My old friend Prof David (Danny) Blanchflower posted this on Twitter yesterday:
My old pal @RichardJMurphy and I used to have a friendly competition for the # followers and for a while I was ahead now he has 124k and I have a rather weedy 66k ,,,,help please...! What the heck happened.....? I owe him many beers....!
— Professor Danny Blanchflower economist & fisherman (@D_Blanchflower) April 11, 2022
The competition began when we both had something like 17,000 followers, many years ago. And Danny is right. He won for years. And then I began to take Twitter seriously.
But Danny is worth following if you are on Twitter. Together we are the Mile End Road economists. The name is deliberate. The Mile End Road leaves the City for the east end in Bow, and beyond. From there the perspective is very different from that in the City, whose views tend to prevail in economics in the UK. By looking at the world from beyond the City gates we appreciate things are very different. We think policy has to be written to suit the needs of the Mile End Road.
Danny has long held that view, at risk of being unpopular. I share it. Give him a follow if you can.
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Policy for “Main Street not Wall Street” as they might say in the US. Whatever next!
I think Danny lies in the mainstream of economic thought when looking at a broader sweep of history… it is the current policymakers that are the aberration (I hope). Both of you, please do keep trying to get the train back on track.
Danny is more mainstream than me
But he adds perspective
We have to offer alternative perspectives
During the Peasants’ revolt of 1381, King Richard II met the rebels at MILE END and agreed to most of their demands.
The rebels then entered the city and killed the Lord Chancellor and Lord High Treasurer. The King then met the rebels at Smithfield where their leader Wat Tyler, was killed. Richard promised to be their leader and meet their demands.
Meanwhile the Mayor London, Walworth, went back to the city and raised troops. All the promises were broken and the leaders of the peasants executed. But the the fact that it had occurred and might again, with the memory of being lied to, any later rebellion would be more dangerous.The Feudal system began to unravel.
There are a number of parallels to be drawn.
Indeed
If there was another uprising today would the police back the people or the criminals( government)
The peasants got conned again in the English Civil War. The Levellers thought they were fighting for an equal society hence their name, Fairfax and Cromwell had the Levellers leaders rounded up and imprisoned in a church. This became like a pressurised think tank and after a week they had created a real revolutionary mentality – if God created everything they we are all an expression of God and we are all equal.
When Fairfax and Cromwell found out it sealed their fate and the leaders were executed by hanging.
Question – why did the Levellers let their leaders be rounded up, why didn’t they not only resist but kill those sent to imprison those leaders?
The answer is simple, because mentally they never stopped being peasants. They were hamstrung by being ‘believers’ and never questioned the ‘authority’ of the Christian church – they were not ‘real’ revolutionaries.
The French revolution wasn’t a real revolution, it was a rebellion against starvation – 2 failed harvests, one after another. They rightly executed the king and because they were not real revolutionaries made a Corsican Latin an Emperor who proceeded to throw away the lives of 1.5 million Frenchmen on his ego trip.
70 years as a red Fascist state did not change the Russian peasants into real revolutionaries – the Russian Orthodox church is stronger than ever. As an example when I was living in Andalucia in 2005 I was using an i/net cafe and I was whistling whilst waiting to pay and the owner was a young Russian woman about 30 she said ” please stop whistling, your calling down the devil”, almost unbelieveable but true.
The paedophile Mao’s Cultural Revolution was in fact just the rebirth of the ancient warlord system.
Peasants are incapable of making a real revolution because the monkey brain is their prime mover – it’s all about pleasing the Alpha male. When I realised this a long time ago now I walked away from all union and political involvement. pissing into the wind is just a waste of time. Until the majority of people are prepared to take responsibility for their own lives there can be no real change.
Johnson and Sunak will not resign, why should they, the peasants will do nothing. I watched Kay Burley brazenly supporting these two this morning, another one who openly flouted the lock down rules – civil unrest in England, don’t make me laugh.