La Gira

Security in insecure times

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, works, works, projects, publications

A short presentation, addressing the conference Edukacja Dla Bezpieczeństwa (Education for Security), April 6th, 2016, in Gdansk

Abstract:

Looking at the economic development of the recent years, the first that comes to mind is of course the crisis and its far-reaching impact on the living conditions and perspectives of many people – social security systems are threatened by austerity, and they often appear as at most shunting yard, without offering real and sustainable perspectives. This is obvious, and the need for immediate changes, securing basic human rights – for individuals and societies – is high on the agenda.

However, it is obvious that the crisis is more fundamental, reaching much beyond this and presenting itself as human crisis, crisis of humanity, crisis of agency and the like.

We best may refer to the antroponomic system crisis as outlined by Paul Boccara.

In other words, when we look at the current economic crisis we have to understand that we are confronted with the potentiality of a fundamental change of the entire mode of production. So, the old security of the Keynesian Welfare National State are failing and seem to be irretrievable, the transitory Schumpeterian Workfare Post-National Regime.

Can economics, and possibly social science in general, only bemoan the developments, leaving the search for security to religion and the violent reestablishment of the traditional systems of security? The question is not only one of social security, but even more so one of thoroughly analysing the burning global demand – and potential – for a new antroponomic balance.

 

See here for the recording.

Migration, German openness and … – the other side

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, works, works, projects, publications

Germany is frequently praised for the policies in connection with migration. And there is surely no reason for any kind of black and white paintings, nor for applying a too broad brush – we are currently elaborating in a small group from the scientific council of attac (Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financières et pour l’Action Citoyenne (Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Citizen’s Action) a positioning paper.

There is surely one thing that is frequently overlooked, and it is sufficiently shocking to have a look. It is the

Institutional racism and a lack of government action

Times changed – will times change

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

It is today that Barack Obama visits Cuba – and

Che Guevara’s Son says Obama will visit an Independent Cuba.

It is the second time a U.S. President pays a visit. While calculating GDP-rates, their global development across different sectors and ventilating the perspectives for the development of the Cuban economy for a new era, with this preparing my own visit (it will give me the opportunity to join the discussion on the future economic development in a way that maintains the foundations of an alternative to being absorbed in global capitalism), it is time to look again a bit more into the question of the small island nation that plays such a great role in the global context. The previous president’s “visit” by an U.S. president was in 1928. As an interesting comment from the Granma says it

was Calvin Coolidge, who landed in Havana in January of 1928.

Here is the original

here a translation into English.

Some more background info on Cuba can be found here in the info-service telesurvtv, especially no the Latinamericas and from their perspective. And also in Charles McKelvey’s blog here.

 

 

Digitalisation

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

Yes, writing “quick comments” is admittedly always dangerous, hastily arriving at wrong conclusions. Still, there is occasionally a huge temptation, and it may be justified as such writing possibly provokes …, well, some really important and not so hasty thoughts, easily overlooked when it comes to detailed analysis of …, well detailed analysis.

Reference at presence is a European Commission’s press release, titled

How digital is your country? New figures show action needed to unlock Europe’s potential

It presents results of the recent study of the DESI.

What is the DESI?

The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) is an online tool to measure the progress of EU Member States towards a digital economy and society. As such, it brings together a set of relevant indicators on Europe’s current digital policy mix.

If I am not mistaken, it fundamentally solves one fear of the past. People were afraid of the development, as they did not want to be “just a number”. We do not have to fear anymore that this may be coming up in the future. It is already the case.

And it also allows us to understand the attitude of those people in the glass palaces towards migration and migrants: Numbers cannot simply decide independently to enter an equation. Only the magician with numbers is The Lord, able and allowed to present the formula …, the white hair and long beard now appearing as netting of bits speeding through fiber glass.

  • Action needed to reach the global top: …

Yes, summits have to be reached – erected like the towers of fortresses. Would it not be an alternative to start with action to reach true global cooperation?

  • Better connectivity, but insufficient in the long-term: … . The EU needs to be ready to meet future demand and to provide the next generation of communication networks (5G).

Sure, but I am still wondering if our brain is fast enough to cope with the improvement of obtaining information, barely allowing for the time needed to think about it. – Since some years now I am introducing in my lectures a unit under the heading “slow reading”, the aim of which is UNDERSTANDING.

  • Digital skills to be improved:

It may not be much more than a side note, it may be that it actually is more: Apparently there is a paradoxical constellation in China where the language is strongly characterised by characters (instead of letters) and sound/pronouncation. The computer keyboard requires to write first by using letters, and moving from there to “choosing characters”. The consequence seems to be the emergence of a new form of analphabetism.

  • e-Commerce, a missed opportunity for smaller businesses:

Two of the issues, if you want: major reference points, in mainstream economics are scarcity and comparative advantage. Well, there is no reason to question the empirical data:

65% of European internet users shop online, but only 16% of SMEs sell online – and less than half of those sell online across borders (7.5%).

However, instead of aiming on change there could be another suggestion: SMEs may claim to move towards comparative advantage: offering something special instead of mass web-products, offer excellent individual advise, offering products that are even individually produced, or produced by individuals working together in cooperatives, and seeing the consumer as co-producer …

  • More public services online, but they are under-used:

Underused? If so, the conclusio may be that there is still hope and people still have more sense than those who govern them.

As said in the beginning, there are problems with such ad-hoc readings – there is much ore to it, including coproducing in particular due to the internet-use etc. – part of it I will deal with next month, when working briefly in Havana. But the problem of blasphemy is not necessarily the heretic; it may well be the self-acclamation of gods who forget that their suggested prayers are mere phantoms as long as their only purpose is … the bubble of their own believe system, the believe system of an old society of which we may say with Shakespeare:

Sans teeth, sans eyes

Sans taste, sans everything

Sure, talking about the believe system of an old society may end in a paradox: it easily lacks the opportunity to get a really good caffellatte.

PS: I hope my students anywhere do not read this blog-entry – as I am required to push them towards the global top, so to say: migrants with global access rights.

Economics – beyond calculations

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, social quality, works, works, projects, publications

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.

Dreams … I sogni ci aiutano a cambiare la realtà.

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

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:

When five orphan girls are seen innocently playing with boys on a beach, their scandalized conservative guardians confine them while forced marriages are arranged.

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.

Morals and Standards

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

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.

Lectures

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

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

The video of the presentations will be published later.

Values

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, general, thoughts on life and its philosophy
Ah well, of course
But how obvious is it?
  • We cannot change our core Roman, or were it Greek ? values, as we subdued them by European enlightenment,
  • Smith and Bentham triumphing over Kant and the French tricolore,
  • leveling the field for the yanks who returned with their reinterpretation to Europe and …
  • … and allow today Merkel’s Schäuble to squeeze the Greek like lemons
  • and “allow” Orban’s barbed wires to cut into the veins of migrants who leave war and starvation behind before they can enter Europe
The tricolore did not say that we share with everybody – it only said we have to share something with some — selected. Some – people and countries – have to pay, so said by the slogan of the time:
  • the inner and outer periphery on which the centre can establish its affluence …. –
  • reflecting these values of individual freedom = precarious jobs
  • and equality = not allowing anybody to sleep under the bridges of Paris … – don’t we remember:
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)
  • and fraternity = the soup kitchens that take the place of the rights that the universal declaration of human rights failed to guarantee ….; where fraternity means redefining sleeping rough by offering a “pillow” near to the churches, softening the hardship by the pretension of a better world, the other world – and for the time being through charity, still leaving space for the question: is there a link between the (name of) the train station Termini in Rome and “its offer of sleeping rough in its protection” – the termination of dignity?
Of course, it may be that these – few – examples also “tell of a political reality far removed from Mr Tao Zhang’s “Europe(an) Dream”, inspired by historical “visions” (let’s take Delors or let’s refer to the founding-FATHERS) and believing in claims that gain much of their positivity not from their inherent greatness but from the fact of a lack of today’s power holders that do not allow to even think outside the ideological and physical fortress of the single finance market.
And of course, all this is about the European Dream which people like Riffkin have, putting like Albert the “Rheinian Model” against the rest of the world – a world order that allows and evokes worries about possibilities to continue  selling the same number of Lamborghinis, Porsches and Mercs to the empire of the middle.
Sure, when it comes to education then, we may have to deal with the
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
this does, of course, not exist for European students (and lecturers alike) – used to the censorship of peer-reviewed publications and ranking systems that, to a large extent controlled by quasi-monopolist publishing houses, are very much algorithm-ised like google: write what we know, quote what we and our peers stated for many times, contend what is publicly accepted … and redefine harsh principles by using softened and softening frameworks like social investment, knowledge management and the failure of implementation of strategies … – you may easily make a rocketing career as long as you do not question the strategies themselves.
There is a wider perspective, looking at the secular issues and developments – or a perspective that is very narrow: lookig the current debates – you may take it as you like:
It surely opens a field for debate when people call for
indirectly suggesting the possibility of a national democracy which in actual fact is one of the core breaking points: the contention of the principle of nationality and externalisation – this is how the core value of European democracy worked since the ancient city states until the Fortress EUrope.
And this is the core European and EUropean value that asks if
without considering that we will not have a legitimate parliament – national or EUropean – as long as we have an economic system that leads to the permanent
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disiganno – the Triumph of Time and Truth
The critical attitude …. – sure, there is some space, though we should not forget that when Baudelaire first presented Les Fleurs du mal, he was condemned to put them aside, allowed to present them later in a revised version, leaving critique to the space of sympbolism, providing there the framework for talking about the Island of the Death (Boecklin) to where Europe seems to be moving, after facing L’angelo ferito (Hugo Simberg) – the disappointed carriers make look grimly but are not allowed to revive the hope they once have had … – not so much changed perhaps, today’s critics turning away from reality and hoping for the savour from Rome who rightly criticises that this economy kills, a critique that is turned down if and when it comes from others who ask for material changes that allow and enforce liberty, equality and fraternity.
.. stating all this does not mean not acknowledging some of the problems mentioned – it means, however, to say that they are much deeper and profound, not least reflecting the need of confronting issues that emerge from the
centre on China’s Confucian cultural tradition
with the issues that are emerging from a limited understanding of rationality that systematically crucifies its own claims and pretensions and sacrifices “Moral Sentiments” on the altar of the “Wealth of the Nations” …
No, we surely cannot change the values for anybody – not for the Chinese, not for anybody … they will pay anyway …
As long as any nation or region claims today that the specifically national or regional core values cannot be changed for those of anybody else we may easily end up as An Idiot Abroad – abroad being everywhere and anywhere, and we being everybody who is still believing in the old answers suitable for dealing with the new questions, questions that are not yet correctly formulated.