Trump's second arrival in the White House marks a shift in political economy. We're entering the Age of Aggression – a new era in political economy. After WW2, we had the Age of Compassion. Neoliberalism was the Age of Indifference. Now we have naked force taking control.
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This is the transcript:
I think we're entering a new political, economic age. I'm going to call it the Age of Aggression. Let me explain.
Donald Trump's inauguration is the point where we have to recognise that the power of the corporation and the power of the wealthy individual has come to dominate the world of political economy.
And the world of political economy is about something slightly different from both politics and economics. Politics and economics - both, to some extent - address the same question. What, who, how and when will get the resources within society? Political economy asks another vital question, which is, ‘Why do they get what they want?'
Not how do they get it, or how much do they get? But why is that right? And what are the mechanisms that result in this allocation? And so, the Age of Aggression is one that reflects the fact that I believe that it is going to be the aggressive power of the corporation and the aggressive power of wealth that is going to determine the allocation of resources within our societies, for the next few years at least.
Now, there's no great surprise that we have reached this point in time. We went through an era which might be called the Age of Compassion. I just made that phrase up, by the way, but I think it's wholly appropriate. And it started in 1945. When millions of troops returned from fighting against the Nazis or the Japanese - it doesn't matter which - they returned to their countries and realised that a better world must be possible.
And that world was built. For the next 30-plus years, we ended up with a world which was characterised by care more than anything else.
And then we reached the neoliberal era, the Age of Indifference. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan promulgated ideas based upon the thinking of people like Hayek and Friedman that suggested that everything was down to the individual.
Society had no money of its own. It was individuals that paid for what government did.
The role of government was to be passive.
The role of the individual was to be dominant.
The age of the corporation had arrived. The age of big government and state-run corporations had gone. The Age of Compassion, in other words, was consigned to history.
And we got this new age, this Age of Indifference, where the individual was told that you are the epicentre of your concern, and nobody else matters as much as you, and therefore, you take whatever you want because you're worth it.
And over the following 40-odd years, something quite extraordinary happened. Although the whole foundation of the thinking of Friedman and Hayek and Thatcher and Reagan was based upon the idea of free competition in free markets, in fact, competition was destroyed.
We have come to a situation where, for example, in economics, you can't now be recognised as an economist unless you are a neoliberal. You have to comply with this type of thinking or else you're not going to get on inside a university economics department, as many of my friends who have to work in other types of department would testify.
There has been an elimination of competition with regard to economics as a consequence of the promotion of free market ideas. You almost couldn't make this up.
And there's been an elimination of ideas in politics as well. You now have to believe in neoliberalism, or apparently, you can't be a politician in a country like the UK.
And until very recently, in a country like the USA.
But the consequence of this promotion of the power of the individual, typified at one point by an advert which said “You're worth it”, as an answer to the question that the advertiser promoted, is that we've reached the Age of Aggression.
Those who have the most power - those who have assembled the ability to control what we think, where we think, how we think, who we think with, because of their control of the media - those people are now saying their views will prevail and they don't care about what we think.
They're contemptuous of democracy.
They're contemptuous of ordinary people.
They're contemptuous of people who do not, as far as they are concerned, fit their required stereotype of what normal is.
They are aggressive in pursuing their goals.
We've gone beyond the thinking of Thatcher and Reagan putting the individual at the epicentre.
We've gone to putting a very few individuals and their desperate need for more - even though they have wealth beyond imaginations – as the whole focus of this politics of aggression, we're going to see this play out. There's no doubt that this is now going to happen.
This is the era of Trump.
This is the era of Musk.
And this is the era of Silicon Valley, far-right tech-bros, as they like to call themselves.
This is the new era of control.
How's it going to end? Aggression always ends badly. We know that. One day, we're going to need an era of compassion again, and I believe we'll get it.
But for the time being, the political economy of power is all about why is aggression going to allocate resources in a way that is going to be so unfavourable to the vast majority of people around the world, and how are they getting away with this?
Those are the big political economic questions of the moment. And we will eventually have to be able to answer how we find the antidote to this type of behaviour because unless we do, we're all in deep trouble.
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[…] to do whenever I watch television these days), editing videos while watching what I am calling the Age of Aggression begin. I then listened to Trump confirm that it would be as bad as I had […]
It took two world wars to arrive at something somewhat better than the Thatcher era onwards, the aggression and it’s reasons (continuous accrual) won’t stop without force, it’s so egregiously unreasonable, and so systemically embedded – hundreds of thousands of direct employees work to make Bezos richer, and maybe billions support this by buying from Amazon, and millions of businesses support this by selling through Amazon, and politicians support this through favourable legislation and inaction, and Amazon buys whoever needs to be bought and oppresses those it can oppress. This is unstoppable by all the usual channels (the evidence is before our very eyes), and now, as you say, corporations and politicians are waking up to a world where they fully know they can disregard the lives of most, because they wield power without consequence (and they do – the idea that, for instance, a politician being a bit uncomfortable during a TV interview is holding power to account, or the same with a newspaper article being critical, is quaint). History may not be science, it may not be predictive, but it does illustrate what it takes for things to improve for the majority, and it isn’t peaceful acquiescence, it isn’t asking politely. These are truly ugly times, but I also think that they’re not something new, but rather something revealed.
Aggression from the Left!
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/spanish-property-tax-ban-eu-b2683049.html
Imagine a Labour government in the UK dealing with the housing crisis in this country by banning second homes and Buy2Let landlordism!
Sorry, but I can’t imagine this with the current neoliberal Labour leadership. We missed our chance of a truly progressive Labour and a kinder politics when Corbyn was hounded out by a concerted establishment campaign against him, cynically spearheaded by right wing members of his own party with false claims of antisemitism faithfully and uncritically amplified by our mass media. We are further away from true democracy than any time since WWII. Let’s make sure we do not repeat the same mistakes after WWIII.
A similar message yesterday from Zack Polanski, specifically with regard to the clampdown on protest here:-
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2NkivioTuIg
I see aggression linked to a sense of righteousnes. And righteousness implies a moral basis, a sense of right and wrong. Trumps references to gangs, killers, sexual identity, people eating dogs, God’s intervention to save him, and therefore America, bring with them a need to separate the worthy from the unworthy. Trump people (the righteous) from non Trump people (the unworthy).
Almost medieval.
A convicted felon says the above and that merit will be the primary determinant of success in America just after he has issued a gambling chip that will enrich himself regardless of regulatory propriety.
He signals the coming of an age of benightedness, of the undermining of language itself.
Very well put. I really hope an age of compassion returns. My concern is with the growing climate crisis, that was getting little enough attention before the return of Trump, things are going to rapidly accelerate and as the LA wildfires show even the rich are not immune. We certainly need more voices of reason, and yours brings a very measured response that cannot be accused of emotionalism.
The aggression started immediately the UK establishment unexpectedly loss hold of the reins of power in 1945. So shocked were they that the foundations of fake individualism were laid immediately and steadily built upon. Thatcher was just the ‘dumb decoy duck’ to figurehead the deliberate evisceration of the power of the individual. It has been one of the most remarkably effective political coups of any historic period. Have any foundations been laid for the compassionate antidote? I’m not aware of any. Yet the majority of folk here in the UK yearn for one and are genuinely horrified by the now inevitable collapse of the USA
This is precisely the argument I make in my recently published book, where I also outline the some of the bio-psychological processes that render people vulnerable to be driven by fear and rage under conditions of neoliberal insecurity, inequality and hopelessness. The latter impacts the neural capacity to think clearly, going some way to explaining the public susceptibility to the current crop of jingoistic populists (much as it has in the past) as cogntion is overridden by emotion under chronic stress. I also address some of the epigenetic consequences for current and, potentially, future generations of experiencing the socio-economic conditions that have produced this scenario and that are set to arise.
See: The Great Decline: From the Era of Hope and Progress to the Age of Fear and Rage
https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-great-decline
Thanks, John
https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/151/4/98/113706/From-Anti-Government-to-Anti-Science-Why
This is a very fine article towards understanding how we may have got from compassion to aggression.
Thanks
[…] have already suggested that we are entering an Age of Aggression. It is now clear that it is backed by theories of behaviour that have no relationship to the […]