Back home now, taking up teaching again – and with this the “major challenge” we face – nolens volens
E.P. Thompson wrote in an article in 1970:
Collectively, all of us – all we liberal academics – were struck with a paralysis of will as the system not only grew round us, but built us into its own body-walls. Once inside there it looked as if we were running our bit of the show: but the show itself was being directed towards other ends.
Making life difficult by complicated, complex thoughts …! – This is the image academics have the bear with quite often – the absent-minded professor is the common proposition.
So the scene:
Imagine there is a train station, you receive a mail message on the phone and it is important enough to receive immediate attention: you want to download it on your tablet, allowing you to work on the issue while travelling. Free internet available as service of the train station, so you try … the annoying process of registration (big data needed, even from a small aunt like you) … the connection fails … – well, that’s life and you have to assess the text (some peer reviewing) later, other work to do during the train journey.
Sitting in the train, a few minutes later, a mail on your phone tells you the user name, different from the one sent via SMS.
As you are still in the area of the train station you want to connect … – big data, all is connected in the global village … – but now you are required to register for another network, not the train station int the railway company …, of course registration is free, zero marginality, the time you spent doesn’t count, i.e. the value of your time is considered to be equal to zero. Curiosity lets you do stupid things – so you register again, fail again …
… The voice out of the speaker reminds you in a very clear, not to say sharp and loud – voice: keep your mobile phones low level, don’t upset your neighbours … – pick and choose, the announcement is made n different languages, all in the clear and loud voice:
BE QUIET, DO NOT UPSET YOUR NEIGHBOURS!!
Isn’t this something that has to bring the day’s trinity to my mind, the one is the presentation heard earlier, dealing with data robbery and the working customer as new type of consumer, and the Un(der)paid Innovators: The Commercial Utiliza- tion of Consumer Work through Crowdsourcing.
The other thing coning to mind is a phone call made earlier, chatting with a Hungarian friend about the near-to-impossibility of living globally in a narrow-minded world where national sentiments are put higher than moral sentiments, even conflating them under the hegemonic meaning of the idea of a “commonwealth” of the Wealth of the Nations.
The dream you still have and of which you receive with all this the confirmation that it is a dream, something you just imagine, thus being a bit interpreting the world without (having the power to) changing things.
Escaping the world of dreams, of the supposed holiness of the trinity capturing your mind, you add a fourth element (which actually leaves father, son and Holy Spirit behind, overcoming them): a beautiful day, a beautiful landscape through which you pass, and possibly some readers from different countries wondering if this is a story that happened in the “own” country, wherever this might be … and where the only “academic” to the little tale was that the train left exactly 15 minutes later than scheduled – the academic quarter. – Perhaps to is not about academics making life complicated but the injustice of a narrow-minded system, extremely “diversified” = uncoordinated by privatisation, a world that suggests sharing as means of encapsulating (within) large “social networks” that loose their democratic dynamics.
Too often in today’s life and academic thinking we are (following what we are required to do:) jumping from one to the next stepping stone, barely being allowed to think about building bridges, let alone building them.
A brief look at social management is given in a lecture to students at Plekanov university and can be accessed on my YouTube channel.
Preparing the presentation was interesting, as actually on the Internet the search for social management does not show any results anymore …. – only issues around social media are schowing up. So, in this light the reflections may be of some special interest also historically.
“The Superior Man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.”
(Confucius)
Today to be added?!
The genius of our times of mendacities is well aware of the ways and means to present him/herself as being righteous, doing so in a charismatically “Catholicist” way and does so in favour of own advantage, while presenting it as deed of one who is saviour of the general weal.
Or:
the Loneliness of the Scientist, While Trying to Escape the Murderers
It is remarkable I think – especially as it is one of these issues we all know, and state repeatedly. It is about the political animal – explored in Aristotle’s Politics -, and the not less important aspect, highlighted by Marx in The Grundrisse, namely that
[t]he human being is in the most literal sense a political animal not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society … is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other.
– in short a social animal, only coming into existence in and with and through society.
Being too well aware of this, a remark that I recently read in the context of an analysis of Da Vinci’s Last Supper caught my special attention – I try to reproduce it here as close as possible to how it had been stated:
If you are alone, you just belong yourself – becoming aware of it, it is a moment that the solitude turns into loneliness.
It is the interpretation of a quote in the same text, namely the supposed reflection by Jesus when he turned away, knowing it would be about turning towards his own death (btw., so very different to Socrates as captured by Plato in the Apology).
Common to all these post-Aristotelian messages is that this “individuality within society” is about actual instances of opposing, contradicting exactly this society: the paradox of individuation happening in the mentioned cases by way of opposing. Obviously, this is very much about the devil not existing without god. This, then, may evoke the question, however, if god would “be in existence” without the devil’s existence in the first instance. It may seem at first glance an absurd and useless reflection. But a closer look may teach us differently: all this is very much a different formulation of topics that stand at the very heart of political philosophy: Hobbes’ Leviathan, the embodiment of a god-like institution, protecting humans against themselves, namely their boundless evil character. Taking up on this, though not representing Hobbesian thought, but moving towards Hegel’sl notion of “True is, what does exist”, and “good is (or will be) what becomes the absolute idea”, it is the eternal and absolute good of society. In Hegels own words, taken from the Science of Logic we are asked to accept as
the sole subject matter and content of philosophy
(para 1782)
that
[t]he absolute Idea has turned out to be the identity of the theoretical and the practical Idea. Each of these by itself is still one-sided, possessing the Idea only as a sought for beyond and an unattained goal; each, therefore, is a synthesis of endeavour, and has, but equally has not, the Idea in it; each passes from one thought to the other without bringing the two together, and so remains fixed in their contradiction. The absolute Idea, as the rational Notion that in its reality meets only with itself, is by virtue of this immediacy of its objective identity, on the one hand the return to life; but it has no less sublated this form of its immediacy, and contains within itself the highest degree of opposition. The Notion is not merely soul but free subjective Notion that is for itself and therefore possesses personality — the practical, objective Notion determined in and for itself which, as person, is impenetrable atomic individuality, but explicitly universality and cognition, and in its other has its own objectivity for its object. All else is error, confusion, opinion, endeavour, caprice and transitoriness; the absolute Idea alone is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and is all truth.
(para 1781)
And of course, Rousseau has to be mentioned, also dealing with the topic, for instance in his Discours sur l’Origine et les Fondements de l’Inégalité parmi les Hommes. At the very end of the text he concludes:
Il suit de cet exposé que l’inégalité, étant presque nulle dans l’état de nature, tire sa force et son accroissement du développement de nos facultés et des progrès de l’esprit humain et devient enfin stable et légitime par l’établissement de la propriété et des lois. Il suit encore que l’inégalité morale, autorisée par le seul droit positif, est contraire au droit naturel, toutes les fois qu’elle ne concourt pas en même proportion avec l’inégalité physique; distinction qui détermine suffisamment ce qu’on doit penser à cet égard de la sorte d’inégalité qui règne parmi tous les peuples policés; puisqu’il est manifestement contre la Loi de Nature, de quelque manière qu’on la définisse, qu’un enfant commande à un vieillard, qu’un imbécile conduise un homme sage, et qu’une poignée de gens regorge de superfluités, tandis que la multitude affamée manque du nécessaire.
Bringing this thought together with Hobbes’ notion, Rousseau emerges as kind of Anti-Christ? And reading his various works, doesn’t he actually contend that true society emerges by way of leaving it as such spontaneously developing, naturally? In other words, he is not opposing society as such, but some “artificial society” …
… which, if we take god as slightly truncated good, would suggest that the devil is actually turning out to be god and vice versa.
Admittedly playing a bit around, it marks, I think, one of the fundamental problems not only of our time: the problem of finding hic and nunc meaning, making the current situation meaningful, overcoming the lack of excitement.
Zygmunt Bauman, in a talk from July 2016, engages in these questions. He emphasises the need to leave the comfort zones that we established over time comfort zones that secured a gated and thus pleasurable setting which does not make much sense. However, it is also a dangerous setting, demeaning history and society as real places where real people act in real history. This ia about revisiting the question of truth (and finding truth), looking at it as matter of dealing with difference.
Thus we have to look for
a step towards people who are in a cosmopolitan situation.
So, what is history, and with this, what are remembrances, about?
Actually it is about history as matter of future, and thus off critique. With this we come to the challenge of remembrance as much as the challenge of living in academia: the establishment of living in society even if it is – temporarily or structurally adverse.
To establish history as another artifact, like society, like life and living means segmentising until we reach a level of not being able to maintain any longer a distinction. The paradox is that the distinction is fading away behind walls of segregation – walls like that between Israel and Palestine and – still in the making – between the USNA and Mexico and, too often, that between “historical artifacts” and the presence of history in the here and now emerging for shaping the future. It is also to often about remembering and even establishing the other – the other country, the other person, the other “system” … overcoming of lack of excitement.
Living in history is not a “collection of items”. But it is the latter that we are taught in daily life of the “economic formation of liquid modernity”. A lengthy passage on page 156 f. from Bauman’s book on “Liquid Modernity”, dealing with the pilgrimage of procrastination may clarify this ambiguity – an ambiguity that moves towards loss of meaning as loss of real history:
Living a life as a pilgrimage is therefore intrinsically aporetic. It obliges each present to serve something which is-not-yet, and to serve it by closing up the distance, by working towards proximity and immediacy. But were the distance closed up and the goal reached, the present would forfeit everything that made it signifi cant and valuable. The instrumental rationality favoured and privileged by the pilgrim’s life prompts the search for such means as may perform the uncanny feat of keeping the end of the efforts forever in sight while never reaching proximity, of bringing the end ever closer while preventing the distance from being brought to zero. The pilgrim’s life is a travel-towards-fulfilment, but ‘fulfilment’ in that life is tantamount to the loss of meaning. Travelling towards the fulfilment gives the pilgrim’s life its meaning, but the meaning it gives is blighted with a suicidal impulse; that meaning cannot survive the completion of its destiny.
Procrastination reflects that ambivalence. The pilgrim procrasti nates in order to be better prepared to grasp things that truly matter. But grasping them will signal the end of the pilgrimage, and so the end to such life as derives from it its sole meaning.
And part of this process is that it goes hand in hand with its opposite, about which we read on page 150
And so the beginning and the end of procrastination meet, the distance between desire and its gratification condenses into the moment of ecstasy – of which, as John Tusa has observed (in the Guardian of 19 July 1997), there must be plenty: ‘Immediate, con stant, diversionary, entertaining, in ever-growing numbers, in ever-growing forms, on ever-growing occasions.’ No qualities of things and acts count ‘other than instant, constant and unreflecting self-gratification’.
This is as well about processes of fundamental alienation, about the walls that urge us to search for or claim that we are dealing with eternal truth.
The first step is about demeaning of labour, the prolonged and deepened process already presented by Marx, prolonged and depend by cutting off further ties. From the Liquid Modernity wager we read on page 148
Once the employment of labour has become short-term and precarious, having been stripped of firm (let alone guaranteed) prospects and therefore made episodic, when virtually all rules concerning the game of promotions and dismissals have been scrapped or tend to be altered well before the game is over, there is little chance for mutual loyalty and commitment to sprout and take root.
Sure, we have to emphasise that this is the old pattern – labour, employment under capitalist conditions has never been a “safe heaven”.
And the same is true for research, more general: working in academia. Two very common poles: clientelism and personalised servitude versus objective measures and uncreative research as “applied”, subordinated under the needs of …, well, that was simply the requirement of system maintenance.
So we are back to history, well reflected in a contribution by Robert Cox, distinguishing in the piece on
Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory, published 1981 in Millennium – Journal of International Studies, between problem-solving and critical theory. He contends
[c]ritical theory is directed to the social and political complex as a whole rather than to the separate parts. As a matter of practice, critical theory, like problem solving theory, takes as its starting point some aspect or particular sphere of human activity. But whereas the problem solving approach leads to further analytical sub-division and limitation of the issue to be dealt with, the critical approach leads towards the construction of a larger picture of the whole of which the initially contemplated part is just the part one component, and seeks to understand the process of change in which both parts and whole are involved.
Critical theory is theory of history in the sense of being concerned not just with the past but with a continuing process of historical change.
This background is at least one of different possible ideal frames to revisit the question of remembrance of the
Lonely Scientists, While They are Trying to Escape the Murderers
It is about living in a world that erects monuments, creates its actors as monuments – monuments standing on the shoulders of other monuments …: another dimension of peer-reviewing, namely undermining to speak, to develop something, to open spaces for and of open debate …. – it is strange when looking around and seeing that sooooooo much is going on and one finds sooooooo many calls for papers, but .., yes, but barely a simple call, inviting to a conference, workshop and take part in a discussion … – for which there is not even the time left anyway, as we are too busy, much too busy. Jo Littler points this out on page 67 of her work on Meritocracy as Plutocracy:
In research recently conducted in St Pauls, an elite North American fee-paying school, Khan and Jerolmack noted that typically these students were conscious of the idea of their privilege, and replaced a frame of entitlement with one based around merit by continually emphasising how hard they’d worked. The researchers argued that ‘they generally do not work hard, although they are adept at performing a kind of busyness that looks and feels like hard work.’ (Students that did regularly go to the library were conversely positioned as ‘freaks’). As they put it, ‘“hard work” is mostly a form of talk – but important talk nonetheless. It is a rhetorical strategy deployed by students in a world of “new elites”’. These are elites ‘saying meritocracy but doing the ease of privilege’. (emphasis added, the comedian)
In any case, the question is obviously not the monument, event, fact that we investigate as such, but it is the context, i.e. the essential content. In other word, it is about the essence of the “one item” for the here and now which is itself, as being in the present, in some part (and only in some part) essence of the future. Essentially critical socio-historical existence (or should we speak of “essentialistence”?) Simple knowledge, “knowledge of the facts” …, of course it plays a role. But the real knowledge is about much more than the ability to be aware of the
or we may summaries it by returning to Bauman’s presentation, presenting the meaning of happiness as matter of overcoming unhappiness. In the present context: historical events, monuments, events, facts that we investigate as such are meaningless, gaining meaning not by our interpretation or by knowing their casualties and causalities but by our practice, by developing ourselves as part of
‘the social’ as ‘an outcome of the interaction between people (constituted as actors) and their constructed and natural environment. Its subject matter refers to people’s interrelated productive and reproductive relationships’
as we know from Social Quality thinking, as long as it is truly relational and to obsessed by the search for indicators.
Any limitation is about clipping the wings of the rooster further, moving back to the charade (alluding to the New Chinese Year, the year of the rooster, following the year of the monkey – in German language charade translates into “theatre of monkeys”)
Suicide by following the rules and requirement of pure existence, being paralysed by looking into the eyes of the murderer, accepting (to use the words of Ben Williamson) that
Computer code, software and algorithms have sunk deep into what Nigel Thrift has described as the “technological unconscious” of our contemporary “lifeworld,” and are fast becoming part of the everyday backdrop to Higher Education. Academic research across the natural, human and social sciences is increasingly mediated and augmented by computer coded technologies.
All these suicides and murders are actually about suicide in different forms and “doses”, as
Dr. Davis, who is working closely with those making the final decision about the fate of the kilogram, says he is not so sure. “In terms of published results, the watt balance is closer of the two,” he said. “But it’s very hard to say which is better.”
Well, yes
Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.
Clarence Darrow
and we may add: happy as matter of successful we may get by remembrance, by knowing the facts … but the step from there to overcoming the “unhappy events” of history, the “unhappy facts” of the presence, moving to real happiness in the sense suggested by Bauman with reference to Goethe, may a long, a very long road indeed,
because we forget the skills which are absolutely necessary in the offline world
skills of which the development indeed takes time
Indeed, the question of living and being lived … This means that it is not really about the question if there is such thing as society or not and if and to which extent we are part of it or if not, if we can and should possibly escape. Nor is it about any “abstract” or “artificial society” that stands against a “natural” or “original society”. Instead, as Samuel Knfao and Benno Teschke underline, while looking at The Rules of Reproduction of Capitalism: A Historicist Critique
[a] structural model of capitalism [and we may expand this, saying of society; P.H.] can only be derived if all the key parameters are independent from concrete historical settings so that the logic can be translated to various contexts where we find different social institutions. This is the classic positivist trap. For taking a theory or a proposition that is useful in one context and for a specific purpose in order to turn it into a generalisation, as if it captures an essential logic that applies to multiple cases (Knafo 2010: Critical Approaches and the Legacy of the Agent/Structure Debate in International Relations’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 23 (3): 493-516.), leads to the standard bifurcation between an abstract conceptual definition, which is meant to ground the explanation, and case-specificities, which are then demoted to the status of accidental accretions, superficial appearances, or un-typical anomalies, rather than accepted positively as presences that defy the general abstraction. In this way, a contextualised observation is made to stands on its own, but only at the cost of severing the rich tension between theory and history (Teschke 2014: IR Theory, Historical Materialism, and the False Promise of International Historical Sociology’, Spectrum: Journal of Global Studies, 6:1, pp. 1-66.).
One can also say that some of the debates amongst philosophers are indeed …, well, just a bit of a contemplative game, taking god and the devil and the possibility of changing roles (as it had been done in the beginning of these reflections) too serious, and considering too little the role of real people in real life. And indeed, real studies in history, real remembrances, real social analyses, real academic studies – are like real philosophy.
It took me a long time to understand the little story a friend, Hans F. Zacher, told me. We had been sitting in the Limoni, opposite of the Institute in the Amalienstrasse in Munich, for one of our more or less regular, though too rare lunches; leisurely talking about …, I think on that occasion it had been about the Baron, i.e. Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu who frequently featured in our contemplations. And now the little story – it took me a rather long time to fully understand its deeper meaning. It went like this:
You know, many colleagues say that I am a philosopher …, but I am not. Here is what I usually answer when somebody asks me if I would be philosopher.
He interrupts himself, looks at me with his impish smile, before he continues
I know about philosophy. And you may even say that I know quite a lot. But I am not philosopher. I would consider myself as philosopher .., look imagine 4 rooms – living/office rooms let’s say. The one is Kant’s, the other Marx’, then …, Nietzsche’s and the one of Leibnitz …
I am not sure …, or actually I am sure that he most likely did not refer to this list, but this is not relevant.
And looking at the room I would, seeing how the chairs are positioned, how especially the chair at the desk is positioned, I could tell you exactly who is living and working there.
He closes, again his impish smile .., which leaves me first simply puzzled … until … I understand, a bit later, the wisdom … . The understanding of memorials, ideas, approaches is very much like understanding human men and women ….
And indeed, isn’t anything below this, any remembrance and any solely problem solving theory, that explicitly and acceptingly lost any critical, and that is also self-critical, ambition like the Trumpian presidential inauguration-ball cake? Of this Masha Gessen says that
much of what little it brings is plagiarized, and most of it is unusable for the purpose for which (…) [they] are usually intended. Not only does it not achieve excellence: it does not even see the point of excellence.
Try it yourself, when you take your chair next time ….
Otherwise … or if you try to do it alone, there remains only
the Loneliness of the Scientist, While Trying to Escape the Murderers
facing the plans that are made to be permanently changed, leaving all of us the permanently I am sorry, but it all because being so busy, hard working ….
And it remains Bitches Brew, if not as death knell, then as a new wake up call, replacing, or reshuffling the old powerful one which, being used in the market lost strength, it is is a bit going down the drain. – Le chemin de la vie ne passe pas par un jardin de roses.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
It seems at least that underlying the main topics of public debates – growth, competitiveness, sustainability, ratio (as in rationality), digitalisation and globalisation, of course – we find some matter that may be called by the apparent misnomer “competition in self-degrading”. It does not really sound better than the more appropriate “nomer” which then should read nationalism, often in its most crude and primitive form. – A quick “synoptical view”, linking few articles I came across in the more or less recent press (like in printing press). Some of it is not so much about reading between the lines, more about reading the small print.
*****
So, in the beginning stands the word; and it says that
many young people started their businesses out of an interest, instead of a market need, which increases the risk of failure.
The report found 29.2 percent of the males and 37.6 percent of the females cited personal interest as one of the main factors for their decision to start a business.
This, to me, sounds at least equally worrying as the complains about working conditions, bribery and some of those aspects that are supposed to deal with human rights here in the Country of Aurora – without any intention to deny their relevance. And I do not refocus, supposing that we should strike a balance and count (breach of) rights here and there. Though yes, the ignorance of some Westeners is remarkable, personalising things or seeing them more as “failure and weakness n individual cases. Still, it is never wrong to look “Trumps special wall”, saying
Of course it is relevant even if said just by one person, dangerously entering the stage, important even if it would be only for the reason to find out about his nasty followers as
[f]rom Mr Trump’s perspective … things are working well: Fiat Chrysler said it may have to pull production from Mexico. Ford, which has already cancelled a $1.6bn plant in Mexico, is now discussing compensation with suppliers.”
Yes, freedom is such an important issue when it comes to Human Rights – the freedom for the market, and we find the old story of preaching water, while drinking – fermented grape juice, this probably the more appropriated term, finally point on the process of rotting that stands behind this concept of freedom:
Donald Trump has called for tariffs of 35 per cent on cars imported from Mexico to the US, and has criticised companies that move manufacturing south of the border, with tweets directed at General Motors and Toyota.
Self-degrading in terms of showing the lowest instincts in place – by no means a new issue as it for instance getting clear from Domenico Losurdo‘s article on the
And of course we should talk about the need to do something immediately and in the singular cases, seeing that
And nevertheless, if it is true that the word stands in the beginning, we should take it from here: the vocabulary of gain as leading motive, as marked by Karl Polanyi – seeing it as the turning point
Nineteenth century civilization alone was economic in a different and distinctive sense, for it chose to base itself on a motive only rarely acknowledged as valid in the history of human societies, and certainly never before raised to the level of a justification of action and behavior in everyday life, namely, gain. The self-regulating market system was uniquely derived from this principle.
The mechanism which the motive of gain set in motion was comparable in effectiveness only to the most violent outburst of religious fervor in history. Within a generation the whole human world was subjected to its undiluted influence.[2]
*****
This word was step by step translated into numbers, which mark today the
On the one level this is the issue Hannah Arendt looked at, stating in her book on the Human Condition that
the situation created by the sciences is of great political significance. Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. If we would follow the advice, so frequently urged upon us, to adjust our cultural attitudes to the present status of scientific achievement, we would in all earnest adopt a way of life in which speech is no longer meaningful. For the sciences today have been forced to adopt a “language” of mathematical symbols which, though it was originally meant only as an abbreviation for spoken statements, now contains statements that in no way can be translated back into speech.[1]
The analysis of the
by Charles Gore clearly shows that this problem also and increasingly applies to the “good-willing”, “good-doing” policy approaches:
These changes have certainly made the Washington Consensus more humane. But at the same time, the SHD approach has had the effect of conserving key features of the world- view of the dominant paradigm. Although its different values have emphasized different indicators and weighting systems, particularly to capture levels of human development and poverty, these measures have reinforced a focus on short-term performance assessment.
*****
But here I also reached the point of talking about competition in self-degrading. Similar studies and complaints and fears in so may countries – and it does not really matter that we find similar claims when it comes to countries (or national NGOs, social group … …) claiming for “their populace” or “their constituency” the “highest unemployment, poverty, homeless rate …”, or the most severe problems with racism, lack of solidarity, democratic deficits, bureaucracy or bailing out the multimillionaires profit sources … , or the least support for alternatives, the closest and strictest and responsive and exclusive (as in exclusion) … .
All these are too often seen in just one respect:
“We’re losing ground – a troubling prospect when, in today’s knowledge-based economy, the best jobs can go anywhere in the world,” says US Education Secretary John B. King Jr. “Students in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Minnesota aren’t just vying for great jobs along with their neighbors or across state lines, they must be competitive with peers in Finland, Germany, and Japan.”
*****
Yes, indeed, we are living in an era of globalisation. And with all the issues around privatisation even those who are in its favour should never forget that they ultimately can and do only gain by relying on the state – this is pointed out by Mariana Mazzucato, writing about
It is of course important not to romanticize the State’s capacity. The State can leverage a massive national social network of knowledge and business acumen, but we must make sure its power is controlled and directed through a variety of accountability measures and diverse democratic processes. However, when organized effectively, the State’s visible hand is firm but not heavy, providing the vision and the dynamic push (as well as some ‘nudges’) to make things happen that otherwise would not have. Such actions are meant to increase the courage of private business. This requires understanding the State as neither a ‘meddler’ nor a simple ‘facilitator’ of economic growth.
And here we may come to another issue that is relevant when talking about globalisation as we can know that:
Company has invested more than $10 billion overseas so far, with gross value of assets reaching $40 billion
State Grid Corp of China has signed a deal to purchase a minority stake in Greece’s power grid operator ADMIE, a move to further extend its international reach.
The company will purchase a 24 percent state in ADMIE, Greece’s state-backed Public Power Corporation’s subsidiary, …
An interesting detail (and I am definitely not talking about the figures) is here the following:
Being part of Greece’s international bailout, ADMIE operates more than 11,000 kilometers of high-voltage power cable in Greece, earning an operating profit of 155 million euros last year, with a regulated asset base of 1.4 billion euros and a total debt of 490 million euros.
So, indeed there are complex new structures not only of cross-interlocking, but emerging new entities, still nameless, as any attempt to call them PPP, global control, interdependence, global governance or the like is all too closely linked to past and present. – In the beginning is the word, but nobody should say that this defines for ever the same language code.
*****
All this does not fit into any model of linearity or mathematical formula …
The old political economy, even of an Alfred Marshall[3], would have been more knowledgeable on this than the “modern” entrepreneurs that had been envisaged in the article, quoted at the beginning of these few thoughts.
At the end there should still be the person to be reproduced as such, and with all the irrational joys and disturbing worries and sorrows.
– It this person (as in personality) that enlightenment – as humanist (though unlike as in humanitarian) movement – wanted to bring on stage.
And as history is made up of contradictions and paradoxes, it may be most appropriate to quote at the end the “self-enthroned antichrist”, leaving aside if he could rightly claim so, and surely not suggesting that this Übermensch would be the incarnation of true humanism:
Those who keep silent are almost always lacking in delicacy and courtesy of the heart; silence is an objection, swallowing down necessarily produces a bad character — it even ruins the stomach. All the silent are dyspeptic. — One sees, I do not want crudeness to be undervalued, it is by far the most humane form of opposition and, in the midst of modern over-indulgence, one of our foremost virtues. — If one is rich enough for it, it is even a matter of good fortune to be in the wrong. A God come down to earth ought to do nothing other than wrong — to take upon himself not the punishment but the guilt, that alone would be divine.
It had not been Zarathustra, saying this.
— At the end of the day, all this is the essence of what my students should have learned from the lectures during the last semester, their first encounter with academics. One could say not much for an entire semester. But one could also say: if some people in Washington, London, Berlin/Frankfurt …, and yes: Beijing would have not forgotten these simple facts we would still have many problems, but many of those fundamental problems we do have, we would not have and we would not have to join the legions of people and peoples, mourning about their own hardship being the most severe … .
**********
[1] Webber, Jude, 13.1.2917: ¡No pasarán!; FT-blog LatAmViva; Your Weekly briefing on the region
[1] Arendt, Hannah, 1958: The Human Condition; Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1958: 3 f.
[2] Polanyi, Karl, 1944: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time; Boston: Beacon Press, 1957: 30
[3] Even remaining “Non-Marshallian”, an interesting academic article by Geoffrey Hodgson, asking “Alfred Marshall versus the historical school?“
Indeed, stunning and beautiful,
Not allowing for any conflict, for anything in the way of the illusionary world of deception self-deception and promises which are not even meant to be kept.
The famous 3 wise monkeys, today not so much what thy stood for:
“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”;
but instead it is about not having time to look closely, hearing, but being not easily ready to listen and permanently speaking, without saying anything …, or even worse: “speaking through emoticons”. I think there is still much unchanged, at least not much changed over time.
But all this, and finally the reduction of using words on emoticons, and reducing what we say on what we “have to say” — reflecting that what we produce is for exchange, and not about value … – the rest dissolving in an unbearable lightness of being, into nothingness …
We cannot change the fact that we are moving on in time, but we may be able to change the direction …
No matter how obvious the irrational character of the whole may manifest itself and, with it, the necessity of change, insight into necessity has never sufficed for seizing the possible alternatives. Confronted with the omnipresent efficiency of the given system oflife, its alternatives have always appeared utopian. And insight into necessity, the consciousness of the evil state, will not suffice even at the stage where the accomplishments of science and the level of productivity have eliminated the utopian features of the alternatives-where the established reality rather than its opposite is utopian.
From Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man: 283
*** sorry for crossposting – please distribute widely ***
Dear Colleagues, a special “New Years Wish” – please find attached the call for applications for the
JÖRG-HUFFSCHMID-PREIS 2017
Below as well the call in English language.
Where applicable, we encourage you to hand in your work and/or pass the call on to colleagues of whom you thing they may be interested.
The Special New Years Wish, going with it: I hope we can use this as one of the Platforms on which collaboration against the conservative and right movements can be developed further.
All the best ,
Peter
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In memoriam of the scientific work and the political engagement of the critical economist Joerg Huffschmid the call for the Jörg-Huffschmid-Award is published for the 4th time, awarding outstanding works in the field of Political Economy. The aim is to encourage in particular young scholars to take up on the tradition of critical thinking for which the name Jörg Huffschmid is an outstanding mark.
Joerg Huffschmid, who passed away in December 2009, at the age of 69 years, combined in his work astute analyses with a critique of capitalism and political reasoning. As one of the founders of the Arbeitsgruppe Alternative Wirtschaftspolitik, the EuroMemo group and member of the scientific council of attac and the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation he aimed in his personal, political and scientific life on a socially just society, engaged against the supposed lack of an alternative as it had been suggested by mainstream economics. Therefore the four organisations publish since 2011 the call for the Joerg-Huffschmidt Award.
We invite final degree-theses on level of PhD, Magister, Master and Diploma. The selected PhD-thesis will be awarded with 1500 Euro, the other collected degree thesis will be awarded with 500 Euro. The work should be related to the field of Political Economy, and look, for instance at the following:
Encouraged are especially theses that apply an approach that brings different disciplines together, integrating economics and approaches from social and political science.
We will consider submissions that had been accepted since April 2015 by a European university/third-level institution in German or English language.[1] Applications are only accepted in electronic form, to be sent before or at the very latest on the 31st of March 2017 to the following address:
Please, attach the following:
Members of the Jury:
Axel Troost, Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Mitglied des deutschen Bundestages; Birgit Mahnkopf, Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Attac, Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin; Claudia von Braunmühl, Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Attac, Freie Universität Berlin; Gunter Quaißer, Arbeitsgruppe Alternative Wirtschaftspolitik, Duale Hochschule Baden- Württemberg; Heide Gerstenberger, Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Attac, Universität Bremen; Jörg Hafkemeyer, Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Universität der Künste Berlin; Peter Herrmann, EuroMemo Gruppe, Corvinus University Budapest; Silke Ötsch, Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Attac, Soziologin; Thomas Sauer, Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Attac, Ernst- Abbe-Hochschule Jena; consultative Bärbel Rompeltien
The awarding ceremony is planned for October/November 2017
Contact and further information
Peter Herrmann, herrmann@esosc.eu, and Rahel Wolff, rahel.wolff@attac.de, Koordination Wissenschaftlicher Beirat von Attac Deutschland
You will get a more or less immediate conformation of the submission, if you do not receive this after a week, please contact both coordinators.
[1] Submissions by members of the four organisations and members of the respective scientific councils will not be considered.
Prof. Dr. habil Peter Herrmann
EURISPES – Istituto di Studi Politici, Economici e Sociali
Via Cagliari 14
00198 Roma
ITALIA
__________
University of Eastern Finland (UEF)
Department of Social Sciences
PL 1627
70211 Kuopio
FINLAND
—-
Corvinus University
Institute of World Economy
Faculty of Social Sciences and International Relations
Fővám tér 8
1093 Budapest
HUNGARY
_________
currently
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
Address: 498 Shaoshan Rd(S),Tianxin District, Changsha, Hunan, 410004, China
skype: peteresosc
QQ: 2738027550
mobile: +86.1856 9511474
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NEWS, THOUGHTS AND PROVOCATIONS
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Herrmann_(social_philosopher)
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