Nature and the Corporation

Douglass North on the role of institutions in our society, part 1. "Understanding the process of economic change"

Institutions, in the thinking of this book and its general field of institutional economics, are the rules of the game of life, while people and their organizations are the players. The practice of going to workplaces and being forced to work there for eight hours, and then going home.. that is an institution of modern societies, based partly on unwritten traditions, and partly on explicit rules written in laws, regulations, organizational guidelines, etc.  The fabric of our lives, and particularly the efficiency and success of our economies, depend on the details and quality of institutions, which set the parameters and incentives throughout the system, which the actors then grapple with, trying to either to satisfy them in competition against other actors, or to evade them, or to alter them through legal, polical, or social means. 

For example, North cites other writers who have concluded that one of the fundamental defects of the Muslim world, as it fell behind the Northern Europeans in economic and cultural terms through the Middle Ages, was the complete lack of the cultural institution of the corporation. Muslim commercial law centers around partnerships, typically very small partnerships between an investor and a merchant, which form anew for each trade mission. But until modern times and reforms inspired by the West, there was no legal form for corporations, which are so fundamental to the Western economic model, providing durable legally and financially independent homes for entrepreneurial teamwork and innovation. Corporations obviously tap into natural human tribalism, offering the familiar setting of small group cohesion and competition, and helpfully cross-cutting against other cultural organizations and power centers such as actual clans, tribes, nations, and religious groupings.

This is a very powerful view of how culture and economics interact. Are corporations all good? Obviously not. They are given rules by the culture at large, though traditional practices and by legal structures when those unwritten rules prove insufficient. Child labor, fraud, tax evasion, family-destroying work schedules... the ways corporations have to make money in socially destructive ways, and thus the ways in which they need to be regulated, are endless. And it is our collective view of these harms and our capacity through social and legal structures / sanctions to address them that manifest in the strength and quality of our institutions.

And here is where one looks back in horror at what has happened to our institutional structures over the last few decades. Donald Trump was merely the apotheosis of lawlessness and institutional destruction that has been the program of the Right for decades. It was enunciated most charmingly by Ronald Reagan, (earning him high grades from historians), but he was only repeating the thoughts of intellectuals like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman who made such persuasive cases for the "freedom" part of free enterprise. I recall especially the spellbinding nature of Friedman's narratives, which contrasted the sclerosis of communist economies with the vibrancy of free markets. Friedman was a hedgehog, advocating one big idea and bulldozing through any nuance or complication. And I regard him as the most influential cultural figure responsible for the general inequality and institutional weakness we find ourselves facing today.

A typical nostrum from Milton Friedman. As though "freedom" was self-explanatory and absolute. Rich people take it to mean something quite different from how others take it, and therein lies the destructive magic of this ideology. 

For he was spinning fairy tales, quite simply. The free market was always good, the government was always bad in his telling. Ham fisted regulation and intrusive economic policy were only one target of attack. Money and inflation was another, and one of the most damaging wedges of this argument. The government is necessarily in charge of the money, by printing it and managing its value through the interest rate, banking regulation, and other mechanisms. But the private sector and general economic conditions are obviously enormous factors as well, creating a complex system of feedbacks and unanticipated events. But Friedman gleefully pinned all the blame for inflation on the government, pronounced a false simplicity in his monetarist program, and used it to further bludgeon the state to get out of the regulatory business. If the government couldn't even get something as simple as the money supply right, how could it possibly have the intellectual wherewithal to regulate the internet, or corporate mergers and concentration, or industrial policy vs other countries? This was the kind of thinking that led to people buying gold, and eventually to the thought that we should get back on the gold standard, one of the greatest lunacies of right-wing politics. (Which Friedman would never have subscribed to, incidentally.)

This intellectual and rhetorical attack, so richly supported and cheered by business interests and the rich, led to the following decades of revolt by the Right against all forms of regulation and enfetterment by the government, to the point now that Republicans speak blithely of defunding the IRS, as if defunding the government and enabling vast tax avoidance consitutes the most natural and virtuous motivation that anyone could imagine. And the gross over-simplifications that Friedman engaged in, his rhetorical excesses, are reflected in more general anti-intellectual trends like the denialism and warfare waged by the right against climate change, among many other topics of urgent and common interest. He, Nobel Prize winner that he was, disastrously debased our intellectual debates on politics and economics. His narrative framing (and that of the whole Chicago school) shaped a generation and more, misleading us into false certainties and terrible policies.

Now, our institutions are in tatters, given that half of our political system is in open warfare against the very idea of productive regulation of economic affairs and a positive role for the state in managing elementary unfairnesses and corruptions that are mounting across our political and economic systems. No wonder that on the world stage, our system is no longer in the vanguard, but is faced with a fundamental challenge coming from states (principally China) whose political systems remain in the driver's seat in managing social institutions, including economic institutions of all kinds, even while harnessing markets in extremely successful ways. 

The question is not whether the government is good or bad, or whether corporations are good or bad. Both institutions have critical and positive roles to play in our prosperity. Both are tools, not ends in themselves. Both need rules to operate effectively- government to be refreshed (via elections, education, research, and new talent) by ever-expanding public perspectives on how society can be improved, and business by an active set of institutions and rules set down by the government to channel all that greed to productive directions instead of the socially destructive directions it inevitably takes when rules are absent. (See Haiti, post-war Iraq, and Afghanistan for examples.) Indeed, it is not going out on a limb to state that business people who spend their time railing against regulations, legal strictures and other institutions designed to make economic markets fair, socially responsible, and productive are not really interested in business at all, but in plunder.

"Because there is a widespread prejudice among many neo-classical economists that simply an absence of government intervention is a sufficient condition for good economic performance in a particular market, it is important to stress that the performance characteristics of any market are a function of the set of constraints imposed by institutions (formal rules- including those by government- informal norms, and the enforcement characteristics) that determine the incentive structure in that market. As noted in the discussion of institutional change in chapter 5, if the incentives reward piracy then that will be the outcome. Any economist who doubts the importance of this observation has only to examine the characteristics of various factor and product markets in Russia in the 1990s to be convinced that it is the incentive structure derived from the institutional framework that is decisive. The rash of entrepreneurial malfeasance in large U.S. corporations in 2001-2 has reflected the evolution of the institutional framework that has altered relative prices to provide incentives for such anti-social behavior."  p.77

 

• Notes on China's economic trajectory. Institutions will be the main determinant.
• Vaccines? Schmaxines!
• Democrats- and the planet- have a problem in coal country.
• What is it with Republicans and basic health & decency?

Aisha and Ali

Women's rights and the crackup of Islam.

I am reading the highly interesting book "The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad", by Barnaby Rogerson. It takes a docu-drama and highly hagiographical approach, yet works in a lot of facts as well. It covers one of the most dynamic and transformative periods in world history, when the newly founded religion, Islam, swept out of Medina to defeat and convert its old enemies in Mecca, then progressively the rest of the Arabian peninsula, into the Byzantine stronghold across Syria and the Near East, the Persian empire, and lastly The Byzantine rump state of Egypt and points west. Let no one mistake Islam for a religion of peace. 

Muhammad left no succession plan, and wise heads got together in turn to appoint the first three successors to lead the community, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Uthman. These were each, in their own way, strong and very effective leaders, just the fortune that Islam needed to press its jihad against each of the neighboring empires. Riches started to flow into Medina, and by Uthman's reign, religious restrictions were eased, wealth spread, slaves and concubines proliferated, and an enormous baby boom occurred in the desert. But Uthman had planted the seeds of destruction, by appointing only his relatives to run the provinces- the Umayyads.

Uthman's reign reeked of nepotism, and he ended up assassinated in a revolt by disgruntled provincials, who took up the standard of Ali. Ali was one of Muhammad's earliest and closest converts, a son in law, war hero, and in personal and thelogical terms, an obvious choice as successor (or Caliph). Ali was acclaimed as Caliph right after the assassination, thus gaining the immediate enmity of all the Umayyads. And there were other problems, which had clearly led the earlier meetings of the companions of the prophet to choose other successors. First, Ali was not an effective leader. A true believer, yes, but starry-eyed, unrealistic, and unskilled in the tribal politics that underlay the new empire and faith. 

Aisha, on her camel, directing the battle against Ali, near  Basra. Turkish depiction, 16th century.

Second, Aisha loathed him. Betrothed to Muhammad at age 6, married at 9, Aisha was his favorite wife, of a stable that grew eventually to 12. Aisha remains a sort of Mary figure in Islam, and was granted a higher pension than any other figure after Muhammad's death, in recognition of her special position. She had once gotten into hot water after being left behind by a caravan, and was brought back to camp by a handsome soldier the next day. Tongues wagged, and eventually the gossip got so bad that Muhammad conjured a revelation from god absolving Aisha of any blame, and bringing heavy punishments on her accusers. What was Ali's role in all this? He had casually advised Muhammad that wives were cheap, and he should just divorce the inconvenient Aisha and be done with it. 

Now, when Ali needed help in his new role as Caliph, Aisha remembered, and whipped up a couple of Muhammad's companions into opposition, and led them personally across the desert to Basra, and into battle with Ali, the battle of the camel, which camel was Aisha's command post. Aisha lost, was personally wounded, and went into a life of retirement in Medina under Ali's protection, helping compile hidiths, providing recollections of the old days, and running a school for women. But the war against Ali went on from this fateful spark, and he gradually lost support to the wilier Umayyads. Thus, Aisha stands as a pivotal figure in Islam and world history, responsible in part for the disastrous Sunni-Shia split, but also a clear standard bearer for women's rights within the world of Islam, an aspect that has clearly been in occultation for some time, especially in what are ironically regarded as the more fundamentalist precincts of the faith.

• Strength and terrorism.
• Lies are a feature, not a bug, of sociopathy.
• We have not been serious about contact tracing in the US.
• Darwin- on target again.
• As if shipping weren't bad enough.

They Thought They Were James Bond

Review of Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA.

Why do we still have the CIA? Its track record is atrocious on both operational and moral grounds, and much of its role has been assumed by the NSA and by military intelligence. It is fundamentally contrary in principle to everything the US stands for, making its reputation, such as it is, damaging abroad, and making recruitment at home excruciatingly difficult. It is a testament, in the end, to bureaucratic inertia and its own skills in backroom politics and public relations that it survives at all.

Headquarters of a bloated bureaucracy

Tim Weiner tells a totally biased history of the CIA, proving a truism of intelligence that everything bad ends up on the front page and everything good remains under wraps. This book covers every disastrous escapade from the exploding cigars sent to Fidel Castro to the torture of prisoners in a farflung network of black prisons and those of our "allies" during the "war on terror". What is even worse, however, is how its sterling successes, like its fomented coup against Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, or the arming of Pakistani proxies in the Soviet-Afghan war, turned out, in the end, even more disastrous than its front-page disasters. The Bay of Pigs made the US a laughing stock. But the melt-down of Iranian democracy haunts us and the rest of the Middle East, even the world, to this day.

The CIA has routinely lied to congress and to the president. It has, at other times, lied to the entire nation and world on behalf of the president, such as during the runup to the Iraq war. Its daily brief is notoriously bereft of deep analysis, and its ranks notoriously short of foreign language and cultural skills. 

Towards the end of the book, even while recounting a rising tide of mediocrity and error, Weiner oddly throws in repeated denunciations, evidently drawn from his stable of CIA veteran interviewees, of the underfunding and underappreciation of the CIA over recent decades. All in all, it is a difficult book (and situation) to make sense of. Yet it is clear that the CIA is a disaster zone, and we need to think carefully about how America's intelligence community should operate on a restructured basis.

One thing to note is that the US is simply not adapted, culturally, to run a great intelligence apparatus, as, say, Russia is with its KGB/FSB/SVR/GU. We are an open society with a well-founded dislike of deceit, and are not skilled at it. We also are a lawful society, unwilling to instill the kind of fear / terror that it takes to staff and run such shady operations. Aldrich Ames, for example, is enjoying a pleasant retirement at a medium-security prison in Terre Haute. Jonathan Pollard is now living a heroic retirement in Israel.

So, maybe we need some of the functions of the current CIA. But they should be made as compact as possible, not subsumed in the current bureaucratic dinosaur. The main function it does not need is the gathering of mundane foreign news via newspapers, low-level contacts, and fake visa officers, to create master "intelligence estimates". All that can and should be done by the State Department. Indeed, such functions should be increased with the addition of open person-on-the street contacts all over the world. We are frequently blind-sided by developments that intelligence agencies fail to see based on their derring-do, tradecraft, and focus in the highest echelons, and which normal people in that other society can easily see coming. These functions may even be replicated into red-team/blue-team competitions, with retrospective evaluations carried out to grow successful teams. The understanding of foreign cultures is a difficult task, and putting it into the hands of a white-bread secretive bureaucracy has not been fruitful. 

What would then happen to all the under-cover intelligence that we gather, mostly via the NSA and the satellite services of the NRO? These have been independent of the CIA for a long time. The CIA has not been "central" for decades. So we should dispense with the charade of special knowledge and integrated deep analysis, leaving that to the State department and perhaps the Director of National Intelligence. The CIA should be confined to espionage and covert operation in a focused way on current and future crises. It should not be meddling in Central American countries, running its own private foreign policy. It should not be trying to span the world with agents all over the place. It should not be trying to carve out bureaucratic slices from the NSA and other agencies with better track records.

Whether the CIA can even be successful in such a truncated remit is highly questionable, given its history. But at least it can then be judged more accurately, without all the distractions of routine newspaper reading, world-wide reporting, etc. It should stand or fall in whether it can supply high-level intelligence from our major adversaries- China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, and North Korea, in any way beyond our technical resources. And naturally, it goes without saying that its covert operations need to be kept on a tighter leash, run not only by the president, but put on specific timelines of reporting to the NSC (cleared in advance) and select congressional oversight bodies (reported within thirty days). Malfeasance, either in reporting or in execution, would result in consequences such that the CIA fires poorly performing personnel, and keeps only a select and small cadre, perhaps in competing teams.

• Ministry of Love, in Eastasia.
• Let's go solar!
• Big soda- lethal and corrupt.
• The joy of piano.

The Parables of Octavia Butler

Review of Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents, about earily familiar dystopias and the religions they call forth.

Octavia Butler is having a moment. The late science fiction author published the parable books in 1993 and 1998, not even knowing of the coming G. W. Bush administration, let alone that of Donald Trump. But her evangelical-supported right wing presidential candidate issues a call to "Make America great again". Her insight and prescience is head-spinning, in books that portray an America much farther gone into division, inequality, corporate power, and chaos (all owing to climate change(!)) than we in actual reality are- yet only by degrees. That is only the window dressing and frame, however. Her real subjects are religion and human purpose. I will try to not give away too much, since these make dramatic and interesting reading.

The books introduce heroine Lauren Olamina, who is totally together and possessed of a mission in life. She grows up in a neighborhood compound walled off from the chaos outside, but quite aware of the desperate conditions there. Her father is a pastor, and both she and her brother become, through the books, preachers as well. The brother in a conventional Christian mode, but Lauren founds a new religion, one maybe tailored for the generally skeptical science fiction audience. God is change. That is it. Lauren emphasizes empathy, usefulness, education, and the shaping of change, but there is no god as traditionally conceived. It is a sort of buddhistic philosophy and educational / communal program rather than a supernaturalist conjuring, and love (or fear), of imaginary beings.

One question is whether such a philosophy would actually gain adherents, form communities and function as a religion. I get the sense that Butler would have dearly loved for her ideas to gain a following, to actually ripen, as did those of fellow science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, into an actual religion (however horrible his escapade actually turned out to be!). But their difference is instructive. Hubbard's Dianetics/Scientology is a floridly imagined narrative of super-beings, secret spiritual powers, and crazy salvation. Absolute catnip to imaginative seekers wanting to feel special and purposeful. On the other hand, Olamina's system is quite arid, with most of the motive force supplied, as the book relates, by her own determination and charisma. Her philosophy is true, and therein lies a big, big problem. Truth does not supply purpose- we already knew that scientifically. Natural selection is all about change, and makes us want to live, flourish, and propagate. Change is everpresent, and while it might be healthy to embrace it and work with it, that is hardly an inspiring and purpose-filling prospect, psychologically. As the books relate in their narrative of Lauren's life, change is also often quite terrible, and to be feared.

But the more important question is what role people such as Lauren play, and why people like her followers exist. People need purpose. Life is intrisically purposeless, and while we have immediate needs and wants, our intelligence and high consciousness demands more- some reason for it all, some reason for existence, collectively and individually. An extra motive force beyond our basic needs. We naturally shape our lives into a narrative, and find it far easier and more compelling if that narrative is dramatic, with significance beyond just the humdrum day-to-day. But such narratives are not always easy to make or find. Classic epics typically revolve around war and heroic deeds, which continue to make up the grist of Hollywood blockbusters. Religion offers something different- a multi-level drama, wrapped up in collective archetypes and usually offering salvation in some form, frequently a hero, if not a militaristic one. Last week's post mentioned the life of Che Guevara, who found purpose in Marxism, and was so fully seized by it that he bent many others, possibly the whole nation of Cuba, to his will / ideology. Lauren Olamina is a similar, special person who has, through her own development and talents, discovered a strong purpose to her life and the world at large that she feels compelled to share, pulling others along on her visionary journey. Are such people "strong"? Are their followers "weak"? 

Human social life is very competitive, with the currency being ability to make others think what you want them to think, and do what you want them to do. Our ideology of freedom was built by a founding class of dominant, slave-holding rich white men who wanted only to come to a reasonable accommodation for political power within their class, not extend freedom to women, blacks, or the poor. This ideology was highly successful as a sort of civic religion, coming down to us in two traditions- the "winning" tradition of native American extermination, ruthless capitalism, and growing international empire- all set within a reasonably stable elitist political system. And the second "freedom" tradition, which gave us abolitionism, the civil rights movement, and the modern Democratic party, which takes Jefferson's ideals at their word, however little he actually meant them.

Religion is a particularly powerful engine of political and social ideology, making people go through ridiculous rituals and abasements to keep on the safe side of whatever the powerful tell them. So yes, domineering social personalities like Lauren and Che, (and Trump), are very powerful, deservedly treated as larger-than-life, charismatic figures. Their powers are archetypal and dangerous, so it falls to skeptics and free-thinkers to offer antidotes, if their charisma goes off the rails. Butler offers a hero who is relentlessly good and positive, as well as charismatic and strong, so the only competition comes from ignorance, conventional wisdom, and from the competing religious powers like traditional Christianity. But the power of artificial purposes, and of the charismatic figures who propound them, is almost uniformly corrupting, so Lauren's opposition is, in the end, far more realistic as a portrayal of what we are facing, now and in the future.

• "China is about to bring 21 gigawatts of coal fired power online."
• Stocks are euphoric, headed for a fall.
• Obstruction of justice, in a continuing saga of impeachable offenses.

Domineering Freeloader Decides Communism is the Answer

General, executioner, economic development czar, and head of the national bank of the Cuban revolution: the biography of Che Guevara, by John Lee Anderson.

Ernesto Guevara began life as a reckless, adventurous, and very intelligent kid. His first inspiration was medicine, indeed medical research on leprosy and other diseases common in South America, and he got a medical degree. But toiling away on small problems in the lab didn't fit his temperament, and he decided to bum around South America instead, living off the generosity of others, running up debts, fast-talking his way out of jams, and building up an implacable hatred of the US. A common thread through his travels from Argentina through Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and points north was the overwhelming influence of the US, usually corrupting the local political system for the benefit of mining interests in the south, and for the benefit of agricultural interests in Central America. Eventually he got caught up in the liberal quasi-socialist reforms of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, later fleeing to Mexico after a US-supported right wing coup.

It was there that he fell under the spell of Fidel Castro, eventually becoming, despite his evident non-Cuban origins, Castro's right-hand man at the head of the communist revolution in Cuba. Not that it started as communist. No, Fidel was a master politician, and started as an anti-communist, currying favor with the Cuban population and the US. But both his brother Raul and Che were dedicated communists by that point, in thrall to Stalin and Mao, and their influence, combined with the logic of perpetual, one-party / one-person power, brought Fidel around to a gradual process of revealing, after the revolution had already gained power and Che had executed resistent elements of the army and police, their new (red) colors. Then came feelers to Moscow and the rest of the eastern bloc, the Cuban missile crisis, and that is pretty much where things stand still today.

Che and Fidel, when times were good.

Anderson's biography is definitive- fully researched, well written, and judiciously argued. He portrays Che as a seeker- a youth on the prowl for good times, but also for a purpose, which he ultimately found in full-on socialism. He found himself most fully during the early fight in the hills of Cuba- a trial by privation, exhaustion, and blood- where he put revolutionary principles to work organizing his men, making alliances with the local peasants, and executing deserters and traitors. Che's socialism was a pan Latin-American Bolivaran ideal, where all the countries of Central and South America would band together- possibly even unite- under state socialism as inspired by the peasant revolutions of Russia and especially China. It was both austere and visionary- a whole continent escaping from under the yoke of the great oppressor- the US.

It is clearly a religious conversion- the epiphany of a wholly captivating ideal. Che became Castro's second in command by his great intellectual and leadership talents, but even more by his absolute dedication to the cause- the cause of liberation from oppression. Unfortunately, after cleansing the army and securing Fidel's rule, Che was assigned to make the economy run, and here he came up against the immovable obstacle- reality. Socialism is healthy in small doses, but communism has not, in Cuba as elsewhere, been able to run an economy. Motivation to work needs to be supplied somehow, and if it is not by the lash of money and its lack, then terror will have to do the job, and poorly at that. Che did what he could, but the system he had fought so hard to establish was impossible to operate, and his thoughts turned back to his first love- revolution.

It is here that we see mostly clearly the religious nature of Che's motivations and of communism generally. If he were a rational researcher in the template of medical or other research, he would have sat back and realized that communism was not working in economic and social terms, let alone in terms of personal individual liberation. And then he would have adapted intellectually and tried to figure out a middle way to preserve Cuba's independence while running a realistic economic system. Possibly even elections. Unfortunately, by this time, Cuba had settled into a dependent relationship with Russia, which bought its sugar and gave aid, preventing either economic or political independence. Cuba is today still relatively poor, in the middle to lower ranks of GDP. Not as poor as Haiti, however, (or North Korea), and therein lies a message, which is that the Cuban revolution remains relatively humane, despite its many debilities and lack of political, social, and economic freedom. The collapse of the Soviet Union shocked the communist government into slight openings for private business and a heavy dose of tourism from Europe, which sustain it today.

But instead of recognizing the errors and failures of his dream, Che fomented more revolutionary cells all over Latin America and Africa, paying special attention to one sent to infiltrate Argentina, one that he was to join himself and die serving in 1965. One can not fault his dedication or consistency, but one can question the intellect that took him and so many other idealistic freedom fighters over the twentieth century into communism only to author monumental disasters of political and economic mismanagement. To think that dictatorship would resolve the class struggle, and produce washing machines and military might ... it had to be a religious movement, which unfortunately, once in power, became incredibly difficult to dislodge.

The motive force obviously was the US. We, through our callous and greedy treatment of our backyard over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and our betrayal of the paternalistic impulse of the Monroe Doctrine, not to mention similar failures of principle in the Middle East and Vietnam, motivated the intense anti-Yankee hatred of idealistic men such as Che Guevara, and the peasant resistance that, at least in Cuba, gave him and Castro support. It is a fascinating history of what the US has wrought, and how our failure to hold to our own ideals has come back to haunt us over and over again.

• It has been abusive, unnecessary, toxic, and we will need some time to work it out of our system.

Rise and Fall of the US

What happened to our 20th century solidarity?

A recent issue of The New Republic carried an article by its publisher that discussed Robert Putnam's diagnosis of the decline of American civic community and solidarity. In the generational arcs of US history, we have had high solidarity, and consequent productive and progressive political eras, only a few times- the colonial era, the Republican interlude while the South had seceded, the progressive era around the turn of the 20th century, and the post-WW2 boom. Perhaps much of the 20th century could be classified that way, up to the 1970s. At any rate, we are obviously not in such an era now. We are, in contrast, floundering in an era of incredible political and social divisiveness, of unproductive public institutions, and of social atomization.

"Just as Putman and Garrett identify an upswing, they also trace a decline beginning in the 1970s. For this, too, they offer an explanation that departs from the standard historical narrative, suggesting that it was not Ronald Reagan who brought the long period of liberal rule to an abrupt halt, but rather the baby boomer of the 1960s who, turning from the communitarian idealism of the early part of the decade toward a more self-oriented direction, set off a chain reaction that ended up blowing the whole Progressive-liberal order to smithereens."

But the article does not really articulate what happened, other than to cite the many dramas of that time, and propose that the US had a bit of a "nervous breakdown", in a transition from a conformist 50's, through the wide-open and tumultuous 60's, to the me-centered 70's. Perhaps this dates me, but I did live through some of those times, and I think can offer a more specific analysis. I'd suggest that the principal elements of the downturn arose from fundamental violations of trust by the state. The US had conducted WW2 with great moral and logistical authority. The grunts always grumbled, and there were plenty of fiascos along the way, but overall, there was a consensus that the elites and people in charge knew what they were doing. They not just won the war, but fostered unprecedented prosperity in its wake. 

All this turned around in the late 60's. I am also reading a history of the CIA, by Tim Weiner, "Legacy of Ashes". This is a deeply biased book, focusing on every failure of the CIA, pronouncing it as an institution utterly and irredeemably incompetent. What is noticeable, however, is that the CIA's successes are generally far more costly than its failures. The coups it sponsored in Iran and Guatemala, et al. came back to haunt us down to the present day. Eisenhower founded this pandora's box of disastrous meddling, (i.e. covert action) and Kennedy accelerated its use. One of its signature accomplishments was the slow process of getting us enmeshed in the Vietnam war. This was the single most influential disaster that discredited the US government to its own citizens. While in principle, we were doing a great thing- saving South Vietnam from communism and totalitarianism- in practice, we had no idea what we were doing, did not understand the nature of the civil war, or the impossible corruption of our allied government, and conducted the war in a fog of lies and delusions. The daily body counts were a visceral expression of revulsion against the state.

But this kind of incompetence became a pattern in major events like Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, and the Iran hostage crisis. Each one showed that our leaders did not know what they were doing- the best and brightest turned out unequal to the crises we faced. A succession of presidents fell victim to fundamental breaches of trust with the country. Inflation, for example, made us feel helpless- that the money itself was being eaten away by processes that were virtually occult in their mystery and darkness. Gerald Ford urged a kind of vodoo economics- that perhaps a public relations campaign urging personal savings and voluntary spending reductions could heal "the economy". But the solidarity he was counting on was evaporating, and the rationale was transparently absurd and unequal to the crisis, which had been brought on by the oil shock and by profligate government spending and interest policy through the Vietnam era. It would not be until the advent of Paul Volcker that we would get a public servant with the courage and intellect to slay this beast, through an extremely costly campaign of squelching private investment.

So it was not Ronald Reagan who started the process of me-ism over patriotic solidarity. He was only expressing the sad consequence of a long series of failures and breaches of faith when he claimed that government is not the solution, government is the problem. So what was the alternative? The other major institutions of common action were and remain the corporation, and this era saw the valorization of capitalism as the system that works. It had the Darwinian structure and motivations that enforced effectiveness, even excellence. It was the environment that unleashed entrepreneurial freedom, then harnessed it for the common good. We know now that all this was vastly oversold, and ignored all the reasons why we have states to start with. But the pendulum had swung decisively from the public sphere to the private.

An unfortunate consequence of such a swing is that the party and ideology of privatization has little interest in fostering effective governance. So the competence of the state erodes further with time, becoming increasingly unable to do basic functions, and becoming corrupt as private interests gain relative power. Our current administration, were it not in power, would be a parody of self-serving corruption and incompetence. It is the pinacle of the Reagan revolution, and it is degrading, day by day, our ability to govern ourselves. This seems to be why these generational shifts take so long to correct. It is not only that we need to recognize the hole we have fallen into on an intellectual and scholarly level, but that enough voters (and enough extra to overcome the entrenched powers of capital in propaganda, lobbying, campaign finance, and other forms of corruption) have to have felt this in their bones to give an alternative ideology a chance to retake charge of the state and rebuild its capacity for effective action. 

• Where are the vaccines? What are the vaccines?
• Not everyone likes Barrett.
• Make the Apocalypse great again.

Genetics and the Shahnameh

We have very archetypal ideas about genetics.

Reading a recent translation of the Persian Epic, the Shahnameh, I was impressed with two things, among all the formulaic focus on war and kingship. First was what it did not say, and second was its attitude, which is shared with all sorts of traditional societies, towards blood, nobility, and what we now understand as genetics. This epic, which transitions from wholly myth in the first half to quasi-history in the second, stops abruptly at the Arab conquest. Not a word is uttered past the overthrow of the last Persian pre-Islamic ruler. Not a word about Islam, not a word about the well over three hundred years of history of Persia under the Arab yoke by the time this was written circa 1000 AD. That says a lot about what the author, Abolqasem Ferdowsi, regarded as the significant boundaries of Persian history. Not that he was opposed to narrations of decline and suffering. The final era of the Sassanian Empire was one of chaos and decline, with regicides and civil war. But apparently, that history was still Persian, while the Arab epoch was something else entirely- something that Iran is still grappling with.

The epic is full of physical descriptions- kings are always tall as cypresses and brave as lions, women are always thin as cypresses, their faces like full moons and their hair musky. True kings radiate farr- glowing splendor that they show from a young age, which marks them as destined rulers. But farr can also be lost, if they turn to the dark side and loose popular support. The Chinese have a similar concept in the mandate of heaven, which, however, is not portrayed as a sort of physical charisma or halo. Children are generally assumed to take after their parents, for good or ill. The concept of the bad seed comes up in the Shahnameh, especially in the saga of Afrasyab, king of Turan and long-time antagonist of Persian kings and their champion, Rostam. Persian king Kavus has fathered a great (and handsome) champion, Sayavash. Through several plot twists, Sayavash must leave Persia and is adopted by Afrasyab, even marrying his daughter. But then the drama turns again and Afrasyab kills Sayavash. Thankfully, Sayavash had already fathered a future king of Persia, whom the Persians suspect of bad lineage, due to his descent from Afrasyab- a suspicion that they are slow to overcome.

"By the time the boy was seven years old, his lineage began to show. He fashioned a bow from a branch and strung it with gut; then he made a featherless arrow and went off to the plains to hunt. When we was ten he was a fierce fighter and confronted bears, wild boar, and wolves. ... Seeing the boy's noble stature, he dismounted and kissed his hand. Then he gazed at him, taking in the signs of kingly glory in his face."

Ancient peoples have generally taken nobility and bloodlines very seriously, for several reasons. First, obviously, is that children do take after their parents, for good and ill, just as ethnic groups similarly have some distinctive characteristics. Second is that, for practical as well as psychological reasons, people always seek good rulers and stable ruling systems, which in the aristocratic, patriarchial setting means an orderly transition from king to prince. The fairy tale (archetypal) ending is that the prince and princess take over the kingdom, and everyone lives happily ever after. Third, is that hierarchy of some sort seems to be part of our cultural DNA. Someone or group is always up, others down. Whatever the group or organization and whatever its professed principles, hierarchy re-asserts itself. Those on top want naturally to stay on top, and bequeath that position to their future replicas, i.e. their offspring. To do that they will generate all the practical advantages they can, and into the bargain foster a mythos of just distinction, based on their glorious bloodline, if not outright divine sanction from god. Thus genealogical trees, heraldry, etc.

The Shah is not like you or me...

The ruling houses of Europe over the whole post-Roman Era were infested with these archetypes and mythologies. Marrying "up" or "down" was a vast game carried out across the continent. And what has it gotten us? Prince Charles. It is obvious that something went awry in this genetic exercise of assortive mating, as it did ultimately in the tragedies of the Shahnameh as well. The behavior of royals generally fails to select for all the positive traits that are ultimately needed. Their training fails frequently as well to expose those good traits that do exist. But most of all, genetics is far more of a crapshoot than the archetypes allow. 

Children do take after their parents, but there are stringent and interesting limits. A child gets only half of each parent's genes, and those genes may be from either copy in each parent. That copy might have been totally silent- recessive vs the other dominant allele. Two brown-eyed parents can have a blue-eyed child, if they are heterozygous for eye color. Multiply this over thousands of loci, and the possibilities are endless. This is why traits of the grandparents sometimes are thought to come up unexpectedly, or novel traits entirely. The genetic mixing that takes place on the way to new life is carefully engineered to replicate, but with wide variation on the theme, such that any child is as much a child of its wider lineage and environment as of its particular parents. Genetic defects remix during this process as well, concentrating in some children, and leaving others fortunately free to realize greater potentials. The obsessive concentration of lineages that characterize royalty systems, such as was taken to an incestuous extreme in Egypt, leads to inbreeding, which means the exposure of defective alleles due to excessive homozygosity. We all have defective gene alleles, which are typically recessive, and thus get exposed only when they pair up with an equally defective partner. Thus an extreme focus on lineage and purity leads to its own destruction.

The differences between ethnicities are far less than those between families. Human lineages may have some strongly selected and differentiated traits, such as skin color, but such traits are exceedingly rare. Otherwise, our genetics are a cloud of variation that crosses all ethnic lines. Humans were a single lineage only a few hundred thousand years ago, or less, so broadly speaking, we are all the same. Indeed compared to most species, such as chimpanzees, we have much less genetic variation overall, and are virtually clones, due to the relatively recent bottlenecks of extremely low population that reduced genetic diversity. Our current population size relative to those of the other great apes certainly does not reflect conditions in the past!

Education was another ingredient in the traditional systems of nobility and aristocracy. Only the rich could afford an education, so only the upper crust were educated, thus gaining one more credential in addition to their genetic credentials, over the middle and lower classes. Such notions of aristocracy died perhaps hardest in military circles, where officers were long an aristocratic class, selected for their connections, not their ability. It was one of the great American innovations to establish a national military college to which admission was distributed liberally to deserving candidates, (at the same time as similar academy was set up in revolutionary France by Napoleon). It is obvious that the capacity for education was far more widespread than originally conceived, and we benefit today from the very active diffusion of education for everyone. Yet not all are college material. Some children are bright, some less so. Genetics and early development still count for a great deal- but good (and bad) genes can come up anywhere. That means that in the end, the American system of meritocracy, for all its defects, of which there are many, and despite its significantly unfulfilled promise to many, is a huge advance over the hidebound traditions, archetypes, and injustice, of aristocracy.

But back to genetics- what are we finally to make of genetics, eugenics, and noble bloodlines? It is clear that humans can be selectively bred, just like any other animal. Twins and twin studies make it abundantly clear that all sorts of traits- physical and mental- are gene-based and heritable, to striking extents. It is also clear that historical attempts at eugenics have not turned out well, whether through systems of nobility or more modern episodes of eugenics. The former were largely self-indulgent and self-serving ideologies designed to keep power and status among an elite, within which poor choices in mates and inbreeding consistently led to genetic doom. The latter were ideological exercises in frank racism, no more anchored in positive values, genetic or otherwise, than the aristocracies of yore. There have been occasional successful genetic experiments in human breeding, such as the Bach family, Yao Ming, and Stephen Curry, which show what can be done when one puts one's mind to it! (The Trump brood may also be cited as another, if negative, example.)

But generally, selective breeding implies a single set of values that constitute its goal. Our values, as a society, are, however, diverse in the extreme. We celebrate some people more than others at a political or social level, but have been heading in the direction, since our country's founding, of recognizing the dignity and worth of every person without exception, along with their freedom to form and express their own values. We can neither agree on a society-wide set of specific values that would shape any form of selective eugenics, nor allow individuals to go beyond the bounds of normal mate selection to plunge into cloning, genetic alterations, and the like, to inordinately expand their genetic influence on succeeding generations. All that would strike at the heart of the social project that is America- to foster individual opportunity and merit, while at the same time respecting the rights and worth of each individual- indeed, each way of life. It is likely that, given the technology, we might come to a general consensus to eradicate certain genetic diseases and syndromes. But beyond that lies a frontier of genetic engineering that the US is particularly poorly suited to cross, at least until we have made America great again, so to speak, and become another society entirely.

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• Followup quote from Frederick Douglass:

"Color prejudice is not the only prejudice against which a Republic like ours should guard. The spirit of caste is malignant and dangerous everywhere. There is the prejudice of the rich against the poor, the pride and prejudice of the idle dandy against the  hard-handed workingman. There is, worst of all, religious prejudice, a prejudice which has stained whole continents with blood. It is, in fact, a spirit infernal, against which every enlightened man should wage perpetual war."

Frederick Douglass

The autobiographies of Frederick Douglass are a milestone of US literary, political, and social history.  

To deepen my appreciation for our history and the ongoing crises, racial and otherwise, I have been enjoying the final autobiography of Frederick Douglass, of the three that he wrote. This is the longest and, for obvious reasons, most comprehensive, where he can provide details about his escape and controversial activities that had been too sensitive previously, and cover later parts of his career. It is a paragon of style, incisive analysis, and emotional impact. Not having a great deal to add myself, I give over this blog to a few selected quotes.

Douglass (then named Bailey, and in his late teens), was sent by his master to a Mr. Covey, who specialized in "breaking" unruly slaves, by supervising and working them relentlessly, and whipping them weekly. Finally, after an escape attempt, Douglass he has had enough and fights back, come what may. What comes is that Covey gives in completely, and is cowed for the rest of the year from laying a finger on Douglass.

This battle with Mr. Covey, undignified as it was and as I fear my narration of it is, was the turning point in my "life as a slave." It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty. It brought up my Baltimore dreams and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I was a man now. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect, and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be a free man. A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, though it can pity him, and even this it cannot do long if signs of power do not arise. p. 591 in the American library edition of the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass took a long tour in Britain, where he marvels at the discrimination he is not experiencing. It remains a deep statement about the work that still now remains.

I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life. The warm and generous cooperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the prompt and liberal manner in which the press has rendered me its aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder, everywhere evinced; the cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion, have embraced me and lent me their aid; the kind hospitality constantly proffered me by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the entire absence of everything that looks to me like prejudice against me, on account of the color of my skin, contrast so strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and amazement at the transition. In the southern part of the United States, I was a slave - thought of and spoken of as property; in the language of the law, "held, taken, reputed, and adjudged to be a chattel in the and of my owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, whatsoever". In the Northern States, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at any moment like a felon, and to be hurled into the terrible jaws of slavery- doomed, by an inveterate prejudice against color, to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the question)- denied the privileges and courtesies common to others in the use of the most humble means of conveyance- shut out from the cabins on steamboats, refused admission to respectable hotels,  caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with impunity by any one, no matter how black his heart, so he has a white skin. But now behold the change! Eleven days and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand miles of perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchial government. Instead of the bright blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, gray fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as a slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab- I am seated beside white people- I reach the hotel- I enter the same door- I am shown the same parlor- I dine at the same table- and no one is offended. No delicate nose grows deformed in my presence. I find no difficulty here in obtaining admission into any place of worship, instruction, or amusement, on equal terms with people as white as any I ever saw in the United States. I meet nothing to remind me of my complexion. I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip, to tell me "We don't allow niggers in here." pp. 688-689, ibid.

 

Douglass looks at the pre-civil war politics of Southern resentment and entitlement, upon the growing spread and success of the abolition movement, which had been Douglass's work for the prior decade.

... Mr. Calhoun and other southern statesmen were more than ever alarmed at the rapid increase of anti-slavery feeling in the North, and devoted their energies more and more to the work of devising means to stay the torrents and tie up the storm. They were not ignorant of whereunto this sentiment would grow if unsubjected and unextinguished. Hence they became fierce and furious in debate, and more extravagant than ever in their demands for additional safeguards for their system of robbery and murder. Assuming that the Constitution guaranteed their rights of property in their fellow men, they held it to be in open violation of the Constitution for any American citiazen in any part of the United States to speak, write, or act against this right. But this shallow logic they plainly saw could do them no good unless they could obtain further safeguards for slavery. In order to effect this the idea of so changing the Constitution was suggested that there should be two instead of one President of the United States- one from the North and the other from the South- and that no measure should become a law without the assent of both. But this device was so utterly impracticable that it soon dropped out of sight, and it is mentioned here only to show the desperation of the slaveholders to prop up their system of barbarism against which the sentiment of the North was being directed with destructive skill and effect. They clamored for more slave States, more power in the Senate and House of Representatives, and insisted upon the suppression of free speech. At the end of two years, in 1850, when Clay and Calhoun, two of the ablest leaders the South ever had, were still in the Senate, we had an attempt at a settlement of the differences between the North and South which our legislators meant to be final. What those measures were I need not here enumerate, except to say that chief among them was the Fugitive Slave Bill, frames by James M. Mason of Virginia and supported by Daniel Webster of Massachusetts- a bill undoubtedly more designed to involve the North in complicity with slavery and deaden its moral sentiment than to procure the return of fugatives to their so-called owners. For a time this design did not altogether fail. Letters, speeches, and pamphlets literally rained down upon the people of the North, reminding them of their constitutional duty to hunt down and return to bondage any runaway slaves. In this the preachers were not much behind the press and the politicians, especially that class of preachers known as Doctors of Divinity. A long list of these came forward with their Bibles to show that neither Christ nor his holy apostles objected to returning fugatives to slavery. Now that that evil day is past, a sight of those sermons would, I doubt not, bring the red blush of shame to the cheeks of many. pp. 722-723, ibid.

In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln, the North sought ways to avoid war ... does this attitude sound familiar?

While this humiliating reaction was going on at the North, various devices to bring about peace and reconciliation were suggested and pressed at Washington. Committees were appointed to listen to Southern grievances, and, if possible, devise means of redress for such as might be alleged. Some of these peace propositions would have been shocking to the last degree tot he moral sense of the North, had not fear for the safety of the Union overwhelmed all moral conviction. Such men as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Henry B. Anthony, Joshua R. Giddings, and others- men whose courage had been equal to all other emergencies- bent before this southern storm, and were ready to purchase peace at any price. ... Everything that could be demanded by insatiable pride and selfishness on the part of the slave-holding South, or could be surrendered by abject fear and servility on the part of the North, had able and eloquent advocates.

Happily for the cause of human freedom, and for the final unity of the American nation, the South was mad, and would listen to no concessions. It would neither accept the terms offered, nor offer others to be accepted. It had made up its mind that under a given contingency it would secede from the Union and thus dismember the Republic. pp.770-771, ibid.

 

Douglass's influence can be appreciated in small part by this piece in his honor by N. Clark Smith.

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Cliques of Civilizations

Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations", twenty five years on.

Is America great again, yet? Well, that didn't turn out quite as promised. China is ascendent as never before, having vanquished a virus that we simply can not get our heads around. China is also putting the screws on its neighbors, assimilating Hong Kong, building island bases in the South China sea, ramping up soft power efforts in its Belt and Road and other diplomatic initiatives, and slowly building the sphere of influence that it merits as the largest nation in the world. In comparison, we are a laughing stock, our incompetent leadership high and low exposed for all to see.

It is quite a different world from that of Francis Fukuyama's "End of History", which imagined that international conflict would disappear with the close of the Cold War and the march of liberal democracy across the globe. Instead, while democracies did advance significantly in the first post-cold-war decade, progress since has stalled. An alternate model of governance has taken root out of the communist ashes- an authoritarian capitalist fusion of the Russian and Chinese types.

Numbers of democracies rose after the Cold War, then plateaued.

Samuel Huntington wrote his "Clash of Civilizations" in response to Fukuyama, offering a conservative, realist view of history as continuing apace in the post-cold-war era on a very traditional basis- that of civilizations, rather than of ideologies. Donald Trump seems to have read (or skimmed, or heard about, or heard about "people" talking about) Huntington with some attention, since his instincts hew quite closely to Huntington's views. Rather than liberal democracy resplendent and ascendent, Huntington proposes that the new world order will be a traditional sphere-of-influence model, centered on the core civilizations of the world- Western, Chinese, Orthodox, Indian, and Islamic. Africa is so far behind that it does not count seriously in Hungtington's scheme, though that may change a few decades on. The Catholic/Hispanic cultures of Central and South America also do not count for very much in his scheme. These civilizations are based on different religions and ethnic histories, and are centered on core states. The US is the core state of the West, (though the EU may take over that role sooner than anticipated!). Russia is the core state of the Orthodox / Slavic civilization, India is virtually the only Hindu state, and China clearly leads the Sinic or East Asian world.

The Islamic world lacks a clear core or leading state, with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan all in contention, a contest that is still nowhere near resolution, and involves starkly different visions for the future of Islamic culture. Islam is a special case not only for its lack of a central or core state that can lead and moderate its civilization at large, but also for its general lack of effective governance, and its peculiar historical position of having had its golden age almost a millenium ago, after which the West gained progressive, and eventually overwhelming, superiority. The bitterness this engenders has not been channeled, as in the Asian tigers, into competition and often superior performance vs the West, but rather into regression, grievance, fundamentalism, and a rededication to its own cultural superiority. Thankfully, Huntington forecasts that by about now, the demographic bulge of Islam, which had been fueling much of its internal discontent and violent lashing-out, would moderate and lead to a less combative general culture- a prediction that I think is slowly coming to pass.

One of the most interesting themes of Huntington's thesis is the clique-like banding together of nations with similar civilizations. Unlike the American ideal of international affairs, where all people everywhere just want democracy and plenty of shopping, Huntington sees nations aligning on cultural terms, like people do in many other settings, like high schools, religions, neighborhoods, and so much else. The Balkan wars are, for Huntington, exhibit A. Each contestant was backed by its cultural kin among the larger countries, with the Muslim Bosnians supported by a variety of Muslim states from Saudi Arabia to Iran, the Orthodox Serbs supported by Russia, and the Catholic Croats supported by Germany, particularly the German Catholic church. Likewise, in the first Gulf war, Huntington writes that, while several Muslim countries were, under Americal pressure, part of the military alliance against Iraq, the Arab street was uniformly anti-West and pro-Saddam. His description of these sentiments and how they sapped their government's respective resolve about the war and its aftermath was sobering, and should have given the next Bush administration pause in its headlong rush into its own crusade against Iraq.

Another corollary of the civilizational world as Huntington sees it is that some cultures are odd nations out. Japan is a prime example. Clearly, Japan exists in the Chinese general sphere of influence. But Japan has been closest to the US since its defeat in World War 2, has adopted many Western attitudes and practices, a highly functional democracy among them. It also, through its wartime and pre-war imperialism, has earned the virtually undying hatred of China and Korea, among other countries in the region. What will its future be like in a world where China takes prime position over all of East Asia? Can it band together with anti-Chinese fellow coutries like Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Australia to create a balancing anti-Chinese bloc? That looks generally unlikely, partly due to negative US leadership, and partly due to the obvious problems it entails, ending in some kind of vast war.

China's sphere and local conflicts.

What China wants as the regional, even global, leader, is actually quite unclear. The history of Korea is instructive in this regard. China has been Korea's big neighbor for at least 2,000 years, and has repeatedly enforced vassalage, favorable trade, and cultural exchange. But it never took over and tried to exterminate Korean culture the way the Japanese did before World War 2. China clearly seeks control over some of its fraternal cultures, like the Tibetan and Uyghur, and now Hong Kong and ultimately Taiwan. But Vietnam? What China wants out of other nearby cultures such as Vietnam, Korea, and Japan is not entirely clear, and some kind of vassalage relationship may suffice. Perhaps seeing the Yuan as the reigning currency, along with other clearly friendly military and trade relations would be enough for long-term stability.

More darkly, some nations in Huntington's system are "torn", in that they partake of more than one culture and therefore face diffcult conflicts, internally and externally. Yugoslavia was an obvious example, but there are many others. Turkey is one, in that it has for decades tried to enter the EU and be a Western country. But with increasing Islamization, this is increasingly off the table, and Turkey is moving towards leadership as a modernizing influence within Islam rather than being a little fish in the EU and lapdog of the US security establishment. Russia has also made its definitive choice, after centuries of conflicting sentiments about the West, turning against a possible turn to NATO and the EU in the post-Soviet moment, and retrenching as leader of the Orthodox civilization. Was it ever realistic to think that Russia might become a normal, Western parliamentary democracy, after its communist collapse? Perhaps not, though our wretched economic advice surely didn't help.
 
Huntington closes on very Trumpian themes, warning that increasing Hispanic immigration to the US may make us into a "torn" culture, less cohesive in international and other terms. Multiculturalism is clearly the enemy. He spins a truly bravura dystopian scenario towards the end of the book, where China and Vietnam spark a world war (with some blundering US intervention) that spirals out of control, Russia and India allying with the West. The US is hobbled, however, by Hispanic dissention, which causes a lack of fighting resolve, and we settle for negotiation! Yikes!

Much of what Huntington wrote was quite precient, especially in the turns that both China and Russia have taken against the West and towards rebuilding their traditional geographic and cultural spheres of influence in clearly civilizational terms. He warns against American universalism- the idea that everyone wants what we want, we just have to invade their countries and give it to them. That way lies imperialism, pure and simple. And his warning about unity in the US is significant. We need to continue to expect and encourage assimilation of immigrants, not social and political balkanization. But it turns out that the principal risk of disunity in the US comes from the native rich, not the foreign poor. The logic of hyper-capitalism and its related ills of political and media corruption has created a plutocratic class that treats the rest of the country as a vulture capitalist project- a place for tax breaks, pet politicians, flagrant propaganda, and walled compounds served by a feudal workforce. That is what is killing our institutions and destroying our standing in the world.

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Iran: Object Lesson of the Enlightenment

Review of Iran: A Modern History, by Abbas Amanat. Part 2- the contest between autocracy, democracy, and theocracy.

Has history ended? Did all countervailing ideologies give up and yield to democracy as the universal form of government and does peace now reign? Apparently not. Indeed, democracy is embattled in many areas as it has not been in decades- even in the US, whose institutions are under sustained attack by a renascent autocratic / plutocratic coalition. Iran has exemplified the contest between the ideals of democracy, human rights, state stability, authority, and religious sentiment in ideologies of government over many centuries. It has been positioned at some remove from, though in durable if not tragic contact with, the European cultures that fostered the Enlightenment in all its aspects. What has been their impact, and what are we to make of the current result?

Amanat provides a magisterial overview of Iran's recent history, (recent meaning since 1500, which leaves out a vast portion going back to antiquity and beyond), focusing on its political systems as they range between autocracy and revolution, growth and decline, consolidation and decadence. Iran was heavily influenced by Europeans starting in the mid-1800's, as the great game got underway. While Russia was unapologetically autocratic, making its menace clearly lineal with previous contests against other invaders, Britain, and later the US, brought a new level of hypocrisy as imperial powers founded on Enlightenment ideals and practices, which were, however, not for foreign consumption.

The Qajar monarchy in the 1800's managed a weak position relatively well, keeping Iran intact and largely sovereign, if also continually corrupt, indebted, and backward. But finally, the modernist winds were too strong, and a constitutional revolution established a constitutional monarchy and parliament in 1906, then again in 1909. This parliamentary system never fully found its footing, however, tussling with the Shah for power, and buffeted through disastrous invasions and occupations during world war 1. It was sort of a Weimar Republic, never attaining full power in military or political terms.

But it embodied the idea of a Western-style, constitutional, democratic system. The addition of an Islamic advisory council was an afterthought and never seriously implemented during this era, since the ulama, or community of clerics, was generally content with its long-standing role of loose collaboration with the secular power, tending to a narrow sector of jurisprudence over religious, business, and personal matters, on a somewhat freelance basis. While the Shi'i clergy had occasionally led protests and fostered limited political activism in the face of gross injustices and suffering from their base among the small merchant class and urban poor, the idea of becoming a full partner in government, or its comprehensive adversary, did not cross their minds, since government was fundamentally unclean and not worthy of theology, short of the return of the twelfth Imam. The clerics were also fully invested in the somewhat corrupt system, having gotten quite rich from their segment of the economy.

But the trauma of the Pahlavi era, broken in the interval between father and son by a hopeful but chaotic constitutional period under Mohammed Mosaddegh, set the clergy- at least some of it- on a more activist path. Both Shahs were dedicated modernizers, dismissive of religion and destructive to the livelihoods and institutions of the clergy. Along with other islamists in the Sunni world like Qutb, they (that is, the less quietist elements, spearheaded by Ruholla Khomeini) started generating a comprehensive critique of modernism, the Pahlavi apparatus, and the West as antithetical to Islam, which it quite obvoiusly was and remains. They found that they still had enormous political power and public sentiment on their side, not among the intelligentsia, but among the common people who had been coming to the mosques, and requesting judgements, and paying their dues all along. All this was seized by Khomeini, who in 1963 gave fiery sermons denouncing the Pahlavi regime, and was duly detained, almost executed, and then exiled to Iraq. The Shah ran an economically successful few decades, but also a brutal secret service and a grandiose view of himself and the dynasty so severely out of step both with native sentiment and with the democratizing / human rights trends in the West, suddenly put on the top of the table by Jimmy Carter.

Faithful Shi'ite Iranians were interested in more spiritual fare than what the Shah offered, and the clerics, through Khomeini, gave them visions of an ideal society, rectified through "dear Islam" to resolve all the injustices and degradations of the Pahlavi era. In return, Khomeini was first elevated to the unprecedented status of "Grand Ayatolla", and then ultimtely to "Imam" status, which had never been done before, the twelfth Imam having been the last of the set, now in occultation. So the revolution rolled on with inexorable power, but also with inexorable revolutionary logic, piling up bodies and hypocrisies as the imperatives of staying in power overwhelmed all other scruples. For example, Amanat mentions with some acidity that, while centuries of Shi'i jurisprudence may not have foreseen the problems of writing a constitution, running foreign policy, or operating a secret service, it had long dealt, and dealt with care and discretion, in contract and property law. But all that went right out the window as the new government "inherited" or expropriated countless businesses and personal properties, took over all major industries of the country, and distributed their management to family members, cronies and loyalists.

Diagram of the Iranian government, from the BBC.

It is through the lens of the constitution and the cobbled institutions that have arisen in Iran that we can see the dialectic between Enlightenment principles and Islamic principles. Khomeini promised a democracy, where power would no longer be monopolized by a somewhat mad Shah. But it also had to be an Islamic democracy, "guided" by the clerics to retain purity and justice. The logic of all this resulted in a thoroughly theocratic state, where there is an interlocking set of instutions all run by the clerics, from the Supreme Leader to the Guardian Council, Assembly of Experts, and Expediency Discernment Council. Each are supervisory, with various veto and appointment powers, leaving the popularly elected parliament with little real power or even representative complexion, since its candidates are routinely disqualified by the Guardian Council for not being conservative enough.

In practical terms, this means that the system maintains just enough democracy to foster some hope and buy-in from some of the populace, while keeping complete control in the hands of the clerics. Will this end in utter corruption of both religion and government? It is difficult to say, but Iran has more of a functional democracy and republican system than many other Muslim countries, which is sadly not saying much. Those who reflect on the very origins of Islam and Shi'ism can readily see that theory of government is not a strong suit of this tradition. I see Khomeini as a demagogue- a Trumpian figure who promised the stars, offered a telling and comprehensive critique of the Pahlavi system, and had a genius for turning a phrase. But he did not promise a coherent and democratic program of governance, rather a messianic dream and relentlessly divisive politics. In the revolutionary process, he always played to the base, favoring extreme positions. A base whose core, there as here, is a religious element of great patriarchial conservatism and dismissive of intellect and compassion. He was fully behind the hostage-taking students, for instance, which solidified support at home while making Iran a pariah abroad.  Hate, of course, was and continues to be central to the Iranian theocracy, from the Great Satan (us), to the little Satan (the Iraq of Saddam Hussein), to the communist Tudeh party, to the Baha'i religion, which they particularly revile and persecute.

At first, the clerics worked with liberals to fashion a written constitution (a significant concession to modernity and Western ideas) and a civilian government. But as time went on, the many contradictions of this approach became apparent, since if the people were given real power, the clerics would lose theirs- that was a lesson of the first constitutions of the early 1900's, and again during revolutionary process in the 1970's and 80's, which saw many contestants for power. The clerics only won due to their cohesion and their ability, time and again, to move the masses with demagogic and messianic appeals.

So the Iranian clerics ended up in unknown territory, creating a government that had no Persian or Koranic precedent, other than putting clerics in charge of everything (including at the top, the monarch-for-life Supreme Leader), and hoping that their own formation, training, and institutions will keep them uncorrupted. At one dire point in the revolution, a hanging mullah suggested that his rather under-supported decisions didn't matter that much, since God would sort it all out in the end, sending those who deserved it to heaven. But by that logic, he should have killed himself first. It is always curious how those who supposedly believe in religion and the glories of its afterlife turn out to have a strong regard for their own lives in the here and now. One would think that meeting one's maker would be a more positive goal, rather than being a mere scrim for power politics in this fallen world.

Iran gets ranked just above China in the democracy index.

Anyhow, Iran has ended up with more torture, more executions, more war, a bigger secret service, a more intrusive state, and less freedom, than the Pahlavi era. It turned out that Islam is not a guarantee of good, let alone moral, governance. Islamic countries generally occupy the lower rungs of the democracy index, and other indexes of development and happiness. This while Islam portrays itself as a religion of peace, of mercy, and of the most exacting jurisprudence and scholarship. The revolutionary government of Iran dabbled in liberalism, and wrote up a semi-democratic constitution, and faced a culture of great diversity and intellectual depth. But in the end, authoritarian logic won out over traditional Shi'i quietism and over most Western trends, creating a sort of Shi'i Vatican writ large, with opaque committees of old bearded men running everything, with additional torture chambers and gallows.

Iran offers an object lesson why the interlocking lessons of the enlightenment are so important- why withdrawing religious projections, drama, and righteousness from the state, in favor of civic secularism, yields a more rational and humane way of life. Why even the most long-standing and cherished religious traditions and "scholarship", while they may serve as selective institutions to weed out the stupid and socially unskilled, are not conducive to the search for objective truth or even a marker of moral superiority.

All that said, the French revolution began with enlightenment principles, which did not prevent a similar revolutionary logic from sending it to appalling depths of brutality, injustice, and authoritarianism. Yet it also spread more liberal, anti-monarchical values throughout Europe during the Napoleonic era, and ended up, after decades of historical development, with true democracy in France and Europe. The whole point of political theory in the Enlightenment was to allow such development via a fundamental humanism and humility in the civic sphere and the state. Its antithesis is messianism of various sorts, from communism to Shi'i theocracy, (even atheist enlightenment, when driven to extremes!), which drives polarization, extremism, and totalitarianism. Iran may yet develop in a softer direction, after what is now forty years of theocracy, but that would take a substantial change of heart on the part of the current ruling class, and perhaps a reduced allergy to Western ideas.

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