Beyond a naive economics to a political economy of how things actually are
Beyond a naive economics to a political economy of how things actually are
Violence has been the basis of our economy for 500 years
It seems to me that we’ve been doing political economy wrong for the last two hundred and fifty years. Any honest political economy of how things actually are would start by focusing on the following aspects of society:
1. The disproportionate impact of violence. A single bullet changes the course of history for hundreds of years, dynamite can move mountains, and now a single bomb can erase a city.
2. The willingness to use violence. This is a small subset of the population.
3. The ability to organize people to commit violence on a mass scale through the use of persuasion, fear, and legitimation. This is an even smaller subset of the population.
4. The stuff that you can get with the mastery of 1, 2, and 3 — oil fields that power the world economy, literal gold (silver, copper, platinum, and cobalt) mines, and control of entire countries and their citizenry.
So, putting this all together — there is a small subset of the population that is willing to use mass violence, this has a disproportionate impact on the world, and these people control the resources that everyone needs. These are first principles that nobody wants to talk about.
The reason that the people in government, banking, and management consulting are so absolutely horrible is because they are the interface between the monsters who have mastered 1 through 4 and the rest of the economy. They launder the violence at the top, take a cut, and then translate and normalize it into everyday life.
The peasants (that’s anyone who isn’t a billionaire) are not allowed to talk about any of this. Indeed, they are not allowed to even think about any of this. The closest they can come to this topic is to watch Hollywood movies that glamorize and celebrate the monsters who have mastered 1 through 4 above. The peasants are only allowed to study peace and non-violence and sing Kumbaya anytime there is a dispute between those with power and the rest of us. Marx wasn’t even capable of having this conversation, focusing instead on the falling rate of profit and assuming that it would lead to collapse that would usher in a workers’ paradise (it didn’t; see my nota bene below).
The paradox of classical economics over the last two hundred and fifty years is that it has legitimated, normalized, and distracted us from the violence at the top while simultaneously trying to expand the scope of the normal (non-violent) economy in hopes that the normal economy might one day crowd out the violent economy to become the whole economy. So classical economics gaslights us and also tries to act as a force for good.
What’s happened in the last four years is that Capital got tired of playing grab-ass (small rates of return in liberal democracies for the past 50 years), took off its mask, and regressed back into the naked brutality of conquest. With Covid, the biowarfare industrial complex just said, ‘F*ck you peasants, we’re more than willing to use violence on a massive scale to take your bodies, your DNA, your savings, and your lives and there is nothing you can do about it.’ Government, banking, and management consulting were more than happy to help them do that. And they proceeded to murder 17 million people and take all of their wealth and are planning to keep doing this for as long as possible (with the help of the WHO, WEF, World Bank, IMF, and other institutions).
There is a small wrinkle in all of this which is that Capital is not monolithic (it would like to be, it’s heading in that direction, but there are still some internal contradictions and conflicts). I believe that we are witnessing a leadership fight between the military industrial complex that has run the world since at least World War II and the biowarfare industrial complex that wants to be in charge now instead.
The traditional military industrial complex is nationalistic; led by macho generals; uses planes, tanks, bombs, armies, and propaganda to accomplish its goals; and focuses on control of markets and natural resources (primarily oil and precious metals but also food and shipping lanes). The biowarfare industrial complex is globalist; led by psychopaths in white coats; uses intellectual property, gain-of-function viruses, disease, and propaganda to accomplish its goals; and focuses on control of minds, bodies, genetic material, and data. There’s some overlap of course.
It seems that the military industrial complex got pissed off that most wars stopped during Covid and they are eager to reassert their right to run the planet via conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and Taiwan. The biowarfare industrial complex want to take over the world without firing a single bullet but is happy to kill people in other ways. Capital hedges its bets by investing in both the old guard and the new upstarts.
Where does that leave the rest of us? I don’t know. My point in writing this is to shine a light on the obvious and abundant violence in the system. Violence has been the basis of our economy for 500 years, the rest of the economy was mostly just to keep people busy until the next war, and that violence has accelerated over the last four years as the biowarfare industrial complex has attempted to take over the world. Covid had nothing to do with health, it was the ruling class doing what it has always done — using mass violence to increase its wealth, power, and control.
Nota bene: What Marx missed is that unfettered capitalism does not lead to collapse and communism but instead to fascism and one world government. (The revolutions in Russia and China were in pre-industrial agrarian economies and, as I’ve written before, they ironically facilitated those countries’ transition to industrial capitalism.) Marx was right that overproduction leads to falling rates of profit but what comes next (that he failed to anticipate) is consolidation, monopolies, corporate capture of government, and world war between the major industrial powers in order to become the last Mega Corporate State standing (in a global game of Survivor that costs millions of lives). That’s what happened in 1914, 1940, and 2020.
As I pointed out a few weeks ago, what’s different and truly terrifying this time is that Capital has gotten wise and formed a cartel to resolve conflicts and divide up the spoils. But as I said, the traditional military industrial complex is feeling raw about being left out of the negotiations and is trying to reassert itself via hot wars wherever it can. That’s why everyone is on edge and it feels like the end of the world — because the twin Leviathans of the military industrial complex and the biowarfare industrial complex are engaged in a battle for control of the entire world and they are trampling the rest of us in the process.
So the revolution we seek is to stop the violence at the top while building an economy based on actual innovation and respect for the rule of law. How we get from here to there is what we must urgently figure out.
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