Nikolai Berdyaev

'What one need to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world.'

In 1920, Berdiaev became professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow, although he had no academic credentials. In the same year, he was accused of participating in a conspiracy against the government; he was arrested and jailed. It seems that the feared head of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, came in person to interrogate him, and that Berdyaev gave his interrogator a solid dressing-down on the problems with Bolshevism. Berdyaev's prior record of revolutionary activity seems to have saved him from prolonged detention, as his friend Lev Kamenev was present at the interrogation.

Nobelit Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago (published in 1973) recounts the incident as follows:

[Berdyaev] was arrested twice; he was taken in 1922 for a midnight interrogation with Dzerjinsky; Kamenev was also there. [...] But Berdyaev did not humiliate himself, he did not beg, he firmly professed the moral and religious principles by virtue of which he did not adhere to the party in power; and not only did they judge that there was no point in putting him on trial, but he was freed. Now there is a man who had a "point of view"!^[4]

The Soviet authorities eventually expelled Berdyaev from the RSFSR in September 1922. He became one of a carefully selected group of some 160 prominent writers, scholars, and intellectuals whose ideas the Bolshevik government found objectionable, and who were sent into exile on the so-called "philosophers' ship". Overall, these expellees supported neither the Czarist régime nor the Bolsheviks, preferring less autocratic forms of government. They included those who argued for personal liberty, spiritual development, Christian ethics, and a pathway informed by reason and guided by faith.

At first Berdyaev and other émigrés went to Berlin, where Berdyaev founded an academy of philosophy and religion. But economic and political conditions in Weimar Germany caused him and his wife to move to Paris in 1923. He transferred his academy there, and taught, lectured, and wrote, working for an exchange of ideas with the French intellectual community.

During the German occupation of France, Berdyaev continued to write books that were published after the war—some of them after his death. In the years that he spent in France, Berdyaev wrote fifteen books, including most of his most important works. He died at his writing desk in his home in Clamart, near Paris, in March 1948.

Geopolitical Realism by Tony Judt

This is the problem with geopolitical realism, especially when it is practiced with distain for domestic constraints. You begin with a reasonable-sounding worldliness, of the kind articulated by Metternich and quoted admiringly by Henry Kissinger: "Little given to abstract ideas, we accept things as they are and attempt to the the maximum of our ability to protect ourselves against delusions about reality." You then find yourself allying with disreputable foreign rulers on the 'realist' grounds that they are the people with whom you have to do business, forgetting that in doings you have deprived yourself of any political leverage over them, because the one thing that matters the most to them - how they get and keep power over their subjects - is of no interest to you. And at the last,you are thus reduced to cynicism about the outcomes not just of their actions but of your own.

Thus, as William Bundy pointed out in his book (The Tangled Web), some of the most vaunted achievements of 'realist' foreign policy turn out to be bogus. Kissinger and Nixon could hardly have been unaware, he concludes, that the Paris settlement of 1973 that 'ended' the Vietnam War was a mirage, its clauses and safeguards 'toothless.' It looked only to the short-term political advantage,with no vision or strategy for handling the longer-term fallout.Their unstinting support for the Shah of Iran was similarly disastrous- first joining him in misleading promises to the Kurds in order to bring pressure on Iran's western neighbor, Iraq, then abandoning those same Kurds to a bloody fate, and finally bonding the image and power of the U.S. to an increasingly indefensible regime in Tehran. Like so much else about the foreign dealings of the Nixon era- AND OUR OWN - the bill fell later: in 1975 in Vietnam and Cambodia,in 1979-80 in Iran. And in each case the interests of the United States were among the first victims.

This is the point: in a constitutionally ordered state where laws are derived from broad principles of right and wrong and where those principles are enshrined in a protected by agreed procedures and practices, it can never be in the long-term interests of the state or its citizens to flout those procedures at home or associate too closely with the enemies of your founding ideals.

The rhetoric of Gladstone's attacks on Disraeli in 1880 is dated,but his theme is unmistakable and familiar:

" Abroad the government the government has strained, if they have not endangered, the prerogative by gross misuse and have weakened the Empire by needless wars, unprofitable extensions and unwise engagements and have dishonored it in the eyes of Europe and the world. Disraeli's brazen unconcern for the behavior of its friends, or for the interests of others, especially small nations, are inimical to Britain's long-term interests. If British interests were accepted as 'the sole measure of right and wrong then the same logic might logically readopted by any other country, and the result would be international anarchy."

Ibn Khaldun and Democracy by Anne Norton

 (Zuckerberg is reading a mistranslationof the Muqaddimah. Ibn Khaldun, of course, has long been favored by rightwingers in capitalist countries because he wrote that lower taxation increases incentives for productivity and prosperity. Even Ronald Reagan cited Ibn Khaldun.)

 But for Ibn Khaldun, individualism and the commons are not opposed.Those who live on the frontier are more self-reliant (because they must be) and more committed to the common good (because they must be). Individuals are more individual: more self-reliant,more independent,more able to provide for themselves.They are likely to be stronger and braver. The harsh circumstances in which they live have obliged them to learn courage, steadfastness and fortitude.But their individual strength does not keep them apart. It draws them together.  The same harsh circumstances that teach them strength and courage also teach them trust.The idea that a common experience of danger and hardship draws them together is a common one. Soldiers who serve together come to see themselves as a band of brothers. Settlers on a windswept,barren plain learn to work together to protect their farms.

Derrida saw friendship as a luxury good.Ibn Khalun recognized it as a necessity.Derrida's late account of democracy figured as a place where enemies meet: the turn of a wheel that raises some and others down,perhaps beneath it. Wendy Brown observed how foreign this is to democracy. This is precisely what democracy would not be: not outside,not unilateral,not over,not a matter of "winning out over." Democracy is, on the contrary, ruling together, ruling and being ruled in turn. Democracies are manifold, many-sided. There are many sides to any question and many sides contesting. Democracy has many dimensions, and on each dimension one may win or lose, and one will rule and be ruled in turn.Opposition is not enmity.Or perhaps it is.

Perhaps democracies have made enmity their own. Perhaps democracies have the power to tame enmity. Tyrants, as philosophers from Xenophon to Arendt have recognized, live in constant fear of opposition. They see enemies everywhere. They live in fear. They live by fear. Their safety depends on making their enemies fear them, and everyone is their enemy. Fear spreads, and such regimes end eating their own. 

In democracies, enmity is made ordinary. Democrats live with the enemy. We argue with our enemies in our homes and at work, we hear them on the radio and watch them on television. We see their bogs. We campaign against them, write against them. We hate them and we know they may win: in this debate, this bill, this law. We set our hearts and lives against them. When they win, we submit.

Whether we win or lose, we do not fear them. Or,more precisely, we have learned to govern out fears. Enmity is not easily domesticated. When domesticated, it may still show its claws. We can hear the gunfire in the parking lot of an Arizona grocery. We can see the aborted fetus. We can see the bullets hit the suspect. We live -all of us with our enemies as with our friends.We live with danger.

Democracy is a hard discipline. Democrats are required to live surrounded by enemies and opponents.They are require to walk among their enemies without fear. Democracy is rooted in courage: in wild recess courage and in steadfast endurance. The marchers who faced fire hoses and dogs on the bridged at Selma,who stood steadfast on bridges over the Nile as the water cannons mowed them down, called us to witness their title to democracy. They had the courage to act when there was no hope. When Egyptians took to the streets in late January of 2011, they acted against the prevailing wisdom and their wholly rational fears. Marchers filled the streets, moving like a river through the city, cling forth democracy, calling forth a free people, "shaab hurri".

The people of these revolutions reminded us of the virtue of democracy. Democracy depends on daring, on that wild reckless courage that defies insurmountable odds (the odds are always against democracy) and prompts people to sail forth into an unknown, unknowable future. democracy depends on fortitude, on steadfastness, on the ability to endure hardship. Democracy relies not only on  the courage one sees during a daring act, but on the courage that enables people to endure war cannot be endured, to face what cannot be faced, to stand up and begin again.

Roland Barthes and the Insurrections of May 1968

"Roland Barthes recognized that the nature of the discourse and the events in France  gave a completely new power to the spoken word and the taking of power by the spoken word. May 1968 was the historical consummation of a process of mass communication based both on the media and the immediate, on the message and the ephemeral, on unreflective imagination and the need for mastery. Barthes was merely denouncing an anti-intellectualism that he had rejected ever since the polemics around his controversial  On Racine that did indeed threaten any possible cultural critique. “There is an intellectual Poujadism* that is always possible: a brutal distrust of language, a dismissal of forms that are always considered sophistical, the accusation of “jargon”, the rejection of writing, etc.’ In saying this, he was repeating his position against the arrogance of the spoken word. His disaffection for theater, earlier in the 1960s, was already evidence of a similar difficulty with the spoken word that was always, when it was imposed and violent, on the side of the law. Yet again, he contrasted it with the polysemia of writing, where everything always needs to be invented: writing alone can be the site of a real revolution.

This is a leitmotif in Barthes’ work: it expresses his disdain for the spontaneity of events and his conviction that a written text - not as a transcription of the spoken word, but as a reflection of the plurality of meaning – could bring together the cultural and the political. “We will regard as suspect any eviction of writing, any systematic primacy of speech, because, whatever the revolutionary alibi, both tend to preserve the old symbolic system and refuse to link its revolution to that of society. As cultural capitalism has merely strengthened its grip since Barthes wrote these lines, we can simply point out how acute his analysis was.

The other point on which Barthes proved to be a real visionary was the advent of technocracy as a moment in capitalism less concerned with human labor than with the profitability of science.In his lecture of 21 November 1968, he said: “The present day is certainly a turning point or at least a significantly new emphasis. How are we to define it? The conjunction or confluence of an ideology and a politics: an ideology, that of the human sciences, and a technocratic politics. The objective alliance between the human sciences and technology risks invading our schools, with its technological demands (research, specialization, qualification) shared by bodies and assemblies set up in May (the document of the reform committee: ‘Cutting-edge or very specialized sectors,’ etc.). Elsewhere, he pointed out how the slogans of ’68 on the university system, if they were assembled like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, form an image which ‘resembled the contemporary American university.’ This denunciation of everything that sacrificed culture to efficiency is such an accurate projection of the university system as we find it now that we cannot accuse Barthes of having adopted a reactionary attitude in 1968. It was always in the name of the same principles that he established his line of behavior. While his relation to writing included the possibility of contradiction, in the name of plurality and the fragmentation of meaning, his political behavior and the reasons for his rejections or his denunciations did not alter."

* The movement's "common man" populism led to antiparliamentarism (Poujade called the National Assembly "the biggest brothel in Paris" and the deputies a "pile of rubbish" and "pederasts"), a strong anti-intellectualism (Poujade denounced the graduates from the École Polytechnique as the main culprits for the woes of 1950s France and boasted that he had no book learning), xenophobia, and antisemitism especially aimed against Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France (claiming "Mendès is French only as the word added to his name"), who was perceived as responsible for the loss of Indochina. Poujadism also supported the cause of French Algeria.

   Tiphaine Samoyault in Barthes, A Biography

Roland Barthes in China [ Traveling with the French Maoists]

This is one of the more revealing passages in Tiphaine Samoyault’s biography of Barthes; of the inner life of the man.

“Barthes was quite aware of the slightly comical aspect of their tour (1974), which sometimes seemed like Tintin in the Land of the Soviets - as some of Barthe’s ironic comments point out: Tel Quel and its friends are applauded in the factories of China’ [ though not so much in France]. All these constraints made it impossible to gain any real understanding of the country: “It’s the continual presence, smooth as a tablecloth, of Agency officials that blocks, forbids censors rules out the possibility of Surprise, the Incident, the Haiku.” For the first time, no doubt, even if this had happened on other journeys, such as to the United States (but not so drastically), travel was not a way of freeing him from the burden of everyday life. It did not provide him with the reservoir of things he could write about which the fascinated observation of foreignness could comprise. The weight of ready-made phrases, of a fossilized discourse, of what Barthes called the “bricks” of ideological discourse, literally wall up Being, life, the gaze. The only escape, where possible, lies in day-dreaming, in drifting thoughts, in the pencil as it sketches, and in desire when  it fleetingly awakens. Usually, when he was traveling, Barthes was most captivated by chance encounters, by places where his desire led him.

In China Barthes suffered from never being in contact with other people’s bodies. ‘And what can you know about a people, if you don’t know their sex?’ The claustrophobia lay in a huge repression of sexality, one that he found frustrating and incomprehensible. On his return, he opened up to his students about this experience: ‘The body does not seem to be thinking about itself, projecting itself, deciding this or that; there is no role for the body, no hysteria.’ This sense of closure could only be overcome if the usual hermeneutics was turned upside down: bodies, perhaps, were not there to signify anything, nor were differences meant to appear. In the absence of the main signifier (the religious) and of the direct signifier (Eros), the absence of any point of contact and the silence of meaning meaning led to a purely phenomenological reading of what he saw. Since it was not possible to interpret things, he needed to be content with noting behavior, little rituals, surfaces appearances.

In spite of this, there are a few fragile moments of escape in the Travels that set it apart from the notorious report in which Barthes tried to impose some form on his impressions, ‘Alors, la Chine?’ These are moments when individual impulses makes themselves known, when the traveler stand out from the group, when his own thoughts are freed from mere ideas. There are sallies of wit that interrupt the boredom; Barthes sometimes senses the resistance of the Chinese to the prevailing uniformity (in a hairstyle, demeanor); there are times when you would like to see something  if you do not succeed -for Barthes was desperately seeking signifiers, but he found only a few, and those he did find (such as children) soon turned out to be void of interest (’I had initially classified the children among the few signifiers, but now they strike me as a real bore.’)  Fashion is more or less completely absent, as in any color, and the tea is insipid. Only the ideograms and the food attract his attention; and the poppies of Luo-Yang, and the tigers in the Nanjing Zoo.

He loves the profusion of dishes, their spices, they way they are set out, the cutting up of the meat and the filling of the fish. He loves listing what he has eaten . . . While he is aghast at the socialist realist paintings  he is shown, he loves the calligraphy and procures several specimens. Indeed, he contemplates a piece of calligraphy by Mao, he compares it to his own painting: ‘utterly elegant (grassy calligraphy), cursive, impatient, and spacious. Reflections on the ‘frame’; my paintings: also calligraphic blocks; it’s not a scene cut out, it’s a block moving forward.’  His purchases corresponded to the few times when he grew enthusiastic. On their arrival in China, he suggested to his friends that they buy Mao suits, which they had tailor made, and in which they would appear in Pars. The rest of the time he was overwhelmed by fatigue and indifference - ‘Sometimes, I enjoy not being interested’ - when it is not pure distress, a rejection of the whole country or the sense of being at a loss that affected his system and mode of expression: ‘All these notes will probably attest to the failure, in this country, of my writing (in comparison to Japan).  In fact, I can’t find anything to note down, to enumerate, to classify. Plynet referred several times in his travel notes to the position adopted by Barthes, always a bit aloof. On he day they visited the Ming tombs, ‘RB stayed in the bus’; in the train to Nanjing, ‘RB sits apart and reads Bouvard and Pecuchet, JK is working on her Chinese, Ph S is playing xiangqi (Chinese chess) with our guide’; and, during a debate between ideologues: ‘RB who seems to be following this discussion distantly states at us like a fish staring at an apple.’ His relief, when they left Beijing on 4 May, was as great as the burden from which he at last felt free. ’Ouf’ he said in Francois Wahl’s ear as the plane started to taxi.”

So far so good,  Samoyault provides keen insight into Barthes’ character, what interests him, how and where his attention his drawn, his engagement with life, but then she writes that  ‘Barthes followed a position he had thought about at length and chose assent to the country rather than distance. This was an ethical choice, but in this case it did not suit an overall political situation in which China and its people were alienated. In Barthes’ texts, in spite of his reservations, no threat was seen to be hanging over the country, there was no death to  be deplored: ‘ Another word comes to mind, a more accurate one: China is peaceful.’ “In those days,” she writes, “ intellectuals took up such radical and sharply defined positions that people were often reduced to ‘choosing their camps’ instead of reflelecting on problems in a more nuanced way. However, it was possible to have more qualified positions, as some of them demonstrated. The truth about the Cultural Revolution had alread been partly disclosed, and that there were many accounts that could have alerted Barthes or led him to seek another truth. In 1971, Smon Leys had already published The Chairman’s New Clothes, in which he spoke of the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the Cultural Revolution. Samoyault concludes: “This moment of direct conformation with history was,  yet again, a missed opportunity for Barthes.”

Well, yes. 100s of thousands of lives were lost, many remain uncounted; horrendous battles and massacres- even descent into the abyss  of cannibalism- unimaginable shifts in ‘official lines’  during which no one could remain ‘neutral’ or silent.  One day this, the next its opposite. But in no way were all these lives ‘innocent’ any more than the mass of Americans  or those designated to represent them are innocent of the political cataclysms that are shaking their country today. At that moment in history, however, in consideration of all that occurred since the Revolutions, the degeneration of the Party, the obstacles he faced, it is actually difficult to discern what else Chairman Mao might have done to secure lasting and effective government in so vast a country. Retrospectively one could imagine that the convulsions of the Cultural Revolution created an opening for better things to come and that recognition helps to explain the ambiguity with which many Chinese regard Mao to this day.

In China Barthes was out of place, out of time (‘no country for an old man), at least not for his sort; that moment  was beyond his interpretative grasp, not even in the fragments, random molecules, brokenness, rupture and cross-fertilizations  with which he customarily concerned himself. I read “China is peaceful’ in that sense, the eye of storm.

Theory of the Leisure Class

To tell truth I always had trouble connecting with this book, its kind of abstract and the way he talks about 'primitive' and 'barbarian' people seemed a bit presumptuous or al least out of sync with the way most of the other academics I was reading talk about such things- of course certain tag lines like 'conspicuous consumption' fit right in with the discourse of the late sixties- but it still remained difficult to follow his argument all the way through because he reels it out in a very extensive fashion rather than in a 'bullet point' way.

Well, lately, I hauled the thing from the dusty shelf were it has rested waiting for a more propitious time these past 30 years and started giving it another go. When he talks about the 'predatory classes' that struck a stronger note with me then ever before but I was still scratching my head- what precise point of view was he assuming, what rock in the stream was he standing on as he cast his line? Then it dawned on me.

He's like the ambassador from an alien world who has spent much time observing us humans over the whole period of historic time and is giving a report to a study group of an intergalactic council which includes many individuals who have either accompanied him on his investigation or conducted their own independently. He mounts almost no political engagements with earthly beings themselves, his 'moral tone' is primarily of the ironic type. He's not even pushing 'a policy' for the council, like say, ' 'The situation is so hopeless down there, we should just nuke em and be done with it, or , yes they are obviously in the thrall of the more primitive sorts of instincts but things might soon evolve in a more favorable direction. As complicated and dire as the situation seems, he simply endeavors to 'tell it like it is' with the least flourish as possible, and without pudding-headed self-congratulations, or projections of his own superiority as you might find in a character like Dr. Spock.

In Veblen's view the most significant mediator between  somewhat distinct schemes of social salvation (both founded upon a predatory animus never-the-less) is what he calls 'the instinct of workmanship',a natural aversion to waste one's time and industrial inefficiency. As an attribute to be emulated, however, the instinct of workmanship has its greatest force only in small, immobile populations where material honorifics (wealth) are relatively equal.Otherwise standards of decency and the means to self-complacency are founded on invidious comparisons of pecuniary status, that is what we use to call 'keeping up with the Jones' or rather surpassing the Jones' even where the obstacles, resistances and dire consequences of doing so are very high.

"As increased industrial efficiency makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with less labor, the energies of the industrial members of the community are bent to the compassing of a higher result in conspicuous consumption, rather than slackened to a more comfortable pace. The strain is not lightened as industrial efficient increases and makes a lighter strain possible, but the increment of output is turned to use to meet this want, which is indefinitely expandable, after the manner commonly imputed in economic theory to higher or spiritual wants. It is owing chiefly to the presences of this element in the standard of living that J.S. Mill was able to say that "hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."

It's clear to me that in the chapter titled "The Conservation of Archaic Traits' Veblen makes a parody out of the racial theories so popular in his time. The three main ethnic types he identifies the 'dolichcephalc-blond', the brachycephalic-brunette' and 'The Mediterranean' all possess similar traits which are portioned out to different degrees in adaptation to the development of the institutions of the society in which they live. Genetic determinations in his book largely concern physical stature- different 'bone intensities' between the sexes which, however, do not irrevocably determine the position or status of women in society which is actually the result of predation and the mechanism of pecuniary interest that characterize the leisure class. Some individuals might possesses a physical superiority which makes them better fitted for 'barbarian' practice but also for the role of industrial worker though the traits of such groups are quite different.

In his discussion of various ethnic groups an astute reader can easily see to whom he is referring- the peaceful Menomites and industrious German farmers. the Scot-Irish frontier settlers, the Glascow businessmen, the common Irish, the Jews and the English whom he always identifies as the chief predatory type, the 'blond' denoting the Viking-like proclivities of that class of people. The distinctions apparent in the different groupings of the Native inhabitants of the 'Occidental' hemisphere are also analogized. The parody and abstract typology are clearly intended to avoid any direct confrontation with the 'extreme chauvinistic nationalism' of his time which continue to exist in our own and was a relatively successful tactic; though he was fired from many positions at universities, he always managed to get another somewhere.

Devout Observances of the Leisure Class

It is easily seen that the devout observances characteristic of the leisure classes in Veblen's time have been to some lesser and greater degrees transferred to the News and Political Parties, despite the forward development of scientific skepticism- greater attention away from animistic and anthropomorphic belief and habits of mind towards material cause and effect characteristic of advance industrial society-as exampled in the comments on PBS Newshour Facebook page, a large proportion of which are genuflectuary in character: expressions of devout confidence in what they have been told with very little critical content, and clearly reflective  of the habitual sense of personal status- a relation of mastery and subservance which fits into 'the industrial scheme of predatory and quasi-peaceful culture'

The same holds true for the fans of other News media- The NYTimes, Fox, CNN-the differences in style being analogous to the variety churches and sects of Veblen's time.The same holds true for the Political Parties, the principle figures in them as well as government officials in general, who often attain a status of 'near divinity', whose practices are riddled with devout , repetitive ceremonies and the usual (though often formal only) expectation of personal austerity and moral probity which in the past was as accorded members of the priesthood or clergy whose sermons and discourses are of an un-intellectual  or anti-intellectual character.

"The guiding habits of thought of a devout person move on the plane of the archaic scheme of life which has outlived much of its usefulness for the economic exstgencies of the collective life today. In so far as the economic organization fits the extingencies of the collective life today, it has outlived the regime of status and has no use and no place for a relation of personal subserviency. So far as concerns the economic efficiency of the community, the sentiment of personal fealty, the general (predatory) habit of mind of which that sentiment is an expression, are survivals which cumber the ground and hinder inadequate adjustment to the existing situation."

"The habit of mind which best lends itself to the purposes of a peaceable, industrial community, is that matter-of-fact temper which recognizes the value of material facts simply as opaque items in a mechanical sequence. It is a frame of mind which does not instinctively impute an animistic propensity to things ( it is not interested in 'games of chance'), nor resort to preternatural intervention as an explanation of perplexing phenomena ( God's special love for America) nor depend on an unseen hand to shape the course of events to human use ( e.g. being convinced that the Presidents 'messaging' has a decisive impact on the problems of inequality and bigotry). To meet the requirements of the highest economic efficiency under modern conditions (global warming etc), the world process must habitually be apprehended in terms quantitative, dispassionate force and sequence."

 Veblen identifies certain traits that are initially present yet alien to the devout life in its animistic and anthropomorphic stages in the barbarian and quasi-peaceful , largely predatory economy that later develop into non- invidious interests compatible with an advanced modern economy.

Survivals  of Non-Invidious Interests in the Devout Observances of the Leisure Class

Among the alien motives which effect the devout scheme in its later stages are charity and social good fellowship or conviviality; the various expressions of the sense of human solidarity and sympathy, together with non-reverent sense of aesthetic congruity with the environment mostly derived from the ancient habit of purposeful activity so inimical to the invidious and predatory schemes of the leisure classes. These motives can sometimes be identified as a disapproval of the futility and waste of human life, activities that only serve individual gain at the cost of the collective or other social groups and marked by a tendency to depreciate the infliction of pain as well as discredit marauding enterprises. Veblen characterizes these benevolent motives or traits as proto-anthropoid, reversions to a cultural stage that may be possibly characterized as sub-human.

" So far as concerns the chance of survival of individuals endowed with an exceptionally large share of these primitive states, the sheltered position of this class favors its members directly by withdrawing them from the pecuniary struggle; but indirectly, through the leisure class canons of conspicuous waste of goods and effort, the institutions of a leisure class lessens the chance of survival of such individuals in the entire population.

The 'decent' requirements of waste absorb the surplus energy of the population in an invidious struggle that leaves no margin for the non-invidious expressions. The canons of what is regarded as a decent life in the leisure class are an elaboration of of the predatory principle of invidious comparison and they accordingly act consistently to inhibit all non-invidious effort and to inculcate the self-regarding attitude."

Reading Theory of the Leisure Class and interacting with my professorial friends on Facebook got me wondering if searching for historical analogues is most fruitful in the historiographical sense, whether in light of new perspectives and unearthed evidences the theories and explanations of past historians can now be said to 'hold water'- or how far they do or don't- whereas contemporary events are unique to such extent that they don't much resemble what happened 'eons ago' or whenever (say the 'lessons of Watergate' in regard to Mr. Trump) and tell very little about how we should proceed today with any real cogency, however entertaining they often are ( they certainly inspire people to read books they might not have otherwise). For example, some general ideas in circulation today may seem reproduce those that have circulated in the past- 'freedom' ,'brotherhood', 'charity', entrepenuerialship' etc- even stated in sentences in exactly the same way- but have a very different meaning and significance in contemporary debate and inspire people to act in ways that would be inimical to the intentions to those who used and acted upon those words in the past. Self-regard inspires us to believe that by stint of great effort and loads of experience  certain principles of natural law do indeed inhere in the in conduct of human affairs on this planet and they provide reliable guides the the course of events in our day, if only the human mind were a natural thing!. However, being largely ignorant of the past or holding tenaciously to the fallacies about the past promoted by various 'experts', pundits and politicians is not wanted either so my wonderings do have the aspect of a leaky boat.

Nickel-and-Dime Socialism by Matt Bruenig

Socialism is the idea that capital (the means of production) should be owned collectively. There are divergent ideas about how to achieve this in reality. One approach is to have the government hold it collectively in social wealth funds. This is (more or less) the socialism of Yanis Varoufakis, Rudolf Meidner, and John E. Roemer. It is also my brand of socialism, at least for the time.

This socialist strategy has two main parts: 1) the management of social wealth funds, and 2) the transferring of private wealth into the social wealth fund. There are challenges to both parts, but challenges that I think can be overcome.

1. Managing the social wealth fund

Slogan-happy conservatives will tell you that the government is necessarily an oafish operator that cannot run anything right, making the idea that they could create and manage huge wealth funds absurd on its face. But governments, in the US and abroad, already manage big funds pretty successfully.

In 2015, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board was managing $458 billion of assets for the federal employee defined-contribution retirement fund called the Thrift Savings Plan. In the same year, California was managing $302 billion of assets for the state employee defined-benefit retirement fund called CalPERS. Abroad, Norway currently manages $897 billion in its social wealth fund. And these three funds are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to wealth managed by state actors.

1.1. Bigness Problem

Some argue that the existing funds only work because they are smaller scale than a robust social wealth fund would be. For the social wealth fund to really approach full-blown socialization, it is going to have to grab up a huge share of the national capital. This is a problem because capital markets only work when there are many smaller actors actively trading against one another, something a social wealth fund would effectively eliminate.

This is a fair objection, but it is able to be overcome easily. If a social wealth fund gets to be so big that it is creating problems (for the capital market, the fund, or anything else), it will be possible to just break the fund up into smaller funds that operate independently from one another. Indeed, elements of Norway’s political establishment have been toying with splitting up their wealth fund for years. By creating many smaller funds that trade separately from one another (and against one another), it should be possible to solve all the problems associated with funds that are too big.

In addition to the problems of bigness being solvable, they are also not unique to social wealth funds. In fact, creating a robust system of actively-traded social wealth funds might actually save the capital markets from the rise of passive investing and the similar problems associated with that rise. As Inigo Fraser-Jenkins noted last year to much fanfare, management of equity has increasingly moved from active traders that try to determine where the market is going in order to make investment decisions and towards passive funds that just buy and hold the whole market (or big swaths of the market) indiscriminately. As the blob of index funds continues to increase their share of the overall equity market, they will collectively create the exact same problems the big social wealth fund is supposed to have.

Thus it’s hardly a knock on the social wealth fund idea that it may have the same problems that market competition for asset management is already creating. This is especially true because there is actually a solution to these problems when they arise for social wealth funds: split them up. No similar solution exists for beating back the growth in passive management strategies.

1.2. Incentive Problem

Naysayers have also suggested that the social wealth funds will have an incentive problem: without the threat of termination or customer withdrawal, the managers of the public funds will have no reason to perform well. Fund managers at investment banks face brutal competition, both inside their firms and outside their firms. If they do very well, they can get big bonuses. If they don’t, they can lose their jobs. Since the social wealth funds do not operate that way, they will wind up saddled with subpar managers that allocate capital poorly and squander the public’s money.

This objection is less fair than the bigness one. Worker motivation is not as straightforward as many seem to think. Loads of studies suggest that performance is not strictly based on monetary rewards and penalties, but instead on a whole variety of factors including how well they are treated, how much they enjoy their work and their coworkers, etc.

But putting aside that general point, this objection also fails because it would be possible to create the same incentives private investment firms already have within the social wealth fund system. You could create incentive-based pay that rewards managers based on the returns they generate. You could base retention on performance. If you have multiple funds, you could also move money in and out of the funds based on how well they are performing, even killing off the funds that do very poorly. All these things are doable.

Thus, neither the bigness problem nor the incentive problem is impossible to overcome. It would seem that, on its face at least, you really could socialize the ownership of the means of production through these kinds of funds, if you were careful about it.

2. Transferring wealth into the social wealth fund

The more difficult problem is how to move private wealth into the social wealth fund. People partial to this form of socialization disagree about how best to do this, with some favoring snap socialization that moves all the private wealth over at once and others favoring gradual socialization that fills up the social wealth fund over time. I am partial to the latter approach and favor using a diversity of nickel-and-dime expropriation strategies that could, over time, add up to a lot.

2.1. Financial Transactions Tax

A financial transactions tax (FTT) would require traders to remit a tiny percentage of the value of each of their trades. Its proponents usually pitch it as a sales tax, but that’s misleading because a sales tax is a levy on final consumption while an FTT is really a levy on wealth. The Tax Policy Centerhas estimated that a well-designed FTT of 0.1% could raise $50 billion per year (or $541.5 billion between 2016 and 2025).

2.2. Mandatory Share Issuances

Right now, the US taxes corporate income at a statutory rate of 35% (the effective rate is much lower). The way this works is corporations determine what their profits are and then take 35% of them (actually less) and remit that money to the state. If we wanted to build up the wealth fund quickly, we could replace the corporate income tax with mandatory share issuances.

There are two ways to do this. The first way, favored by Dean Baker, is to have companies give a one-time grant of shares to the government equal to whatever we think an appropriate tax rate would be. So, instead of taxing corporate income at 20%, we could have each corporation give the state shares equal to 20% of its outstanding shares. This would make the state the 20% owner of the company and would entitle it to 20% of the dividends, buybacks, and any other payouts to shareholders.

The second way, favored by Rudolf Meidner, is to have companies give an annual grant of shares to the government equal to some percent of their annual profits. So, instead of taxing corporate income at 20% every year, we would have companies give over shares equal in value to whatever their corporate income tax liability would be that year. So, if a company had profits of $100 million, the 20% mandatory share issuance would require them to give the state shares equal to $20 million. This is a much more aggressive strategy than the one favored by Baker because, in the long-run, it would result in far more of the company’s equity getting transferred into the social wealth fund.

2.3. Countercyclical Asset Purchases

Roger Farmer and Miles Kimball have collectively written dozens of posts making the case that a social wealth fund could be filled up by snapping up cheap and risky assets when the economy goes into recession. The case involves a lot of arguments, but the main ones are that 1) countercyclical asset purchases would stabilize financial markets, preventing the kind of wild drops we see during recessions such as in the Great Recession, 2) the government is already implicitly on the hook for bailing out financial markets anyways because their total collapse would ruin the country, and 3) given (2), we might as well allow the public to enrich themselves in the process of stabilizing financial markets by taking direct positions in the assets that are going to be bailed out.

The way this would work is that when the financial markets plunge (they have more rigorous definitions of how to determine when this has happened), the social wealth fund (through the Treasury) would issue bonds at very low rates and use the money raised from those issuances to snap up equities and other higher-yield financial assets. Mechanically, what it means is the social wealth fund would trade newly minted, low-yield treasuries for higher-yield financial assets, satisfying the financial market’s sudden demand for safe, liquid assets while increasing the holdings of the social wealth fund in the medium and long term.

2.4. Fund Management Excise Taxes

When people put their money in things like mutual funds, the fund manager takes a percent of what they invest each year as its compensation. So, for instance, a Vanguard Fund might charge you 0.1% of the amount that is in your account each year for its management fee.

One of the interesting things about these management fees is a lot of people really have no idea what a reasonable management fee is. This has opened the door for tons of funds to basically scam investors out of money by charging a, say, 4% management fee, which might seem reasonable on its face, but is actually very expensive.

A fund management excise tax would take advantage of this apparent insensitivity many have to management fees. The government could require fund managers to pay an annual tax equal to, say, 0.3% of the assets they manage. This 0.3% would be passed on to the fund’s clients, with most not even realizing what’s going on and with the rest having no way to avoid it (unless they want to become a retail investor). Such an excise tax, if high enough, might even help curb the allegedly problematic rise of passive management discussed above.

2.5. Large Endowment Taxes

This idea may not raise much money but it would be incredibly fun. Basically what you do is say that institutions with sufficiently large endowments (think Yale and Harvard) have to pay a wealth tax equal to some percent of their holdings each year.

2.6. Net worth tax

Piketty has advocated using a progressive wealth tax to raise money. The way this would work is people would be required every year to determine their net worth (assets minus liabilities) and then that net worth would be subject to a tax schedule (e.g. all net worth over $1 million would be taxed at 1%). Wealth taxes of this sort already exist in France and Norway.

2.7. Land value tax

As the Georgists have argued, land value is able to be easily seized (without distortion of any sort) by levying a tax equal in value to land rents. So, for instance, if we can determine that the annual rental value of a parcel of land is equal to $10,000, we could in theory levy a $10,000 tax on its owner without a problem. In so doing, we would effectively add the land to the social wealth fund, since the rent that flows to the land would become socialized.

We already have property taxes in this country (which levy a percentage of the value of the land and dwellings). This would basically be like that, but only levy on the value of the land rent, not the dwellings. In order to avoid harming incumbent landowners too much, we would want to phase the land value tax in over many years.

2.8. Inheritance Tax

We already have such a tax, called the Estate Tax, which is levied on a small percentage of very large inheritances. We should want to increase taxes on inherited wealth as much as possible.

2.9. Other Stuff Too

This is not an exhaustive list, but I hope it gets across the basic gist of the nickel-and-dime socialization strategy. Rather than going for one big seizure, it seems better to just nickel-and-dime people at as many points in the wealth ownership system as possible. Over time, this could amount to a lot of money and put the country on a path towards gradually socializing most of the wealth in the country. Such a gradual path would not shock the system too much in the short term and would allow people to still engage in private wealth accumulation.

2.10. The Savings Problem

Even though it is meant to minimize this problem as much as possible, this sort of nickel-and-dime approach may drag on private savings some. At least, that’s what the opponents of the idea will say. The nickel-and-diming will in total reduce the return on savings and thus somewhat reduce the incentive to do so.

As an initial matter, it’s important to push back on these simplistic theories of savings behavior. People save for all sorts of reasons that are not directly related to how much return they will get from it. This includes having money for a rainy day, securing their relative position in the wealth hierarchy, and because they just don’t have any desire to consume at this time (e.g. people who literally have too much money to consume).

With that said, there may be some drop in the national savings rate from this reform. If we drop below an adequate savings rate, the state will need to pick up the slack caused by a drop in private savings by increasing public savings. With a social wealth fund, this should be easy to do: just reinvest as much of the fund’s annual return each year as is necessary to keep the overall national savings rate where it needs to be.

Conclusion

For the above reasons, I think a nickel-and-dime social wealth fund strategy is a viable way to move towards socialism. This is not an exhaustive account of all that could be said on this topic (I’d need a book to be able to lay it all out), but it provides more details on my thinking on this than I ever have before.

https://medium.com/@MattBruenig/nickel-and-dime-socialism-47fcec406295#.w05celah4