BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-07-14 We
Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember...
First:
I have recently uncovered a substantial hole in my visualization of the Cosmic All:
I understand feudal politics: A network of connections, most vertical, some horizontal, overlapping with kin and marriage ties, allocating resources and support of various kinds. I understand Republican politics: an electorate plus local notables with their client networks Competing to win elections, after which magistrates with various forms of imperium take office and function within some agreed-upon legal structure, in attempts to maintain and expand the coalition that elected them and also to accomplish what they think are good policy goals.
But suppose you have politics as the internal workings of a self-replacing and co-opting elite which organizes itself neither according to public demonstrations of the vox populi nor according to the construction of a publicly-visible network of lords and vessels, but otherwise? Suppose you have politics through some process of the selection, promotion, and purging and derogéance of personnel, all working behind a Rousseauist mask of enthusiastic obedience and submission to the general will? I really do not understand how such systems work. And so I do not understand the modern Republican Party, or the Chinese Communist Party in either the Mao Zedong or the Xi Jinping eras, or, indeed, many other important things about how the world we live in actually works.
It seems to be largely a scorpions-in-the-bottle game. You are a member of a committee that can purge anyone beneath you. But you cannot purge everyone: someone has to do the work, and keep the system running. Those you purge have friends, allies, networks. They may be waiting in the weeds for whenever it becomes your turn in the barrel, and so you would like to leave as few enemies as possible armed behind you.
Moreover, there are higher-ups who are on committees that can purge you. Those you purge may or may not have links that you do or do not understand to your own supervisory committee.
Plus there is the Trump card—or the Mao joker—Of actors in the system who have direct, charismatic linkages to forces outside both the formal structures of bureaucratic authority and the selection-promotion-purging logic of normal politics. Such appeals to outside can take many forms: army versus party, cadres versus officials, primary electorate versus incumbents, the Han scholar-bureaucracy versus the Ming eunuchs, or the Han scholar-bureaucracy versus the Manchu semi-feudal network made up of the hereditary bondsmen of the ruling clan.
So what do I do next to try to figure this out?
I suspect that the right thing to do is to somehow find time to re-read Ronald Syme (1939): The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon) <https://archive.org/details/romanrevolution0000syme>. But maybe there is a better book?
One Video:
Marcella Alsan: Racial Health Inequality in Medicine and Economics <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KzblwwUgSM>
Very Briefly Noted:
Kenneth Arrow (1978): A Cautious Case for Socialism <https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-cautious-case-for-socialism>
Michael Kremer, Jack Willis, & Yang You: Converging to Convergence<https://www.dropbox.com/s/e3p4kx0gfxoyg6w/Convergence_210621.pdf?dl=0>
Cosma Shalizi (2012): In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You <https://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/>
Adam Serwer: Trump & the Republican Party’s Cruel Logic <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/opinion/trump-republican-party.html>
Philippe Aghion: The Power of Creative Destruction: ’Some historical enigmas are discussed in the book: industrial take off, secular stagnation, middle income traps, and sources and dynamics of inequality. The book uses the lens of creative destruction to revisit these enigmas, question common wisdoms, and rethink the future of capitalism… <https://bcf.princeton.edu/events/philippe-aghion-on-the-power-of-destruction/>
Paragraphs:
Matthew Yglesias: Conservatives Can’t Win the History Wars: ‘Ross Douthat’s column on the history wars… made me think… conservatives don’t… understand what they’re mad about…. He thinks conservatives are trying to rescue the good name of The United States of America…. But… [the left] says not that America is bad but that the American conservative movement is bad…. What’s threatening… is… that… [is] perfectly plausible…. Nikole Hannah-Jones’s… point… is to center Black Americans as the hero of the fight for American freedom, and thus cast their political adversaries as the villains… cast[ing] racial conflict as the central through-line of American history and do[ing] so in a way that’s devastating to conservatism…
LINK: <https://www.slowboring.com/p/conservatives-cant-win-the-history>
Xi Jinping: The CCP’s 100th Anniversarya: ‘The Chinese nation is a great nation. With a history of more than 5,000 years…. After the Opium War of 1840, however, China was gradually reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society and suffered greater ravages than ever before. The country endured intense humiliation, the people were subjected to great pain, and the Chinese civilization was plunged into darkness. Since that time, national rejuvenation has been the greatest dream of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation…. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the Reform Movement of 1898, the Yihetuan Movement, and the Revolution of 1911 rose one after the other, and a variety of plans were devised to ensure national survival, but all of these ended in failure…. The founding of a communist party in China was an epoch-making event, which profoundly changed the course of Chinese history…. Since the very day of its founding, the Party has made seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation its aspiration and mission…. Through the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and the War of Liberation, we fought armed counter-revolution with armed revolution, toppling the three mountains of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism and establishing the People’s Republic of China, which made the people masters of the country. We thus secured our nation’s independence and liberated our people…. We established the Party’s basic line for the primary stage of socialism, resolutely advanced reform and opening up, overcame risks and challenges from every direction, and founded, upheld, safeguarded, and developed socialism with Chinese characteristics, thus bringing about a major turn with far-reaching significance in the history of the Party since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This enabled China to transform itself from a highly centralized planned economy to a socialist market economy brimming with vitality, and from a country that was largely isolated to one that is open to the outside world across the board. It also enabled China to achieve the historic leap from a country with relatively backward productive forces to the world’s second largest economy, and to make the historic transformation of raising the living standards of its people from bare subsistence to an overall level of moderate prosperity…. The Party has united and led the Chinese people in pursuing a great struggle, a great project, a great cause, and a great dream through a spirit of self-confidence, self-reliance, and innovation, achieving great success for socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.
LINK: <https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Full-text-of-Xi-Jinping-s-speech-on-the-CCP-s-100th-anniversary>
Katsuji Nakazawa: Analysis: Xi Looks Up to Father’s Integrity, but Will Choose a Different Path: ‘The website of state-run China Central Television published an article headlined, “Xi Jinping and father Xi Zhongxun: Relay by two generations of Communist Party members.”… Why is Xi so fixated on power? It is said this hunger came from watching the roller-coaster life of his father, Xi Zhongxun. “Although Xi Zhongxun is a father Xi Jinping respects, he is also fanmian jiaoyuan (a living example of what to avoid),” said a person with knowledge of the Xi family…. Xi Zhongxun was purged in 1962… made a political comeback in 1978… clash[ed] with paramount leader Deng Xiaoping over the sacking in January 1987 of party general secretary Hu Yaobang, a reformist leader… forced to retire…. If Xi Zhongxun, who showed his integrity in standing up for the liberal Hu, were still around today, what kind of living example would he see in his son?…
Capitalism: Karl Polanyi, The Human Factor: ‘“The economy is important but it cannot override and colonize, if you wish, all other aspects of our social life and our society.”—Economist Kari Polanyi Levitt…. Polanyi said that industrialization and the first wave of globalized economy had led to labor, money and nature being treated like commodities, with potentially disastrous results—the kind being played out on the streets of Athens, where unemployment is over 20%, neo-fascism is on the rise, and rioters face down police over harsh austerity measures that benefit foreign bankers…
LINK: <https://docuseek2-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/if-capi6>
Matthew Yglesias & Dara Lind: Time Machine: Volcker Shock: ‘Vox’s Dylan Matthews joins Matt and Dara for another step into Weeds Time Machine: a visit to the past to review some now-forgotten chapter in policy history. This week, it’s a return to the late 1970s and a reexamination of “Volcker shock”: an attempt by Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to cope with rising inflation, and the myriad consequences of his efforts. Our hosts discuss the oil crisis, stagflation, the curious relationship between central banking and fiscal policy, and give some much-needed reanalysis to this crucial and topsy-turvy time in American history…
LINK: <https://open.spotify.com/episode/5JyJNfKTlO2knku7f9cLo1>
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You might also consider, aside from Syme, David Schoenbaum, The Nazi Social Revolution 1933-1939 (1967), but I’ll bet you already know that one. Gleichshaltung and “working toward the Fuehrer” seem like relevant concepts.
I think they model you're looking for to understand what the GOP, Maoists, etc. are doing is found in academic governance, dept, school, university.