The Failed Presidents of Eastern Europe

  With each passing day, I am more and more convinced that the Ukrainians have fallen into the same political trap as Romanian voters did when they elected Iohannis as president in 2014.

To be sure, Iohannis did not have the necessary national political experience : until his election, he was the mayor of a Transylvanian city atypical for Romania, nor was he a member of the Liberal Party (he had been active in the German Forum). No, he was elected because Romanian voters thought that by endorsing a Saxon they would get a better treatment in Brussels and that they would be accepted faster in the Schengen area by the EU:

"The election of Iohannis is undoubtedly linked to high expectations and hopes. But these alone do not fundamentally change the political situation in Romania,"  a leading German CDU MP said. "Doubts about Romania's accession to the Schengen Area persist (...) (Romania) will not achieve this goal in 2015," he added. The reaction of the chairman of the Bundestag Committee on Internal Affairs comes in the context in which, recently, the president Klaus Iohannis declared in the German press that he will make efforts for Romania's accession to Schengen to take place in 2015. "( Adevarul newspaper from 2015)

In turn, Zelensky was elected president without any previous political experience. In my opinion, the Ukrainians voted for him because of the supposed connections that someone of his ethnicity might have in Washington. Ukrainians seem to have believed - wrongly, as it comes out - that the mere choice of Zelensky as president would secure their admission into NATO. ( Unfortunately, neoconservatives of Jewish origin's perceived domination of US State Department structures had created a vulnerability for the United States, which is currently being exploited by the likes of Zelensky. )

Both Iohannis and Zelensky were also elected with a mandate to end corruption, which has not happened. Instead, Iohannis became - ironically for a descendant of Hitler's allies in Transylvania - a vocal champion of campaigns to combat anti-Semitism in Romania ...

The two presidents both belong to microscopic ethnic minorities from Romania or Ukraine, which unfortunately do not have a history of harmonious coexistence with the majorities of the two states. This fact makes their selection for their state's top job  even more inexcusable.

The consequences of choosing the two presidents are worrying, to say the least. Romania's domestic political instability has become chronic over the past year, while Zelensky has managed to endanger peace across Eastern Europe through his uninspired neighborhood policy.

It is obvious today that at the instigation of domestic and / or foreign services, both peoples made a colossal electoral error. I am curious to see, however, how all this will play out in the end.

An Original Interpretation of Marxism

Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989) succeeded in interpreting Marxist thought from the standpoint of Marx's virulent atheism. Historical materialism and the inexorable evolution of universal history in the direction of victorious communism are therefore shown by him to be the  fruits of Marx's atheism and of the influence exerted on him by Hegel's ideas, and nothing else.

Marx was also the one who subordinated philosophy to politics. In his view, as we all remember,  philosophy was not meant to interpret the world, but to change it. This is also the fundamental reason why Marxism cannot even be considered a proper philosophical system and why Marx is not a philosopher in the true sense of the word: from a melange of  ideas from different philosophers - some materialists, others idealists - one cannot build a truly original philosophical system.

The same can be said of Marx the "economist", who had little to add to Adam Smith's labour theory of value or to the economic ideas borrowed from David Ricardo. The analysis of the mechanism of exploitation of the proletarians by the owners of capital is more pertinent in the work of Eugene Buret, whom Marx plagiarized copiously, and so on.

But Del Noce's analysis shows that the political philosophy of the affluent and technocratic West was also influenced by Marxism, although Western atheism is based on eroticism, not class struggle. ( at this point it is important to note the essential role played by neo-marxists like Herbert Marcuse in igniting the sexual revolution during the sixties in the West ).

Soviet communism - or today's Chinese communism - was therefore only the revolutionary version of Marxist thought, as it was put into practice by Lenin.

Marx's belief that science and technology would emancipate man from faith in God was adopted in the West by liberalism, thus spawning today's technocratic societies. The two traditional enemies of liberalism - revolutionary ideology and religion - were thus eliminated in the wake of an ideological fusion between liberalism and Marxism, whose messianic dimension got amputated. The result, says Del Noce, was the emergence of Western neo-totalitarian societies, which only retain the appearance of democratic societies.

US DIPLOMACY AND THE SPHERES OF INFLUENCE

 Today's American diplomacy refuses to accept the existence of spheres of influence. Both Hillary Clinton and Blinken have unequivocally stated that spheres of influence belong to the past, although the 50-year long peace that characterized the Cold War period was based on the existence of two spheres of influence, one American and the other Soviet.

The United States has consistently pursued a foreign policy based on spheres of influence since the adoption of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, completed in 1904 by the Roosevelt Corollary . Thus, the United States has reserved for itself the status of regional policeman in the Western Hemisphere and the right to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of any South or Central American state.

The hypocrisy of American diplomacy and its current representatives is devoid of pragmatism and could lead to serious military conflicts, which can be avoided by simply acknowledging that there are other great nations in the world - such as Russia or China - with major geostrategic interests in their immediate vicinity.

THE INVENTION OF SOCIOLOGY, MORE BENEFICIAL THAN THAT OF ECONOMICS

 

Working classes and the poor in England and the rest of Europe had a better fate after the appearance of the positivist doctrine of Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and after the "invention" of sociology. Comte's field surveys and positivist philosophy inspired two altruistic British businessmen, Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree, in the late 19th century , who laid the foundations of British sociology.

The two paid out of  their own pocket for sociological surveys to be conducted on the phenomenon of poverty in London and York. The Booth-sponsored survey found that by the end of the 19th century, 30.7 percent of London's population was still living in poverty (according to a World Bank study, the proportion of poor people in Western Europe in the early 19th century was about 84 percent). Rowntree 's survey gave a similar proportion for Yorkshire and set a sociological poverty line. 

Together, their investigations and lobbying led to the introduction by the British government of a system of social insurance and pensions, starting in 1909. In 1909, the report of the Royal Commission on the Laws of the Poor (Majority Report) was based on the findings of the sociological surveys sponsored by Charles Booth. Rowntree - the owner of a chocolate factory - introduced an 8-hour working day, a 5-day working week into his company and decided to increase the salaries of his employees. For his measures in industrial relations, welfare and management, Rowntree was proclaimed as "the British management movement's greatest pioneer" (Lyndall Urwick).

Neither Booth nor Rowntree flirted with socialism, both reformers having been staunch supporters of liberalism.

 It is a well-known fact that Rowntree and Booth were deeply influenced in their actions by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte. In other words, the father of sociology had a beneficial influence on his European contemporaries, clearly superior to the detrimental influence exerted by the founders of classical economics - Adam Smith and David Ricardo - on most economists and much of nineteenth-century liberal politicians.

 It can therefore be said with some certainty that the new science of sociology arose from the need to counteract the negative effects on British intellectual and political elites of the mistaken or retrograde ideas inherited from the classics of economics.

THE EMBARASSING IDEAS OF THE CLASSICS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE

 I said in my previous post about Smith / Ricardo that even to this day we collectively have the misfortune to suffer the consequences of an economic ideology developed by people from peripheral and poor regions of Europe. I was referring, of course, to Adam Smith and his native Scotland, who joined the British Union in 1707.

Smith profoundly influenced Thomas Malthus, who in his well-known essay on the principle of population expressed his revolt over the indifference of the English rulers of the time, who dared to ignore the "recommendations" launched in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," especially those concerning the aids for the poor. (It should be noted here that the only nations with a state welfare system for the entire population in the eighteenth century were only England and the Netherlands. In the case of England, aid laws for the poor were even several hundred years old.)

But here is what Malthus proposes in his essay, re-edited by him in 1817:

"I have been thinking for a long time about the English laws regarding the poor. (...)

... I propose to publish a law refusing parish assistance (in England, state aid was distributed to the poor by law through the network of Anglican parishes) to CHILDREN born from a marriage contracted more than one year after the publication of such laws, and all illegitimate children born two years after the enactment of the same law. "

In 1834, following campaigns mounted against continuing aids for the poor, Parliament decided to stop them ... 

William Senior, who drafted the text of the decree in question, was also the first professor of economics - the new discipline - at Cambridge. From the outset, therefore, classical British economists proved hostile to wage-earners and to the poor. From a social point of view - keeping in mind the fact that economics is a social science - this legislation represented a huge setback.

Here is how Adam Smith saw the solution to the fluctuations in the price of wheat, which quite often generated hunger among employees during that period:  "Smith made us see clearly that the natural tendency in a year of famine is to deprive workers of jobs of any kind or to force a large number of workers to work for a low wage, due to the impossibility for employers to hire the same number of people at the same price as before. An increase in wages  will only lead to an increase in the number of unemployed and would do away, warns this author (i.e. Smith) with the beneficial effects of a period of moderate famine, which tends to make people more industrious, attentive and economical "  (Thomas Malthus," Essai sur le Principe de la Population ", p. 63)

However, another Scottish economist of the time, Sir James Steuart ( 1712 - 1780 ) - who fully deserves the status of co-founder of economics - was knowingly marginalized by Adam Smith. In contrast, James Steuart was a staunch supporter of state intervention in the economy. Thus, Steuart believed neither in laissez-faire in economic policy nor in the existence of the "invisible hand" that would allow markets to self-regulate. During the debate over the increase in wheat prices in his day, Steuart recommended state intervention to stabilize prices and to ensure the quantities of wheat needed for consumption by the population.   "He proposed an intervention scheme reminiscent of the common agricultural policy (CAP) which was adopted by the European Community ". (Gilles Dostaler, "James Steuart, the fight lost against Adam Smith", Alternatives économique, 5/2010, no. 291 p. 76).

Unfortunately, Adam Smith's ideas still decisively influence the political action of some US Republicans. Members of the Washington DC Heritage Foundation for example - very influential during the Reagan and Bush administrations - wore ties printed with the portrait of Adam Smith at ceremonies, until recently. No other comments necessary...

US Diplomacy v. the Military-Industrial Complex

 The last time the United States achieved lasting peace with its former enemies was in 1945. Since then America has been dragged into an endless succession of regional wars, with its diplomats being forced to play second fiddle to the hawks in various US administrations.

Nowadays it's not diplomats who come up with solutions to solve tensions between states, but the direct or indirect representatives of the American, Russian or French military-industrial complexes, that is - military attachés or secret service chiefs posted  in embassies. The situation arose after 1945 and gradually worsened as the military-industrial complexes in question gained increasing levels of influence over politicians.

Of course, unlike diplomats, the people of the military-industrial complex (MIC) do not aim to settle conflicts between states, but to stall solving them in order to keep the level of arms sales as high as possible.

A recent example from Australia illustrates how toxic a MIC can be for the conduct of normal diplomatic relations between states. Thus, a country like France - hitherto known to have the oldest and most prestigious diplomatic service in Europe - recalled its ambassadors from 2 of its oldest Western allies, namely the US and Australia, simply because the French MIC lost an order to supply submarines to the Australian Navy in favour of the Americans.

The Russian MIC is also a strong competitor to the American MIC when it comes to sales of military hardware.Thus, the Russians have succeeded in selling sensitive military hardware even to NATO members like Turkey. Cash-strapped nations like India are also traditional customers. The huge success of the Russian MIC, however, lies elsewhere. Twenty-odd years ago one of their own - Vladimir Putin - took over the presidency and made sure that no traditional politician will ever gain power in Russia again. The domination of the Russian MIC over state institutions is so complete due to the fact that no alternative power centres have been allowed to exist.

" Russian defense companies do not need to spend money on lobbyists (as their U.S. counterparts do) because key individuals working for them simultaneously hold senior political posts and already take part in high-level decision-making. Thus, Russia’s defense-industry lobbying, such as it is, focuses on access to the federal budget—funds distributed by the government with the active participation of the presidential administration and Putin himself for arms procurement, R&D and industrial modernization programs. " ( Pavel Luzin )

Many analysts and Western politicians have mistakenly compared Putin to the likes of Stalin or Hitler. For a start, unlike them, Putin is not a politician and has never aspired to be one. Secondly, unlike Stalin, he has an excellent working relationship with the top generals of the Russian army, or with the heads of Russia's main secret services like the GRU and the FSB. Thirdly, Vladimir Putin has demonstrated that when his country is backed into a corner, he and his army commanders act as one in pushing back against what they see as trespassers to the Russian security sphere. And finally, Putin and the other top leaders of the Russian MIC take a dim view not only of traditional politicians, but also of the role diplomats can play in solving international crises. In other words, unlike his Western counterparts, Putin is not a politician but the leading PR representative of the Russian MIC.

In the United States, the typical political representatives of the MIC are the  neo-conservatives, the most belligerent of Americans. They are often found in important positions, either in the White House or in the state or defense departments , where they exert a strong influence on US foreign and defense policy. (Two best-known such people are Paul Wolfovitz or Victoria Nuland.)

Even worse, four of the top 5 corporations in the military-industrial complex in the US are run by women , who unfortunately have a dubious reputation for being more aggressive in negotiations than men ...

Whenever the issue of diplomatic negotiations between states  comes up -  such as the planned Biden Administration negotiations with Russia this month - representatives of the mass media associated with the complex fill up the public space with articles describing the diplomatic efforts as being a sign of weakness on the part of the US, insisting instead on the need to send more weaponry to the US' allies.

In other words,  when it comes to extinguishing armed conflicts,  the tactic of ​​the American military-industrial complex is to pour more gas on the fire, in order to be able to provide as many weapons as possible to the conflict zones of the world.

TIME TO GET OUT OF HISTORY

Once economic modernization is completed, all communist regimes have to face up to their lack of legitimacy. The Chinese communist regime is no exception. Taking into account the recent history of communist regimes worldwide, China's current leadership will soon have to make a choice between 2 options. The first is the one Gorbachev chose in 1991. The second is the one that Ceausescu opted for in December 1989. Unfortunately, there is no third option available.

One of Lucian Blaga's brilliant remarks - which referred to the period in which there is an absence of data on the Romanian people in medieval European historiography - is that Romanians "went out of history to remain in history."

Nowadays, I would apply Blagian thinking to the impossible situation currently facing the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. For several years now, the latter have been making furious plans aimed at perpetuating the unbroken political monopoly they have held  since 1949.

Like the USSR communists in the interwar period, the Chinese Communists succeeded in the economic modernisation of China, which in a few decades was transformed from a poor agrarian nation into a strong and prosperous industrial nation.

However, Chinese leaders - like Ceausescu before them - believe that they can stay in power forever with the help of electronic means of mass surveillance or by putting tanks in the streets. They do not seem to understand that the only way to secure a prestigious role in Chinese history is to voluntarily relinquish power - yes, as Gorbachev did - and to allow other political forces to take over and continue China's institutional and political modernization. In other words, to go out of history in order to remain in history.

Any communist society, no matter how economically  or militarily advanced, suffers from a major flaw in the logic of its governing program. When communist governing programs reach this point - like China today or  the USSR in the 1980's - the system goes haywire. The solution chosen by the Chinese leaders - that of strengthening political repression and mass surveillance of the population - only aggravates the situation.

Of course, China's problem is  not the system's lack of economic performance, as in the case of the USSR. However, China urgently needs the demonopolization of its political system, even a controlled one,  as well as numerous institutional and legal reforms that would guarantee, not violate, the fundamental rights of Chinese citizens in their relations with the state.

In conclusion, a minimum of political intelligence should prompt the current Chinese leaders to leave power now, while they are still on top. The growing complexity of the problems facing the Chinese society today imposes this. The intensification of the Marxist education of the population and of the repression and surveillance of citizens are only pseudo-solutions, totally inadequate for this moment in history.

Unfortunately,  the Chinese communist leaders do not seem to be able to understand a simple fact, namely  that their historical role has ended and that  time has come to "get out of history in order to remain in history", since their governing program no longer meets  the needs of Chinese society and has even become toxic.