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Other suppliers are, of course, available, but it's not a bad selection of weekend reading.
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Read the first one.
Just finished Destiny of Civilization: Finance capitalism, Industrial capitalism or socialism by Michael Hudson.
Interesting. In short he claims that the 19th century economists wanted to tax away ‘economic rent’ – doing away with landlord class privileges and lower the cost doing business by providing natural monopolies at cost or cheaply. Taxes should fall on capital and less on labour and industry. Then neo-liberalism reversed the trend. He claims China is following the playbook that American followed , and reinvests profits. He says banking is a public utility in China ( he has taught there) and that American foreign policy is geared to a predatory finance capitalism. At home it takes over the state for private gain.
There are two competing models for the world 1) the American 2) the Chinese, and our political democracy is an economic oligarchy. The rest of the world which has experienced the Washington consensus, may well choose the Chinese unless we revert to a mixed economy.
Quite a lot to think about and I don’t have a conclusion.
Thanks
To take adavantage of lower wages, lesser worker rights, union interdictions, lower health standards with no health service the West is now is in thrall to the 3d world especially china. My bruv’s business disappeared to china 3 months after it cancelled contracts. .so now china builds its economy stealing patents….. and its forces and shall rule the world unless….
Sort of know many of these ideas – but not sure I’ve actually heard of him.
Michael Hudson is a public asset, like our host. He came to prominence to me after 2008, largely seen on public service broadcasting in America. He has a good website. He’s getting on a bit but is so energetic. He has worked at a high level in the private sector but seems to have been repulsed by it.
The books I’ve read are:
Killing the Host – How Financial Parasites & Debt Destroy the Global Economy (2015).
Trade Development & Foreign Debt – How trade and development concentrate economic power in the hands of dominant nations (2009).
Super Imperialism – The Origins & Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance (2003).
And Forgive Them Their Debts – Lending, Foreclosure & Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (2018).
What Hudson contributes to me is the awareness that the world is how it is by a deliberate design by those who want things that way. He reveals how much of our history – religious as well social – has been re-written by money-power in a way that would make the Soviet communists of the past proud. The parallels BTW are not tenuous!
In short he debunks the Neo-liberal myth-making about ‘the natural state of things’ and gives hope to man. There is actually a strong ethical bias that naturally occurs in societies and even now money-power, wealth, vested interests (whatever you want to call it) are doing their best to wipe it out and portray us differently.
As for China, I would recommend watching John Pilger’s ‘The Coming War with China’ (currently on Netflix). One Chinese entrepreneur interviewed (and acknowledges China’s other problems) says that in China, the Government does not change but policies can. The Chinese communists he says have been very flexible.
He contrasts that with the West and says that we change Governments but policy essentially stays the same because it has essentially been captured by capital.
In China he says, capital can never rule Government like that because of the communist party system.
What do you think? I mean, its very interesting. China is growing through capitalism, but is also finding out about the dark side of capitalism too and struggling with it within its own borders. Those profit margins imposed on it by Western companies like Apple won’t help either will they? Yet China cops it for (1) nicking our jobs and (2) having to come to terms with worker unrest about poor pay and conditions and (3) is now seen as public enemy No.1 in the West.
It’s hard to know what is going on, but its complicated and down right dirty – in the best Western tradition I might add and in line historically about how badly the West has treated China.
Also I’d recommend Isabella Weber’s (2021) ‘How China Escaped Shock Therapy’ (Routledge).
What amuses me about Micheal is that his godfather was Trotsky, unless I am very mistaken
“Surviving 2023” is recommended reading on weownit.org.uk
🙂
I certainly endorse this selection. Perhaps your recent correspondent, DAG, would be interested. He might then understand that lawyers don’t simply tell rich clients what they cannot do, but more commonly what they can do by exploiting all the loopholes and ambiguities in legislation to legally defeat the intention of lawmakers and gain a morally questionable advantage to the disadvantage of other less wealthy, or poor, citizens. And make themselves even richer.
Perhaps morals don’t come into it when you are serving the rich like a butler.
Richard, please permit me to give a shout out for the new podcast ‘Empire’ by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. Especially Episode 2, in which they detail the early days of the East India Company, its methods of operation, and …. later… the outcomes. Thoroughly researched and hugely entertaining – William is a rollicking storyteller – and jaw-droppingly relevant….!
The series has kicked off with the history of the East India Company and the Raj. But on current form I anticipate an absolute podcast stunner.
Having done some reading about the East India Company in India in the second half of the 18th century, it’s impossible not to see all sorts of relevance to our own times. It’s so (horribly) illuminating on relationships between states/territories, and massive companies with the power of states behind them – and also on the relationships between those companies and elites/investors (as well as their victims). It’s kind of weird in that when I was at school in the 1970s and 80s, I’m sure I and most people saw this topic as irredeemably dull and marginal (primarily I suppose because its significance was never made clear), yet now I would see it as a topic everyone in Britain would benefit from studying (if it were taught well, which is a very big if).
If anyone wants to read about how the people of India view the Raj Shashi Tharoor’s book Inglorious Empire (subtitle: What the British did to India) will be a revelation. I went to school a good 20 years before Peter and my recollections are broadly similar to his except that we were that bit closer to India’s Independence and were fed the line that the Empire had been vastly beneficial to the sub-continent and its peoples. Inglorious Empire was an eye-opener when I read it about 5 years ago.
Hudson’s god father was indeed Trotsky.
He has a number of Youtube videos but he is not the best speaker in the world but most have subtitles and , if it is a long piece, I resort to them.
I frankly don’t know enough about J S Mill, Ricardo or Adam Smith to verify all his assertions about them. I have a feel he may emphasise by exaggeration but I find his general thesis quite convincing. He paints a picture of a predatory American financial system and his view of China is quite optimistic.
I came across Consortium News an America site founded by Robert Parry which has a number of contributors, including Chris Hedges and John Pilger. It posts a similar line. But I have distanced myself as many of the contributors seem to fall into the trap of an ideological stance, which is interpreting the world just through the prism of that ideology and 2) being very judgemental about those who pose another interpretation or who question the reliability of a source. I first met it with dedicated Marxists who interpreted even cultural features by the ideology. I recall Marx, in later life, distanced himself from some who called themselves Marxists. We see it, of course, on the right, but, sadly, I feel too often among some people on the left whose views I am broadly in sympathy with. Some tell of a similar experience with the Momentum group in Labour.
A lot of people who post on Consortium News about the Ukraine war blame the US 100% and assert as a fact that the war was planned to further the Wall Street dominance of the world. Ukraine is dominated by Nazis and they are prepared to bomb own cities for propaganda. They seem oblivious of the features of Putin’s Russia or their conduct of the war. So contrary views supported with reasoning and factual background (me ) often get moderated out.
At the moment I am researching for a talk I am giving on Conscientious Objectors in the First world War. Their stance engendered such hatred and my observation is that “Righteous Anger” is , or can be, an evil as great as that which provokes it. Thinking which divides into black/white is dangerous.
Pragmatism and slowness to judgement are more positive qualities.
It’s pretty amazing information to me concerning Hudson. Wow! I didn’t know that. It does not change my opinion of him which is high. He is very good though at detailing modern capitalism’s failings but also comes up some answers. Here’s what he writes in the penultimate chapter of ‘Killing the Host’ (2015), p.403:
1. Write down debts with a Clean Slate, or at least in keeping with the ability to pay.
2. Tax economic rent to save it from being capitalized into interest payments.
3. Revoke the tax deductibility of interest, to stop subsidising debt leveraging.
4. Create a public banking option.
5. Fund government deficits by central banks, not by taxes to pay bondholders.
6. Pay social security and Medicare out of the general budget.
7. Keep natural monopolies in the public domain to prevent rent extraction.
8. Tax capital gains at higher rates levied on earned income.
9. Deter irresponsible lending with a Fraudulent Conveyance principle.
10. Revive classic value and rent theory (and its statistical categories).
And yes, I too have seen Chris Hedges and read some of his work too. I have a lot of respect for him because he’s brave and speaks out from what I see as a rather moral position. To be honest I have time too for John Pilger whose phlegmatic delivery I can cope with even if he and others don’t seem to have the answers that I thankfully find here that could be tried. At least Hedges and Pilger care.
Marxism? Well, I think that Marxism is right about a number of things – one being that wealth is greedy and the other being wealth’s other objective (other than wealth accumulation) which is achieving hegemony in order to create conditions for the self perpetuation of wealth acquisition. That means taking control of the political apparatus of whatever country wealth is living in.
The other thing I thing Marxism noted was about the creation of value in traditional work and where that value creation was located in industrial production. My interpretation of this was that it formed the moral basis for a fair distribution of profit amongst the work force (workers and managers) and owners. This was not totally new either as some of the more enlightened capitalists realised that looking after your workers meant better production – it was a pre-Marxist idea it seems to me, only endorsed by Marx.
And indeed many companies practiced it some form – the way in which M&S treats its staff now compared to even the early 1980’s couldn’t be more different. Even in the public sector, wage differentials are now much higher as pubic sector orgs have sought to and been encouraged to ape the market.
Whilst acknowledging that the nature of work is changing, modern capitalism has just chosen to ignore workers and is concerned with extracting as much money as it can for investors – rentierism rules now because the legal position of investors is enshrined rather too unquestioningly into law.
You need more than the exhortation of revolution to deal with stuff like this. Marx was right that revolution was needed but wrong about where and how it occurred. It did not occur in the work force or on the Left.
The real revolution has been in markets and the Right of the political spectrum in the super-heating and misallocation of finance and increased rule breaking and destructive anarchy from the political Right who are being used as a tool to cement wealth and wealth extraction into our societies.
What we need is a counter revolution now and as the promises and lies of Neo-liberalism seem to be unwinding the time is ripe – but it is a revolution in THINKING that we so sorely need.
Marx used an earlier 19th century concept about labour being the only source of value. It has not survived well except for the dedicated Marxists.
But he did predict that capital would be increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. He also said the people would be increasingly worse off. Social democracy in the 20th century prevented that-though it doesn’t seem so at the moment.
When we read that a bus load of people own as much as half the population, it seems he got that one right.
I think, if I recall correctly, that by the time of the revolution, there would be few people to overthrow and their ownership would just be transferred. We have a sizeable minority who wish to distance themselves from the idea of the Proletariat and identify with the ruling class and so support the existing power structure even when it works against their own interest. So we do need a revolution in thinking.
Thanks to all the above. I think it was Hudson – doubtless among others – who noted that Marx later came to believe / realize that revolution in a Capitalist society was impractical, as too few educated workers to direct it while richer nations block revolution in poorer ones (hooray for the calming influence of the IMF !) Hudson’s focus on rents fits well with vol.3 of Das Kapital. His emphasis on debt forgiveness and Jubilees has other sources.
I share the mistrust noted by Ian Stevenson of some of the groups promoting Hudson, but I find the same blindness to the state of things in Russia among some of the more extreme socialists in France, obviously nothing to do with Hudson.
For anyone not wishing to support Amazon’s apparently exploitative business model, one can get copies of Richard’s book from Abebooks, a site hosting second hand booksellers at less than that advertised by Amazon, including P&P
Abebooks is owned by Amazon, I think
Which is a shame, as I like it….
I find Biblio.com quite a useful site for buying books. As for Amazon, I took part in the Free Software Foundation’s boycott of the company. It ended in 2002 but I have never got round to using them again.
All books are available at http://www.hive.co.uk
Reduced prices and they give a percentage to your local bookshop.