… and what may learned from Confucius:
It is a disgrace to be rich and honoured in an unjust state.
Sure, it is something not only for Europe … – and it is not something just for today. More a general matter of the Mysteries of progress …, and its failure.
Nothing special though possibly a small contribution on matters of understanding economics as social science in its true sense. It is very basic – recordings from teaching students in China who are in their first year (second semester) learning about economics. The first lectures can be found here.
I sogni ci aiutano a cambiare la realtà.
Well, as much as this trip was about some work, it waS also about these things we usually call ‘pleasure’. So, in the meantime I went to the theatre, a play based on Luchino Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli. In my opinion the performance was not really great – btw, a problem I have more and more, be it in the theatre, the opera or in galleries: some ‘forced innovation’, some spasmodic efforts to be innovative, too often ending in just being ‘artificially loud’. Still, the play itself ended by rejecting this in some way …, being a kind of dramatic as well, basically suggesting:
Don’t have dreams, life is about ‘just getting along’, things being ‘OK’, not anything more, not anything special … having dreams is about moving towards failure. So, just accept, without dreams – Then things are ‘OK’.
Never heard the ‘OK-option’ in such a pejorative, negative, rejecting way. – Why I said it had been a confirmation of rejecting the spasmodic efforts to be innovative? Simply because any change, any innovation has to be sound, radical – as such it is in need of being genuine. In arts as much as in ‘real life’.
Mustang confirmed this – in such a frightening way confronting us with the difficulty we overlook too often. A simple plot:
And still, what we overlook is our own limitation, maintaining traditions, claiming the rights of self-determination, while forgetting that this can easily (surely not necessarily) result in oppression, localism and clientelism etc. Can we find a way that is really about moving forward and respecting the traditions? Or is it about two distinct, incompatible array, standing side by side?
You should sleep nine hours without dreams. Then you have the day for dreams. (Herbert Marcuse)
it seems like the wide spaces as we find them in so many paintings of Gauguin and the subdivision, the we know from the later paintings of van Gogh: two impressionists, two friends, and one misunderstanding ….
Apparently two sides, poles without connection. Standing against the alternative of a permanent struggle. The dreams we have – and should have beyond the brothers’ OK-option have to look for a sound foundation in the fact that
It is never possible to return to the point of departure – it does not exist anymore (Shumona Sinha).
And with this we have to acknowledge the most difficult point: we do not exist anymore, we also changed, and even if we think, we did not change: ultimately we did.
Another time we see the meaning of the words we find in the first volume of The Capital, chapter 31, dealing with the Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist
“Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and strife, and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very incompletely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated.” (T. J. Dunning, l. c., pp. 35, 36.)
It is not about the genesis though, it also and even more so about maintaining the role of capital in general, paradoxically pushing you to produce and tighten the rope that may one day be seen hanging down the gibbet, when walking up the last stairs. Or is there another way to interpret the following
Saudis Use European Arms for ‘Human Rights Violations’
Is it too cynical to demand that the profits should be at least used to accommodate the refugees?
It is just appalling to see that, what we sometimes hope to be exaggerations, is brute reality.
Two presentations coming up on the 19th of February 2016, another attempt to contribute to understanding a world (‘s development) that is apparently increasingly difficult to be comprehended – but perhaps it is easier than we think.
The one is on:
Space – A Category between Physical Extension, Economic, Re-Production and Understanding the Self
the other looks at
Precarity as Socio-Economic Transformation – New Perspectives on Social Policy
La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.Le Lys Rouge [The Red Lily] (1894)
difficulty Chinese students face, particularly in the arts and social sciences, is in adopting the critical thinking that the Quality Assurance Agency insists master’s level courses must inculcate
centre on China’s Confucian cultural tradition
The world is flat … – and there is some flavor of naiveté in such theses …
Finally, the fall of the wall did not just open the way for more people to tap into one another’s knowledge pools. It also paved the way for the adoption of common standards—standards on how economies should be run, on how accounting should be done, on how banking should be conducted, on how PCs should be made, and on how economics papers should be written. I discuss this more later, but suffice it to say here that common standards create a flatter, more level playing field. To put it another way, the fall of the wall enhanced the free movement of best practices. When an economic or technological standard emerged and proved itself on the world stage, it was much more quickly adopted after the wall was out of the way. In Europe alone, the fall of the wall opened the way for the formation of the European Union and its expansion from fifteen to twenty-five countries. That, in combination with the advent of the euro as a common currency, has created a single economic zone out of a region once divided by an Iron Curtain.
Page 54 of Friedman’s book “The World is flat” (2005, 2007)
Many one hope that the thinking in the rest of the book is less flat: celebrating the formation of the EU, by dating it to 1989, and celebrating the advent of the euro as common currency at a time when some of us already predicted a harsh crisis which indeed manifested itself in 2007/2008 seems a bit …, well let us say … – lacking thoughtfulness …
It reminds me of another thing I read recently, somebody from the NorthAmericas complaining about Europe, celebrating the USA and highlighting the difference between the USA and Europe. One of the differences was telling: the Americans drive on the right side, whereas the Europeans drive on the left … – well, a sharp and clear distinction. But true in some way perhaps? The Europeans are increasingly following the flattened understanding of the world by the Yanks …, that may then be the reason for driving in foresight since years on the … – have to check next time when walking across the streets. My be the Brits are the only real Europeans ….? And they may leave the EU ? …. So many questions …
We frequently talk about neoliberalism – and the disastrous implication its proponents cause. Indeed, there is the need to criticise these policies. But preparing my presentation for Hungary, soon coming up under the title
Precarity as Part of Socio-Economic Transformation – New Perspectives
, and of which the abstract can be found already here, I am getting another time aware of the fact how important it is, to overcome the danger not to block oneself by sohrt-termism. I pointed this frequently out, for instance when looking together with Marica Frangakis for The need for a radical ‘growth policy’ agenda for Europe at a time of crisis; or asking if we face a Crisis and no end?, looking for the Re-embedding economy into life and nature. Already at an early stage I asked Crisis? Which Crisis? aiming on Assessing the Current Crisis in a More Fundamental Way. Ireland as a Case Study.
In empirical terms, some of this may be outdated – actually I am currently preparing also the report for the Max-Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich which I am going to visit during the upcoming weeks – it is the annual report on legal changes in Ireland.
There is one point, we may actually learn from the liberals, expressed by David Lloyd George.
Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.
It may well be questioned if he, as liberal, would agree with proposals of today’s liberals – I have my doubts. But in any case, a radical shift in thinking and acting is needed, anything else will mean not more and not less than death, even if it may mean to Die Slowly:
He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn’t know, he or she who don’t reply when they are asked something they do know,
die slowly.
Let’s try and avoid death in small doses,
reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.
There should be no place for it, for the Lentamente Muore.
(scroll for English version below)
Ogni mattino, quando mi risveglio ancora sotto la cappa del cielo, sento che per me è capodanno.
Perciò odio questi capodanni a scadenza fissa che fanno della vita e dello spirito umano un’azienda commerciale col suo bravo consuntivo, e il suo bilancio e il preventivo per la nuova gestione. Essi fanno perdere il senso della continuità della vita e dello spirito. Si finisce per credere sul serio che tra anno e anno ci sia una soluzione di continuità e che incominci una novella istoria, e si fanno propositi e ci si pente degli spropositi, ecc. ecc. È un torto in genere delle date.
Dicono che la cronologia è l’ossatura della storia; e si può ammettere. Ma bisogna anche ammettere che ci sono quattro o cinque date fondamentali, che ogni persona per bene conserva conficcate nel cervello, che hanno giocato dei brutti tiri alla storia. Sono anch’essi capodanni. Il capodanno della storia romana, o del Medioevo, o dell’età moderna.
E sono diventati così invadenti e così fossilizzanti che ci sorprendiamo noi stessi a pensare talvolta che la vita in Italia sia incominciata nel 752, e che il 1490 0 il 1492 siano come montagne che l’umanità ha valicato di colpo ritrovandosi in un nuovo mondo, entrando in una nuova vita. Così la data diventa un ingombro, un parapetto che impedisce di vedere che la storia continua a svolgersi con la stessa linea fondamentale immutata, senza bruschi arresti, come quando al cinematografo si strappa il film e si ha un intervallo di luce abbarbagliante.
Perciò odio il capodanno. Voglio che ogni mattino sia per me un capodanno. Ogni giorno voglio fare i conti con me stesso, e rinnovarmi ogni giorno. Nessun giorno preventivato per il riposo. Le soste me le scelgo da me, quando mi sento ubriaco di vita intensa e voglio fare un tuffo nell’animalità per ritrarne nuovo vigore.
Nessun travettismo spirituale. Ogni ora della mia vita vorrei fosse nuova, pur riallacciandosi a quelle trascorse. Nessun giorno di tripudio a rime obbligate collettive, da spartire con tutti gli estranei che non mi interessano. Perché hanno tripudiato i nonni dei nostri nonni ecc., dovremmo anche noi sentire il bisogno del tripudio. Tutto ciò stomaca.
Aspetto il socialismo anche per questa ragione. Perché scaraventerà nell’immondezzaio tutte queste date che ormai non hanno più nessuna risonanza nel nostro spirito e, se ne creerà delle altre, saranno almeno le nostre, e non quelle che dobbiamo accettare senza beneficio d’inventario dai nostri sciocchissimi antenati.
Antonio Gramsci, 1 gennaio 1916, Avanti!, edizione torinese, rubrica Sotto la Mole
(taken from here)
Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s day.
That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management. They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit. You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates.
They say that chronology is the backbone of history. Fine. But we also need to accept that there are four or five fundamental dates that every good person keeps lodged in their brain, which have played bad tricks on history. They too are New Years’. The New Year’s of Roman history, or of the Middle Ages, or of the modern age.
And they have become so invasive and fossilising that we sometimes catch ourselves thinking that life in Italy began in 752, and that 1490 or 1492 are like mountains that humanity vaulted over, suddenly finding itself in a new world, coming into a new life. So the date becomes an obstacle, a parapet that stops us from seeing that history continues to unfold along the same fundamental unchanging line, without abrupt stops, like when at the cinema the film rips and there is an interval of dazzling light.
That’s why I hate New Year’s. I want every morning to be a new year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. No day set aside for rest. I choose my pauses myself, when I feel drunk with the intensity of life and I want to plunge into animality to draw from it new vigour.
No spiritual time-serving. I would like every hour of my life to be new, though connected to the ones that have passed. No day of celebration with its mandatory collective rhythms, to share with all the strangers I don’t care about. Because our grandfathers’ grandfathers, and so on, celebrated, we too should feel the urge to celebrate. That is nauseating.
I await socialism for this reason too. Because it will hurl into the trash all of these dates which have no resonance in our spirit and, if it creates others, they will at least be our own, and not the ones we have to accept without reservations from our silly ancestors.
Antonio Gramsci, 1 January 1916, Avanti!, Turin Edition
Translated by Alberto Toscano
(Republished here)
I uploaded a lecture I gave today, 25th of December 2015 to Students at 中南林业科技大学班戈学院/Bangor College CSUFT
中国湖南省长沙市天心区韶山南路498号. Changsha, PRC
Though the lecture refers to the work of a group of students and their work on essays (mostly concerned with “Studying Abroad”), some fundamental issues of methodology are raised and may be of interest when doing research in economics and political economy.
They may be used in different ways as a kind of “propedeutico”.
Reference to the books mentioned:
References in the text:
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 