and at other times independent and critical of unions; and present in both industrialised and developing nations.[29] Originating within the socialist movement, social democracy has embraced a mixed economy with a market that includes substantial state intervention in the form of income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state. Economic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism where there is more decentralized control of companies, currencies, investments, and natural resources.

In particular, critics of "socialism" that charge it is a failed system that history exposes as inferior ignore a factor that I regard as the most salient one, namely, the ferocious opposition and actual violent attacks of the capitalist, so-called liberal order  (read "bourgeois liberal" plutonomy)  on any hint of social power and control that would limit the power and control of the privileged elite and which imposes a dictatorship of the ruling class through their minions, behind a facade of representative democracy. In the US, for instance, the a bipartisan establishment is rife with corruption, much of it legalized.

Economists simply are not in a position to hold themselves out as experts capable of commenting definitively on these matters since they have put so many relevant factor beyond the scope of their subject matter. The result is an economics devoid of connection with reality.

In the real world, capitalism has been linked historically with imperialism and colonialism. Neoliberalism can be viewed as joined at the hip with neo-imperialism and neocolonialism. Neoconservative and liberal internationalism/interventionism are both based on "spreading freedom and democracy" which is equated with economic liberal as bourgeois liberalism, which is liberal chiefly in the sense that powerful elites are enabled by capture of the state to extract rent without limitation and to do so globally, backed by a powerful military and control of the global financial system.

This is becoming especially important now that "socialism" is becoming a hot topic and economists think that they are are in a position to be best informed about it and comment on it. That is not necessarily so. Very few have the breadth and depth of knowledge of Michael Hudson, for instance.

Socialism involves not only economics, but also other fields such as political theory, sociology, anthropology, history, general systems theory, psychology, and philosophy.

Oh, and did I forget physics, you know, like neoclassical economics is trying to imitate? See Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?

Is genuine socialism best characterized in terms of government that is actually "of the people, by the people and for the people" rather than being controlled by a ruling class and operated for special interests as a representative democracy under capitalism and the way the US was really organized under the Constitution?

Econospeak

Who Is Really A Socialist?
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University

UPDATED

Yves Smith weighs in here. Useful in my view, but also incomplete. She also ignores the political aspect of external pressure, including threat of force and actual force, that I brought in above. It is very difficult to disentangle the social, political, financial and economic, especially when it involves key international and geopolitical input. Characterizing "socialism" based on such historical examples is naive, in my view.

For example, is Venezuela a "failed state" entirely owing to "socialist" policy or in part, even great part, owing to US pressure since Chavez, including a former coup attempt. Moreover, the sorry state that Venezuela was in prior to Chavez and which underlay his rise was a result of the comprador government that served as US puppet, a state to which is the US is working reestablish there. Simlarly, a great deal of Soviet and Red Chinese policy was a response to pressure, threat of force and actual application of force from the "free world" dominated by "capitalism" as the mortal enemy of "socialism"

Moreover, "capitalism" and "socialism" are such high level abstractions they are difficult to define technically in a way that can be measured quantitatively. And quantitative modeling is a sine qua non of science these days. Otherwise it is speculative in a way that is undecidable on data-based evidence. However, to reduce the problem to what is measurable often excludes material factors that are relevant. So the end-result is based on opinion, which famously suffers from cognitive bias, including ideological bias.

Bill Mitchell — The conflicting concepts of cosmopolitan within Europe – Part 1

In the past week, the UK Guardian readers were confronted with the on-going scandal of wealthy British politicians and ‘peers’ receiving massive European Union subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The article (January 27, 2019) – Peers and MPs receiving millions in EU farm subsidies – recounted the familiar tale –“Dozens of MPs and peers, including some with vast inherited wealth, own or manage farms that collectively have received millions of pounds in European Union subsidies”.

The story is not new and this scandal is just a reflection of the way in which the development of the European Union has contradicted the idealism that the Europhile Left associate with ‘Europe’.

As an aside, it would be telling, one imagines to map the EU payments (and well-paid job holdings) with Brexit support – one would conjecture a strong negative correlation.

This is a two-or-three part mini-series on the evolution of concepts of ‘cosmopolitanism’ in the European context. It is part of work I am doing for the next book Thomas Fazi and I hope to publish by the end of the year.

In this blog post, I introduce the conflict that is inherent in the European Union, and the way the Europhile Left has been seduced by a concept of cosmopolitanism that bears not relevance in the reality of modern Europe....

Bill branches out widely from MMT to encompass political economy, economic sociology, , economic geography, political theory, the EU and EU politics, the Left (such as it is) and more, exhibiting an awesome command of the material.

I have added some paragraphing.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The conflicting concepts of cosmopolitan within Europe – Part 1
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Eric Schliesser — On Presidents

On Alexander Hamilton's argument for dictatorship in a republic.

Digressions&Impressions
On Presidents
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Doug Greene — More Than Universal Healthcare: The Meaning of Socialism

Young people are turning to socialism, and Democratic Party politicians are adopting the term. But what is socialism?

My own summary answer is that socialism is the socio-economic system that favors people and the environment as a whole over other factors and and political theory that prioritizes human rights. 

This is in contrast to capitalism, which favors capital over other factors and accords highest priority to property rights.

Doug Greene presents his view of a Marxist-Leninist approach to socialism and capitalism, which seems to me to be past its expiration date. At the very least, it needs repackaging. But without altering the content, the repackaging would still leave the contents stale.

Marx, Engels, Lenin and others of their day had some ideas that still apply but they need to be adapted and integrated with new knowledge and emergent conditions.

But it is useful to review the fundamental principles.

However, where I think that most explorations of these ideas goes off track is due to focusing on objectives and means rather than the kernel of the design problem, which is necessary to elaborate a satisfactory design solutions. 

Basically, the priorities being used now are wrong and lead to social dysfunction, political unrest, and economic inequality that fuels the oligarchic power that is at the bottom of the class struggle between ownership and work.

These priorities are now socially and culturally embedded and institutionally established. Changing these priorities requires a system overhaul. In the West this means the transformation of bourgeois liberalism that resulted from the transition from feudalism to capitalism into a more integrated liberalism that integrates people, the environment and technology. 

Under feudalism, an oligarchy owned the means of production in the form of land during the agricultural age. Under capitalism, a similar oligarchy that owns industrial and financial capital in addition to land controls the means of production and reaps the greatest reward based on ownership rather than work. This also enable the negative externality of environmental degradation to be socialized while the gains are capitalized.

Under socialism, there would be no oligarchy controlling the means of production, workers and the environment would be favored by rights established in law, and there would be no incentive to socialize environmental degradation.

Left Voice
More Than Universal Healthcare: The Meaning of Socialism
Doug Greene

Simon Wren-Lewis — Could the US become a democratic dictatorship?

Simon Wren-Lewis wanders into political theory.

Mainly Macro
Could the US become a democratic dictatorship?
Simon Wren-Lewis | Emeritus Professor of Economics, Oxford University

See also

On-air real-time censoring reporting about the recently released UK torture report.

Craig Murray Blog
The Unsubtle Art of Non-Verbal CommunicationCraig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee

Peter Turchin Can Fascism Happen Here?

Peter Turchin equates fascism with tyranny, but I don't think that is correct. Fascism is a modern political theory, while tyranny is a political category proposed by Plato, as Professor Turchin notes. The "tyrants" of history were what now call "dictators," although the Latin term "dictator" had a somewhat different meaning classically from the Greek "tyrannos." Thus, equating fascism with tyranny as usurpation of absolute power as sole ruler involves a category error, on one hand, and it also fails to consider the range of meaning of both terms.

Fascism is a totalitarian concept of political theory based on authoritarian nationalism that doesn't necessitate a sole absolute ruler that has usurped power. Being grounded in authoritarian nationalism, fascism as a political theory has elements of tyranny associated with it, but it is not equatable with tyranny as a political category.

In the ancient sense, a tyrant was a military usurper that seized absolute power over the state. Solon was careful to deny that he was actually a tyrant, even though he held that power. In modern times, tyranny is no longer associated exclusively with military dictatorship but is extended by analogy to administrative or bureaucratic tyranny (Mill) and "the tyranny of the majority."

"Fascism" today is most closely associated with the Hitler regime and Mussolini doesn't come to mind, even though he was the originator of the modern term. Hitler was influenced by Italian
Fascism, but Nazism was an separate creation.

Ok, this is nitpicking a bit and the author is dealing the limitations of a blog post. But, I think it is useful to point out for the sake of discussion since "fascism" is a term that getting lot of use now, which risks Godwin's law by conflating "fascism" with "Hitler." But Nazism its a form of fascism rather than being the paradigm case of fascism as often presumed.

So asking whether it can happen here has deeper implications that often considered or admitted. Thinking not is letting one's guard down. And maybe the question is better framed as to what degree has fascism crept in.

Cliodynamica — A Blog about the Evolution of Civilizations
Can Fascism Happen Here?
Peter Turchin | Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, Research Associate in the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, and Vice-President of the Evolution Institute

See also

Wikipedia — The Doctrine of Fascism

Benito Mussolini (with Giovanni Gentile) — The Doctrine of Fascism

Paul Sagar — The real Adam Smith

Setting the record straight.

Aeon
The real Adam Smith

Paul Sagar | lecturer in political theory in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London

Mark S. Weiner — Trumpism and the Philosophy of History

This is a summary distinction between liberalism and traditionalism, although Weiner doesn't use the term traditionalism specifically. The distinction in the Western intellectual tradition begins with Plato and Aristotle's different political theories, with Plato's theory developing into traditionalism and Aristotle's into liberalism. In modern times, this would be reflected in the dichotomy between Hegel and Locke, and Continental versus Anglo-American thought. 

The main protagonists presently in the US are Steve Bannon representing traditionalism and conservatism and George Soros representing Karl Popper's Open Society view of liberalism. Weiner is aligning with the Soros "school" or liberal internationalism, neoconservatism, and interventionism here against classical conservatism and political conservatism.

The way the debate is now being framed publicly by both sides is in terms of American values and what  being "a real American" involves. Each side is attempting to lay claim to the mantle of "real American."

The conflict of over the future course of America and neither side is about to compromise in any way.

Project Syndicate
Trumpism and the Philosophy of History

Mark S. Weiner | Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law—Newark and former Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Legal Philosophy of the University of Salzburg

Jehu — Rethinking Marx’s Grand Strategy

Comparison and contrast of  Ferdinand Lassalle, Mikhail Bakunin, and Karl Marx stated simply.

The Real Movement
Rethinking Marx’s Grand Strategy
Jehu

Lars P. Syll — Habermas and Rorty on intersubjectivity and truth

This cuts for the core of liberalism.

The liberalism that characterizes the West is a political theory based on ontological, epistemological, and ethical assumptions based mostly on 18th, 19th and 20th century Anglo-American thinkers, with roots in Classical Greek thought and subsequent Christian theology.

It is assumed to be based on eternal values and truths.

This is contested even in the West, where liberalism has different interpretations and different positions contend. It is also at odds with traditionalisms globally that have different ontological, epistemological and ethical assumptions.

This dialectic, with Anglo-American liberalism dominant, is now occupying center stage in the historical dialectic globally.

Where the dust will settle remains to unfold. It is now affecting the lives of all. Hopefully, the opposition of many points of view will not lead to open conflict, especially as the US seeks to impose its rules on the international order.

But the West itself, and particularly America, is conflicted on what constitutes liberalism and how it should be administered socially, politically, and economically.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Habermas and Rorty on intersubjectivity and truth
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

See also

Occidental Dissent
Charlottesville: Huge Torchlight March & Rally

Charlottesville, VA: Judge Rules in Favor of Alt-Right; ANTIFA Slashes Tires & Knocks Out Windows
Jason Wilson
Michael Cushman

The Guardian
'Increasingly Nazified' white nationalist rally descends on Virginia amid expected protests | US news | The Guardian

Levan Vasadze — Challenges of Modern Traditionalism

As professor Dugin rightfully says in many of his lectures and books, the individual subjects or the centers of three mentioned totalitarianisms were each different: liberalism centered on Cartesian individual, which is an artificial concept; Marxism centered on class and Nazism - or fascism - centered on race. The deconstruction of these has happened in the reverse chronology, as we know. Communism dragged down - brought down - and collapsed the idea of supremacy of the race; and then liberalism brought down and collapsed the idea of supremacy of the class; and the oldest one of the three, which was initially invented, has remained as the standing beauty without any alternatives. Now we are entering the era of destroying the liberalism and the supremacy of the individual. I have had the honor and pleasure of discussing on numerous occasions with professor Dugin and the some of you what should be the center of the post liberal paradigm, of the normal society. And we all have different opinions, not necessarily contradictory to each other. For example, professor Dugin tends to gear towards the idea of people - people of the empire if you will - as the carrier and the center of the alternative matrix. I tend to favor more – and again I don’t think we are in contradiction here – the idea of family as the center of the alternative constitution. In Budapest[1] yesterday I said that, in my humble opinion, all 193 constitutions on the planet need to be rewritten. The center of each constitution today is an individual and I am not an individual, I am a component, I am a part – I am a brother, I am a husband, I am a father, I am a son – and when I loose these I become the enemy of humanity. Therefore, it is not the rights of an individual that we should be protecting in these constitutions, it is the obligation of an individual towards the family and the rights of the family that we should be protecting in the constitution.

Geopolitika.ru
Challenges of Modern Traditionalism

Levan Vasadze

Scotty Hendricks — Beyond the Welfare State: John Rawls and the Property Owning Democracy

Brief explanation of the political theory of John Rawls based on fairness.

Big Think
Beyond the Welfare State: John Rawls and the Property Owning Democracy
Scotty Hendricks

J. Bradford DeLong — When Is Responsible Democratic Governance Possible? The Classical View: Never

Democracy Must Be Irresponsible: So Responsible Governance Must Be Undemocratic

This is why America was founded as a democratic republic rather than a democracy. The obvious question is why elected officials will not be approximately equal to the level of collective consciousness of voters and reflect voters' mindset. Oh right, the wealthy and successful will dominate the candidate selection process. But what if the selection process is conducted through primaries. Could not representatives of "the rabble" be selected since the rabble comprise the majority of the population?

Some interesting quotes of Alexander Hamilton.

Grasping Reality with Both Hands
When Is Responsible Democratic Governance Possible? The Classical View: Never
J. Bradford DeLong

Jon Hellevig — The Scientific Essence of Economy – Capitalism and Socialism versus a Democratic Competitive Market Economy

Must-read if you are into foundations of economic and political theory. Useful even if you are not, since Jon Hellevig debunks a lot of the myths about capitalism, neoliberalism, liberalism, socialism and communism in advancing his argument for a democratic competitive economy.

Keeper.

Awara Blog
The Scientific Essence of Economy – Capitalism and Socialism versus a Democratic Competitive Market Economy
Jon Hellevig

Katehon — Theories of Globalization

Brief summary of the field. Backgrounder.

Katehon
Theories of Globalization

Neil Wilson — The Left's Love of Higher Law

One thing I've noticed during debates over the past year or so, is that those on the Left are particularly keen on the concept of Rule According to Higher Law. When they lose elections they always want to appeal to some higher body to stop any changes being made by the winners. (This seems Kantish in origin - perhaps the philosophers can shed more light?)

I don't think that this is remarkable since liberalism is dominant politically in the West since the Enlightenment and especially with the end of political monarchies and aristocracies after WWI. The Left and Right hold competing views of liberalism.

It's a paradox of liberalism that liberalism seeks to make itself the only acceptable political paradigm once it is installed. Moreover, different views on the spectrum of liberalism take themselves to be the very definition of liberalism and therefore seek to install themselves as the optimal alternative within a liberal contexts when they accede to power.

The tension is between freedom and control. In engineering design, it is generally assumed that an optimal balance between freedom and control needs to be achieved in order to produce the highest level of capability consistent with getting the work done.

So it's likely explicable through a combination of optimizing and preferences in articulating the design problem. Preferences is where the normative aspect comes in, and it is arguable that "higher law" is Kantian, or deontological rather than consequentialist.

I don't see this as problematic in that humans tend to rationalize their preferences in terms of values. Humans also disagree over what constitutes values to some degree and quite a bit over prioritizing values, especially when they conflict in situations.

This is especially the case in political and legal affairs since positive law and institutional arrangements, which are human constructs, are inherently normative owing to the human context in which they are embedded.

The difference in liberal political theory tends to be over competence. The Right is conservative and conservatism is based on the principle that some are better than others. So this is reflected in the conservative approach to liberalism, which prefers republicanism, in which elites control the levers of power and are the final arbiters.

On the other hand, the Left generally subscribes to the wisdom of crowds and prefers democratic decision-making and determination of criteria.

But just because someone or some party adopts a label doesn't imply that they are actually going to behave like that. Presently, the Right is more or less consistent but the Left, no so much, at least with respect to the political leadership.

3spoken
The Left's Love of Higher Law
Neil Wilson

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.