La Gira

The Devil, the Detail and the Devil’s Home

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation

It is often said that the devil can be found in the detail – and this is not contest here as general rule. However, we should never forget to think about the place where the devil can be found, namely the devil’s home.

The Council of the Economic Advisors is looking in an issue brief from April 2016 at the

BENEFITS OF COMPETITION AND INDICATORS OF MARKT POWER

While we talk in the meantime extensively about inequality of wealth and the unbelievable affluence of the super-rich, and while we look with disgust at the Panama-papers, there is indeed something in the report that is more appalling  and actually the showing the real issue that is covered by all those scandals, clearly apparent from the report: the real inequality is still the inequality in the control of means of production though, though those means changed over the years they appearance – it may be true that

we are about to make the transition from a society in which energy was the engine of progress, innovation and productivity to one where data and the information technologies that underpin it will be the engine of progress.’

(Degryse, Christophe, 2016: Digitalisation of the Economy and its impact on labour markets; Working Paper 2016.02; Brussels: ETUI: 9 f.; with reference to Babinet, Gilles, 2015: Big Data, penser l’homme et le monde autrement; Paris: Le Passeur)

The inequality not in terms of money but in terms of capital is the decisive factor, so the analysis should really look at The Capital of the 21st Century, and not just at the distribution of money – students are at least sometimes told that there is a difference between money and capital.

This means as well that we have to be careful, resisting the attractive models that are easily offered – resisting in the dialectical way of overcoming the shortcomings while maintaining the potentials. Joe Stiglitz looked recently at the

Monopoly’s New Era

surely raising important issues. However, this makes us easily forget the systematic character, the law if you want, that stands behind the development. It is not the Sshumpetarian entrepreneur who develops with inventiveness and courage the empires, be they empires of steel barons or information gurus. As long as we believe in such magic powers, we easily find ourselves in the trap of distributing income, forgetting to consider the need to question power. Brecht’s words

The womb is fertile still from which that crept

are also valid in this context, not least making us alert of the dangers, posed by capital looking for spheres for investment and war. Indeed, taking it from my forthcoming publication “Security in insecure times” (which is linked to the presentation I made in Gdansk)

… we find as well the mention if the immediate security threat: Paul Krugman, in a conversation with Tony Atkinson on Inequality and Economic Growth at the Graduate Centre of City University of New York speaks of ‘a large public work stimulus programme known as the second world war’ (15/05/16; minute 1:18:13 ff.).[1] And in his opinion page/blog in The New York Times, Krugman contends that ‘World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to a depressed economy.’

And indeed, we have sufficient evidence of the aggressiveness, be it in international relations, regionally in Latin America or in the name of national democracy.

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[1] Btw, going hand in hand with a rejection of trade unionism.

 

 

 

Democracy

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Of course it would be silly to deny the value of democratic rules and mechanisms as free elections, representation and the like. But looking at countries where all these are in place, one may occasionally ask what all this really means.  A report on the situation in France and its labor reform may make us think a bit more. Quoted from the Telsur-aricle:

The plan, opposed by three in four French people, according to pollsters, has provoked weeks of often violent demonstrations and added strains on police who were already stretched by extra security duties in the wake of last November’s deadly Islamist attacks on France.

Brazilianisation

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation

It is always easy – and tempting – to work with slogans and catchwords like Brazilianisation, New Princedoms and the like. One aspect behing putting them forward is the fact that they often focus on one point, by this presenting things neatly. And for this they can and should be always be criticised. But occasionally they also allow us to understand the broader picture that they carry with them. Two recent telesur-reports on the recent developments in Brazil highlight this in an interesting way, highlighting the dangers we are currently facing globally and nationally/regionally.

Dangers we are facing globally means that, of course, what happens there is part of a wider geopolitical strategy:
* Senate-imposed President of Brazil Michel Temer being not much more than a string-puppet to the USNA – yes, the self-elected world gendarme Northern America having again its dirty hands in the game and

Brazil is only the latest Latin American Coup

* the global dimension gets also clear when we understand that the movement is one aiming on getting

Brazil back in the clutches of Washington

Looking at the economic development and the fact that it is to some extent based on throwing off the ropes of the neocolonialist dependencies and obediences, also turning towards BRICS, UNASUR and others are major threats for the overcome system of the global hegemonic structures. – The

Goodbye Washington Consensus

is not really in sight.
Reestablishing inner colonialisation is the second dimension: Brazilianisation is, indeed, about reestablishing the old hegemonies of a white male society, where “austerity” becomes identical with reinstalling a system that ignores human rights, that explicitly opens doors for discrimination and arbitrary rules.

When we then see the term Brazilianistion in its originally intended understanding of the “West” adopting the rules of a then neocolonial country (the origin of the term goes back to the pre-reform Brazil of the late 1990s), the current developments may give us some idea of what we can expect – or it may alert us when it comes to seeing the germs already now:
* Nestle Gains Control of Town’s Water for the Next Half Century
It reminds me of an interview I once heard, the Nestle CEO openly stating that he does not care about people dying because of the lack of access to water.

* A colleague from Austria wrote in a recent mail about the way in which his university deals with applications for academic jobs. He claimed that all applications should be assessed by a well defined catalogue of requirement – the same catalogue used for all applicants. The reply he had to face, coming from the chairwoman:

We surely have the right to assess every person indiviually and flexibly.

Right, this happened in Austria and the chairwoman had been a German. Not yet 100 years ago somebody came from Austria to Germany [and of course, he did not stay there].

* And of course we find the inequality exactly HERE. In a policy note of the

Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

we find the data on the 1 % and the 99 %. But not less interesting is a look at the data of the sources of “income”. As true as it is that “honest labour never makes a person rich”, the gap between those who get income from “work” and those how gain from what is called unearned income, defined as

any income that comes from investments and other sources unrelated to employment services

is also increasing.

That the definition of unearned income also includes social transfers/welfare shouldn’t surprise – the clandestine socialisation of private entrepreneurship. If there would be a law making enterprises pay a “decent income”, we would not face the increasing number of the so-called working poor. And the latter live on state welfare but depend increasingly on charities – yes, Brazilianisation and New Princedoms go hand in hand. One of the differences between the old and the new princedoms is, of curse, that the church though still playing an important role, is to me extent replaced by other good-doers: The foundations of the super-rich, defining in their light what social quality should be and profiling themselves as the new messiahs …

Zsuzsa Ferge

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, Peter's Log, publications, works, projects, publications

I am glad that I could make a small contribution* to celebrate this great colleague – it is always a pleasure to meet a person that is ready to stand up, to move things – to sit down – to seriously discuss issues, and to be around – just to have a good time together.  Zsuzsa, thank you!!

 

* I cannot set the link to the actual publication

US – “world leadership in the care sector”

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Surprising? Yes, it is indeed the United States of Northern America who are playing a leading in the  care sector — of course, one may have to look exactly at the definitions of “care” and “leadership”. Check yourself here for the

Black Alabama Inmates Strike Against Oppression and Slavery.

And do not forget to watch the embedded  film.

Impressions from a weekend in Yueyang

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, Peter's Log

It had been a brief trip – a short distance, it takes about half an hour by train to arrive from Changsha in Yueyang. I had been there earlier, seeing the blueprints and architectural models of what I would visit now as reality already in place – surely part of the reality as it is about an ongoing development (can anywhere and any time be an end to development?).

Sunday morning, the second day of the weekend trip, 收件人 collects me from the hotel and we walk along the lake – although it is cold again, it is nice, especially after having made the first steps and warming up. A modern and clean area – the tennis court, a little lake with goldfish and golf course bring the notion of the “leisure society” to the fore.

After walking on for a while, I see some old houses, a bit stray from the development path – I write development path as the way we walked is part of the ongoing development programme that aims on attracting tourists – for me always a bit of a contradiction in terms, as I ask myself about the self-destructive potential: People come to an area because they are looking for nature, for some remoteness that allows retreating from the daily stress. Anyway, asking for these houses, is met with a question:

Do you want to walk a bit through the countryside?

And so we go, changing from the clean park-street to a more or less muddy pathway. After having walked there for some time an old man looks – a bit  – skeptical at us – his one hand holds the walking-stick; with the other he is looking after the plants.

My father would know all these plants – he grew up in the countryside.

收件人 says. And I want to know a bit more. He is from the real countryside whereas for the people here the little farming is an additional source of income – the elderly and the women doing the jobs “at home”, whereas the “male breadwinner” is working  in some industrial job, perhaps doing some farmwork in the evening. A bit further I see the rubble of destroyed cottages, the real development path: contrasting the old with the new, but more showing the contradictions between them. The rubble and a bit further the new houses – not really skyscrapers, but too high to easily count or estimate the number of stories. I ask where the people will live in the future.

The government provides apartments – and also some subsidies that makes it possible to pay the rent.

So far the new houses look neat – as long as one does not see the large squares  that had been there before; and one can truly acknowledge the greens, the new squares, the nearness to the lake, and the view on the mountains in the distance … – yes, and another feature is again and again delightful – the “monuments”: old stones, pagodas, tablets bearing the inscription of traditional and new poems …, integrating different perspectives.

Synchrony of times and cultures? – Changing the scene ?

We talk about the price of accommodation – those who lived here in the old cottages may gain nicer accommodation – and they get apparently also some support. Finally they need the compensation for the loss of the additional income of subsistence farming. – But is that compensation measurable in terms of money? Do they loose part of what was meaningful for them? Do they loose the burden of the heavy work?

收件人’s parents want to buy a new place and this brings us to a more general perspective which can be put into a nutshell:

  • government buildings, i.e. accommodation tat had been provided by the state,
  • had been replaced by accommodation owned by the employers: tough one did not live at the workplace, one lived in the accommodation provided by the owners of the workplace. Hearing about it, the old Krupp-settlements come to my mind: working for the Krupps, living in the houses the Krupps provided, and buying in the shops the Krupps owned.
  • The new stage of development is as matter of “freedom”: The market provides accommodation and the law of demand is the rule.

Isn’t it what we read in the Critique of the Gotha Program?

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Sure, in the light of the market it refers to the ability to pay, and the need to submit to the rules of competition. And this is major part of the individualism: personal disintegration, taking the form of the need to look after yourself stops all of us from looking for integrated solutions, going beyond the establishment of princedoms and princessdoms.

Airport Chat

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy
The only free seat, while waiting for the boarding to commence, was the one between brother and sister …, as usual I forgot the name. Unusual though that we talk about “the world” and that “there is something wrong, though I don’t know what.” My reference to the Evangelii Gaudium and an attempted “left interpretation” does not really move the communication forward – also it doesn’t help when I draw the direct line between this and the confrontation with the pressure today’s students are under. – Is she too distracted? Or is she convinced that the mobile phone she frequently looks at, provides the answer?

May be the brother from Kenya knows it, admiring the Chinese:

They are clever. Loosing no time, just looking around and implementing …. – that is what they do.

Sure, his reflections on his home country are interesting – and the endless trust of both of them:

You surely need a bishop to perform …

is somewhat perplexing.

— Sitting with the back to us: a father with his son …. – I have to admit that the permanent rattling  of the computer game they are playing, implementing shooting at, racing after, hunting for virtuality makes me a bit irascible …, nothing alluring about it ….

Differences

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications
Differences ….
…. I thought about it during the symposium, while talking to one of the colleagues who asked me what I would think about the gathering. Of course, there is a danger of stereotyping. Still, I dared to say that in China such events are more about presenting the institution, in Europe it is always very much about self-presentation of the participants – “here I feel more of collaboration, trying to define the core of the issue and working together towards finding an answer.” – As said, there is the huge danger of all these classifications, concerned with the I and the We and the Us – I will come back to it.

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The day after the symposium was the day of … – well, it was not really holiday. It was about other meetings – the many ambassadors that participated in the symposium had been now “replaced” by the individual ambassadors: instead of meeting the ambassadors as collaborators, it was now meeting the ambassadors. One could think: they represent their country; but they also may represent themselves – just having a job, living in another country than that of their origin and somewhat “merging images and expectations” – at least in some cases. If one would not know the mechanisms that are behind of being sent on mission into the different countries one could occasionally get the impression ambassadors come to the country that they see “as their own”, the country in which they would really like to live … . Perhaps it is about extremely privileged people who are able to live up to the Aristotelean “vision” that

[t]he ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Or it is about the perfect staging: the non-smokers, and non-drinkers, sitting relaxed in the rocking chair, smoking the obligatory cigar, while their vista is moving pensively between the rum and …, well, it should be Miami if it would be a it closer …
Anyway, would it be possible in Italy to meet for a chat with the French ambassador, and especially: celebrating the launch of a mural, a most remarkable project that decorates now the wall around the embassy? The kind of casual chat may be as remarkable as the fact that the embassy allows such truly multi- and intercultural project to happen and as remarkable as the way in which artists, people from the embassy and people from the Cuban government and people from the street interact. Is there a term like “serene-serious”? But looking for such a term may be just due to the German heritage that I carry with me around the world – nolens volens … – as we all carry such tiny things with us, and as it confirmed to me during the day: the yanks in the morning, the French during the day, but also confirmed in the evening, meeting the ambassador of the UK on the occasion of the visit in the beautifully renovated opera house. (— Ah well, there is something nice about carrying the general entry ticket named “minister of culture”.
Though the various ambassadors and embassy staff reflect another dimension of “the we and they”: the social divide is surely not relevant in Cuba as it is elsewhere. I was always thinking about it during these days, looking at the person in the escalator: her job is to look after everybody, getting us onto the right floor …, and during the breaks she is reading the academic journal on international relations. It reminds me of thbe one day when I had been collected: the car at the gate was bringing me to the ministry. The colleague, who would later take part in the meeting with the deputy of the department, discussed heatedly the next possible moves the government should take – admittedly car and uniform were less pompous than those of the European doormen.
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Second day after the symposium, first day of the month: First of May. I leave as usual in the morning at 5ish. But this day not just for a walk, but with  the destination appropriate for this day: the Revolution Square. Already in front of my house I see many people, moving into the same direction. They are gathering, the group of international students just passes when I open the gate, I see the workers of different hospitals, the workers of the ministry of education, the workers of the tourist industry … – an experience of a special kind: Bonn, the peace rallies (in 1972?), a rally in Paris, probably about 15 years ago; the various rallies around the globe, against the US-Intervention in Iraq — I remember having been in Birmingham at the time, taking part in  workshop. And we received the messages: tens of thousand, millions … – in Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid … .
I do not know how many people gathered on the first of May in Havanna. In any case, numbers do not really matter. Later, when I walked back, a thought came to my mind, the idea of a “comparison”: There are so many people now talking about the pope, the new developments: beginning with his harsh critique of “an economy of exclusion and inequality [that] kills”, recognising that
[t]he current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person.
(Evangelii Gaudium, 2013)
But as strong as the messages from the pope may be, something else comes to my mind: The pope’s message is received with devotion and humility, leaving afterwards everybody alone: going home or even going out to do good – as volunteers, as supporters and councillors (I guess it is the new term for missionaries), as Mother Theresia or Father Theodore or Brother Michael
and sister St Catherine of Siena. The message of this first of May was clearer – after a short but powerful address the rally started moving, the groups remaining together: from their enterprises etc., but in some way they are merging …, expressing their determination — Trotz alledem (or here)
Sure, for some the photos seem to be more important; and for some … – Linda, when we talked, was not too excited: “”e are gathering at 5:30 — it means that I have to get up at 4, walk a long way as the buses will not provide service that morning … – but I have to.” — “And if you would not have to …?” — “Well, I still would go. We Cubans just like to complain.” [Ah well, yes … of course also “We Cubans …” ;-)]
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Much later, it is about 10, I am sitting in the rocking chair, reflecting, writing, contemplating …. – some people pass the house, obviously tourists … too late to join, though it may well be that they never really want to join.
I look at my t-shirt: 21ème siecle. La fin de l’histoire? Mon oiel! – Karl Marx looking mischievously. And indeed, it may well become true in a different way as originally stated that
those who come too late are castigated by history
(Mikhail Gorbachev)

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Something that occupies my thought since some time now is going hand in hand with this — in the words of the pope it would be about “camminare insieme”; in general terms it is about the point I mentioned earlier: “the I and the We and the Us”. Recently somebody addressed me in a mail by writing “Man without country”. And I was thinking about it. What is it that makes us men and women of/with a country? The marching together as something of producing something and getting awarded for it? In simple terms the production of the gross domestic and gross national product and the social security that results from here? So far so good … – and still completely loosing ground when we think a bit more about it. Such production was always exclusive, depending on “the other”: any surplus produced, is complemented by a loss somewhere else. If a win-win situation is possible at all, it actually depends on overcoming its own presumption: the presumption of “the other”. It is even difficult to think it. It is a bit like thinking the “endless character of the universe”, the common approach being imagining something really huge, and adding something really huge to it, always adding and adding, only shifting borders and not being able to really think without borders at the outset – forgetting that the sum is more than the amount of its parts, forgetting that the borderless space is different to shifting borders to another external point. — Living in some way an “ex-pat life” (possible if one does not have a patria? Possible not to have a patria?), one hears too often these words of “the I and the We and the Us”: we Europeans, we Irish, we French, we Chinese, we Japanese, we Italians, we Germans, we …; our dumplings, our pasta, their stew …; and all their different ways of thinking and acting and not-acting, making even “our crisis” and “our hardship” and “our inability to find solutions” more remarkable than the “crisis” and “hardship” and “inability to find solutions” of the others — often followed by something like “but actually I am different, I am not really European, Irish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, German,  … In this way, nationalism may well be the foundation of individualism, making it necessary for us to define ourself in contradistinction. In actual fact this arises then from the constellation of a fundamentally split society, the split between and within nations. It does not allow us to develop this “camminare insieme”. Is it really true?
The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person.
(Evangelii Gaudium, 2013)
Or is it the other way round: as the accumulation regime, a capitalist system stands at the outset. In the words of Karl Polanyi:
The market pattern, on the other hand, being related to a peculiar motive of its own, the motive of truck or barter, is capable of creating a specific institution, namely, the market. Ultimately, that is why the control of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system.  The vital importance of the economic factor to the existence of society precludes any other result. For once the economic system is organized in separate institutions, based on specific motives and conferring a special status, society must be shaped in such a manner as to allow that system to function according to its own laws. This is the meaning of the familiar assertion that a market economy can function only in a market society.
(Polanyi, Karl, 1944: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time; Boston: Beacon Press, 1957: 57)
It was the
[n]ineteenth century civilization alone [that] 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.
(ibid., 30)
And as long as these gain oriented markets are now our “societies”, and as much as these markets are backed by a methodological nationalism, it is barely imaginable to achieve a way of thinking that overcomes the inherent force towards “the I and the We and the Us”. Actually capitalism itself – its key players of the current casino system – is much advanced, not limiting itself to overcoming borders, but having moved further, by simply moving them away, as long as it is advantaging itself.
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What makes it so difficult to accept the contradictoriness as something very normal?
Two o’clock at night – well, not yet. I have to levee to the airport at two – Teresita is still up, asks if I want a coffee. Of course I want and some water. Few minutes later the driver enters the kitchen, and we enjoy the coffee together. There is not much time left. A last hug, I have to lean down, sense the warm skin … the little luggage I have is already in the car – an old Moscovitch, still in the road. We reverse, and I see a built-in gadget, showing the driver green, yellow and red lines, with it the distance to objects in the back. Unexpected, added to the original — I look up, there is still a mirror, having lost its original function of looking back. But wait, it looks back, much further than any mirror would allow, holding a rosary …
… Accepting this contradictoriness will allow us to enjoy “our stew”, to respect the baci e abbracci with some people as much as the respectful and somewhat distanced bow of other people and look together for those contradictions and tensions that need to be rebuked.
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Democracy – Freedom of Research

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation

While in Turkey harshest measures can be found against academics and it is a witch-hunt like atmosphere, calls for  the Support of Turkish academics being answered with even more severe punishment, while there is the ongoing debate on the problems of socio-economic security for academics, another, more subtle, aspect should not be forgotten, linked to the ranking systems:

Fearing for their budgets, rectors responded with both carrots and sticks. A few weeks before the submission deadline, the CRUI announced a “university spring day”, on which every campus would hold a debate about the problems facing Italian universities. Meanwhile, Pisa suspended all planned appointments, promotions and payment of research expenses until the effect of the boycott on its budget is ascertained. And the University of Pavia announced that future resources would be distributed to departments on the basis of their VQR results: hence, fewer protesters means more resources.

An interesting way of strangulating democracy is shown  where

Academics in Italy have boycotted assessment

and the questions is

What has it achieved?