Shocking — the story itself; and that in so many ways we accept it, refrain from massive resistance …
And even already little resistance bears harsh consequences …
if we then add those who retire at an early stage, looking for something else, working outside of academia etc., the picture is quite frightening …
Still, also One scholar’s crusade may matter, is at least necessary …
Economists using mathematical expressions to decorate arguments about the perfection of market systems may believe that their work is beautiful. Outsiders see instantly that it isn’t. Quite apart from the messy problems and ugly realities of the economic world (capitalist or otherwise), no one with a sense of aesthetics would take the clumsy algebra of a typical professional economics article as a work of beauty. The main purpose of the math is not to clarify, or to charm, but to intimidate. And the tactic is effective. An idea that would come across as simpleminded in English can be made “impressive looking” with a sufficient string of Greek symbols. A complaint about the argument can be deflected, most easily, on the ground that the complainer must not understand the math.
(Galbraith, James K., 2014: The End of Normal. The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth; New York et altera: Simon & Schuster: 67)
But it being identified as not being an economist may also be perceived as praise.
To analyze the world in this way, requires, in effect, the redefinition of human experience into a special language. That language must have a vocabulary limited to those concepts that can be dealt with inside the model. To accept these restrictions is to be an economist. Any refusal to shed the larger perspective – a stubborn insistence on bringing a broader set of facts or a different range of theory to bear – identifies one as “not an economist.” In this way, the economists need only talk to one another. Enclosed carefully in their monastery, they can speak their code, establish their status and rankings and hierarchies, and persuade themselves and one another of their intellectual and professional merit.
(Galbraith, James K., 2014: The End of Normal. The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth; New York et altera: Simon & Schuster: 64)
Well, this is just another, and better formulated reflection of what I presented …
The other day I received a mail (I received it as CC), somebody stating
As I mentioned to you, it is clear that our colleague Peter’s mind was not shaped by Central bankers neither other kind of executive format.
Thanks god, though I do not believe in that one.
Interesting as NB is the following: I presented a while back on the same conference as the author of those line – it had been in Cuba, his topic being the Eurocrisis, a reasonably “good” presentation of bad economics, though very affirmative. At the end he also gave out, blaming the victims of austerity etc., and asking for a restrictive monetary and fiscal policy and for further restrictions. Investment, growth as source of eternal wealth — in other words: the ongoing belief in the eternal
… the heavenly lullaby,
The old song of abnegation,
By which the people, this giant fool,
Is lulled from its lamentation.[1]
In the original
das alte Entsagungslied,
Das Eiapopeia vom Himmel,
Womit man einlullt, wenn es greint,
Das Volk, den großen Lümmel.[2]
In my presentation applied in analytical terms but as well in terms of developing a perspective a more complex perspective – much appreciated and welcome. And leading to ongoing cooperation with colleagues from the Cuba government …
for my part I can only see it as praise — and hope that not only the colleagues in Cuba will maintain their critical position to the minds of Central bankers and other kind of executive format.
==============
[1] Germany. A Winter’s Tale; Text by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856); translated into English by Joseph Massaad; http://www.heinrich-heine.net/winter/wintereng1.htm
[2] Heine, Ein Wintermärchen caput 1; http://www.heinrich-heine-denkmal.de/heine-texte/caput01.shtml
After just having finished drafting a document under the title
Crisis and a/n/o [and/no] end?
I am now preparing the conference in Moscow later, in a way the application of the topic. It is titled
Lost Generation – Finding Future? Challenges for Youth Policy.
The thesis which I will present is very much reflecting the fact that the current structural crisis means especially for young people total exclusion, establishing a lost generation. However, it may well have another meaning, namely offering a door to overcome the deep structural weakness of capitalism: investment programmes etc may help to reinstall to some extent the status quo ex ante, however such programmes will not be able to make use of the huge productive potential that today’s societies waste: inequality needs to be addressed by fundamental redistribution, redistribution has to be oriented on changing the process of production and opening doors to its real creative potentials overcoming the limited understanding of production, reducing it on a narrow economic understanding of commodity (and profit) production – we have to look the at the processes of producing and reproducing social relationships.
Indeed, another world is possible ….
See in this context the still interesting publication:
There are many people, who always have some boating idea about which they can write.
C’è molta gente a cui viene sempre in mente qualcosa di noioso di scrivere
Es gibt viele Leute, denen immer wieder etwas Langweiliges einfällt, worüber sie schreiben können.
(Reinhard Elze)
Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it. In war it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us in great measure from spiritually exhausting labor, it has made men into slaves of machinery, who for the most part complete their monotonous long day’s work with disgust and must continually tremble for their poor rations. … It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man’s blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavours; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.(Speech to students at the California Institute of Technology, in “Einstein Sees Lack in Applying Science”, The New York Times; 16 February 1931)
We frequently talk about the glass, wondering if it is half full or half empty … , and easily deny or overlook when it is broken.
Only looking for a new one then will allow us to avail of one that is at least half full and that may be filled up further.
It was in the dreary month of November,
The gloomy days grew shorter,
The wind tore the foliage off the trees,
….
No, not the time I visited Germany, as Heinrich Heine did, writing A Winter’s Tale about Germany
We ended a European conference: social services, the meaning of care with its various facets, not least the pressure from marketisation and the neglect of a system of which it had been said in 2013 that this capitalism kills.
I said good bye to a colleague from Hungary – I did not know her, mentioned en passent my position at the Corvinus University and ….
… Could I only recite that then
She sang of love and its woes,
Of sacrifice and meeting again,
High above, in a better world,
Void of suffering, void of pain.
I heard another story instead
Orban finally took him away
– so on the occasion of my next visit I will not see the Marx statue that stood in the central hall of the university. Of course, it had been only a monument, a symbol – but yes: it had been a symbol: a manifestation of a writer, scientist and activist. And it had been a symbol for a writer who had been recognised as important contributor to the development of world culture – part of the heritage of Western culture which means in the understanding of the UNESCO a recognition not only of the importance but also in terms of the positive contribution.
With the news about Orban’s recent coupe I leave the venue – a stale feeling, weakness and disgust …
Indeed, Orban and his myrmidons learned what their recent victim said:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
Of course, it is important, necessary to accuse this infringement of respect of Western culture, this arrogance of a snooty-nosed little upstart who is known for his pathological outages, his populist megalomania. Still, there is a wider perspective.
Some may recall the sentences by Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.[1]
And indeed, it is cum grano salis also relevant here:
Not yet – if we are serious now in interpreting the development correctly and, indeed, change it fundamentally.
[1] There are different versions and there is along discussion on the statement – see here… And here.
I got recently a mail from a colleague from a place where I worked for some time during my professional existence – it had been sent to colleagues and some others, being concerned with data security issues in connection with dropbox. This mail provoked some wider contextualisation from my side which I sent as reply – this is reproduced in the following.
Thank you …, good to hear from you – though in ways not the best things.
Though personally I am not sooooo concerned in some way (the experience of having been permanently surveyed when I lived in West Germany at least in the 60s, and 70s and having faced some of the consequences of the 72-“administrative decree” known as Berufsverbot did have a somewhat numbing effect) we are surely facing a frightening development: not least as personal data are used by war mongers, by business sectors for the war of consumerist terror and by individuals and groups who hack into personal e-mail accounts, using them for sending SPAM. There is however another dimension to all this which may – and I think should – require a minute of thought.
Keeping things short, there is also from this side the need to develop more critical strategies – the “more” as matter of quality: more fundamental, more principal and accepting in more serious ways our role as educators instead of seeing the work we do as providers of “pure” knowledge and skills. Looking at this, the shocking part is not only starting when it comes to extremes like the development in Hungary (where direct government intervention in teaching is “reasonably” common). The shocking part is not only starting when it comes to developments where (as in Lithuania) a social policy department is now renamed as department for social technology. The really dangerous part is where we are not critically taking up our responsibility and remain stuck in the cocoons of individualist reseachers, unwilling and unabled (sorry, the term should exist, against Microsoft’s will) to collaborate in a sound and integrated and radical way.
Sure, part of it is that we cannot change the situation as individuals though we have to change the individuals in order to change the situation. And part of it being the ambiguity of working towards a process of change itself: Apparently we are fighting for “the social” as individuals. Sure, all this includes the challenge that we have to get off the pedestals that are still characterising academia: as we chanted in the late 60s
Under the gowns / Is the musty odour of a thousand years
(see another potential abuser of data processing – wikipedia, here in German on the slogan and in English on the context the context)
All this is, of course, not least linked the the loss of readiness to think of contradictions as driving force of development – already the notion of dialectical and historical materialism is whipped out, even in “progressive” thinking, unfit for being squeezed into slide-thinking of presentations which are always not least self-presentations. In this context, I hope that the science shop (as it had been called those times) is developing in a direction which is not moving and moved further against the intention which I have had when I co-initialised the work.
All the best and enjoy the weekend – camminare insieme 😉
Peter
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 