tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/capitalism-1137/articlesCapitalism – The Conversation2024-03-06T17:15:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250202024-03-06T17:15:09Z2024-03-06T17:15:09ZA US with fewer allies threatens global security<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579834/original/file-20240305-30-n3u2sq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C0%2C6657%2C4652&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/american-soldiers-us-flag-troops-1170998920">Bumble Dee/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At a recent election rally in South Carolina, Donald Trump <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68268817">said</a> he would “encourage” aggressors such as Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to Nato allies he considers to have not met their financial obligations. </p>
<p>Trump’s comments, however offensive, may merely be an electoral strategy. Why should, say, a South Carolinian citizen see their taxes go towards defending faraway lands, especially if they believe these partners are not willing to pay equally? </p>
<p>But there’s also a logic to his remarks that Europe should recognise, especially in light of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Many European nations need to build up their <a href="https://www.econpol.eu/sites/default/files/2024-01/EconPol-PolicyReport_45_0.pdf">own security capacities</a> again after years of lax spending on defence.</p>
<p>Regardless, such public comments from a presidential candidate have long been unthinkable. Since the second world war, America has sought out allies. What would it mean for the nation’s security, as well as that of the wider world, should they forego them?</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trump says he ‘would encourage’ Russia to attack non-paying Nato allies.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>British precedent</h2>
<p>The modern US-led global order is in many ways a modern iteration of something developed by Great Britain at the beginning of the 19th century. Britain used the peace negotiations that followed the Napoleonic wars (1803–1815) to try and limit the power of expansive land empires like that of defeated France. </p>
<p>The 19th century is sometimes referred to as “Pax Britannica” (British peace) because of the relative absence of conflict between major European powers, with the notable exception of the Crimean War (1853–1856). It lasted until a unified German state emerged as a land power in continental Europe in 1871, upending the security presumptions of the post-Napoleonic peace.</p>
<p>One of Britain’s key reasons for fighting two world wars against Germany was to maintain its version of a global order. But, in winning, Britain depleted its finances – and <a href="https://www.antiquesage.com/world-war-ii-bankruptcy-of-the-british-empire/">capacity to maintain an empire</a> – through borrowing from the US. </p>
<p>The US had become the new economic heavyweight, with a military built up and spread by wartime necessity. Its adherence to basic principles meant the British did not resist America’s newfound global primacy. </p>
<p>Free trade was to remain sacrosanct. Sea trade routes were defended as these were (<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-airstrikes-on-houthi-rebels-are-the-us-and-uk-playing-fast-and-loose-with-international-law-222906">and still are</a>) vital for US economic superiority. The US would also maintain the kind of alliances that the British tended to turn to during times of war, where coalitions of allies share the costs and persevere towards victory. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-airstrikes-on-houthi-rebels-are-the-us-and-uk-playing-fast-and-loose-with-international-law-222906">With airstrikes on Houthi rebels, are the US and UK playing fast and loose with international law?</a>
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<h2>Lonely at the top?</h2>
<p>The US would actively shape the world to its own liking in the post-war period. After the hyper-nationalistic conquests that were characteristic of its enemies in the first and second world wars, the US wanted no more empires.</p>
<p>It set up institutions dedicated to spurring free trade and global stability like the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And it formed alliances, most notably Nato, which included befriending wartime enemies like Germany and committing themselves to a long-term global role.</p>
<p>These alliances allowed the US to station troops overseas in strategic positions without having to administer a costly and potentially discontented empire, like the British and basically every world power had done before them.</p>
<p>Much of this was motivated by the Cold War. The Soviets had exchanged Nazi occupation of eastern Europe for their own. And it was widely believed that in the absence of US security guarantees, western Europe would also be invaded and made communist – an ideology that the US considered incompatible with its own. </p>
<p>The great power competition soon led to US involvement in other zones of communist activity, such as Asia. This was a period in which the US intervened in foreign governments and carried out or supported ethically questionable conflicts. For US politicians, however, it was generally bipartisan to believe that US intervention was justified by a bigger conflict between democracy and authoritarianism.</p>
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<span class="caption">US paratroopers carrying out a strike in the Tay Ninh province of south Vietnam in 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/vietnam-war-march-1963-840-south-245961343">Everett Collection/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>US power was also different to, say, the heyday of the Spanish empire in the 16th century. This empire did an excellent job of antagonising other powers and depleting its own vast resources in endless wars over honour and Catholicism.</p>
<p>Although certainly not universally loved, US power is not completely resented. This has much to do with America’s <a href="https://news.illinoisstate.edu/2018/07/book-examines-american-cultures-influence-on-the-world/">globally exported culture</a>, from Hollywood to hip-hop. But also in how its power can be articulated as mutually beneficial to other nations, both in terms of trade and security. </p>
<p>We do not live in a peaceful world. But it is widely acknowledged that the world would <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/12/11/if-the-united-states-pulls-back-the-world-will-become-more-dangerous">become more dangerous</a> if the US were to suddenly disengage. US security guarantees, for instance, disincentivise allies like Germany and Japan from developing nuclear weapons for their own safety.</p>
<h2>Global security is American security</h2>
<p>Supporting US allies, which was once a bipartisan issue in American politics, is becoming a <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/can-republicans-find-consensus-foreign-policy">zero-sum game</a> – even though it is just about the most dangerous issue to do this with. </p>
<p>Bringing global security guarantees into question is exactly what states hostile to the US want. They know it weakens a world order that protects democracies, global trade, and weaker states that could otherwise be imposed upon militarily. </p>
<p>The US protects these not merely as an act of charity, but also because they are in the vital interests of America’s own safety, even if it can seem indirect to some American voters or the politicians who recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-senate-passes-us-95-billion-aid-package-for-ukraine-what-this-tells-us-about-republican-support-for-trump-223502">held up aid</a> for Ukraine.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-senate-passes-us-95-billion-aid-package-for-ukraine-what-this-tells-us-about-republican-support-for-trump-223502">US Senate passes US$95 billion aid package for Ukraine – what this tells us about Republican support for Trump</a>
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<p>Ironically, a worldview that sees raw, almost <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/mercantilism">mercantilist</a>, selfishness as the entirety of foreign policy is exactly the thing that the US’s global order of free trade and respecting national sovereignty has discouraged for almost a century. </p>
<p>If America First becomes America Only, it might be a world view that certain regimes wish to emulate. But morally, it will not do what the nation managed in the past. To convert souls to an American future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Rees receives funding from The University of Exeter and The Royal Historical Society.</span></em></p>A world where the US has fewer allies would be an even more dangerous place.William Rees, PhD Candidate in Modern American History, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193922024-02-25T19:05:45Z2024-02-25T19:05:45ZCritics of ‘woke capitalism’ want to return to a time when money was the only value. But it never existed<p>“Corporate virtue signalling” is a phrase of our time. <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/21/business/desantis-bud-light-explainer/index.html">Bud Light</a> was accused of it when it hired TikTok personality and trans woman Dylan Mulvaney to promote low-cal beer. </p>
<p><a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/07/thumbs-down-on-woke-disney-debacle-lesson-for-ceos/">Disney</a> was labelled a virtue signaller for its opposition to the US state of Florida outlawing discussions of gender fluidity and sexual orientation in schools. </p>
<p>When multi-trillion-dollar investment company <a href="https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/larry-fink-ceo-of-worlds-largest-asset-management-firm-blackrock-rejects-accusation-of-pursuing-woke-capitalism-esg-virtue-signalling">Black Rock</a> promoted environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, it too was branded a virtue-signaller.</p>
<p>These are only a few of the many high-profile examples of corporations who have made headlines for publicly supporting progressive social and environmental political positions. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World – Hannah Forsyth (Cambridge University Press)</em></p>
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<p>The loudest critics of virtue signalling come from the more vocal end of right-wing politics. Many conservative pundits angrily denounce the “woke” for failing to follow what they see as the real purpose of capitalism. </p>
<p>“Go woke, go broke,” they vent, insisting there is no place in the competitive world of market rivalry for taking sides on social and political issues. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bud Light was accused of ‘virtue signalling’ when it hired trans TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Anti-woke critics want to make corporations great again: let’s get back to the old days, where making profits was the only thing harried managers had to worry about! Wheeling out <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html">Milton Friedman</a>’s hackneyed 1970 dictum, they censure today’s managers for failing to meet “the social responsibility of business […] to increase its profits”.</p>
<p>If you buy into this rhetoric you might believe that, prior to the 2020s, business leaders were unencumbered by ethical or political concerns. </p>
<p>The problem is the anti-woke mob are nostalgic for a past that never existed. This is borne out in the pages of Hannah Forsyth’s history <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/virtue-capitalists/E5DEC7049458F3FAE69C77AF6317CB51">Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World, 1870-2008</a>. </p>
<p>“Woke capitalism” was first called out by conservative columnist Ross Douthat, who coined the phrase in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/corporate-america-activism.html">New York Times in 2018</a> – a decade after the period Forsyth spans in her book. </p>
<p>But what she uncovers, with all the specificity and detail to be expected from a historian, is a story of “virtue capitalism” that existed long before the concept of “wokeness” became a political weapon of the recalcitrant right. </p>
<p>In one sense, Forsyth’s book will interest those who want to know more about the history of capitalism and the mixed fortunes of the professional and managerial classes. </p>
<p>In another very important sense, it provides the material for something akin to what French philosopher <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-foucault-99758">Michel Foucault</a> once called “a history of the present”: it helps us understand our present situation by tracing its genealogy in the past.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-foucault-99758">Explainer: the ideas of Foucault</a>
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<p>Forsyth shows that, contrary to the imaginings of anti-woke crusaders, capitalism has always had a relationship with virtue, and a troubled one at that. This goes back to the very beginning of modern industrial capitalism, well before “virtue signalling” became a catch cry for those yearning for an illusory version of a purely economic capitalism. </p>
<h2>The long 20th century</h2>
<p>Forsyth covers the “long 20th century”. Her book starts in 1870, when the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard#Impact">establishment of the gold standard</a> marked the birth of modern capitalism, and the ascendancy of the professional class. It ends in 2008, just before the <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/the-global-financial-crisis.html">global financial crisis</a> exposed the world’s vulnerability to capitalist excess. </p>
<p>The book focuses on the professional classes in Anglophone settler colonies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, in particular. In these countries, the process of supposed civilisation was married to economic domination and colonisation, administered by a new professional class of white-collar workers.</p>
<p>With the growth of the new class of professional workers, Forsyth argues, morality became entwined with capitalism. The moral virtues that emerged centred on the value of education and a belief in meritocracy, bolstered by precision, integrity, discipline and efficiency. For workers like nurses, journalists and accountants, professionalism became associated with moral standing, which translated into economic value.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/global-corporate-power-is-out-of-control-but-reports-of-democracys-death-are-greatly-exaggerated-210270">Global corporate power is 'out of control', but reports of democracy’s death are greatly exaggerated</a>
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<p>But the Anglophone colonial world and its capitalist economies were, as Forsyth observes, “founded on violent dispossession, where land theft in the settler colonies was the precondition to property ownership”. The so-called morality of the virtue capitalists was used to justify colonialism’s brutal acquisition and racial oppression. </p>
<p>Professional integrity and virtue may have given colonialism a sense of respectability, but it reflected a moral system that at best regarded Indigenous populations as the benefactors of Western civilisation and assimilation in Western culture. At worst they were seen as impending the natural course of progress, and hence dispensible. </p>
<p>The result was the displacement of the Indigenous moral systems that came before the colonisers. White virtue, cultural domination and capital expansion were inseparable companions. </p>
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<span class="caption">Hannah Forsyth.</span>
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<p>Forsyth portrays professional virtue not so much as a self-serving hypocrisy, but as a culturally narcissistic form of self-deception that masked the brutality of colonial self-interest. Indigenous populations were castigated as “savage” and in need of education. White moral authority was established as the colonial order, and it was all proper.</p>
<p>By the end of the second world war, the virtue capitalists reached their peak power. They designed a new world economic order rooted in their own sense of righteousness. <a href="https://theconversation.com/measuring-a-presidents-first-100-days-goes-back-to-the-new-deal-159852">The New Deal</a> was established in the United States, focusing on relief for the needy, economic recovery and financial reform. The “welfare state” was established elsewhere. Education and health were provided to the masses, protecting capitalism from the threat of communist revolutions. </p>
<p>Away from home, virtue translated into international development that was intent on “civilising” and “developing” the once-colonial world in the image of the professional classes.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/greed-is-amoral-how-wall-street-supermen-cashed-in-on-pandemic-misery-and-chaos-207311">'Greed is amoral': how Wall Street supermen cashed in on pandemic misery and chaos</a>
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<h2>An economic and moral crisis</h2>
<p>The mid-1970s ushered in an economic and moral crisis. Forsyth argues this triggered the downfall of the professional virtue capitalists after a century on the rise. By the 1980s, a new wave of managerialism was sweeping the business world. Economic management became increasingly divorced from the professions. </p>
<p>In the heyday of early neoliberalism, the conservative professional was displaced in favour of a prototypical manager who was showy, entrepreneurial and hypermasculine. The new focus was on financial and economic success, rather than professional morality. Success at all costs was the neoliberal mantra. </p>
<p>A globalising world economy became ripe for new forms of exploitation and Western wealth accumulation. A new elite discarded the old professional virtues as quaint, starchy and old-fashioned. Forsyth characterises this as “moral deskilling”. The market became the solution to all problems. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574805/original/file-20240211-18-m5e8r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574805/original/file-20240211-18-m5e8r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574805/original/file-20240211-18-m5e8r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574805/original/file-20240211-18-m5e8r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574805/original/file-20240211-18-m5e8r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574805/original/file-20240211-18-m5e8r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574805/original/file-20240211-18-m5e8r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574805/original/file-20240211-18-m5e8r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Virtue Capitalists ends with the managerial class having reached a crescendo of power, as masters of a new world order where “success is the only virtue”. The book leaves us in a world where traditional professional virtues have been all but dismantled and professional expertise has been discredited in favour of can-do capitalism. </p>
<p>There is no happy ending. With the rise of the managerial class came a new political populism characterised by a distrust of professional expertise, and professed hatred of “the elites”. Think, for example, of anti-vaccination campaigns undermining medical expertise, or climate denialists flouting the findings of climate scientists.</p>
<p>“Virtue was, and is, used for power,” writes Forsyth. That power was deployed in the long 20th century, initially to justify colonial exploitation, then to further ransack the world as it opened up to global trade. </p>
<p>Virtue, by this account, is a cloak of respectability that hides the realities of a global economy geared to produce inequality. Perhaps it hides them so well, even the professional workers crunching the gears cannot see them. </p>
<p>Virtue Capitalists is not without fault. At times, the narrative is disjointed, the argument lacks consistency and ideas are presented without being developed. The references to theorists and theories can, at times, appear superficial and unnecessary. But the strength of the work overcomes these faults. It provides us with a historical account of the tight connections between morality and economics that popular narratives have ignored.</p>
<p>Like the virtue capitalism of the past, today’s “woke” capitalism is an act of power, as much as it is an ethical movement. Where would capitalist legitimacy be if, in the wake of the global financial crisis, the 1980s entrepreneurial “success at all costs” attitude returned unvarnished? Surely capitalism’s legitimacy would have come to an end, at last. </p>
<p>While no such end was reached, there was no change to the inequality driving core of capitalism either – it was just woke-washed. The morality of today’s woke corporations serves to re-legitimise capitalism, while leaving its exploitative nature unaltered. History repeats. Virtue is still a way to increase profits. </p>
<p>This will not make the world great again. It will keep us on the same trajectory of inequality and exploitation. History’s lessons are worth learning, so we might imagine a better future. Forsyth’s book provides a valuable means to do that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Rhodes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Conservative critics argue the ‘social responsibility’ of business lies in increasing profits. But values have always been tied up with money-making, from the welfare state to colonialism.Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219192024-02-25T14:20:58Z2024-02-25T14:20:58ZWhy the West’s resentment of China is so misguided<p>Over the past few years, <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/08/24/why-chinas-economy-wont-be-fixed">some western commentators</a> have proclaimed the “decline of China.” They argue <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/responses/who-killed-chinese-economy">China’s economy is failing</a>, its <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/root-chinas-growing-youth-unemployment-crisis">youth are alienated and unemployed</a>, it <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/09/13/chinas-beautiful-xinjiang-continues-oppress-uighurs">abuses human rights and represses its people</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-shrinking-population-and-constraints-on-its-future-power/">its demographic decline means that China will never rise to surpass western power</a>. </p>
<p>The subtext of this focus on China’s problems is that western domination of the world will continue, proving the superiority of the West’s political and economic ideologies.</p>
<p>These eulogies for China are premature, at best. </p>
<p><a href="https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-economists-failed-to-predict-the-financial-crisis/">Economists in the West</a> <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know">don’t fully understand western economies</a>, let alone China’s, and <a href="https://www.edelman.com/trust/2023/trust-barometer">western states have numerous fundamental problems of their own</a>. </p>
<h2>Drumbeat of negativity</h2>
<p>China is experiencing <a href="https://eastasiaforum.org/2023/10/08/has-the-chinese-economy-hit-the-wall/">economic headwinds as it transitions to a new model of economic development</a>. It is <a href="https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/five-years-trade-war-china-continues-its-slow-decoupling-us-exports">also contending with</a> <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/09/16/u.s.-china-trade-war-has-become-cold-war-pub-85352">western economic</a> and <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-the-united-states-is-losing-the-tech-war-with-china">technological sabotage</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-american-technological-war-against-china-could-backfire-219158">Why the American technological war against China could backfire</a>
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<p>How well China manages these forces remains to be seen. </p>
<p>An objective analysis of China’s economy is required, but the constant drumbeat of negativity emerging from the West makes that difficult. Some of it is a <a href="https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/china-news/21091-a-500-million-dollar-business-america-s-state-sponsored-anti-china-propaganda.html">concerted propaganda campaign, financed by the United States</a>, to undermine America’s biggest competitor. But the trend also reflects the <a href="https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3223603/what-used-be-called-yellow-peril-now-china-threat">western world’s racial and political anxieties</a> and its profound insecurities about its own failures and decline. </p>
<p>For hundreds of years, <a href="http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/backgrounds/colonialism-and-imperialism">the West has used imperialism and violence to construct an international system</a> that ensures its prosperity and prioritizes its interests. Keeping the Global South subservient to a Eurocentric world order has been critical to this strategy. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/south-africa-icj-israel-genocide/">Israel’s attack on Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians</a> — along with the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/12/how-the-us-uk-bombing-of-yemen-might-help-the-houthis">associated American and British bombings of Yemen</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-launches-retaliatory-strikes-iraq-syria-nearly-40-reported-killed-2024-02-03/">Iraq and Syria</a> — are contemporary manifestations of this phenomenon. </p>
<p>China’s rise is the first time in modern history that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6811-1_25">a non-European state beyond western control</a> is economically eclipsing the West. <a href="https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/05/09/who-hates-chinas-rise-the-most-from-the-yellow-peril-to-the-biggest-challenger/">The “yellow peril” is back</a>, and the West will now need to compromise and negotiate with a powerful, non-western entity. </p>
<p>It cannot simply impose its will on the Global South, though the American campaign against China is an effort to re-establish this status quo.</p>
<p>To the West, this was not how it was supposed to be.</p>
<h2>China forged its own path</h2>
<p>According to American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, the end of the Cold War was the <a href="https://pages.ucsd.edu/%7Ebslantchev/courses/pdf/Fukuyama%20-%20End%20of%20History.pdf">“end of history,”</a> meaning that liberal democratic capitalism is the final and best form of government for all nations. </p>
<p>This political and economic system, embodied by the West (especially the United States), <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/06/24/how-the-two-big-ideas-of-the-post-cold-war-era-failed/">was supposedly the only path to success</a>. The West was held up as pinnacle of achievement that the entire world should emulate.</p>
<p>China <a href="https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/how-china-survived-end-history">disproved this narrative</a> <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience">by achieving extraordinary economic and technological developments with unprecedented speed</a>, and it did so by following its own path. It is a major player in the world economy, but has refused to become a western <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/vassal">vassal state</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, the western world has failed in many measurable and obvious ways, particularly since the 2008 financial crisis. Europe is facing <a href="https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/02/14/eurozone-avoids-recession-but-remains-stagnant-as-germany-struggles">economic stagnation</a>, <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/05/11/changing-continent-the-eus-population-is-declining-new-figures-reveal">demographic decline</a> and increasingly <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/fake-news-and-personal-attacks-how-the-political-right-took-down-europes-green-agenda/">toxic politics</a>. </p>
<p>Western youth are alienated and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/trust-nicola-sturgeon-prime-minister-mark-drakeford-jeremy-hunt-b2290758.html">pessimistic</a>. The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ukraine-war-vladimir-putin-imf-growth-military-spending-economy-2024-1">West’s failure to destroy Russia’s economy with sanctions</a> following its invasion of Ukraine is evidence of decreasing western economic power. Its <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/17/gaza-will-be-the-grave-of-the-western-led-world-order">absolute moral failure</a> in Gaza is tragically apparent.</p>
<h2>American decline</h2>
<p>But the most spectacular and consequential example of western decline is the United States. On paper, the U.S. economy is performing <a href="https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2024/01/numbers-us-economy-grows-faster-expected-year-and-final-quarter-2023#:%7E:text=Helpful%20Not%20helpful-,By%20the%20Numbers%3A%20U.S.%20Economy%20Grows%20Faster%20than%20Expected%20for,and%20Final%20Quarter%20of%202023&text=Today%2C%20the%20U.S.%20Commerce%20Department's,quarter%20of%202023%20exceeding%20expectations.">moderately well</a>. In practice, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/2/8/americas-underemployment-problem">under-employment</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-income-inequality-rose-3-years-through-2022-fed-data-shows-2023-10-18/">and economic</a> <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/#:%7E:text=In%20the%20third%20quarter%20of,percent%20of%20the%20total%20wealth.">inequality are posing major problems</a>. </p>
<p>Many Americans <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/mood-by-microbe/202311/defusing-armageddon-why-are-so-many-americans-angry">are angry</a>, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/americans-take-a-dim-view-of-the-nations-future-look-more-positively-at-the-past/">disillusioned</a> <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/07/22/key-findings-about-americans-declining-trust-in-government-and-each-other/">and polarized</a>. American politics are dysfunctional and blatantly <a href="https://www.citizen.org/news/twelve-years-since-citizens-united-big-money-corruption-keeps-getting-worse/">corrupted by money</a>. Even the <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/4/25/23697394/supreme-court-clarence-thomas-neil-gorsuch-corruption-harlan-crow-constitution">highest judiciary has been accused of corruption</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-americans-be-shielded-from-the-u-s-supreme-court-186084">Can Americans be shielded from the U.S. Supreme Court?</a>
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<p>In the next presidential election, Americans may well <a href="https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/trump-biden-polls/">re-elect</a> Donald Trump, someone <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-new-york-indictment-1.7115927">who epitomizes</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68175846">this corruption</a>. </p>
<p>The U.S. government also continues to stir up <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/12/us-foreign-policy-bombing-deterrence-north-korea-nuclear-sanctions/">violence and instability around the world</a> rather than dealing with its own <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/us/politics/richard-haass-biden-trump-foreign-policy.html">enormous domestic problems</a>.</p>
<h2>China’s achievements</h2>
<p>Over the past 20 years, China’s transformation has been astonishing. Its modern cities feature <a href="https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/travel-and-architecture/a8407-buildings-of-china-15-architectural-marvels-every-architect-must-see/">marvels of architecture</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibRorZwnZl8">well-constructed infrastructure</a>, phenomenal <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm3IxEtzj7s">public spaces</a> and are clean and safe, in contrast to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdvJSGc14xA">crumbling infrastructure</a> and <a href="https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting">dangerous streets</a> of some <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-dangerous-cities-in-the-us/">American cities</a>. </p>
<p>By purchasing power parity, China’s GDP <a href="https://cepr.net/china-is-bigger-get-over-it/#:%7E:text=Measuring%20by%20purchasing%20power%20parity,Source%3A%20International%20Monetary%20Fund.">is currently 25 per cent bigger than that of the U.S.; the International Monetary Fund estimates it will be 40 per cent larger by 2028</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/china-worlds-sole-manufacturing-superpower-line-sketch-rise#:%7E:text=China%20is%20now%20the%20world's%20sole%20manufacturing%20giant.,the%20G7%20countries%20still%20dominate.">China is responsible for 35 per cent of the world’s manufacturing compared to 12 per cent for the U.S</a>. China’s <a href="https://yogesh-upadhyaya.medium.com/how-did-china-become-a-manufacturing-superpower-7322c3058d8">economies of scale</a> and <a href="https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/research/blog/how-china-is-winning-the-race-for-clean-energy-technology%EF%BF%BC/">technological advancements</a> mean that renewable energy may become <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/chinas-spending-on-green-energy-is-causing-a-global-glut-d80eaea7">affordable to billions of people all over the world</a>, <a href="https://eastasiaforum.org/2023/11/21/chinas-electric-vehicle-surge-will-shock-global-markets/">offering viable climate action</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-so-much-of-the-worlds-manufacturing-still-take-place-in-china-207178">Why does so much of the world's manufacturing still take place in China?</a>
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<p>If China really does fail — something those western commentators perpetually claim is imminent — it would have serious consequences for the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Western hostility towards China reflects the grudging realization that the West may not be the pinnacle of achievement after all. Rather than possibly learning from China’s successes, westerners have chosen resentment borne of a sense of frustrated superiority.</p>
<p>The modern world is a pluralist global system. Different states will follow different paths to development and experiment with different forms of government. The West does not have all — or maybe any — solutions to the many problems the world is currently facing.</p>
<p><a href="https://hbr.org/2021/05/what-the-west-gets-wrong-about-china">China is pursuing</a> its own economic and social goals. These may not accord with western models, and <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/12/China-bumpy-path-Eswar-Prasad">China may stumble</a> as it follows its own path. </p>
<p>But cheering on those stumbles won’t make for a more peaceful or co-operative world, nor will it compensate for western failures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaun Narine is a contributor to Jewish Voice for Peace and Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.</span></em></p>Western hostility towards China reflects the grudging realization that the West may not be the pinnacle of achievement after all.Shaun Narine, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, St. Thomas University (Canada)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2237812024-02-23T16:56:58Z2024-02-23T16:56:58ZJavier Milei: Argentina’s new president presses ahead with economic ‘shock therapy’ as social unrest grows<p>Only weeks into his term, Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, seems to be making good on his promise to <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-argentinian-president-javier-milei-promises-to-take-a-chainsaw-to-countrys-crippled-economy-218155">put a chainsaw</a> to the country’s crisis-ridden economy. In his inaugural address, Milei <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/11/argentinas-javier-milei-tells-nation-to-brace-for-painful-economic-shock">told the nation</a>: “There is no alternative to shock.” He dissolved half of the country’s ministries days later, and implemented a 50% devaluation of the peso.</p>
<p>But amid massive spending cuts, prices <a href="https://buenosairesherald.com/economics/argentina-starts-2024-with-a-20-6-monthly-inflation-rate#:%7E:text=Argentina%27s%20monthly%20inflation%20rate%20reached,the%20peso%20on%20December%2012">continue to spiral</a>. Argentina’s annual rate of inflation has <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3bee368d-6b02-4659-85dd-e63eb1f224b6">reached</a> a three-decade high of 254.2%. Milei blames the poor economy on years of mismanagement, and has warned his compatriots to <a href="https://buenosairesherald.com/economics/oecd-argentina-inflation-projected-to-hit-251-in-2024">expect more pain</a> before any gains will be felt. </p>
<p>While many support his measures, there are clear signs of disconnect. His government suffered the earliest general strike in history, conceding the streets to masses of protestors. More alarming for Milei, his all-reaching “omnibus law”, which ranged from economic policy to the privatisation of state entities, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/02/argentinas-lower-house-votes-for-javier-mileis-sweeping-reform-package">failed to get sanctioned</a> by a divided National Congress in which he lacks a majority.</p>
<p>However, this resistance seems only to be emboldening the president. His plan to dollarize the currency, which some dismissed as mere electoral strategy, now seems likely to come <a href="https://www.ambito.com/finanzas/dolar-los-gurues-argentina-va-camino-una-dolarizacion-y-advierten-caida-salarios-n5948359">sooner than expected</a>. Milei has also launched a “cultural war” against his critics including Lali Espósito, a well-known <a href="https://english.elpais.com/people/2024-02-17/why-argentinas-president-hates-pop-diva-lali-esposito.html">Argentine pop star</a>. But unless the economy picks up soon, he may be fighting a growing mass of unhappy citizens.</p>
<h2>Echoes of the past</h2>
<p>Shock therapy – involving the sudden removal of trade barriers and labour protection, and the implementation of drastic fiscal policies – is not new in Argentina. It was integral to the last dictatorship’s economic plan (1976-1983), who had learned from the pioneer in shock therapy: Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. In both cases, an eventual debt crisis followed. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, the then-Argentinian president, Carlos Menem, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-07-10-mn-2611-story.html">announced</a> “major surgery without anaesthesia” on the economy. Failing to curb escalating inflation, it took currency “convertibility” – pegging the peso to the dollar – to break that cycle. But this generated new public debt, chronic stagnation, high levels of unemployment, and provoked the largest sovereign <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41800185?seq=2">default</a> in history.</p>
<p>Shock therapy is not only a Latin American phenomenon. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-painful-post-soviet-transition-from-communism-to-capitalism-recovery-podcast-series-part-five-141718">collapse of the Soviet Union</a> led to a rapid transition from state-based to free market economies for a large part of the world’s population. </p>
<p>In Poland, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Balcerowicz-Plan">Balcerowicz Plan</a> provoked an initial hike in inflation before eventually stabilising the economy based on free market capitalism – although <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=676661">new inequalities</a> and social problems were on the way.</p>
<h2>Milei’s challenge</h2>
<p>Two features distinguish Milei’s shock therapy. First, he has a comparatively <a href="https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/argentinas-new-congress-will-condition-mileis-bid-for-reform.phtml">weak political position</a> – particularly in Congress. Second, it is unclear how much of Argentina’s population is prepared to <a href="https://pulsar.uba.ar/en-que-creemos-los-argentinos-segundo-informe/">support his measures</a>, as memory of the crisis looms close in the public imagination. </p>
<p>Milei has already introduced massive spending cuts, including a reduction of salaries and pensions via both inflation and suspending funding to subnational governments to pay salaries and subsidies. He has also launched an ambitious project to reset the Argentine economy, which includes the privatisation of all public companies, liberalisation of trade, and deregulation of labour.</p>
<p>Social opposition was immediate. Despite the government discouraging mobilisation by banning road blocks and large public gatherings, spontaneous protests took place in cities across the country. Labour organisations and trade unions have <a href="https://theconversation.com/workers-in-argentina-face-the-biggest-blow-to-their-employment-rights-since-the-military-dictatorship-of-the-1970s-220611">provided the largest resistance</a>, through declarations, protests and legal claims. </p>
<p>Then, on January 24, when Milei was barely a month into office, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/world/americas/argentina-union-strike-javier-milei.html?searchResultPosition=6">general strike</a> was called. The strike, which included even Argentina’s more conservative unions, brought the country to a standstill.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Milei has faced <a href="https://buenosairesherald.com/politics/traitors-milei-rails-against-deputies-who-rejected-omnibus-bill-articles">resistance in Congress</a>. His omnibus law was expected to collect support from centre-right parties and subnational governors in need of national funding. However, Milei’s dogmatism prevented the government from accepting the changes requested by its potential allies, and the bill collapsed. </p>
<p>Since taking office, Milei has had a fragile relationship with governors and deputies, calling lawmakers a “delinquent cast set out to get bribes and perpetuate the decadent status quo”.</p>
<p>Instead of taking advantage of his strong electoral victory and fragmented opposition parties, he has provoked <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/07/argentina-milei-lashes-out-at-governors-after-key-reform-bill-setback.html">confrontation</a> and ever-unified resistance. <a href="https://zubancordoba.com/portfolio/informe-nacional-febrero-2024/">Public opinion</a> also seems to be turning, as the proportion of people living in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/more-more-hunger-argentinas-soup-kitchens-brink-collapse-high-inflation-2024-02-14/">poverty</a> has shot up from 45% to <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/713507-mas-de-la-mitad-de-los-argentinos-son-pobres">almost 60%</a>. </p>
<p>With a sluggish economy, it is difficult to imagine how the president will find the necessary support for his shock therapy. </p>
<h2>Dollarization: Milei’s big gamble</h2>
<p>The most ambitious, yet unpredictable, element is Milei’s well-publicised <a href="https://www.forbesargentina.com/today/javier-milei-estamos-857-chances-poder-dolarizar-n48017">plan to dollarize</a> the currency. He claims this will generate hope and reboot a competitive economy, with the middle class able to travel and buy imported goods at ease. </p>
<p>But, based on current exchange rates, the <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/trabajo/consejodelsalario">average wage</a> is set to be just US$218 (£171) per month, and this is likely to fall further following <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-22/investors-bet-argentina-crawling-peg-to-speed-up-to-6-by-april">expected devaluations</a> in the coming months.</p>
<p>If the plan fails, Milei can expect resistance to be mighty. Argentina has a deep history of popular uprisings. In 2001, five presidents <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1470-9856.00072">resigned</a> in the space of two weeks, with one of them escaping the Pink House (the president’s official workplace) in a <a href="https://www.telam.com.ar/notas/202112/577661-helicoptero-de-la-rua-derrumbe-convertibilidad.html">helicopter</a>. </p>
<p>Since then, despite regular protest and crisis, all governments have finished their terms and pursued their economic policies. Will Milei break the mould and be thrown out of office early? Or will he be able to show Argentinians a real economic turnaround before patience runs out?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Argentina is already feeling the sting of its new president’s policies – but Javier Milei is pressing ahead with ever-more radical plans to overhaul the economy.Sam Halvorsen, Reader in Human Geography, Queen Mary University of LondonSebastián Mauro, Associate professor, Universidad de Buenos AiresLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225702024-02-20T17:00:43Z2024-02-20T17:00:43ZArgentina’s anti-government protests offer a lesson for the international struggle against the rise of the far right<p>In the first 24 hours of his reign, the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, <a href="https://chequeado.com/el-explicador/ministerios-cuantos-y-cuales-fueron-en-cada-gestion/">halved the number</a> of previously existing government ministries in a manner resembling a dystopian science fiction novel. Milei amalgamated education, culture, labour and social welfare into a “Ministry of Human Capital” led by his friend and former television producer, Sandra Pettovello.</p>
<p>Milei is a far-right populist leader who labels himself an “anarcho-capitalist libertarian”. In his presidential campaign, he used social media expertly, attracting <a href="https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/argentinas-new-conservative-coalition/">many young men</a> and those who feel left out of the political class and want something different. </p>
<p>More than 40% of Argentina’s population is <a href="https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/uca-report-puts-argentinas-poverty-rate-at-431.phtml">very poor</a>. These people, who sometimes do not know where their next meal is coming from, voted for the “complete reset” promised by Milei in viral memes and videos where he <a href="https://apnews.com/article/milei-argentina-chainsaw-fed35a37c6137b951e4adada3d866436">brandished a chainsaw</a> or hoisted a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/wielding-chainsaw-huge-dollar-bill-argentine-radical-taps-into-voter-fury-2023-09-15/">huge US$100 bill</a> with his face on it.</p>
<p>Milei admires western versions of cutthroat capitalism. His legislation mimics the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/Washington-consensus">Washington Consensus</a> fiscal policy “discipline” of the 1990s, and makes explicit attacks on human and workers’ rights, social welfare, and all forms of political activism. </p>
<p>Thus, comparisons have been made with 1976, when an <a href="https://theconversation.com/workers-in-argentina-face-the-biggest-blow-to-their-employment-rights-since-the-military-dictatorship-of-the-1970s-220611">Argentine military junta</a> seized political power of the country. After taking power, the dictatorship regressively reformed labour relations. Given this history, and the rising autocracy that is now sweeping much of the world, it’s no surprise that tensions are arising.</p>
<h2>Mass mobilisation</h2>
<p>Milei’s radical economic programme is designed to clear the terrain for a free-market society. People will supposedly be unleashed from the perils of the welfare state, free to become millionaires and consume the suddenly flowing bounty of goods and services in a capitalist paradise. </p>
<p>Milei’s “shock therapy” started by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67688727">weakening the value</a> of Argentina’s currency by 50% against the US dollar. This move has driven up prices, particularly for internationally obtained goods like medicine, and has <a href="https://www.ambito.com/economia/fuerte-ajuste-jubilaciones-febrero-el-poder-adquisitivo-va-ser-mas-que-la-crisis-2001-n5943851">eroded the purchasing power</a> of salaries and pensions. The currency devaluation was also accompanied by severe funding cuts to health, social benefits, culture, science and more.</p>
<p>Just 45 days after the new government was instituted, the General Confederation of Labour <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/24/argentina-strike-protest-javier-milei">called</a> for a general strike. Businesses and educational institutions closed, and tens of thousands of Argentinians took to the streets in protest at the severe cuts to funding and the outright market-facing stance that Milei is taking. </p>
<p>Popular assemblies, student gatherings, and judicial and political actions are limiting the government’s initial plans. In January, an Argentine court <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-67881300">suspended</a> the labour reforms Milei had brought in by emergency decree after taking office. </p>
<p>Under those reforms, the probation period for workers would have increased, employees who were dismissed would have received less compensation, and maternity leave would have been shortened.</p>
<h2>The art of protest</h2>
<p>Argentina is no stranger to left-wing mass mobilisations. But this one stands out for its aesthetic prowess. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576534/original/file-20240219-28-x8qvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protestors at holding aloft a black octagonal sign reading 'Exceso Vaciamiento de la Cultura'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576534/original/file-20240219-28-x8qvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576534/original/file-20240219-28-x8qvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576534/original/file-20240219-28-x8qvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576534/original/file-20240219-28-x8qvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576534/original/file-20240219-28-x8qvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576534/original/file-20240219-28-x8qvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576534/original/file-20240219-28-x8qvsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protestors hold a sign complaining of ‘too much cultural destruction’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phoebe Moore</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Protestors held signs with the message “La patria no se vende” (the homeland is not for sale). They carried plaques depicting a father and son, where the son asks “Papa, que es rendirse?” (Father, what is surrender?), to which the adult replies: “No se, hijo, somos Peronistas” (I don’t know, son, we are Peronistas). </p>
<p>Peronism is a political movement based on the ideas and legacy of former Argentine president Juan Perón (1895–1974), who called for the state to take a leading role in the economy.</p>
<p>Another protest sign resembled a health warning label frequently seen on sugar-laden treats. But, rather than “Exceso de azucar” (too much sugar), it said “Exceso vaciamiento de la cultura” (too much cultural destruction).</p>
<h2>Attacking state research</h2>
<p>One of us (Phoebe Moore) attended the general strike protest in Buenos Aires on January 24 with a group of social science researchers working for Argentina’s national research agency, <a href="https://www.conicet.gov.ar/about-the-conicet/?lan=en">Conicet</a>. Their trade union represents state and public sector workers. </p>
<p>Conicet researchers Julia Soul, Clara Marticorena and Maurizio Atzeni said that public sector workers have been specifically targeted by Milei’s radical reforms. Soul stated: “Milei asks: ‘What do state researchers do? What do we produce?’ Apparently, nothing. We are called ‘gnocci’.” Gnocci is Argentinian slang with a similar meaning to “jobsworth” in the UK.</p>
<p>Milei has repeatedly engaged in a cultural battle against the idea of universal rights, the provision of basic needs, and anything held in common. He advocates for the privatisation of education, healthcare, and even the introduction of market forces into <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/599276-mercado-libre-de-bebes-la-propuesta-de-milei-que-refloto-en-">child adoption processes</a> to gain “efficiency”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576730/original/file-20240220-23-io09l1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A protestor holding a placard reading 'Tyrant Milei, I shove your laws up my arse'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576730/original/file-20240220-23-io09l1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576730/original/file-20240220-23-io09l1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576730/original/file-20240220-23-io09l1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576730/original/file-20240220-23-io09l1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576730/original/file-20240220-23-io09l1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576730/original/file-20240220-23-io09l1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576730/original/file-20240220-23-io09l1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protestor’s placard reads: ‘Tyrant Milei, I shove your laws up my arse.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phoebe Moore</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, according to Atzeni: “Public research in science and technology systems has always been closely intertwined with innovation”. This can be seen in the development of treatments for health issues such as the <a href="https://www.conicet.gov.ar/especialistas-del-conicet-desarrollan-una-vacuna-para-prevenir-y-tratar-la-enfermedad-de-chagas/">Chagas disease</a>, and <a href="https://www.conicet.gov.ar/el-mincyt-conicet-y-universidad-nacional-del-litoral-anunciaron-la-aprobacion-del-trigo-hb4-en-argentina/">new patents</a> for genetically modified crops.</p>
<p>Marticorena warned that Milei’s actions are going to lead to reduced state sovereignty. Ignoring local talent even where it has been successful and recognised internationally will probably lead to a brain drain, diminishing the ability of the state to make independent assessments and decisions. This concern has been <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/704281-plenario-por-la-ley-omnibus-el-discurso-completo-de-alberto-">repeatedly voiced</a> by members of the scientific community, who warn that prioritising private interests and granting advantages to private capital will undermine Argentina’s economic, social and cultural development prospects. </p>
<p>Milei’s radical organisation policies align with privatisation and neoliberal capitalist mythology. But fundamentally, he aims to reshape relationships between the state, civil society, and the market. This is something that Argentine society has already experienced, and to which it responded for more than 40 years by saying <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NUNCA_MAS.ogv">“Nunca más”</a> (never again). </p>
<p>History doesn’t always repeat itself, but we may have to go through some battles more than once. The resistance we’re seeing in Argentina shows how to build strength that is needed worldwide, to stand up against the resurgence of the far right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luciana Zorzoli was a doctoral and postdoctoral fellow of Argentina's National Council for Scientific and Technical Research.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phoebe V Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Argentine society is responding strongly to Javier Milei’s radical policies.Phoebe V Moore, Professor of Management and the Futures of Work, University of EssexLuciana Zorzoli, Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations, Essex Business School, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2202822024-02-15T00:00:55Z2024-02-15T00:00:55ZFeminist narratives are being hijacked to market medical tests not backed by evidence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575240/original/file-20240213-27-twey75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=252%2C97%2C6218%2C4210&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/woman-sitting-on-floor-and-leaning-on-couch-using-laptop-Nv-vx3kUR2A">Thought Catalog/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Corporations have used feminist language to promote their products for decades. In the 1980s, companies co-opted messaging about female autonomy to encourage women’s consumption of unhealthy commodities, <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/7902">such as tobacco and alcohol</a>. </p>
<p>Today, feminist narratives around empowerment and women’s rights are being co-opted to market interventions that are not backed by evidence across many areas of women’s health. This includes by commercial companies, industry, mass media and well-intentioned advocacy groups. </p>
<p>Some of these health technologies, tests and treatments are useful in certain situations and can be very beneficial to some women. </p>
<p>However, promoting them to a large group of asymptomatic healthy women that are unlikely to benefit, or without being transparent about the limitations, runs the risk of causing more harm than good. This includes inappropriate medicalisation, overdiagnosis and overtreatment. </p>
<p>In our analysis published today in the <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076710">BMJ</a>, we examine this phenomenon in two current examples: the anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) test and breast density notification.</p>
<h2>The AMH test</h2>
<p>The AMH test is a blood test associated with the number of eggs in a woman’s ovaries and is sometimes referred to as the “egg timer” test. </p>
<p>Although often used in fertility treatment, the AMH test cannot reliably predict the <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2656811">likelihood of pregnancy</a>, timing to pregnancy or <a href="https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/29/3/327/6990969">specific age of menopause</a>. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists therefore <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30913192/">strongly discourages testing</a> for women not seeking fertility treatment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman sits in a medical waiting room" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575242/original/file-20240213-24-tbgpbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575242/original/file-20240213-24-tbgpbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575242/original/file-20240213-24-tbgpbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575242/original/file-20240213-24-tbgpbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575242/original/file-20240213-24-tbgpbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575242/original/file-20240213-24-tbgpbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575242/original/file-20240213-24-tbgpbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The AMH test can’t predict your chance of getting pregnant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/a-woman-sitting-on-a-bench-in-a-waiting-area-UssKpGyrBzw">Anastasia Vityukova/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite this, several <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/7/e046927.info">fertility clinics</a> and <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2808552">online companies</a> market the AMH test to women not even trying to get pregnant. Some use feminist rhetoric promising empowerment, selling the test as a way to gain personalised insights into your fertility. For example, “<a href="https://www.ondemand.labcorp.com/lab-tests/womens-fertility-test">you deserve</a> to know your reproductive potential”, “<a href="https://kinfertility.com.au/fertility-test">be proactive</a> about your fertility” and “<a href="https://monashivf.com/services/early-intervention/amh-blood-test/">knowing your numbers</a> will empower you to make the best decisions when family planning”. </p>
<p>The use of feminist marketing makes these companies appear socially progressive and champions of female health. But they are selling a test that has no proven benefit outside of IVF and cannot inform women about their current or future fertility. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-believe-the-hype-egg-timer-tests-cant-reliably-predict-your-chance-of-conceiving-or-menopause-timing-207008">Don't believe the hype. 'Egg timer' tests can't reliably predict your chance of conceiving or menopause timing</a>
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<p>Our <a href="https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/38/8/1571/7193900?login=false">recent study</a> found around 30% of women having an AMH test in Australia may be having it for these reasons.</p>
<p>Misleading women to believe that the test can reliably predict fertility can create a false sense of security about delaying pregnancy. It can also create unnecessary anxiety, pressure to freeze eggs, conceive earlier than desired, or start fertility treatment when it may not be needed.</p>
<p>While some companies mention the test’s limitations if you read on, they are glossed over and contradicted by the calls to be proactive and messages of empowerment. </p>
<h2>Breast density notification</h2>
<p>Breast density is one of several independent risk factors for breast cancer. It’s also harder to see cancer on a mammogram image of breasts with high amounts of dense tissue than breasts with a greater proportion of fatty tissue. </p>
<p>While estimates vary, approximately 25–50% of women in the breast screening population <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4200066/">have dense breasts</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Young woman has mammogram" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575244/original/file-20240213-22-kbvlxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575244/original/file-20240213-22-kbvlxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575244/original/file-20240213-22-kbvlxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575244/original/file-20240213-22-kbvlxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575244/original/file-20240213-22-kbvlxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575244/original/file-20240213-22-kbvlxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575244/original/file-20240213-22-kbvlxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dense breasts can make it harder to detect cancer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-woman-taking-mammogram-xray-test-75178006">Tyler Olsen/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Stemming from valid concerns about the increased risk of cancer, advocacy efforts have used feminist language around women’s right to know <a href="https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2022/34/breast-density-we-can-handle-the-truth/#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CWomen%20can%20handle%20the%20truth,need%20to%20know%20that%20truth.">such as</a> “women need to know the truth” and “women can handle the truth” to argue for widespread breast density notification. </p>
<p>However, this simplistic messaging overlooks that this is a complex issue and that <a href="https://ebm.bmj.com/content/26/6/309">more data is still needed</a> on whether the benefits of notifying and providing additional screening or tests to women with dense breasts outweigh the harms. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-causes-breast-cancer-in-women-what-we-know-dont-know-and-suspect-86314">What causes breast cancer in women? What we know, don't know and suspect</a>
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<p>Additional tests (ultrasound or MRI) are now being recommended for women with dense breasts as they have the ability to detect more cancer. Yet, there is no or little mention of the <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1912943">lack of robust evidence</a> showing that it prevents breast cancer deaths. These extra tests also have out-of-pocket costs and high rates of false-positive results. </p>
<p>Large international advocacy groups are also sponsored by companies that will <a href="https://www.volparahealth.com/news/volpara-announces-expanded-sponsorship-of-densebreast-info-org-at-sbi-2023/">financially benefit from women being notified</a>.</p>
<p>While stronger patient autonomy is vital, campaigning for breast density notification without stating the limitations or unclear evidence of benefit may go against the empowerment being sought. </p>
<h2>Ensuring feminism isn’t hijacked</h2>
<p>Increased awareness and advocacy in women’s health are key to overcoming sex inequalities in health care. </p>
<p>But we need to ensure the goals of feminist health advocacy aren’t undermined through commercially driven use of feminist language pushing care that isn’t based on evidence. This includes more transparency about the risks and uncertainties of health technologies, tests and treatments and greater scrutiny of conflicts of interests. </p>
<p>Health professionals and governments must also ensure that easily understood, balanced information based on high quality scientific evidence is available. This will enable women to make more informed decisions about their health.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/young-women-wont-be-told-how-to-behave-but-is-girlboss-just-deportment-by-another-name-132351">Young women won't be told how to behave, but is #girlboss just deportment by another name?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brooke Nickel receives fellowship funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is on the Scientific Committee of the Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tessa Copp receives fellowship funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is also on the Scientific Committee of the Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference. </span></em></p>Corporate medicine is hijacking feminist narratives around empowerment and women’s rights to market technologies, tests and treatments that aren’t backed by evidence.Brooke Nickel, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, University of SydneyTessa Copp, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205202024-01-11T13:24:37Z2024-01-11T13:24:37ZSellout! How political corruption shaped an American insult<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568059/original/file-20240105-15-op8mrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C55%2C4034%2C2967&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alf Bruseth, 'Politician Coin Bank' (1938).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.20772.html"> Index of American Design</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you follow politics, sports, Hollywood or the arts, you’ve no doubt heard the insult “sellout” thrown around to describe someone perceived to have betrayed a core principle or shared value in their pursuit of personal gain. </p>
<p>The term has recently been hurled at a range of well-known targets: Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows for <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/-hail-mary-attempt-fails-appeals-court-rules-mark-meadows-cannot-move-case-out-of-georgia-200487493763">cooperating with</a> a special counsel investigating election fraud in 2020; Kim Kardashian for advertising <a href="https://time.com/4314413/modern-feminism-is-selling-out/">her personal brands</a> as a form of women’s empowerment; even former NFL great Deion Sanders, for leaving Jackson State, a historically Black university, <a href="https://theconversation.com/calling-deion-sanders-a-sellout-ignores-the-growing-role-of-clout-chasing-in-college-sports-196792">to coach</a> at the University of Colorado.</p>
<p>Most people, I find, are familiar with this accusation. But few people really know the full story of “selling out” – when and where the term originated, how it spread across so many different sectors of American culture, and just why this insult hurts so much. These are the questions I set out to answer in the book I’m currently writing, tentatively titled “Sellouts! The Story of an American Insult.” </p>
<p>Through my research, I found that the idea of selling out originates with American politics — and more precisely, with the scandals of the Gilded Age.</p>
<h2>Gilded Age origins</h2>
<p>This era, which gets its name from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s 1873 satirical novel “<a href="https://www.loa.org/books/178-the-gilded-age-amp-later-novels/">The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day</a>,” spans roughly from the 1870s to the 1900s. These <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25144440">decades saw the rise</a> of industrial capitalism in the United States: people moving to cities, technologies transforming industries like the railroads, growing unrest and activism by workers, and crises erupting from an economy built around banks, stocks and corporations.</p>
<p>Until this time, the phrase “selling out” had largely <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/sell_v?tab=phrasal_verbs#23525421">been used to describe</a> the sale of one’s stock or holdings – cattle, steel, grain, real estate. But <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/sell_n2?tab=meaning_and_use#23522487">by the 1870s</a>, the term had quickly gained a new meaning as an insult for public figures — especially politicians — who had compromised their morals, and the needs of the community, in pursuit of illicit personal gain.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cartoon of obese men representing various industries looming over senators." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Bosses of the Senate’ by Joseph Keppler, published in the Jan. 23, 1889, issue of Puck.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, political scandals were hardly a novelty of the 1870s. What changed in the Gilded Age, <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/20317/reviews/21375/burg-summers-gilded-age-or-hazard-new-functions">historians suggest</a>, was not the frequency or severity of unethical behavior by politicians, but rather the public’s awareness of the corruption plaguing the U.S. political system. </p>
<h2>The Tweed Ring</h2>
<p>Party politics has always involved graft: skimming off the top of budgets, directing contracts to favored firms, and securing offices for friends. But <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/07/02/george-santos-william-boss-tweed-tammany-hall/">William Tweed, widely known as “Boss Tweed,”</a> took this corruption to new heights.</p>
<p>In the 1860s, Tweed ran New York’s Democratic Party. His circle of influence extended to dozens of city and state offices. The Tweed Ring would provide someone with a job, and then the beneficiary would provide the ring with a kickback.</p>
<p>Whenever contracts were issued for services like carpentry, the ring inflated costs and skimmed off the extra — at first, adding a mere 10%, but later exaggerating these expenses wildly. One carpeting bill from a Tweed contractor ran to US$565,731, a cost high enough for a carpet in New York City to get “<a href="https://kennethackerman.com/books/boss-tweed/">halfway to Albany</a>.” </p>
<p>The ring would also buy up large chunks of city real estate, especially plots they knew were about to receive development projects. Estimates on the total wealth they siphoned through such graft <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Boss_Tweed/ipAxruFk54AC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">range from</a> $20 million to a staggering $200 million – or around $5 billion in 2024, when adjusted for inflation.</p>
<p>Tweed’s cronies also fixed elections with a boldness that’s unthinkable today; one drunken accomplice <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Rise-Fall-Tammany-Hall/dp/020162463X">confessed he had voted</a> at least 28 times on Election Day.</p>
<p>In 1870, The New York Times began an unprecedented journalistic exposé of Tweed and his ring. Their editorials used the phrase “selling out” to capture how city and state politics were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1870/11/26/archives/the-tammany-ring-and-its-agents.html">manipulated by a corrupt few</a> who lined their pockets and kept a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1871/10/16/archives/the-democratic-circus.html">chokehold on elections</a>. </p>
<p>The Times also attacked other newspapers, like the New York World, which took large “advertising revenues” from Tweed, as evidence that these papers would “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1870/11/23/archives/the-mission-of-the-democratic-party.html">sell out to the highest bidder</a>.” In a <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/American_Journalism/eatZAAAAMAAJ?hl=en">major coup</a>, the Times eventually published complete records of the city’s finances, proving the ring’s corruption and landing Tweed inside the Ludlow Street Jail. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cartoon of men standing in a circle pointing their fingers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s transformed the public’s perception of William ‘Boss’ Tweed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/55200970-dc40-0130-375d-58d385a7bbd0">New York Public Library Digital Collections</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Times’ crusade against Tweed pioneered a new, activist form of journalism, while also helping establish “selling out” as a recognizable idea in American life. </p>
<p>Later journalists, known as muckrakers, would launch their own famous investigations, such as Lincoln Steffens’ writing on <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822043023084&seq=7">political machines</a> in other U.S. cities, David Graham Philips’ coverage of the <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100646108">widespread misdeeds</a> of U.S. senators, and Ida Tarbell’s exposure of Standard Oil’s <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/004490918">illicit business practices</a>.</p>
<p>All used the newly popularized phrase “selling out” to describe the corruption of a democratic society. The “corrupt government of Illinois sold out its people to its own grafters,” <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Struggle_for_Self_government/EYYmAAAAMAAJ?hl=en">wrote Steffens</a>, whereas “the organized grafters of Missouri, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island sold, or are selling, out their States to bigger grafters outside.” </p>
<h2>A contested concept</h2>
<p>Over the next century, the idea of selling out spread from politics to numerous other corners of American culture: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/on-the-literary-history-of-selling-out-craft-identity-and-commercial-recognition/2AA296CB7FEA8768D1F944CF88F7DBDB">Novelists chastised peers</a> who went to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.1984.10661963">write for Hollywood</a> as sellouts, while <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/810368/summary">Black intellectuals</a> debated what, if anything, Black elected officials had to do to be seen as <a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/sellout-the-politics-of-racial-betrayal/">“authentic” racial representatives</a> and not sellouts. </p>
<p>For all its many uses in American culture, however, selling out remains a contested concept. For virtually any action that some people view as a betrayal, others will see as a rational choice. </p>
<p>Consider Bob Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, who became the first Black billionaire when <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Billion_Dollar_BET/aF_LAgAAQBAJ?hl=en">he sold the cable channel</a> to Viacom in 2001. Some applauded his historic sale, but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/11/04/but-has-the-network-sold-a-bit-of-its-soul/2c7ef34b-7c04-451b-8239-74f34a2c998b/">others accused</a> Johnson of “selling out” this unique platform for Black voices. </p>
<p>Trump supporters may similarly see Meadows as a traitor — a sellout who abandoned his party’s leader to save his own skin. But Democrats may see him as a Republican who has chosen the values of the country over protecting his party’s standard-bearer. Each side follows its own logic.</p>
<p>Selling out, then, is not always a clear-cut transgression. When a group feels like one of its own has betrayed some shared values, there are often meaningful questions to be asked about what that group’s values ought to be in the first place.</p>
<p>Some critics have <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/ibram-x-kendi-hasan-minhaj-and-the-question-of-selling-out">wondered whether</a> selling out is an <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/is-selling-out-no-longer-a-concept-for-gen-z-356761">obsolete notion</a> in <a href="https://lithiumagazine.com/2020/05/22/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-sell-out-in-2020/">an age when</a> so many people aspire to be an influencer or entrepreneur. But as long as this term gets used to scold public figures like Meadows, it means Americans still believe some form of loyalty — to a community or a shared principle — matters more than personal gain.</p>
<p>But what does it say that so many Americans share the concern that success and integrity are in conflict, as if one comes at the expense of the other? Is it an increasingly unavoidable moral contradiction in a capitalist society?</p>
<p>“Selling out” evokes a widespread fear that anyone who pursues success will corrupt both their morality and their community. Some people – say, billionaires in their private jets – can perhaps suppress this fear more easily than others. But everyone knows its name.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Afflerbach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why do so many Americans share the concern that success and integrity are in conflict, as if one comes at the expense of the other?Ian Afflerbach, Associate Professor of American Literature, University of North GeorgiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2023582024-01-04T20:00:43Z2024-01-04T20:00:43ZWalter Benjamin’s Illuminations: the remarkably prescient work of an intellectual truth-seeker<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561775/original/file-20231127-21-j536wj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Walter Benjamin's membership card for the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1940).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our Guide to the Classics series, experts explain key works of literature.</em></p>
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<p>Walter Benjamin was a German Jewish intellectual born in Berlin in 1892 to wealthy parents. He died by his own hand in September 1940 while fleeing the Nazis. Following his death, his writing was nearly forgotten until the publication in German in 1955 of an anthology of his work.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2725.Illuminations?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=FCNX0QXsqK&rank=2">Illuminations</a>, which draws together many of Benjamin’s most significant pieces, was published in English in 1968. It includes the enduring The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), as well as writings on translation, book collecting, and some of the authors he most admired: Kafka, Baudelaire and Proust. Illuminations also has a weighty introduction by political philosopher Hannah Arendt.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560974/original/file-20231122-24-ipvwb9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cover of Illuminations" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560974/original/file-20231122-24-ipvwb9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560974/original/file-20231122-24-ipvwb9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560974/original/file-20231122-24-ipvwb9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560974/original/file-20231122-24-ipvwb9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560974/original/file-20231122-24-ipvwb9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560974/original/file-20231122-24-ipvwb9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560974/original/file-20231122-24-ipvwb9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2725">Goodreads</a></span>
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<p>Benjamin grew up in Berlin and spent his teenage years at a rural boarding school. During his adolescence he was a voracious reader. At university, he completed his doctoral dissertation on German Romanticism. However, he failed to obtain the formal qualification at the University of Frankfurt that would have enabled him to become an academic. Arendt’s sense is that Benjamin’s eccentric genius jarred with the mediocrity of the university system.</p>
<p>Benjamin struggled to make a living, earning some money by writing essays and reviews for various publications. <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/walter-benjamin.html">In his words</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>there are places where I can earn a minimal amount, and places where I can subsist on a minimal amount, but nowhere in the world where these two conditions coincide.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like many Jewish intellectuals, Benjamin left Hitler’s Germany: in 1933 he moved to Paris. Then, in 1940, with the Wehrmacht closing in, he fled the city. He had a visa to the US, but met with trouble as he was making his way to neutral Portugal. </p>
<p>Unable to obtain a visa to exit France, Benjamin crossed illegally into Spain. There he was detained by the authorities. Rather than return to France he overdosed on morphine.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/simone-de-beauvoir-hannah-arendt-simone-weil-and-ayn-rand-all-felt-different-in-the-world-and-changed-the-way-we-think-213895">Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil and Ayn Rand all felt 'different' in the world – and changed the way we think</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>My younger self’s kind of thinker</h2>
<p>Returning to Benjamin’s work to write this article, I found myself remembering, with some sadness, my own intellectual proclivities and ambitions in my 20s – before I encountered the reality of university life. Benjamin was my younger self’s kind of thinker. He sought to understand the nature of modernity. He drew on Marxism but was not contained by it. He ranged across literature, art, popular culture, language and even Jewish mysticism. He was often a lover of his subject matter – especially the literature. And just as significantly, he was a philosopher in the sense of being someone who seeks truth. </p>
<p>My sense is that there is less room for Benjamin’s way in today’s intellectual world. The impulse to try to understand the totality of modernity runs a distant second to a shallow activism that begins by assuming it knows how everything works. </p>
<p>To love literature – the classics – is increasingly associated with a regressive right, because the classics are tainted by Western imperialism and other inexpiable sins. To speak of truth is still on the nose given the ascendancy of postmodern relativism and identity politics. And to range freely across ideas is a sign of someone who will likely ask too many questions.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560976/original/file-20231122-27-vp2780.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560976/original/file-20231122-27-vp2780.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560976/original/file-20231122-27-vp2780.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560976/original/file-20231122-27-vp2780.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560976/original/file-20231122-27-vp2780.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560976/original/file-20231122-27-vp2780.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560976/original/file-20231122-27-vp2780.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560976/original/file-20231122-27-vp2780.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Walter Benjamin in 1928.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walter_Benjamin_vers_1928.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Benjamin was an unfettered intellectual who held the tension between the old and the new – between tradition and renewal. Today, many one-dimensional, intellectual clones, who are, ironically, influenced by Benjamin’s ideas, uncritically sweep aside the old.</p>
<p>But then there was not all that much room for Benjamin’s way in his own time, either. Even though he associated with and was highly regarded by many significant figures of his day, including playwright Bertolt Brecht and philosophers Ernst Bloch, Theodore Adorno and Arendt, Benjamin only achieved posthumous fame. </p>
<p>Arendt’s introduction to Illuminations begins with a lengthy discussion of this. Drawing on the writings of Cicero, she says, “how different everything would have been ‘if they had been victorious in life who have won victory in death’.” </p>
<p>The writings in Illuminations were produced between 1923 and 1940. Some were published in journals and other places, but some were only published posthumously. I will focus here on three of the most significant pieces.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-new-identity-focused-ideology-has-trapped-the-left-and-undermined-social-justice-217085">How a new identity-focused ideology has trapped the left and undermined social justice</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)</h2>
<p>Benjamin’s seminal essay provides a Marxist analysis of the changing nature and function of art. A quick Marxism 101: For Marxists, the way a society produces things – the “economic base” – determines the political and cultural “superstructure”; that is, the nature of production determines how we live our lives.</p>
<p>In earlier times, Benjamin argues, when different economic systems dominated, art had “cult” value. This art was inseparable from ritual and was intended only for the initiated. He gives the example of a statue that was only accessible to a priest. But many other examples come to mind, such as the art buried alongside the pharaohs.</p>
<p>As objects shifted from having use value to exchange value (the point of capitalism is to make money by selling things), art objects shifted from having cult value to “exhibition” value. Benjamin’s example here is that paintings, (objects of exhibition and exchange), superseded mosaics and frescoes.</p>
<p>For Benjamin, in its earliest ritualistic incarnations, art was not even recognised as art but as magic. With greater emphasis on exchange value, the artistic came to be seen as a thing in itself. However, as capitalism further advances, the “artistic function” becomes “incidental”. It’s so true. I was talking with a film lawyer at a party recently. She described directors as “content providers” whose decisions are subservient to the producers’ will. (This is why Tarantino remains one of the few genuine film-making artists: he retains final cut rights.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/karl-marx-his-philosophy-explained-164068">Karl Marx: his philosophy explained</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Benjamin also observed that “the increasing extension of the press” had allowed ever more readers to become writers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not in principle find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is remarkably prescient for 1935! This trajectory has only been amplified by social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. We are all now consumer-producers. And who would even refer to the material we produce on social media as art – even though it is sometimes artistic? The artistic function is incidental to the likes. Exchange value trumps use value.</p>
<p>Benjamin introduces the concept of the “aura”. When art is a fresco or even a painting, there is only one of it. And this unique work has an aura, which includes the process of creation and the work’s journeys in the world. But once we learned the techniques of reproducing art for mass exhibition and exchange, the aura was diminished or even lost. </p>
<p>This is a part of the process of alienation that occurs under capitalism, and is comparable to the worker no longer being a craftsman – having autonomy – but rather, a cog in the machine. For Benjamin, the stage actor has an aura. But with the screen actor, the aura has shrivelled. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the “spell of the personality”, the phoney spell of a commodity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Benjamin, with reproducibility, everything becomes equal. It is interesting that here “equality” is not exactly good. It reminds me of a state of high entropy as described by <a href="https://youtu.be/DxL2HoqLbyA">the second law of thermodynamics</a> in which there are may possible states, but everything has a sort of chaotic sameness about it. </p>
<p>It is strange that even though the reels and shorts on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok are democratic (anyone can make them), stunningly diverse and at times artistic, scrolling through them drains us of our life-essence – it is intensely alienating. This is because they have no aura.</p>
<h2>Theses on the philosophy of history (1940)</h2>
<p>In this poetic and aphoristic essay, Benjamin makes the kind of arguments about history that were taken up with vigour by the likes of Foucault, and are now indicative of how many think about history – for better and worse. In short: history is often the tool of the powerful.</p>
<p>Benjamin objects to doing history by “telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary.” And he argues that both major and minor events are relevant to the telling of history: “nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history”. More poignantly he says, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Benjamin’s argument develops, it becomes clear that for him, emancipation from fascism will in part proceed from a retelling of history – from brushing history “against the grain”. The point is that the fascists told a version of history that presented themselves as the vector of progress. But a more thorough telling of history, that included the experiences of the oppressed, such as Jewish people, would reveal the fallacious nature of fascist history.</p>
<p>This again has great resonances with our current political battles. Today the epithet “fascist” <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/8/25/16189064/protests-george-floyd-antifa-president-trump">is thrown around all too easily</a>. And while there is much to be improved in our liberal democracies, we would do well to remember, when criticising, or even denouncing them, that Benjamin’s arguments were developed in relation to genuine, genocidal fascism.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-donald-trump-is-not-a-fascist-52679">No, Donald Trump is not a fascist …</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Benjamin, to his immense credit, knew that all things can be corrupted (even Marxism) – it is this awareness that is so often lacking in today’s polarised political discussions.</p>
<p>He writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I fear that today too many play at battling fascism, believing elements of our flawed, liberal democracies to be equivalent to older fascist regimes. But it is this bourgeois conformism – this pseudo-progressivism – that threatens the very traditions and institutions that have helped preserve us against Fascism, whether this be the Western canon, a strong regard for history, free speech, or the rule of law.</p>
<h2>The Task of the Translator (1923)</h2>
<p>We often use language to provide prosaic information, such as the time a bus leaves. However, in art, language becomes the bearer of meanings that are more vivid but also more elusive. Shakespeare, in Sonnet 18, renders “You will live on in my words”, as “Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade / When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.” </p>
<p>But then there is translation. How would someone translate Shakespeare’s lofty rendering? Benjamin, in this essay, considers such questions.</p>
<p>He writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But do we not generally regard as the essential substance of a literary work what it contains in addition to information […] – the unfathomable, the mysterious, the ‘poetic,’ something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet?</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-shakespeares-sonnets-an-honest-account-of-love-and-a-surprising-portal-to-the-man-himself-156964">Guide to the classics: Shakespeare’s sonnets — an honest account of love and a surprising portal to the man himself</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In pondering such issues, Benjamin feels his way towards a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms">Platonic</a> “language of truth” – i.e. the meaning that a work ultimately embodies beyond the words. Benjamin writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These sentiments help us probe the mystery of why art itself even exists – why art has such an effect on us. The art that stands the test of time, and that is honoured by being translated, is, arguably, the bearer of something eternal that lies both within and beyond language.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Q Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his essays, Walter Benjamin sought to understand the nature of modernity. He drew on Marxism but was not contained by it, ranging across literature, art, popular culture, even Jewish mysticism.Jamie Q Roberts, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2172622023-12-03T19:15:54Z2023-12-03T19:15:54ZLydia Davis’ amusing, insightful stories address the estrangements of everyday life – and resist the hollowing of language<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562615/original/file-20231130-27-k1j3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C14%2C2500%2C1646&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeffrey Czum/Pexels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lydia Davis is known for her minimalist fiction – “economy, precision and originality” is how the author Ali Smith once described her style. Her shortest story, Index Entry, amounts to just four words: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Christian, I’m not a. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Davis’ latest book <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Lydia-Davis-Our-Strangers-9781805301899/">Our Strangers</a> is a pageant of quirky observations, dialogue-driven vignettes and gnomic flashes of insight. Among the shortest stories is Overheard on the Train: Two Old Ladies Agree, which at seven words is even shorter than its title:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Everything gets worse.”</p>
<p>“Does anything get better?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Stripped down to the barest narrative elements of character and event, Davis’ flash fiction requires the reader to actively engage in the production of meaning. We are forced to fill in the blanks to find some sense of resolution or satisfaction. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Our Strangers – Lydia Davis (Canongate)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The stories in Our Strangers magnify minor conflicts during train and plane commutes, on phone calls with telemarketers, and in online forums. Often these banal scenarios provide subtle but convenient means of reflecting on bigger issues, such as the prospect of death, marriage breakdown, regrets about what we have said, and the effects of capitalism and technology on art, communication and politics. </p>
<p>Our Strangers is an assorted meditation on these and many other contradictions and absurdities of postmodern life. What unites Davis’ disparate stories are the startling moments of misrecognition, misremembrance and miscommunication that intrude on everyday life. </p>
<p>Sometimes, what results is funny. Some of the vignettes read like your standard Larry David scenario, with their combination of bad timing, presumed slights blown out of proportion, and a stubborn refusal to let little things go. </p>
<p>In one story, a woman on a train asks a young couple to mind her bag while she uses the restroom, but in an impulsive moment decides to enlist a more respectable-looking man to watch the couple. The drama escalates when he loudly refuses and the couple discover her treachery. </p>
<p>Many of Davis’ narrators feel alienated from and irritated by strangers going about their daily business. In Those Two Loud Women, Davis taps into the pervasive annoyance when others do not respect our expectations of decorum in public spaces:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those two loud women – if they’re going to talk so constantly near me on the train, they could at least have an interesting conversation, one that I would like to overhear!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At times, the futility approaches Beckett-like absurdity. Characters become almost as irrationally irked by conversations with members of their own families. In several stories entitled Marriage Moment of Annoyance, cracks in otherwise functional relationships appear in the most routine interactions: deciding what to have for dinner; asking who was on the phone. One such story of marital annoyance reads, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[Mumble, mumble].”</p>
<p>“I can’t hear you.”</p>
<p>“Do you want to hear me?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She was trying to explain something to him.</p>
<p>What she said was confusing, contradictory, and a little incoherent.</p>
<p>“You’re like that <em>insurance document</em>!” he said to her.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Davis exalts these confused moments in which the people closest to us become strange and unknowable. At other times, her register shifts, in quick succession, from quirky humour to heartfelt reminiscences and sobering earnestness. Quietly reminiscent of <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-dickinson">Emily Dickinson’s</a> lyric poetry, the final story When We Are Dead and Gone reflects on the frontier between life and death:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When we are dead and gone, </p>
<p>it might be comforting </p>
<p>to hear the quick knock on the door </p>
<p>and the voice from the far side saying, </p>
<p>“Hóusekéeping!” </p>
<p>though we won’t be able to open the door.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This and other pieces blur the presumed borders between prose and poetry, while reflecting on their part in a storied literary tradition. One story evokes the “condensery” of thoughts and images of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism.">Objectivist</a> poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lorine-niedecker">Lorine Niedecker</a>. Struggling to recall someone she has seen on the train so she can write about him – “That obnoxious man!” – the narrator is suddenly struck by a similar phrase from an untitled Niedecker poem, which begins “The museum man…”. </p>
<p>This sets off a chain of questioning. Did her own phrase make her think of the poem? Or could it be that it “worked both ways: I began the story with those words because somewhere in my memory, though I didn’t know it, was the Niedecker poem”. </p>
<p>The narrator then rewrites her observations in the style of the Niedecker poem. A story that begins as one thing – an ordinary memory – becomes something more extraordinary: a reflection on craft, and the struggle between innovation and tradition. </p>
<p>Other authors alluded to in Our Strangers include Henry James, Franz Kafka, Ezra Pound (and his musician mistress Olga Rudge), Samuel Beckett and William Shakespeare. Several stories dwell on the six degrees of separation that hypothetically connect ordinary people to such extraordinary characters. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562588/original/file-20231130-19-l8er5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562588/original/file-20231130-19-l8er5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562588/original/file-20231130-19-l8er5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562588/original/file-20231130-19-l8er5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562588/original/file-20231130-19-l8er5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562588/original/file-20231130-19-l8er5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562588/original/file-20231130-19-l8er5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562588/original/file-20231130-19-l8er5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Samuel Beckett (1977).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Beckett,_Pic,_1_(cropped).jpg">Roger Pic/Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>These numbered stories, titled Claim to Fame, centre on marginal figures whose lives orbit well-known individuals, such as Marx’s brilliant daughter <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/11/eleanor-marx-life-review-spirited-biography-socialist-karl-marx-daughter">Eleanor “Tussy” Marx</a>: a socialist editor, journalist, and translator, who, like Davis, translated Flaubert’s Madame Bovary into English. </p>
<p>We are introduced not to the famous burlesque dancer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gypsy-Rose-Lee">Gypsy Rose Lee</a>, but to her unknown sister, apparently remembered as an actress by her own community. These sideways perspectives shift our collective memories of these famous historical characters, who become somehow more and less familiar to us.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-candy-house-jennifer-egan-delivers-an-inventive-novel-for-a-digital-age-181151">In The Candy House, Jennifer Egan delivers an inventive novel for a digital age</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Optimism of the will</h2>
<p>Our Strangers also reflects Davis’ broader concerns about literature’s place in today’s political economy of words. This is not least because it opens with a statement on the importance of independent bookselling in an age of monopolistic practices. The book, the publisher advises, “is available for sale only at physical bookshops, Bookshop.org, and selected online independent retailers”. </p>
<p>Davis “hopes this decision will stand as a sign of her solidarity with independent booksellers and encourage further conversation about the vital importance of a diverse publishing ecosystem”. She feels “corporations should [not] have as much control over our lives as they do”. </p>
<p>She is not alone. She joins a growing group of authors who are seeking ways to resist the corporations that monitor, influence and commoditise what we read. Dave Eggers similarly refused to allow Amazon to sell the first run of his novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-every-9780241993644">The Every</a> (2021), about the perils of big-tech monopolies. Louise Erdrich’s <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/louise-erdrich/the-sentence-shortlisted-for-the-women-s-prize-for-fiction-2022">The Sentence</a> (2021), another COVID-era publication about what it means to be restored by books, also opens with a plea for US readers to support independent bookstores, such as <a href="https://birchbarkbooks.com/pages/our-story">Birchbark Books</a>: a “locus” for “literate Indigenous people who have survived over half a millennium on this continent”. </p>
<p>The Italian Marxist theorist <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gramsci/">Antonio Gramsci</a> would conceptualise the root of these concerns as “cultural hegemony”: the ways in which those in power rule not only by controlling the economy, law and politics, but by governing the ideas of an age through the regulation of cultural production. This situation has only escalated since the beginning of the pandemic. While independent booksellers navigated the challenges of lockdowns, Amazon’s profits rose astronomically. That trend has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/26/amazon-quarter-profits-revenue-increase">not declined</a>.</p>
<p>Our Strangers is not a political manifesto. Davis does not write openly about issues that concern her. Rather, she chooses to “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/27/lydia-davis-i-write-it-the-way-i-want-to-write-it">let the preoccupation come out indirectly</a>”. In the story Gramsci, for example, a man overhears his wife discussing the theorist with a friend on the phone, making a note of the credo Gramsci penned in 1929, while imprisoned by the <em>Fascisti</em>: “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” </p>
<p>Although the wife later explains who Gramsci is, the husband initially worries it is an expensive Italian designer she wishes to splurge on, because they “don’t often use the word <em>Marxist</em> in their home”. </p>
<p>The political enters Davis’s collection through such unexpected flashes. Insights are gained through dry humour and ironies produced by misunderstandings and things left unsaid. While Our Strangers depicts deeply personal scenarios, the stories come together as an incisive snapshot of our present moment. The rifts that have opened up in US society since 2016, and deepened during the pandemic, provide the context for these meditations on miscommunication and disconnection. </p>
<p>Davis’ narrators use writing to try to take personal stands against the “wastefulness” of corporations, blasting apart the hypocrisy of their rhetoric. Letter to the U.S. Postal Service Concerning a Poster takes the form of a complaint about a poster for Styrofoam peanuts “co-sponsored by an internet auction service”. The advertisement describes sending parcels wrapped in synthetic materials destined to become landfill as “a kind of love”. </p>
<p>The narrator argues that “people shipping items that have been purchased through an internet auction are strangers to people buying these items, and the transaction is purely commercial”. The letter indicts the government service for selling out to large corporations, and in the process encouraging “the sort of” social and environmental “wastefulness of which our society is already sufficiently guilty.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562347/original/file-20231129-28-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562347/original/file-20231129-28-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562347/original/file-20231129-28-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562347/original/file-20231129-28-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562347/original/file-20231129-28-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562347/original/file-20231129-28-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562347/original/file-20231129-28-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562347/original/file-20231129-28-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>The complaints of Davis’ characters often come across as whimsically self-indulgent, naive and hypocritical. One writes a complaint letter to the eco-friendly corporation Who Gives a Crap, praising their charity contributions, while criticising their “attitude of brutal indifference that is all too actually pervasive in the times we are living in” by using language that might offend the neighbours when their boxes arrive on a customer’s doorstep. </p>
<p>Davis’ narrators can seem to be naive or lacking in self-awareness, but the stories are attempting to address the challenge of what Davis <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/27/lydia-davis-i-write-it-the-way-i-want-to-write-it">in one interview</a> suggested was the most important issue facing the contemporary writer and us all: the climate crisis. What can the individual writer do to make a difference, to effect meaningful change, when corporations are not held accountable? </p>
<p>Many of Davis’ characters struggle to retain their political and moral values, while succumbing to the trappings of convenience and complacency. They also yearn for meaningful connections in a digitally networked social landscape that feels paradoxically disconnecting. </p>
<p>The collection’s title suggests the term estrangement, derived from the Latin <em>extraneare</em>: “to treat as a stranger”. Marx, namedropped in one story, saw alienation as the result of “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/alienation/index.htm">estranged labor</a>”, which reduced people to commodities and social relations to mere exchanges, alienating us from our work, one another and ourselves. </p>
<p>This seems to be an implicit concern of stories such as A Woman Offering Magazines, in which the narrator reflects on her quarrel with a woman selling magazine subscriptions over the phone, “who in the end did not seem like a real woman, or even a real human being”. They are unable to regard each other as real humans because they are locked in an awkward transaction: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I gave her a small bit of my humanity and she annihilated it suddenly, in a lighting bolt […] not because she was angry […] I was no longer useful to her. In fact, we did not really quarrel. And, really, there was no “we”. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>What does capitalism do to our ability to connect with other people? It hollows out our words, Davis suggests. It reduces language to a mere transaction and people to strangers. All the while, corporations try to sell us the idea that their services will bring us the opposite: unlimited connection. </p>
<p>One takeaway message from Our Strangers seems to be that literature serves its purpose when it connects us with the community of humanity. At its best, literature provides an outlet for the pessimist to observe and exalt the ordinary, to read and know other people, to embrace them with all their oddities, flaws and predictabilities. </p>
<p>Above all, literature can strengthen the pessimist’s will and optimism, so that we can encounter our fellow strangers as more than their exchange values. This is not the kind of connection Amazon is designed to facilitate, nor the kind of community you sign up to on Facebook, a point Davis comically makes in Pardon the Intrusion, which is formatted like the forum messages posted on a local online marketplace. </p>
<p>The standout title story – among the longer, more allegorical inclusions – hones in on the interpersonal volatility that can arise when unfamiliar people live in proximity to one another. It suggests that, with time, those neighbours one might resent and regard as enemies can “become a sort of family”, bound together by a sense of familiarity and shared experiences that rise above presumed differences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tamlyn Avery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What does capitalism do to our ability to connect with other people? Lydia Davis’ stories suggest it hollows out our words – but that the exaltation of the ordinary can connect us.Tamlyn Avery, Lecturer in American Studies, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2139922023-11-08T19:10:37Z2023-11-08T19:10:37ZIs capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it<p><a href="https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/">Yanis Varoufakis</a> grew up during the Greek dictatorship of 1967-1974. He later became an economics professor and was briefly Greek finance minister in 2015.</p>
<p>His late father, a chemical engineer in a steel plant, instilled in his son a critical appreciation of how technology drives social change. He also instilled him with a belief that capitalism and genuine freedom were antithetical – a leftist politics that made his father a political prisoner for several years during the “junta”, as they called it.</p>
<p>In 1993, when he first got the internet, Varoufakis’s father posed a “killer question” to his son: “now computers speak to each other, will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its Achilles heel?” </p>
<p>Varoufakis has been mulling it over ever since. </p>
<p>Though, sadly, it is now too late to explain to his father in person, Varoufakis’s new book <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/technofeudalism-9781847927286">Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism</a> answers the question in the form of an extended reflection addressed to his father.</p>
<p>“Achilles heel” was on the right track. In his striking response, Varoufakis argues that we no longer live in a capitalist society; capitalism has morphed into a “technologically advanced form of feudalism”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism – Yanis Varoufakis (Bodley Head)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Rent over profit</h2>
<p>Traditional capitalists are people who can use capital – defined as “anything that can be used to produce saleable goods” (such as factories, machinery, raw materials, money) – to coerce workers and generate income in the form of profits. Such capitalists are clearly still flourishing, but Varoufakis argues they are not driving the economy in the way they used to. </p>
<p>“In the early 19th century,” <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/techno-feudalism-replacing-market-capitalism-by-yanis-varoufakis-2021-06">he writes</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>many feudal relations remained intact, but capitalist relations had begun to dominate. Today, capitalist relations remain intact, but techno-feudalist relations have begun to overtake them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Traditional capitalists, he proposes, have become “vassal capitalists”. They are subordinate and dependent on a new breed of “lords” – the Big Tech companies – who generate enormous wealth via new digital platforms. A new form of algorithmic capital has evolved – what Varoufakis calls “cloud capital” – and it has displaced “capitalism’s two pillars: markets and profits”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553923/original/file-20231016-22-yg3ynp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553923/original/file-20231016-22-yg3ynp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553923/original/file-20231016-22-yg3ynp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553923/original/file-20231016-22-yg3ynp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553923/original/file-20231016-22-yg3ynp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553923/original/file-20231016-22-yg3ynp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553923/original/file-20231016-22-yg3ynp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553923/original/file-20231016-22-yg3ynp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Markets have been “replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets”. The moment you enter amazon.com “you exit capitalism” and enter something that resembles a “feudal fief”: a digital world belonging to one man and his algorithm, which determines what products you will see and what products you won’t see. </p>
<p>If you are a seller, the platform will determine how you can sell and which customers you can approach. The terms in which you interact, share information and trade are dictated by an “algo” that “works for [Jeff Bezos’] bottom line”. </p>
<p>The capitalists who rely on this mode of selling are granted access to the digital estate by its virtual landowners, the Big Tech companies. And if “vassal capitalists” don’t abide by the laws of the estate, they are kicked out – removed from Apple’s App Store or Google’s search index – with disastrous consequences for their business. </p>
<p>Access to the “digital fief” comes at the cost of exorbitant rents. Varoufakis notes that many third-party developers on the Apple store, for example, pay 30% “on all their revenues”, while Amazon charges its sellers “35% of revenues”. This, he argues, is like a medieval feudal lord sending round the sheriff to collect a large chunk of his serfs’ produce because he owns the estate and everything within it.</p>
<p>This is not extracting profit through the production or provision of goods and services, as these platforms are not a “service” in the sense in which the term is used in economics. They are extracting rents in the form of the huge cuts they take from the capitalists on their platforms.</p>
<p>There is “no disinterested invisible hand of the market” here. The Big Tech platforms are exempted from free-market competition. Their owners – “cloudalists” – increase their wealth and power at a dizzying pace with each click, exploiting a new form of rent-seeking made possible by the new algorithmically structured digital platforms. Parasitic on capitalist production, they are now dominating it. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yanis-varoufakis-from-accidental-economist-to-finance-minister-36827">Yanis Varoufakis: from accidental economist to finance minister</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Cloud serfs</h2>
<p>But something even more transformative has happened, Varoufakis argues.</p>
<p>Even though most of us are regularly interacting with capitalists and earning wages via our labour, now, for the first time in history, all of us contribute to “the wealth and power of the new ruling class” through our “unpaid labour”. </p>
<p>Every time we use our cloud-linked devices – smartphones, laptops, Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri – we replenish the capital of the Big Tech cloudalists. This in turn increases their capacity to generate more wealth. How? We train their algorithms, which train us, to train them, and so on, in a feedback loop whose goal is to shape our desires and behaviour. They are “selling things to us while selling our attention to others”. </p>
<p>This interaction, Varoufakis insists, is not taking place as any kind of market exchange, such as wages being paid by a capitalist to a group of workers. In this interaction, we are all high-tech “cloud serfs”. </p>
<p>The new advertising men of the postwar world, portrayed in the series Mad Men (Yanis is clearly a fan), thought television was amazing because of its power to deliver audiences to advertisers. They could innovate “attention-grabbing” ways of “manufacturing” consumer desires – and it was delivered free-to-air! </p>
<p>But, Varoufakis emphasises, the ad men of the previous century could never have imagined the development of something like Amazon’s Alexa: a digital network learning “at lightning speed”, via the input of millions of people, how to train us. It is shaping our desires and behaviours in a process of perpetual reinforcement. Our experience and reality are increasingly algorithmically curated. And due to the incredible ease and utility, the information is all freely given. </p>
<p>So the “cloud capital” we are generating for them all the time increases their capacity to generate yet more wealth, and thus increases their power – something we have only begun to realise. Approximately 80% of the income of traditional capitalist conglomerates go to salaries and wages, according to Varoufakis, while Big Tech’s workers, in contrast, collect “less than 1% of their firms’ revenues”.</p>
<h2>Quantitative easing</h2>
<p>So how did this dystopian turn happen without us really noticing the change? Varoufakis’s story is detailed, but he emphasises two main drivers.</p>
<p>First, the “internet commons” of Web 1.0 transformed into Web 2.0, privatised by American and Chinese Big Tech.</p>
<p>Second, the colossal sums of central bank money that were supposed to refloat our economies in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) – a process known as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-money-more-problems-the-quantitative-easing-quandary-9758">quantitative easing</a>” – were lent out to big business. Coupled with “austerity” economics for the many, this “murder[ed] investment” and led to what Varoufakis calls “gilded stagnation”. </p>
<p>Much of the central bank money, particularly following another round of quantitative easing during the COVID pandemic, made its way to the Big Tech companies. Their share prices soared to astronomical levels. </p>
<p>The “world of money” was decoupled from the “real economy” where most of us live and work. In an environment where profit became “optional”, loss-making Big Tech companies run by “intrepid and talented entrepreneurs” chose to build up their cloud capital. </p>
<p>So along with markets being steadily replaced by digital platforms, central bank money displaced private profits as the fuel that “fire[s] the global economy’s engine”. Intended by G7 central bankers and their presidents and prime ministers to “save capitalism”, it has unintentionally helped finance the emergence of a new form of capital (cloud capital) and a “new ruling class”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554466/original/file-20231018-23-rnfwr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554466/original/file-20231018-23-rnfwr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554466/original/file-20231018-23-rnfwr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554466/original/file-20231018-23-rnfwr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554466/original/file-20231018-23-rnfwr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554466/original/file-20231018-23-rnfwr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554466/original/file-20231018-23-rnfwr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554466/original/file-20231018-23-rnfwr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The ‘world of finance’, argues Yanis Varoufakis, has decoupled from the ‘real economy’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Markus Spiske/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>GFC: the turning point</h2>
<p>So why was the GFC such a pivotal point? Varoufakis has a lot to say. Here’s a brief sketch. (Bear with me!)</p>
<p>Crucial changes had taken place in our economies since the rise of large corporations in industry and banking, which grew ever bigger over the course of the 20th century, eventually becoming global in scale. </p>
<p>The Bretton Woods international financial system – designed to prevent the “greed-fuelled recklessness” that led to the 1929 crash, the Great Depression and a world war – was abolished in 1971. From the 1970s, economies were progressively deregulated and free-market policies were increasingly enthusiastically practised, leading to a new “financialised” version of capitalism.</p>
<p>This was facilitated by the suppression of workers’ wages and bargaining power. The weakened state was progressively captured by lobbyists for the interests of big business. And the hegemony of the US dollar in the global system led to a “tsunami” of dollars pouring back into US markets from Europe, Japan, and later China, “[enriching] America’s ruling class, despite its [large trade] deficit”. </p>
<p>By the new millennium, this had led to an orgy of speculation and, by 2007, the financiers, using “computer-generated complexity” to obscure the “gargantuan risks”, had “placed bets worth ten times more than humanity’s total income”.</p>
<p>The new version of capitalism was failing. But it had grown to such scale and in such a complex, integrated “globalised” way that the banks and insurance companies were “too big to fail”. Their collapse in 2008 would have taken down the US banking system, and the rest of the world with it. Their hubris was thus “rewarded with massive state bailouts”.</p>
<p>What <em>could</em> have happened, as in <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/Explainer_How_Sweden_Rescued_Banks_1990s/1379859.html">Sweden in the 1990s</a>, was to “kick out” the bankers, nationalise the banks, appoint new directors and, years later, sell them to new owners – thus saving the banks, but not the bankers.</p>
<p>What happened instead was that bankers, handed large bailouts, did not direct the money to where it was most needed. Neither punished nor chastened, they sent it straight to Wall Street. And there it stayed. Combined with the profits sent to Wall Street from the rest of the world, it eventually caused an “everything rally” that went on for over a decade. </p>
<p>This ultimately helped fuel the development of the cloud capital that has overtaken capitalism. And every time we use our devices, we contribute to its value. The more we transact via platforms, the further we move away from an economic system primarily driven by markets and profits, and the more power concentrates “in the hands of even fewer individuals” – a “tiny band of multi-billionaires residing mostly in California or Shanghai”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/greed-is-amoral-how-wall-street-supermen-cashed-in-on-pandemic-misery-and-chaos-207311">'Greed is amoral': how Wall Street supermen cashed in on pandemic misery and chaos</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A tech-driven economic revolution</h2>
<p>Varoufakis suggests his theory helps us better understand extreme wealth inequalities, the “atrophied democracies” and “poisoned politics” of the West, geopolitics (he interprets the United States and China as two rival “super cloud fiefs”), the stalling of the green energy revolution, and more.</p>
<p>For Varoufakis, we are not just living through a tech revolution, but a tech-driven economic revolution. He challenges us to come to terms with just what has happened to our economies – and our societies – in the era of Big Tech and Big Finance.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558188/original/file-20231107-19-nr1728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558188/original/file-20231107-19-nr1728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558188/original/file-20231107-19-nr1728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558188/original/file-20231107-19-nr1728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558188/original/file-20231107-19-nr1728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558188/original/file-20231107-19-nr1728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1175&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558188/original/file-20231107-19-nr1728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1175&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558188/original/file-20231107-19-nr1728.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1175&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The first decades of the 21st century have brought challenges that we are still struggling to come to grips with. One thing is for sure – we have no hope of improving things without properly understanding our predicament. </p>
<p>This book is a welcome contribution towards that task. A technofeudalist age, Varoufakis argues, is not inevitable. Despite the difficulties we face, we have the agency to reject “techno dystopia” and structure our institutions in ways that more meaningfully embody freedom and democracy.</p>
<p>Towards the end of Technofeudalism, Varoufakis canvasses some proposals, drawn from his earlier book <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/another-now-9781529110630">Another Now</a> (2020), for how to address these issues. These include ending the cloudalists faux “free service” model and replacing it with a universal micro-payment model, instituting a Bill of Digital Rights, and using digital technology to “democratise companies” (with decisions being taken collectively by “employee-shareholders”).</p>
<p>Varoufakis also proposes to “democratise money”. This plan would involve central banks issuing digital wallets, a universal basic income, reconfiguring “the central bank’s ledger” in the direction of a “common payment and savings system”, and abolishing the current capacity of private banks to “create money”.</p>
<p>The proposals are pretty radical, but I think Varoukais would say they are as radical as the times require them to be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Pollard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Traditional capitalists are still flourishing, but according to Yanis Varoufakis they are not driving the economy like they used to.Christopher Pollard, Tutor in Sociology and Philosophy, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2164742023-11-05T13:01:53Z2023-11-05T13:01:53ZGrain as a weapon: Russia-Ukraine war reveals how capitalism fuels global hunger<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/grain-as-a-weapon-russia-ukraine-war-reveals-how-capitalism-fuels-global-hunger" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>International fears about the <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/how-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-has-further-aggravated-the-global-food-crisis/">impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on an existing global food crisis</a> appear to have faded in the seven months since <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-grain-food-security-ba7f9146b745337a1948a964cb30331c">Russia pulled out of a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain to world markets.</a></p>
<p>Such complacency is misplaced and dangerous. The risk of worsening food insecurity through the weaponization of grain continues. It’s troubling that such a risk exists at all, given how blocking access to a basic food staple can devastate innocent people and those with no connection to the conflict.</p>
<p>The idea that access to food and other basic commodities can be cut off to serve the strategic aims of a country at war is among the most concerning contradictions of modern capitalist political economy. Yet it’s barely even questioned in most policy discussions.</p>
<p>Precarity in food supplies has not dissipated despite the relative stabilization of grain exports and prices. As respected Black Sea agriculture expert Andrey Sizov argues: <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90566">“The calm on the grain exports market is deceptive</a>.” The risk is emanating from many sources. </p>
<h2>Targeting food vessels</h2>
<p>For one, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hits-ukraines-grain-fourth-day-practises-seizing-ships-black-sea-2023-07-21/">Russia has placed food vessels to and from Ukraine on its list of potential targets</a>, and <a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/ukraine-warns-ships-heading-to-russia-ports-risk-attack-1.1948329">Ukraine has retaliated by warning about similarly attacking the Crimea bridge</a> connecting Russian shipping straits to key ports. </p>
<p>There is also the continuing risk of Russia deliberately slowing inspections or restricting exports. </p>
<p>Lastly, <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=107264">global grain prices have decreased in recent months</a>, due in no small part to speculation and hedging in financial markets. </p>
<p>The short selling of grain <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/albanian-wheat-farmers-struggle-with-selling-price-bad-weather/">hurts farmers in Albania</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/25/ukraine-grain-poland-election/">Poland</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/world/europe/ukraine-grain-deal-romania.html">Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia</a>, in addition to contributing to price fluctuations that affect countries already struggling with food insecurity.</p>
<p>This illuminates a wider fundamental problem with commodified food systems and with neoliberal capitalism’s logic of financialization more broadly.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-neoliberalism-a-political-scientist-explains-the-use-and-evolution-of-the-term-184711">What is neoliberalism? A political scientist explains the use and evolution of the term</a>
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<p>Most commentators on food security have called for an end to threats of grain disruption, for the revival of the grain deal or for commitments to new agreements. </p>
<p>Others have pushed for a more controlled <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2022.100662">approach of judiciously managing wheat stocks</a>. Along similar lines, a team of food systems and security researchers has collaborated on establishing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2022.06.008">recommended research priorities for tackling food security during extreme events</a>.</p>
<p>These suggestions, however, are governance approaches that remain embedded in existing systems of political economy.</p>
<h2>Flawed logic</h2>
<p>More durable solutions may lie in addressing what gave rise to our shaky and unjust commodity systems in the first place.</p>
<p>At a basic level, the promise of our supply-and-demand capitalism is that those who want a good or service are willing to pay more for it. But that’s illogical, because those who want or need goods the most may not be able to pay top dollar for them.</p>
<p>The result of this flawed logic has been that even the threat of disruptions to grain supply have driven prices high and placed populations in countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia at risk of hunger. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.2753/IJP0891-1916420401">financialization</a> of everything, including basic needs, is just one mechanism of neoliberal capitalism, and it reveals the dangers of turning basic needs into commodities.</p>
<p>Since the war in Ukraine, <a href="https://www.ifpri.org/blog/assessing-tight-global-wheat-stocks-and-their-role-price-volatility">implied price volatility for wheat has peaked</a> beyond what we saw during the <a href="https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/high-food-price-crisis">2008 global food price crisis</a>.</p>
<p>Financialization leads to speculation and hedging that triggers price volatility in international grain markets. </p>
<p>Speculation multiplies the risk to food accessibility because the mere perception of risk in financial hubs like New York and London can cascade into very real food shortages for millions. That, in turn, can spawn other crises, from violent social conflict to mass displacement.</p>
<p>Throughout the Russia-Ukraine war, <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4518088">wheat has provided hedging benefits</a> to investors. The <a href="https://unctad.org/podcast/prices-and-profits-commodity-speculation-making-global-food-crisis-worse">United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has recognized</a> that this has exacerbated the current global food crisis.</p>
<h2>Speculation underpins food insecurity</h2>
<p>Hopeful discussions and <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/666714">research by the G24 group of nations</a> occurred during the 2008 crisis and focused on the role of financial market speculation in creating food insecurity. </p>
<p>These conversations are urgently needed again to further examine the underlying influences of capitalism on food insecurity. </p>
<p>The newly released <a href="https://unctad.org/publication/trade-and-development-report-2023">UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 2023</a> has again raised concerns over financial speculation and hedging. The report directly links food insecurity to corporate profiteering made possible by financial speculation in commodity markets.</p>
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<p>But it failed to call into question the underlying political-economic organization of neoliberal capitalism, which has encouraged the use of critical and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/09/14/oil-food-crisis-price-spike-global-russia-putin-ukraine-war/">life-sustaining commodities as geopolitical pawns</a>. </p>
<p>A more forward-looking and sustainable solution would be to decommodify basic needs altogether.</p>
<p>Decommodification is an attainable aim, but to achieve it requires a critical examination of the wider political economy. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00933-5">Research is demonstrating</a> how basic needs, like food, can have both stable and sustainable supply. These discussions on alternatives to neoliberal capitalism are beginning to happen in <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_STU(2023)747108">prominent policy arenas</a>.</p>
<p>The war in Ukraine’s impact on food insecurity is critical, of course, but there is more to the picture. The main problem is that capitalism allows food and other basic needs to become precarious commodities.</p>
<p>The current <a href="https://www.wfp.org/publications/war-ukraine-drives-global-food-crisis">global food crisis may be triggered by war</a>, but neoliberal capitalism is the fuel.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alicja Paulina Krubnik receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>The Ukraine war’s impact on food insecurity is critical, but there is more to the picture. The main problem is that capitalism allows food and other basic needs to become precarious commodities.Alicja Paulina Krubnik, PhD Candidate, Political Science, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102702023-09-18T20:01:00Z2023-09-18T20:01:00ZGlobal corporate power is ‘out of control’, but reports of democracy’s death are greatly exaggerated<p>The past 40 years have seen massive expansion of the dominance of large corporations in the global economy. A wave of neoliberal reforms spread internationally from the 1980s with the promise that deregulated markets would unleash the animal spirits of private enterprise, bringing a new era of growth and prosperity. </p>
<p>Corporations were touted as the heroes of the neoliberal dream, casting off the shackles of staid state bureaucracy as they leapt forward into a future where there was no alternative to unfettered global capitalism. </p>
<p>So what happened?</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy – Claire Provost and Matt Kennard (Bloomsbury)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>The dream of popular capitalism</h2>
<p>In the late 1970s, <a href="https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103336">Margaret Thatcher</a> championed “popular capitalism” as a means to deliver “renewed material prosperity, […] individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society”. </p>
<p>Ronald Reagan promised that cutting the taxes of corporations and the wealthy would create a new era of economic prosperity for all. This was dubbed “<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/01/23/woke-capitalism-new-trickle-down-economics">trickle-down economics</a>”.</p>
<p>As leaders in the 1980s of the United Kingdom and United States, respectively, Thatcher and Reagan were harbingers of major changes to the global economic order. By 1989, what came to be known as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/Washington-consensus">Washington Consensus</a> was firmly established as the dominant policy position of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This prompted a wave of structural reforms to economies across the developing world, lest they lose access to IMF dollars. </p>
<p>The “consensus”, for rich and poor nations alike, was that privatisation of state enterprises, liberalisation of markets, corporate deregulation, reduced taxation and the general withdrawal of government from economic affairs were the only ways to secure global economic growth.</p>
<h2>A dream that did not come true</h2>
<p>Journalists Claire Provost and Matt Kennard’s <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/silent-coup-9781350269989/">Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy</a> charts what has become of the corporate-led global prosperity that was promised in the 1980s. </p>
<p>Their assessment is grim and hopeless. Instead of shared progress arriving on the wings of an ever-empowered capitalism, what we got was a massive grab for power and money by the corporations that were supposed to save the world. </p>
<p>The book asserts that corporations have staged nothing less than a political <em>coup d’état</em>: a deliberate and successful attempt to usurp the power of nation states and establish themselves as rulers of the world. By its own account, Silent Coup provides a </p>
<blockquote>
<p>guide to the rise of supranational corporate empires that now dictate how resources are allocated, how territories are governed, how justice is defined and who’s safe. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Provost and Kennard chart four ways this corporate political revolution has been achieved. These involve the international legal system, the international aid and development system, the corporate acquisition of territory, and the growth of private corporate armies. It all amounts to an undermining of democracy by ever-growing corporate empires. </p>
<p>The first part of Silent Coup, “Corporate Justice”, examines the international treaties that have been established across the world by countries wishing to increase corporate foreign investment. These treaties give corporations legal authority to sue nation states in <a href="https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/09/17/development-vs-profit-exploring-the-controversial-realm-of-investor-state-dispute-settlement/">international tribunals if their investments are jeopardised</a>. </p>
<p>The book illustrates the power shift this entails with precisely documented examples from around the globe, from El Salvador to South Africa to Germany.
In El Salvador, for example, the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim <a href="https://investmentpolicy.unctad.org/investment-dispute-settlement/cases/356/pac-rim-v-el-salvador">sued the government</a> – unsuccessfully, in the end – for blocking it from opening a particular gold mine. Pacific Rim claimed the government’s actions, while legal, caused it to have lost “future profits”. </p>
<p>Provost and Kennard portray the system as being “out of control”. Investor trade arbitrations have turned the tables of power. The popular sovereignty of democratic nations, they argue, has been ceded to the private economic interest of the world’s corporations. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548689/original/file-20230917-17-pm6pat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548689/original/file-20230917-17-pm6pat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548689/original/file-20230917-17-pm6pat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548689/original/file-20230917-17-pm6pat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548689/original/file-20230917-17-pm6pat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548689/original/file-20230917-17-pm6pat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548689/original/file-20230917-17-pm6pat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548689/original/file-20230917-17-pm6pat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Silent Coup then delves into the domination of international aid by large corporations. By way of example, Provost and Kennard report on the G8 initiative called <a href="https://www.feedthefuture.gov/the-new-alliance-for-food-security-and-nutrition/">New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition</a>, designed to reduce poverty and grow agriculture in Africa. In practice, this was implemented through changes to tax and agriculture laws designed to boost the profits of private agribusiness.</p>
<p>Government aid, in today’s world, is no longer positioned as reparation or generosity; wealthy countries now want a return on their investment. Projects that create trade and wealth opportunities for corporations are prioritised. This means, in effect, that aid is increasingly used to benefit big business as much as it ostensibly claims to be funding economic development. </p>
<p>A section on “Corporate Utopias” takes aim at <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/special-economic-zone">Special Economic Zones</a> established within countries to give corporations preferential tax rates and more relaxed regulations. Some of these zones are even exempt from labour laws and protections. </p>
<p>There are 3,500 such zones across the globe, from Myanmar and Shenzhen to Ireland and the UK, employing 66 million generally low-paid workers. Unfettered, union-free, government-backed worker exploitation, <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/features/special-economic-zones-corporate-utopia-capitalism.html">the authors argue</a>, runs rampant amid this epidemic of “sweatshop globalisation”.</p>
<p>The final section of Silent Coup, “Corporate Armies”, reports how corporations are engaging in military and police-like activities to protect their premises, transportation and logistics in places such as occupied Palestine, Columbia and Honduras. </p>
<p>One example discussed is fruit company Chiquita, which the US Department of Justice found <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/March/07_nsd_161.html">guilty of funding and arming known terrorists</a> to protect its presence in the banana-growing regions of Colombia. Elsewhere, corporations are making profits from running <a href="https://www.asyluminsight.com/private-contractors">immigration detention centres</a> and <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/private-prisons-in-the-united-states/">prisons</a>. </p>
<p>In today’s world, corporations control armed forces at a level hitherto the exclusive realm of nation-states. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/greed-is-amoral-how-wall-street-supermen-cashed-in-on-pandemic-misery-and-chaos-207311">'Greed is amoral': how Wall Street supermen cashed in on pandemic misery and chaos</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The horror of the new world order</h2>
<p>Silent Coup paints a horrifying picture of a new world order in which power has been ripped from the hands of sovereign governments and placed in the hands of private corporations. The investigative journalism that underpins the book is harrowing reading, even for people well versed in the exploitative machinations of corporations and the deleterious effect they can have on people, politics and planet. </p>
<p>Amid the intrigue and suspense that characterises the writing of this book, there is an unnerving and unspoken undercurrent. The book quivers with a feeling that there is no hope. The air of hopelessness starts with the subtitle: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy. It is over, the authors aver; democracy has been defeated. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548706/original/file-20230918-17-rfrffi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548706/original/file-20230918-17-rfrffi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548706/original/file-20230918-17-rfrffi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548706/original/file-20230918-17-rfrffi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548706/original/file-20230918-17-rfrffi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548706/original/file-20230918-17-rfrffi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548706/original/file-20230918-17-rfrffi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548706/original/file-20230918-17-rfrffi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Matt Kennard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/author/matt-kennard/">Bloomsbury Publishing</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Democracy is under attack, to be sure. But reports of its death are greatly exaggerated, if not irresponsible. That is not to say democracy is not wounded – Silent Coup provides meticulously researched and detailed case studies of just how out of control the political clout of corporations has become. But does that mean we give up hope in the promise of democracy under the guise of a dramatic clickbait headline? </p>
<p>This reviewer says no.</p>
<p>The drama of Silent Coup is, in many parts, unwarranted and misleading. This is not helped by the use of a first-person narrative that, throughout the book, characterises the authors as the protagonists. They are the ones who can reveal the secrets of the corporate revolution that has happened behind all of our backs. They are the fearless and intrepid journalists who have ventured into the big bad corporate world, returning with tales of their amazing adventures.</p>
<p>The rhetorical flair distracts from the real issues. What Provost and Kennard report is important, and reflects some of the most pressing political challenges of our time. But while their discoveries may have been revelations to them, these matters were hardly secrets and their journalistic exploits are not what is important. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548707/original/file-20230918-19-xm5lek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548707/original/file-20230918-19-xm5lek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548707/original/file-20230918-19-xm5lek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548707/original/file-20230918-19-xm5lek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548707/original/file-20230918-19-xm5lek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548707/original/file-20230918-19-xm5lek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548707/original/file-20230918-19-xm5lek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548707/original/file-20230918-19-xm5lek.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Claire Provost.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/author/claire-provost/">Bloomsbury Publishing</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The problem is not that nobody knows about the growing global corporatocracy; it is that nobody seems to have the will or ability to stop it. </p>
<p>It is only in the book’s epilogue that a glimmer of hope shines through. Provost and Kennard gesture to a few examples of people resisting corporate power in the name of democracy, but little detail is provided. Perhaps this will be a sequel.</p>
<p>Democracy still means something. It means a promise of equality, liberty and solidarity among citizens. It means retaining the primacy of popular sovereignty – the rule of the people – instead of political power residing with a minority class of plutocrats. It means believing in the possibility of shared prosperity.</p>
<p>It is only with hope that we can retain the political will to continue the democratic promise, and to retain and strengthen the practices, institutions and ways of life that enable that promise. Political change does not come from resigning ourselves to a fate beyond our control, but from daring to dream of a better future. This is where the book fails.</p>
<p>It is not too late. Don’t give up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210270/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Rhodes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Multinational corporations can dictate how resources are allocated, territories are governed, and justice is defined.Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2099902023-09-11T20:09:03Z2023-09-11T20:09:03ZIn Doppelganger, Naomi Klein says the world is broken: conspiracy theorists ‘get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right’<p>Idly googling myself some years ago, I came upon an unusually glowing reference to one of my academic papers. “Masterpiece is an overused word,” the reviewer wrote, “but this Proustian evocation is indeed a masterpiece.”</p>
<p>Something was amiss. My paper was good, but not <em>that</em> good. And there was nothing particularly Proustian about it either. Whatever exquisite sensibility I might possess was well hidden beneath a scholarly armour of logic, evidence and jargon.</p>
<p>Reading further resolved the puzzle. “Nicky Haslam has known everyone from Greta Garbo to Cole Porter to the Royal Family.” Curses! I had been confused with my namesake, the famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicky_Haslam">British interior designer</a> and scourge of vulgarity, and my paper with one of his books.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World – Naomi Klein (Allen Lane)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The experience of being confused with someone else is probably universal. Names and appearances are fallible markers of personal identity, especially as populations grow and we become exposed to a dizzying multitude of other people.</p>
<p>These confusions are usually trivial and droll, but sometimes they become sinister and destabilising. The idea that we have a double, someone who treads on the toes of our uniqueness, perhaps deliberately, can create deep anxieties and resentments.</p>
<h2>The two Naomis</h2>
<p>Such is the experience of <a href="https://naomiklein.org/">Naomi Klein</a>, Canadian author of a string of anti-capitalist blockbusters. <a href="https://naomiklein.org/no-logo/">No Logo</a> (1999) attacked corporate malfeasance, <a href="https://naomiklein.org/the-shock-doctrine/">The Shock Doctrine</a> (2007) catalogued the exploitation of disasters to roll out neoliberal policies, and 2019’s <a href="https://naomiklein.org/on-fire/">On Fire</a> marked her increasing focus on the climate crisis.</p>
<p>In her new book, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/doppelganger-9780241621318">Doppelganger</a>, Klein makes her experience of being confused with another high-profile author, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wolf">Naomi Wolf</a>, the stimulus for an extended meditation on the nature of doubles, mirror-worlds, and the political and personal challenges of threatened identities.</p>
<p>Along the way, Klein returns to several of the animating themes of her previous books. Capitalism is the ultimate cause of the dire societal challenges we face, she argues, and people on both sides of the political mirror – right-wing conspiracists and liberal critics alike – fail to recognise it because they are mired in individualist ways of thinking.</p>
<p>The backbone of Klein’s personal story is simple enough. “Other Naomi”, her “big-haired doppelganger”, is the American author of feminist bestseller <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-beauty-myth-9780099595748">The Beauty Myth</a> and was once a celebrated and very public figure on the broad left. Because Wolf was older and more established than Klein, being mistaken for her initially brought a frisson of celebrity. </p>
<p>That all changed when Wolf’s writing veered away from sexual liberation and female empowerment into <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/10/5/6909837/naomi-wolf-isis-ebola-scotland-conspiracy-theories">conspiracies about</a> Ebola, ISIS and (<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/162702/naomi-wolf-madness-feminist-icon-antivaxxer">most recently</a>) the COVID pandemic, complete with fear mongering about vaccines, mask mandates and impending tyranny. </p>
<p>Her transformation – or derailment, as Klein would have it – has seen her teaming up with far-right media personalities like <a href="https://theconversation.com/stephen-bannons-world-dangerous-minds-in-dangerous-times-100373">Steve Bannon</a> and issuing torrents of misinformation and paranoia.</p>
<p>Appalled at being confused with Wolf, Klein developed a dogged obsession. She followed Wolf’s social media, watched in horror her televised appearances, and pursued her down the rabbit hole – or through the looking glass – of conspiracist thinking. The intensity of Klein’s anti-crush and the tenacity of her pursuit seem to have surprised her, but it delivered insights into the nature of doubles and evil twins. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/seeing-double-the-origins-of-the-evil-twin-in-gothic-horror-and-hollywood-98196">Seeing double: the origins of the 'evil twin' in Gothic horror and Hollywood</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<h2>Doppelganger as ‘shadow self’</h2>
<p>Translated from the German, a doppelganger is literally a “double-goer” or “double-walker”: someone who eerily accompanies us as a kind of shadow-self. Literary doppelgangers tend to be uncanny presences, violent alter egos, wicked impersonators or tormentors who sometimes turn out to be figments of their victim’s madness. </p>
<p>To philosophers and psychoanalysts, doppelgangers illuminate the existential wobbliness that goes with having our sense of unique selfhood undermined. As Golyadkin tells his replica in Dostoevsky’s <a href="https://archive.org/details/threeshortnovels01dost/page/n5/mode/2up">The Double</a>, “Either you or I, but both together we cannot be!”, not long before he is carted off to an asylum while his double blows mocking farewell kisses.</p>
<p>Klein’s response to other Naomi is similarly unsettled and goes beyond merely wishing to correct the record whenever she is misidentified. Klein feels her personal brand has been diluted, while acknowledging the irony of caring about her brand, given her fierce critique of corporate branding in No Logo (1999). </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Naomi Klein fiercely critiqued corporate branding in No Logo, which spawned a documentary.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Nearly a quarter of a century later, she argues that personal branding, amplified by the growing desire to curate a unique digital self, entrenches fixed and phony selves and stands in the way of forming alliances with others.</p>
<p>Despite admitting she cares too much about her own brand, Klein deals with Wolf’s encroachment head-on by attacking her new politics. She takes aim at the “Mirror World” that congealed around resistance to vaccine and mask mandates, a new coalition of far-right <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-divided-america-including-the-15-who-are-maga-republicans-splits-on-qanon-racism-and-armed-patrols-at-polling-places-193378">MAGA folk</a> and far-out health and wellness influencers and new-agers, united by a concern with body purity and a fondness for overheated rhetoric. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heather-rose-writes-with-raw-beauty-about-trauma-and-hardcore-spiritual-work-so-why-does-it-leave-me-cold-195425">Heather Rose writes with raw beauty about trauma and 'hardcore spiritual work' – so why does it leave me cold?</a>
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<h2>Calling out conspiracists</h2>
<p>Klein bristles at anti-vaxxers’ claims of a genocidal “hygiene dictatorship” and their appropriation of Holocaust imagery, “as if the Nazi atrocity of <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-biological-state-nazi-racial-hygiene-1933-1939">treating human beings as germs</a> and treating germs as germs was in any way the same thing”. </p>
<p>She also calls out bad-faith appropriation of civil rights discourse by white conspiracists, as when Wolf refers to one of her anti-mask protests as a <a href="https://time.com/3691383/woolworths-sit-in-history/">lunch-counter sit-in</a>, or when vaccination requirements are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-20/experts-insight-into-covid-vaccine-mandate-protests/100707434">described as</a> “medical apartheid”. </p>
<p>Klein also hears less-than-faint echoes of fascism and colonial callousness in arguments the pandemic was nature doing its work of thinning out the weak and infirm – and in the blind eye turned to disproportionate death rates among people of colour.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/mondays-medical-myth-the-mmr-vaccine-causes-autism-3739">Mistaken beliefs</a> linking vaccines and autism were a prequel to this dynamic, Klein suggests. In both cases, a health initiative takes the blame for troubling events: a diagnosis commonly taken as a tragedy in a society “that is very generous with diagnoses and awfully stingy with actual help” and a major economic and social disruption. A righteous hunt for villains ensues, heightened by the primal fear of shadowy, malevolent forces.</p>
<p>What might have driven Wolf into this parallel universe where Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are replaced by the far-right social media alternatives of Gettr, Rumble and Parler? Klein offers an equation: “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-types-of-narcissist-are-there-a-psychology-expert-sets-the-record-straight-207610">Narcissism</a> (Grandiosity) + <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-your-social-media-habit-is-probably-not-an-addiction-new-research-158888">Social media addiction</a> + <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-midlife-crisis-a-real-thing-105510">Midlife crisis</a> ÷ Public shaming = Right-wing meltdown”. (Though surely the ÷ should be an ×: shaming exacerbates rather than dampens meltdowns.) </p>
<p>Klein argues Wolf is simply chasing clout and “digital dopamine”, a chase hardly confined to one side of politics.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/white-supremacist-and-far-right-ideology-underpin-anti-vax-movements-172289">White supremacist and far right ideology underpin anti-vax movements</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Blame on both sides</h2>
<p>Klein’s denunciations of Wolf and her allies are full-throated, but she doesn’t see her own side as blameless. Progressives have abandoned some issues to conservatives and have been overly reactive rather than setting their own agenda. Centrists have failed to deliver action to match their fine words. </p>
<p>Citizens of developed societies have quietly denied the magnitude of our dependence on – and complicity with – global injustice.</p>
<p>What needs to happen, according to Klein, is for people to realise the true source of their problems. Conspiracy theorists are half right: they “get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right”. The feeling others are profiting from human misery and withholding the truth is justified, but the cause is not evil individuals – it’s capitalism itself. </p>
<p>Doppelganger argues that capitalist “<a href="https://theconversation.com/atlas-shrugged-ayn-rands-hero-burns-the-world-down-when-he-doesnt-get-his-way-her-fans-run-the-world-should-we-worry-192510">hyper-individualism</a>” is the root of many of our troubles, and a value held by conspiratorial rightists and liberals alike. It breeds a culture that sees all failings as personal and stands in the way of us uniting to act for the greater good. </p>
<p>The solution, Klein maintains, in a tone that becomes increasingly prophetic as the book progresses, is to think systemically about oppression and inequality, and to decentre ourselves. “There is an intimate relationship between our overinflated selves and our under-cared-for planet,” she writes. </p>
<p>Later chapters take up this challenge, in discussions of settler colonialism, antisemitism and the climate emergency. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-live-in-a-time-of-late-capitalism-but-what-does-that-mean-and-whats-so-late-about-it-191422">We live in a time of 'late capitalism'. But what does that mean? And what's so late about it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Doubling down too much</h2>
<p>Klein’s book is a compelling critique of polarising trends in American and global politics, constructed around a relatable personal narrative. Its anti-capitalist message and sometimes utopian faith in socialist solutions will not be universally embraced, of course. But Klein delivers it with a powerful and passionate voice.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546139/original/file-20230904-15-2ln6ly.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546139/original/file-20230904-15-2ln6ly.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546139/original/file-20230904-15-2ln6ly.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546139/original/file-20230904-15-2ln6ly.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546139/original/file-20230904-15-2ln6ly.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546139/original/file-20230904-15-2ln6ly.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546139/original/file-20230904-15-2ln6ly.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546139/original/file-20230904-15-2ln6ly.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>If Doppelganger has a weak point, it is in its organising idea, which strains under the load it is made to bear. The range of meanings “doppelganger” carries is extravagant, extending far beyond the realm of troublesome namesakes and lookalikes.</p>
<p>Our self-branding online selves are “an internal sort of doppelganger”. The ideal body we aspire to is a doppelganger, and so is the data footprint our online presence leaves behind, our “digital golems”. Thinking is a form of doubling, a “dialogue between me and myself”. </p>
<p>Stereotypes create doppelgangers by projecting images onto individuals: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>race, ethnicity, and gender create dangerous doubles that hover over whole categories of people – Savage. Terrorist. Thief. Whore. Property.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Children are doppelgangers of parents who fail to see them as autonomous beings. We have a second, doppelganger body that represents all the harms we cause others and our planet.</p>
<p>It’s not just individuals that have doppelgangers, but also societies, religions, nations and places. Pluralist society has a fascist doppelganger. Jews and Christians are each other’s doppelgangers. Israel is a doppelganger of antisemitic European nationalisms. New South Wales is the doppelganger of South Wales. Indeed, we all live in a “doppelganger culture. A culture crowded with various forms of doubling.”</p>
<p>Strangely, in all this multiplication of doubling, Klein has little to say about other pressing forms of duplication, such as artificial intelligences, <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-who-spread-deepfakes-think-their-lies-reveal-a-deeper-truth-119156">deepfakes</a> and identity theft. </p>
<p>Her use of the doppelganger concept is so fruitful, so capable of capturing any kind of similarity and difference, that it becomes almost empty. Doppelganger succeeds despite the occasionally laboured use of this metaphor, rather than because of it.</p>
<p>In the end, Klein finds some almost grudging sympathy for her doppelganger, acknowledging an act of political bravery (a <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/naomi-wolf-argues-that-what-really-is-at-stake-in-gaza-is-israel-s-soul">2014 stand</a> against Palestinian civilian casualties) and recalling an early starstruck meeting. Wolf is not a double of the haunting variety – she has apparently rebuffed Klein’s invitations for a public interview – but she has left her psychic mark and the reader is the better for it. </p>
<p>Ironically, being paired in this engrossing book leaves the two Naomis more conjoined than ever, like two magnets flipped from repulsion to a strange attraction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Naomi Klein uses her frequent confusion with ‘doppelganger’ Naomi Wolf to spark an exploration of doubles, mirror-worlds, and the gulf between left and right.Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2115752023-08-15T15:56:34Z2023-08-15T15:56:34ZAdults: how a sex play about boomers v millennials brings both together<p>Kieran Hurley’s new play <a href="https://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/event/adults-festival-23">Adults</a> brilliantly illuminates an intergenerational clash that should leave <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2008/06/25/baby-boomers-the-gloomiest-generation/">boomers</a> (born between 1945 and 1964) and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/">millennials</a> (born between 1981 and 1996) in the audience with a little more empathy for each other.</p>
<p>It all starts entertainingly when a strawberry milkshake bursts open in the face of Iain (Conleth Hill) just as he arrives early at the flat of thirtysomething Zara (Dani Heron). Zara is a sex worker who runs her business from home “collectively and ethically”.</p>
<p>Iain, in his 60s, married with two grown-up daughters, is completely out of his comfort zone and there to have sex with a young man: Zara’s business partner, Jay (Anders Hayward), who is running late.</p>
<p>As Iain wipes the pink goo from his face, Zara recognises him as her former teacher Mr Urquhart. And so Hurley sets up his character triangle. For the next 80 minutes, the audience has the pleasure of watching Zara, Iain and Jay argue with, blackmail, and eventually simply hold each other across the generational divide.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/29/millennials-struggling-is-it-fault-of-baby-boomers-intergenerational-fairness">spat</a> between boomers and millennials has been rumbling on for the last few years, pitting the former against their children’s/grandchildren’s generation who are viewed as whiny, lazy snowflakes with an overinflated sense of entitlement.</p>
<p>Conversely, millennials view boomers as the generation that took everything, ruined everything, and have left very little for those who came after. As journalist David Barnett has succinctly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/millenials-generation-x-baby-boomers-a7570326.html">pointed out</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Boomers live in the past and have ransomed the future. Millennials fear the future and are ignorant of the past.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Envy, resentment, misunderstanding</h2>
<p>Disappointed expectations and repressed resentment bubble up during Zara’s and Iain’s initial confrontation, which plays out in her small one-bedroom flat while she matter-of-factly turns her living space into a brothel, replete with dildo collection (set and costume design: Anna Orton).</p>
<p>Zara, a literature graduate now earning money through sex work, begrudges the older generation their safe careers and settled lifestyles, and resents her teacher for instilling in her the bogus belief she could do anything with her life. Iain, meanwhile, feels trapped and envies the younger generation their seeming freedom, abandon and sexual confidence.</p>
<p>Both are deliberately ignoring the fact that the object of their envy is a fantasy. Iain is oblivious to the fact that the carefreeness of the younger generation (the young men he watches in his videos) is largely performed for a capitalist market that values only these qualities.</p>
<p>Zara’s resentment, meanwhile, doesn’t take into account that the apparent safety of her teacher’s generation came at the expense of not pursuing other, maybe more exciting or fulfilling alternatives.</p>
<p>Their debate treads the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/29/millennials-struggling-is-it-fault-of-baby-boomers-intergenerational-fairness">familiar territory</a> of millennial precarity versus boomer affluence, but is nonetheless supremely entertaining. Spontaneous applause rewards Zara’s viciously eloquent takedown of Iain’s cherished memories of reading his kids Thomas the Tank Engine, which, according to Zara, is simply “pseudo-imperialist nostalgic colonial nonsense … some big nostalgic cry-wank for a lost idea of Britain”. </p>
<p>However, once Jay arrives, with his infant daughter screaming in the pram, the stakes are raised considerably. While Zara berates him for bringing his daughter to work, he insists that she owes him money, thus revealing her talk of an ethical and “non-hierarchical business practice” as hypocritical.</p>
<p>Jay needs money to secure shared custody of his daughter. And when the little one finally goes to sleep, he puts all his expertise into performing the willing, lascivious little “twink” to seduce the inhibited Iain and earn his money.</p>
<h2>Comedy and tragedy</h2>
<p>Hayward and Hill (who played Varys, Master of the Whisperers, in Game of Thrones) excel in this seduction scene that alternates beautifully between moments of physical comedy and verbal exchanges that reveal profound sadness. Hill’s Iain, a sexually inexperienced older man who has never explored his desires, gradually develops into a tentative, then enthusiastic punter who enjoys roleplay – only to revert to the condescending, middle-class teacher who judges Jay for how he earns his money and is scathing about his parenting.</p>
<p>Hayward’s Jay writhes seductively on the floor, performs the invested listener and works his literal butt off, but draws the line at being insulted. When he vindictively posts a compromising picture of Iain on Facebook, the secrets that Iain and Zara have kept from their families are revealed.</p>
<p>Roxana Silbert’s confident direction lets the play text breathe and leaves room for her actors to insert some well-timed physical comedy – Hill sliding/falling off various bits of furniture hits the spot every time. </p>
<p>In the end, Iain, shocked but also relieved that he has nothing more to lose, comes clean to his wife in the face of his very public outing. The humbled Zara acknowledges in yet another reference to children’s literature, this time <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-lorax/dr-seuss/9780007455935">The Lorax by Dr Seuss</a>, that she just might be a “Once-ler” too – meaning to “accept that the world you’re passing on is in a worse state than when you inherited it”.</p>
<p>Before the lights go out, we see Jay, the overwhelmed millennial father, lying on the bed holding the sobbing Iain, while offstage the voice of his crying baby clamours for attention to the coming generation.</p>
<p>With Adults, Hurley, a millennial author himself, seems to appeal to his own generation to let go of their rage, be more understanding of their elders, and accept that, one day, they too will to be blamed for the future. Because as it turns out, confirms Iain: “Everyone always grows up thinking it’s the end of the world.”</p>
<p><em>Adults is showing until August 27 at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann-Christine Simke is affiliated with the theatre company Stellar Quines. She is a member of the board for the company.</span></em></p>Kieran Hurley’s new play treads the familiar debate of millennial precarity versus boomer affluence with verve and insight.Ann-Christine Simke, Lecturer in Performance, University of the West of ScotlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2094272023-08-09T14:31:04Z2023-08-09T14:31:04ZInterest rates: the case for cutting them permanently to zero<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541544/original/file-20230807-27-xsmepo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>In 1937 the English economist Joan Robinson <a href="https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.13867/page/n265/mode/2up?view=theater">proposed that</a> “when capitalism is rightly understood, the rate of interest will be set at zero and the major evils of capitalism will disappear”. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Maynard-Keynes">John Maynard Keynes</a>, who had taught Robinson, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch16.htm">suggested something</a> similar a year earlier in slightly more qualified and technical terms, arguing that this would be “the most sensible way of gradually getting rid of many of the objectionable features of capitalism”.</p>
<p>Robinson and Keynes were writing during the great depression, when spending and investment were moribund and interest rates seemed like a stranglehold on the economy. Unlike the sort of <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/the-interest-rate-bank-rate#:%7E:text=21%20September%202023-,Official%20Bank%20Rate,-Official%20Bank%20Rate">temporary measure</a> we saw from 2009-21 when rates were close to zero, they believed interest rates should be set at zero permanently as a way to purge capitalism of its most objectionable and destabilising features. </p>
<p>This was a time when the Soviet Union was challenging the western model of prosperity. Indeed, Robinson’s argument was in response to a Marxist, proposing it would lead to “even better results than the revolutionist theory”. </p>
<p>With interest rates rising steeply in the past couple of years and capitalism <a href="https://iea.org.uk/publications/left-turn-aheadsurveying-attitudes-of-young-people-towards-capitalism-and-socialism/">deeply unpopular</a> among younger generations, it is worth returning to this idea. So what was the logic and how would it work?</p>
<h2>The rationale</h2>
<p>Inflation is sustained by consumers, businesses and governments spending in excess of the supply of goods and services. Central banks raise interest rates to reduce demand by discouraging borrowing and spending. This aims to restore equilibrium between supply and demand, and reduces inflationary pressure. </p>
<p>A major problem – setting aside the question of how well it works – is that this distributes the cost of curbing inflation very unevenly. A <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/02f151aa-40a0-4d07-8335-61d02aa6dc4e">recent report</a> by the Royal Bank of Canada said higher interest rates disproportionately hurt poorer and younger people, such as renters and first-time homebuyers. <a href="https://moneyzine.com/uk/resources/debt-statistics-uk/">Anyone borrowing</a> out of financial distress is likely to be in trouble with rising rates. </p>
<p>There are additional objections to positive interest rates. One relates to depleting resources. </p>
<p>Suppose I own a forest that regenerates at 2% per year and is worth £1 million in timber overall. I could log the forest sustainably, cutting down trees only in line with the speed of regeneration, which would earn me £20,000 a year. </p>
<p>But with interest rates at 5.25%, I would do better to cut down everything, invest my £1 million into bonds, and earn upwards of £52,500 in annual interest (I say upwards because the rate of interest on bonds is usually a little way above the central bank base rate). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541469/original/file-20230807-21-zpbybv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aerial view of a forest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541469/original/file-20230807-21-zpbybv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541469/original/file-20230807-21-zpbybv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541469/original/file-20230807-21-zpbybv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541469/original/file-20230807-21-zpbybv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541469/original/file-20230807-21-zpbybv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541469/original/file-20230807-21-zpbybv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541469/original/file-20230807-21-zpbybv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wooden thinking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aerial-top-view-summer-green-trees-1024452661">nblx</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>If the interest rate were zero, it would reduce my incentive to log the entire forest today. It’s true I could still cut it all down and earn a passive income in other ways, such as holding shares that pay good dividends. But that would involve slightly more risk, since dividends are not guaranteed, and the underlying shares might lose value. </p>
<p>In general, to quote a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/06/central-banks-interest-rate-hike-climate-crisis">recent op-ed</a>, central banks raising interest rates make it harder to fight the climate crisis. A permanent zero rate might also discourage wealthy people from parking their money in bonds to earn a passive guaranteed income rather than taking entrepreneurial risks. </p>
<h2>The fiscal alternative</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541470/original/file-20230807-26-d7b2lo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="JK Galbraith looking pensive" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541470/original/file-20230807-26-d7b2lo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541470/original/file-20230807-26-d7b2lo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541470/original/file-20230807-26-d7b2lo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541470/original/file-20230807-26-d7b2lo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541470/original/file-20230807-26-d7b2lo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541470/original/file-20230807-26-d7b2lo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541470/original/file-20230807-26-d7b2lo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">JK Galbraith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith#/media/File:JK_Galbraith_1962.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>If the interest rate were permanently zero, the government’s fiscal levers of taxation and spending would be the alternative means of controlling inflation. The economist John Kenneth Galbraith <a href="https://archive.org/details/economicspublicp0000galb">made the point</a> that using progressive taxes rather than interest rates to control spending would put the greatest costs of maintaining stable prices on those best placed to weather them.</p>
<p>Targeted consumption taxes, for instance on luxury goods or products with an needlessly high carbon footprint, could be used to ensure that the most socially undesirable forms of spending are the first to be reduced during inflation. Likewise, socially desirable forms of spending such as essential infrastructure would be the first to increase during recessions. </p>
<p>Such a system would require several other changes. There would always be a danger that the government would manipulate tax and spending to try and win an election rather than focusing on inflation. This was the main reason independent central banks were given control over interest rates in the first place. </p>
<p>We could prevent that by restricting the inflation-controlling levers to just a few types of tax and spending. We could then give an independent body oversight of these levers to make sure they were not exploited for electoral purposes.</p>
<p>At the same time, there is a risk that permanent zero rates might encourage commercial banks to lend more irresponsibly. There wasn’t a lot of evidence of this <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS?locations=GB">in the UK</a> when rates were close to zero in the 2010s. But we did see other economically hazardous activities such as companies borrowing cheaply to buy back their shares to drive up their prices. New regulatory frameworks could be introduced to prevent these kinds of activities. </p>
<p>Giving up control of the interest rate needn’t remove all central-bank control over lending. The “<a href="http://nyborg.ch/book/">open secret of central banks</a>” is that they also control lending through a <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/eligible-collateral">list of types of loans</a> that they are willing to take as collateral in exchange for providing banks with reserves (in practice these transactions are often indefinitely renewable, so they’re more like purchases).</p>
<p>Banks are strongly motivated to lend to customers according to this framework, since it gives them access to liquidity at low cost. Central banks claim to maintain “neutrality” on the types of loans on these lists, though <a href="https://www.cepweb.org/central-bank-market-neutrality-is-a-myth/">others would disagree</a>. The <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/markets/eligible-collateral/summary-table-of-collateral.pdf">Bank of England includes</a> mortgages but not construction loans, for instance, encouraging banks to lend more for buying houses than building them. Instead, central banks could openly use these frameworks to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-14/lagarde-says-ecb-needs-to-question-market-neutrality-on-climate">guide banks</a> into making low-risk loans for socially and environmentally responsible ventures. </p>
<h2>The future of central banks</h2>
<p>Also <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-a-central-bank-digital-currency">worth mentioning</a> is the current push by the Bank of England towards <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-central-bank-digital-currency-cbdc">central bank digital currencies</a> (CBDCs), in which buyers and sellers would transfer money directly without having to use the banking system. This could enable central banks to encourage or discourage certain spending in more targeted ways, for example by restricting what can be spent by people in certain areas or income brackets. If inflation was controlled using only fiscal levers, CBDCs could be used to reinforce this policy. </p>
<p>The idea of permanent zero rates is far outside the mainstream of economic thinking. But perhaps Robinson was right to suggest it as a viable compromise between capitalism and more radical alternatives: rewarding entrepreneurship without compounding inequality or incentivising the unsustainable use of resources. At a time like this, it’s an old idea well worth considering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Douglas receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the Future of Work and Income Research Network (fwirn.co.uk).</span></em></p>Why it’s time to reconsider an idea that was popular with economists during the great depression.Alexander Douglas, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2068482023-07-20T12:29:04Z2023-07-20T12:29:04ZBlame capitalism? Why hundreds of decades-old yet vital drugs are nearly impossible to find<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537557/original/file-20230714-29-wo8n77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C6000%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is presently no end in sight to the drug supply shortage. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-pharmacist-checking-the-shelves-with-a-royalty-free-image/1344251576?phrase=generic+drugs&adppopup=true">FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/31/792617538/a-decade-marked-by-outrage-over-drug-prices">Past public ire</a> over high drug prices has recently taken a back seat to a more insidious problem – <a href="https://pharmanewsintel.com/features/drug-shortages-a-growing-concern-for-the-healthcare-industry-worldwide">no drugs</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/health/drug-shortages-cancer.html">at any price</a>.</p>
<p>Patients and their providers increasingly face <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/health/cancer-drugs-shortage.html">limited or nonexistent supplies of drugs</a>, many of which treat essential conditions such as cancer, heart disease and bacterial infections. The American Society of Health System Pharmacists now <a href="https://www.ashp.org/products-and-services/database-licensing-and-integration/ashp-drug-shortages">lists over 300 active shortages</a>, primarily of decades-old generic drugs no longer protected by patents.</p>
<p>While this is not a new problem, the number of drugs in short supply has increased in recent years, and the average shortage is lasting longer, with more than 15 critical drug products <a href="https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023-03-20-HSGAC-Majority-Draft-Drug-Shortages-Report.pdf">in short supply for over a decade</a>. Current shortages <a href="https://www.ashp.org/drug-shortages/current-shortages/drug-shortages-list?">include widely known drugs</a> such as the antibiotic amoxicillin; the heart medicine digoxin; the anesthetic lidocaine; and the medicine albuterol, which is critical for treating asthma and other diseases affecting the lungs and airways.</p>
<p>What’s going on?</p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3jf-nyIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">health economist</a> who has studied the pharmaceutical industry for the past 15 years. I believe the drug shortage problem illustrates a major shortcoming of capitalism. While costly brand-name drugs often yield high profits to manufacturers, there’s relatively little money to be made in supplying the market with low-cost generics, no matter how vital they may be to patients’ health. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aXbYGfz2ATE?wmode=transparent&start=17" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The shortage includes chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, medications to treat ADHD and other critical drugs. Some patients are able to get their drugs, while others are not, and in some cases patients are getting ‘rationed care.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A generic problem</h2>
<p>The problem boils down to the nature of the pharmaceutical industry and how differently the markets for brand and generic drugs operate. Perhaps the clearest indication of this is the fact that <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2956.html">prices of brand drugs in the U.S. are among the highest</a> in the developed world, while generic drug prices are among the lowest. </p>
<p>When a drugmaker develops a new pill, cream or solution, the government grants the company an exclusive patent for up to 20 years, although most patents are filed before clinical testing, and thus the effective patent life is closer to eight to 12 years. Nonetheless, patents allow the drugmakers to cover the cost of research and development and earn a profit without the threat of competition from a rival making an identical product.</p>
<p>But once the patent expires, the drug becomes generic and any company is allowed to manufacture it. Since generic manufacturers are essentially producing the same product, profits are determined by their ability to manufacture the drug at the lowest marginal cost. This often results in low profit margins and can lead to cost-cutting measures that can compromise quality and threaten supply. </p>
<h2>Outsourced production creates more supply risks</h2>
<p>One of the consequences of generics’ meager margins is that drug companies outsource production to lower-cost countries.</p>
<p>As of mid-2019, 72% of the manufacturing facilities making active ingredients for drugs sold in the U.S. <a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/congressional-testimony/safeguarding-pharmaceutical-supply-chains-global-economy-10302019">were located overseas</a>, with India and China alone making up nearly half of that. </p>
<p>While overseas manufacturers often <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/3842481d-7bc7-532b-8cd2-ab30f57c6519/content">enjoy significant cost advantages</a> over U.S. facilities, such as easy access to raw materials and lower labor costs, outsourcing production at such a scale raises a slew of issues that can hurt the supply. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/science/13drug.html?pagewanted=al">Foreign factories are more difficult</a> for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fdas-lax-oversight-of-research-in-developing-countries-can-do-harm-to-vulnerable-participants-170515">Food and Drug Administration to inspect</a>, tend to have more production problems and are far more likely than domestic factories to be shut down once a problem is discovered. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/congressional-testimony/safeguarding-pharmaceutical-supply-chains-global-economy-10302019">In testimony to a House subcommittee</a>, Janet Woodcock, the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner, acknowledged that the agency has little information on which Chinese facilities are producing raw ingredients, how much they are producing, or where the ingredients they are producing are being distributed worldwide. </p>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the country’s reliance on foreign suppliers – and the risks this poses to U.S. consumers.</p>
<p>India is the world’s largest producer of generic drugs but imports 70% of its raw materials from China. About <a href="https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/downloads/cidrap-covid19-viewpoint-part6.pdf">one-third of factories</a> in China shut down during the pandemic. To ensure domestic supplies, the Indian government restricted the export of medications, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/business/coronavirus-india-drugs.html">disrupting the global supply chain</a>. This led to shortages of drugs to treat COVID-19, such as for respiratory failure and sedation, as well as for a wide range of other conditions, <a href="https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/drug-shortages-amid-the-covid19-pandemic">like drugs to treat chemotherapy</a>, heart disease and bacterial infections. </p>
<h2>Low profits hurt quality</h2>
<p>Manufacturing drugs to consistently high quality standards requires constant testing and evaluation. </p>
<p>A company that sells a new, expensive, branded drug has a strong profit motive to keep quality and production high. That’s often not the case for generic drug manufacturers, and <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/02/bring-manufacturing-generic-drugs-back-to-u-s/">this can result in shortages</a>. </p>
<p>In 2008, an adulterated version of the blood-thinning drug Heparin <a href="https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/generic-drug-safety-us-regulators-struggle-global-market">was recalled worldwide</a> after being linked to 350 adverse events and 150 deaths in the U.S. alone.</p>
<p>In 2013, the Department of Justice <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/enforcement/generic-drug-manufacturer-ranbaxy-pleads-guilty-and-agrees-to-pay-500-million-to-resolve-false-claims-allegations-cgmp-violations-and-false-statements-to-the-fda/#">fined the U.S. subsidiary of Ranbaxy Laboratories</a>, India’s largest generic drug manufacturer, US$500 million after it pleaded guilty to civil and criminal charges related to drug safety and falsifying safety data. In response, the FDA banned products made at four of the company’s manufacturing facilities in India from entering the U.S., <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/business/global/ranbaxy-in-500-million-settlement-of-generic-drug-case.html">including generic versions of gabapentin</a>, which treats epilepsy and nerve pain, and the antibiotic ciprofloxacin.</p>
<p>And while there may be multiple companies selling the same generic drug in the U.S., there may be only a single manufacturer supplying the basic ingredients. Thus, any hiccup in production or shutdown due to quality issues can affect the entire market.</p>
<p>A recent analysis found that approximately 40% of generic drugs sold in the U.S. <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=3011139">have just one manufacturer</a>, and the share of markets supplied by just one or two manufacturers has increased over time. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a suit points in front of a lectern that says $30 insulin, with fridges of insulin in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537321/original/file-20230713-19-4vturh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537321/original/file-20230713-19-4vturh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537321/original/file-20230713-19-4vturh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537321/original/file-20230713-19-4vturh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537321/original/file-20230713-19-4vturh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537321/original/file-20230713-19-4vturh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537321/original/file-20230713-19-4vturh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">California Gov. Gavin Newsom partnered with Civica Rx to manufacture insulin for the state.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CaliforniaGovernor/fb9c46b454aa451b87d3120061aa4fd2/photo?Query=insulin%20california&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=27&currentItemNo=6">AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Repatriating the drug supply</h2>
<p>It is hard to quantify the impact of drug shortages on population health. However, a recent survey of U.S. hospitals, pharmacists and other health care providers found that drug shortages <a href="https://www.usp.org/sites/default/files/usp/document/supply-chain/pediatric-oncology-drugs-and-supply-chain.pdf">led to increased medication errors</a>, delayed administration of lifesaving therapies, inferior outcomes and patient deaths. </p>
<p>What can be done?</p>
<p>One option is to simply find ways to produce more generic drugs in the U.S.</p>
<p>California <a href="https://nashp.org/california-enacts-law-to-produce-generic-prescription-drugs/#">passed a law</a> in 2020 to do just that by allowing the state to contract with domestic manufactures to produce its own generic prescription drugs. In March 2023, California <a href="https://californiahealthline.org/news/article/california-generic-insulin-contract-civica-rx-newsom/">selected a Utah company</a> to begin producing low-cost insulin for California patients.</p>
<p>Whether this approach is feasible on a broader scale is uncertain, but, in my view, it’s a good first attempt to repatriate America’s drug supply.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206848/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoffrey Joyce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The shortages, which have been going on for years, have typically affected only low-cost generics rather than profitable brand-name drugs.Geoffrey Joyce, Director of Health Policy, USC Schaeffer Center, and Associate Professor, University of Southern CaliforniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2051542023-06-08T10:27:04Z2023-06-08T10:27:04ZFive reasons Adam Smith remains Britain’s most important economist, 300 years on<p>June 5 2023 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith, the 18th-century British economist widely hailed as the father of modern economics. </p>
<p>Born in Kirkcaldy, on the east coast of Scotland, Smith studied at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford (which he didn’t think highly of), before becoming a professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow. He was a quiet, unassuming man, only travelling when he accompanied a student on a tour of Europe in the 1760s. He died in Edinburgh in 1790. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A historical plaque." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530594/original/file-20230607-25-yfxs0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530594/original/file-20230607-25-yfxs0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530594/original/file-20230607-25-yfxs0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530594/original/file-20230607-25-yfxs0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530594/original/file-20230607-25-yfxs0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530594/original/file-20230607-25-yfxs0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530594/original/file-20230607-25-yfxs0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A plaque on Kirkcaldy High Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Kirkcaldy_High_Street_Adam_Smith_Plaque.png">James Eaton-Lee</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite living an uneventful life, Smith is considered a central figure in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-enlightenment-philosophers-would-have-made-of-donald-trump-and-the-state-of-american-democracy-56098">Scottish Enlightenment</a>. His book <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-myth-that-holds-adam-smiths-wealth-of-nations-together-35674">Wealth of Nations</a>, published in 1776, remains one of the most influential books ever written – second only to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital as the <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/05/12/what-are-the-most-cited-publications-in-the-social-sciences-according-to-google-scholar/">most cited work of classical economics of all time</a>. </p>
<p>As my research <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/scottish-enlightenment-and-the-french-revolution/57C02044A2031C54E6D17DFC5F943CAB">shows</a>, Smith is much more than the “father of economics”. He was a <a href="https://www.libertyfund.org/books/essays-on-philosophical-subjects/">philosopher</a>, a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/495243/pdf">historian</a>, and a <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/cultural-history-of-democracy-in-the-age-of-enlightenment-9781350272859/">political theorist</a>. His life work was dedicated to working out the moral, social and political consequences – both good and bad – of the emerging capitalist and industrial economy in late 18th-century Britain. Here are five reasons why he remains Britain’s most important economist. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A historical portrait painting of a man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530593/original/file-20230607-17-nsx4od.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530593/original/file-20230607-17-nsx4od.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530593/original/file-20230607-17-nsx4od.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530593/original/file-20230607-17-nsx4od.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530593/original/file-20230607-17-nsx4od.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530593/original/file-20230607-17-nsx4od.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530593/original/file-20230607-17-nsx4od.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Muir Portrait of Adam Smith, c 1800, artist unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Adam_Smith_The_Muir_portrait.jpg">Scottish National Gallery</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. He invented fundamental economic concepts</h2>
<p>Among the concepts Smith came up with – or helped to popularise – are productivity, free markets and the division of labour. His use of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-cute-dogs-help-us-understand-adam-smiths-invisible-hand-35673">the invisible hand</a>” to describe the unseen mechanisms that regulate the market economy remains a central metaphor in contemporary economic thinking. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, economists inspired by Smith, including David Ricardo, laid the foundations of economics as the discipline we know today, by formalising economic reasoning in mathematical language. Smith’s innovative discussion of the rules of supply and demand anticipated the economic model of <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/general-equilibrium-theory.asp">general equilibrium</a>. His theory of economic growth also inspired later economists such as John Maynard Keynes to develop the notion of gross domestic product. </p>
<h2>2. He has a cult following</h2>
<p>Smith was already famous in his lifetime, even before he published Wealth of Nations. As a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow between 1753 and 1763, his reputation attracted students from as far away as Russia. </p>
<p>However, in the 20th century, he became something of a hero for proponents of free markets. An influential thinktank founded in the 1970s, the <a href="https://www.adamsmith.org/">Adam Smith Institute</a> – dedicated to the pursuit of economic liberalism – bears his name. And as prime minister, Margaret Thatcher supposedly <a href="https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/07/26/rescuing-adam-smith-from-myth-and-misrepresentation">carried a copy</a> of Wealth of Nations in her handbag. </p>
<p>Smith is widely celebrated –- often by people who haven’t read all his works –- as a prophet of individualism and neoliberalism. People see him as the man who foresaw the rise of industrial capitalism and provided definitive arguments against the idea of government interference. This, however, is a caricature of his writings. </p>
<p>Wealth of Nations was not a celebration of individualism. Smith was all too aware of the dangers and drawbacks of unbridled capitalism. In fact, he argued that governmental intervention was needed to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/equalizing-hand-why-adam-smith-thought-the-market-should-produce-wealth-without-steep-inequality/5F88C6D86DD80C3420E85982D72FAF50">keep economic inequalities in check</a>. He also advocated breaking up monopolies, providing public works such as roads and bridges, and educating the middle classes. </p>
<h2>3. He was the first Scot ever to appear on an English banknote</h2>
<p>Between 2007 and 2020, Smith featured on <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/the-people-on-the-notes-adam-smith">English £20 banknotes</a>. He was a proud Scotsman, a Kirkaldy native who spent his formative years in Glasgow. </p>
<p>Following Scotland’s 1707 union with England, Glasgow was asserting its place as a wealthy city of merchants. The city was benefiting from access to Britain’s growing trade empire, and by the 1740s it had become the centre of a thriving trading network with North America and the Caribbean. </p>
<p>At the University of Glasgow, Smith taught the sons of wealthy sugar and tobacco merchants and slave-labour plantation owners. They dominated local politics, invested their money in shipping and new industrial development, and were rebuilding Glasgow into an imposing city of stone. </p>
<h2>4. He was a polymath</h2>
<p>In his Glasgow classes, Smith lectured on moral philosophy, a broad humanities subject, which in 18th-century Scotland included topics as varied as morals, politics, religion, economics, jurisprudence and history. </p>
<p>He reworked some of these university lectures into a successful book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Published in 1759, this made him a household name throughout Europe. </p>
<p>Today, the book is mostly remembered by <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/theory-of-moral-sentiments-adam-smith-wealth-of-nations-economics-11671662290">historians</a>. But Smith believed his main achievement was teaching young Scots how to live a good, ethical life. Toward the end of his life, he wrote to the principal of the University of Glasgow that his 13 years as a professor of moral philosophy had been “the happiest and most honourable period” of his life.</p>
<h2>5. His legacy is controversial</h2>
<p>Smith’s economic theories have inspired a long line of free-market economists, but they also influenced Marx’s critique of capitalism. Marx admired Smith’s attempts to analyse the new modes of production that were emerging in early industrial Britain, as well as his innovative theory that wealth was related to labour. </p>
<p>Even today, Smith’s legacy is claimed both by neoliberals (who emphasise his defence of free trade) and by leftwingers (who emphasise his views on the pitfalls of capitalist economies). But Smith would have been puzzled by modern attempts to classify him as either of the right or the left. He was merely studying the changing world in which he lived: an early industrial society that was increasingly engaged in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/12634">colonialism and global trade</a>. It is time to reclaim Smith’s legacy from economists and to celebrate him as an astute observer of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/78907/how-the-scots-invented-the-modern-world-by-arthur-herman/">Europe’s emerging modernity</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Plassart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Scottish economist dedicated his life’s work to understanding the consequences – moral, social and political – of capitalism. Both neoliberals and leftwingers claim his legacy.Anna Plassart, Senior Lecturer in History, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2070262023-06-06T03:52:18Z2023-06-06T03:52:18ZDoes competition make us less moral? New research says yes, but only a little bit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530222/original/file-20230606-18-kaq90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C35%2C3806%2C2553&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bao Truong / Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many of our economic and even social interactions are competitive. We use markets to find jobs, but also dates. What does this mean for our morals? Does capitalism give us the American dream, or American Psycho? Does the experience of competition keep us honest, or drive us towards cheating? </p>
<p>These profound questions preoccupied the minds of some of the great classical economists, who saw capitalism as rife with both good and bad moral influences. Adam Smith mostly focused on the good, whereas Karl Marx was admittedly less optimistic.</p>
<p>To test this question convincingly in the lab, our <a href="https://manydesigns.online/#team">project coordinators</a> invited dozens of behavioural scientists to contribute their own experimental designs, resulting in observations of more than 18,000 people in total.</p>
<p>Our results, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2215572120">published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>, show that competitive interactions tend to make people’s behaviour slightly less moral – and offer some intriguing clues about why this might be so.</p>
<h2>A difficult question to answer</h2>
<p>We are not the first to take a scientific approach to the question of competition and morality. However, individual tests have delivered mixed results, possibly because of differences in the definitions and measures of morality used. </p>
<p>Some of the early results were provocative, such as a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1231566">finding</a> that people in competition were less likely to prevent the death of a mouse. However, these results were <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/105/1/226/97758/Does-Market-Interaction-Erode-Moral-Values">hard to replicate or interpret</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/karl-marx-his-philosophy-explained-164068">Karl Marx: his philosophy explained</a>
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<p>One way to account for differences in the design of individual studies is to conduct a “meta-analysis”, evaluating and combining the results of many different studies. However, meta-analysis often has troubles of its own, as selective reporting and publication bias can influence which studies are available to be included in the analysis.</p>
<h2>What was different about our study</h2>
<p>To really get some reliable results, we went a step further and carried out a “prospective meta-analysis”. </p>
<p>The “prospective” part means that all the studies to be included in the analysis were registered before they were done. This prevents cherry-picking of results, or bias in what kind of results are published.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-cute-dogs-help-us-understand-adam-smiths-invisible-hand-35673">How cute dogs help us understand Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'</a>
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<p>Our project involved 45 different experiments carried out by teams around the world. Each team independently designed an experiment to test the effects of competition on morality.</p>
<p>The results of these studies, which involved observations of more than 18,123 individual participants, were then collated and analysed.</p>
<h2>A small decline in morality (on average)</h2>
<p>The meta-analysis revealed that competition has an overall negative effect on morality, but the effect is very small. (The effect is measured by a number called Cohen’s <em>d</em>. A value of 0.2 is considered a small effect, and the value we found was only 0.1.)</p>
<p>As expected, we also observed a substantial variation in the effects as measured by different experiments. Some were positive, some were negative, and the sizes of the effects also varied.</p>
<p>So despite the advantages of our new prospective meta-analysis, the jury is still out regarding the overall effect of competition on morality. </p>
<p>Perhaps the question is too general to answer properly without a particular context. The devil may be in the details.</p>
<h2>Loss, not competition, to blame?</h2>
<p>My team (one of the 45 involved in the meta-analysis) used a number-guessing game between two people as an instance of competition. This was followed by an individual game of honesty, which was our measure for the effects on morality. </p>
<p>This individual experiment resulted in a small negative overall effect of competition (<em>d</em> = –0.1) much like the meta-analysis, but it failed to reach statistical significance on its own. </p>
<p>However, exploratory analysis of our results revealed a potential breakthrough.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/oh-the-morality-why-ethics-matters-in-economics-5963">Oh, the morality: why ethics matters in economics</a>
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<p>We found it was only the losers of the number-guessing game who became more dishonest, with a larger effect (<em>d</em> = –0.34). The winners of the competition stage, on the other hand, showed no change in their honesty behaviour. </p>
<p>These exploratory results – yet to be replicated – suggest a reason why competition does not affect morality much on average. Perhaps it is being disadvantaged in a competitive process that corrupts, not competition per se.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ozan Isler is a research fellow at the University of Queensland's School of Economics. He acknowledges funding from the Templeton Religion Trust for an international research grant on religious belief and moral behavor.</span></em></p>Do competitive, market-like interactions encourage immoral behaviour? A study of 18,000 people in 45 experiments shows there’s no simple answer.Ozan Isler, Research Fellow, School of Economics, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2048212023-05-14T06:13:25Z2023-05-14T06:13:25ZFear and loathing in South Africa: book examines how anxiety plays out in everyday life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524113/original/file-20230503-16-pbi6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>Social scientists have <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-1994-miracle-whats-left-159495">shown</a> how freedom in South Africa has lost its meaning for many in the country. Despondency about democracy is <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africans-are-fed-up-with-their-prospects-and-their-democracy-according-to-latest-social-attitudes-survey-204566">on the rise</a> as the promise of prosperity under a caring government continues to ring hollow for many, thanks to poor governance, corruption and incompetence. Nicky Falkof is a media studies professor who researches race and anxiety. The Conversation Africa’s Thabo Leshilo spoke to her about her book, <a href="https://witspress.co.za/page/detail/Worrier-State/?K=9781776147885">Worrier State</a>, which shows how narratives of fear manifest in mainstream and digital media, and the role that ‘race’, class, gender, space and identity play in these in the country.</em></p>
<h2>What brought you to the view that fear is a dominant feature of life in South Africa today?</h2>
<p>Just life, really. I live in Johannesburg, which provides a constant illustration of what urban theorists call “<a href="https://canvas.harvard.edu/files/2658790/download?download_frd=1&verifier=tdP5dqTEesNdxLMh4I0VL2JD7tV09a69tbN88qXz">fortress architecture</a>”: the high walls, the armed response signs, the barbed wire, the spikes, the beams and the guard huts. Alongside that is the ever-more-visibly <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/opinion/2022/2022-07/sas-entire-infrastructure-is-on-the-verge-of-total-collapse.html">crumbling infrastructure</a>.</p>
<p>Moving through the city is anxiety-provoking in multiple ways, even for people like me who are fortunate enough to have our own transport, and live close to where we work. As I say at the start of <a href="https://witspress.co.za/page/detail/Worrier-State/?K=9781776147885">the book</a>, my return to Joburg in 2012, after almost 15 years in the UK, was fraught with discussions with friends, family and colleagues about what I should be careful of and what to worry about. That conversational trend seems to have increased recently, with people now talking frantically about <a href="https://www.joburg.org.za/departments_/Pages/MOEs/city%20power/What-is-load-shedding.aspx">loadshedding</a> (power cuts) and water outages as well as crime and corruption.</p>
<p>So, while a lot of other emotions make up the country’s affective landscape – South Africans are frequently joyful people – it seems to me that fear and anxiety are significant elements of what it feels like to live here. I believe that these kinds of emotional experiences, which are part of rather than supplementary to urban life, need to be thought and written about.</p>
<h2>What are the main ways this fear manifests itself?</h2>
<p>Fear has important consequences for how people vote, what they spend their money on, who they consider to be part of their communities and who they treat as outsiders. Pretty much all the major political parties in this country use <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/police-probe-under-fire-da-councillor-john-hayes-for-racist-facebook-post-e476dc59-6e8d-4a4c-8a61-7eb5b9971df6">racist</a> and <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2022-04-18-anc-speaks-with-forked-tongue-on-xenophobia/">xenophobic</a> dog-whistle tactics to frighten the population with the threat of loss of jobs, increased violence or even just feeling uncomfortable due to the presence of strangers. Media coverage of these political activations of collective anxiety distracts voters from the multiple failures of the political class by amplifying the sense that citizens are under threat from outsiders. </p>
<p>The design and management of South Africa’s cities are significantly affected by fear. This can be seen in the <a href="http://thehda.co.za/index.php/multimedia/single-media-statement/apartheid-spatial-planning">apartheid-era planning</a> of Joburg and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto-johannesburg">Soweto</a>, the sprawling black settlement south-west of the city. Soweto was intentionally located to keep poorer black labourers away from “white” areas. These historical scars of segregation persist today. People have to travel for hours from <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/townships">townships</a> – historically black residential areas – and predominantly black <a href="https://pmg.org.za/page/Informal%20Settlements">informal settlements</a> to get to their jobs, because frightened middle class residents <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-johannesburgs-suburban-elites-maintain-apartheid-inequities-169295">push back</a> against affordable housing or even just accessible taxi ranks in their areas. </p>
<p>Fear makes us suspicious and distrustful. This often draws on disturbing stereotypes about “race”, nationality and economic status. For example, in the chapter on township fear of crime, I discuss the automatic association of criminal drug dealers with people simplistically referred to as “Nigerians”, one of the major folk devils of contemporary South Africa. Dangerous street drugs like <a href="https://theconversation.com/drug-addiction-in-south-africa-what-was-learned-from-six-young-men-recovering-from-opioids-191524">nyaope</a> are rife throughout the country. They are sold and used widely by South Africans and other nationals. But Nigerians are often scapegoated as the “real” drug dealers, solely responsible for this ongoing crisis. </p>
<p>Similarly in the chapter on Melville, the suburb where I live, I show how middle class residents use the neighbourhood Facebook group to classify homeless people and informal workers such as <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/DQrXvg35BeuCrQ9feQ2y/full">car guards</a> as dangerous and threatening. Discussions within this digital community are rife with assumptions that poorer black men are criminals, and don’t belong on the streets of the suburb. </p>
<h2>Do you think the fear will pass?</h2>
<p>Honestly? I wouldn’t think so, no. One of the points I make in the <a href="https://witspress.co.za/page/detail/Worrier-State/?K=9781776147885">book</a> is that cultures of fear, while extraordinarily visible and racialised in South Africa, are not at all unique to this country. The general increase in fear and anxiety is a global condition which has to do with a number of factors. These include the explosion of digital technology and corresponding transmission of misinformation; the alienating conditions of late capitalism, in which power and money are diffuse and distant; people’s increasing senses of powerlessness given these circumstances; and global phenomena like climate change that do actually pose a significant threat, but that feel unmanageably vast. </p>
<p>The rise of <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/ideas/Assets/Documents/updates/LSE-IDEAS-Understanding-Global-Rise-of-Populism.pdf">populist</a> and racially supremacist politics – such as that of the Donald Trump-supporting meta-conspiracy <a href="https://theconversation.com/qanon-is-spreading-outside-the-us-a-conspiracy-theory-expert-explains-what-that-could-mean-198272">QAnon</a> – is an important barometer of how worried people are. It also suggests how eagerly we cling to something that might help us to define and explain the many threats we feel subjected to. </p>
<p>And of course South Africa <em>is</em> actually more <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/new-sa-crime-trends-are-bleak-but-at-least-we-have-the-data">insecure, riskier</a>, than many other places, which, alongside the swings of global social change, suggests that fear and anxiety will be a part of the country’s inner and public lives for the foreseeable future. </p>
<p>I realise that this is a fairly bleak assessment, but I also think that it’s important for scholars, government and civil society to start taking emotion seriously as a political and social force. How people feel really matters, and if people feel bad or threatened – even if nothing bad or threatening has happened to them directly – they will struggle to be engaged citizens, to interact with empathy or to think collectively. Acknowledging the power of fear and emotion is a first step in trying to work our way through this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204821/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicky Falkof has received funding from the National Research Foundation and the African Humanities Programme. </span></em></p>Fear has important consequences for how people vote, what they spend their money on, who they consider to be part of their communities, and who they treat as outsiders.Nicky Falkof, Associate professor, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2028062023-05-09T11:43:28Z2023-05-09T11:43:28ZAneurin Bevan’s writings still have lessons for contemporary politics – and far beyond the NHS<p>The NHS will turn 75 this year, a considerable legacy for the person responsible for <a href="https://theconversation.com/nhs-was-not-solely-modelled-on-a-welsh-workmens-medical-society-98024">establishing the service</a>, Aneurin Bevan. But Bevan’s political career encompassed far more than this one achievement. </p>
<p>When today’s politicians talk about Bevan’s values or principles, these references often do not go beyond his ambition to make the NHS free at the point of delivery. While this was essential to Bevan, there is a tendency to overlook his wider principles. And by only focusing on the NHS, we run the risk of oversimplifying a complex figure.</p>
<p>One way of uncovering Bevan’s wider political philosophy is to explore his voluminous writings in the socialist magazine, Tribune, for which he wrote more than 300 articles between 1937 and 1960. My new book, <a href="https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/this-is-my-truth/">This Is My Truth: Aneurin Bevan in Tribune</a>, includes 72 of these articles. It provides an opportunity to delve deeper into Bevan’s philosophy and to critically engage with his ideas and their relevance to contemporary politics.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-end-to-want-disease-ignorance-squalor-and-idleness-why-the-beveridge-report-flew-off-the-shelves-in-1942-88097">An end to 'want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness': why the Beveridge report flew off the shelves in 1942</a>
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<p>In his writings, Bevan voiced his belief in parliamentary democracy, his critique of capitalism and his reflections on class conflict. Bevan saw capitalism as a system of “crystal gazing” based on “gambling and speculation”, with pernicious effects that led to class conflict pervading all forms of political debate. For Bevan, “the class struggle is the underlying motif of politics”.</p>
<p>In waging class conflict, Bevan believed that parliament was “one of the weapons of the general interest” in the “struggle between the sectional and the general interest or between Property and the People, which is endemic in capitalist society”. He insisted that the “more effectively Parliament asserts the general against the sectional interest the more bitter grows the conflict between the People and Property”.</p>
<p>Bevan was often at loggerheads with the Labour leadership over the extent to which parliament could (or should) seek to achieve radical change. As shown by the articles in the collection, Bevan used the pages of Tribune to state his case during <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tnvHk8g1crUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_book_other_versions_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Labour’s ideological disputes</a>, particularly after 1951, when the party entered opposition and began a period of soul searching. He used Tribune to vent his frustrations at those in Labour whom he accused of failing to pursue socialist policies with enough vigour.</p>
<p>Beyond domestic politics, the collection demonstrates Bevan’s ambition to apply his principles of democratic socialism to the international arena. To achieve peace and foster international cooperation, Bevan argued that the “institutions of peace must be strengthened and clothed with power and dignity”. </p>
<p>He also insisted that large countries needed to put their war machines in reverse and reallocate that money to economically poorer nations in the hopes of waging a “resolute attack on world poverty”.</p>
<h2>Bevan today</h2>
<p>Although the world has moved on significantly since Bevan’s time, many of the issues he grappled with remain relevant today. In the UK, politicians, activists and the public are still debating Labour’s ideological positioning, the ability of parliament to achieve radical change and the correct role for the state in the economy. In international politics, the world is still ravaged by war, power politics and global poverty.</p>
<p>It is important to be careful, however, when trying to interpret the works of historical figures. There is a tendency to pick and choose the elements that fit particular narratives while ignoring those that do not. Bevan is not immune to criticism. Insisting on the need to re-engage with his writing does not mean that he was correct or that he has all of the answers to our current situation.</p>
<p>But it is crucial to return to figures like Bevan in greater detail and to critically engage with their ideas. By doing so, we might find lessons that are relevant today, and avoid reducing significant political figures to snappy one-liners and quotable lines.</p>
<h2>The role of the past</h2>
<p>When reflecting on Labour’s election defeat in 1955, Bevan wrote that youth “does not build its case on the memory of the old”. He reminded readers that “communal memories are overlaid by a new situation and their influence grows ever more remote and vague”. Therefore, as time goes by, those memories “were not sufficient in themselves to form the basis of mass appeal”.</p>
<p>Bevan’s words can be read as a reminder of the enduring legacy of the past. They are also a warning against nostalgia and uncritically relying on old ideas. Instead, we must learn from them. </p>
<p>As we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the NHS and remember Aneurin Bevan’s role in its founding, his work for Tribune allows us to engage with his wider political philosophy and reflect on it in the light of contemporary politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nye Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new book analyses the Labour politician’s prolific political writing.Nye Davies, Lecturer at School of Law and Politics, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2034622023-05-02T17:01:12Z2023-05-02T17:01:12ZLevelling up alone won’t help many of the UK’s ‘left-behind’ places<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523256/original/file-20230427-18-tzbl18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=94%2C141%2C2943%2C2155&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">philip openshaw/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The economies of the UK and US, among other nations, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/305263/the-crisis-of-democratic-capitalism-by-wolf-martin/9780241303412">are increasingly based on unjust forms of democracy</a> that do not align with regional attitudes or support regional equality. This can be seen in the many deprived cities, towns and other “<a href="https://localtrust.org.uk/policy/left-behind-neighbourhoods/">left-behind</a>” areas – those experiencing deprivation on multiple fronts. </p>
<p>Many countries have such places that are in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cjres/article/15/1/39/6427773">precarious economic and social positions</a>. But <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/27/parts-of-england-have-higher-mortality-rates-than-turkey">in the UK</a>, deprivation in parts of towns and cities such as Blackpool, Hull and Manchester are leading to mortality rates that are higher than some similarly sized towns and cities in Poland, Romania and Turkey.</p>
<p>These places need policies that stimulate inclusive growth to addresses this inequality across the UK. Unfortunately, these lagging localities will <a href="http://cforic.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/UKCI-2021.pdf">struggle to achieve any economic growth at all</a> in coming years, regardless of whether or not government policies promote more equality. </p>
<p>A concept called “bounded rationality” is one of the main reasons why these cities, towns and localities remain locked in a vicious downward spiral, according to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-behavioural-theory-of-economic-development-9780198832348?cc=gb&lang=en&#">my research with Piers Thompson</a>.</p>
<h2>What is ‘bounded rationality’?</h2>
<p>The term <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262519434/models-of-bounded-rationality/">bounded rationality</a> was coined by the Nobel prize winning political scientist Herbert Simon. It explains how people are limited when trying to make rational decisions because of restrictions on their access to relevant knowledge or the capability to understand that information.</p>
<p>In many ways, the notion of bounded rationality is one of the bedrock concepts underpinning what is known today as <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/000282803322655392">behavioural economics</a>. While often associated with people, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-behavioural-theory-of-economic-development-9780198832348?cc=gb&lang=en&#">recent work</a> indicates that places – cities, regions, towns and localities – have their own spatially bounded rationality. </p>
<p>This is due to what <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Culture_s_Consequences.html?id=hW6AAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">cultural theorists</a> refer to as the “collective programming of the mind”. </p>
<p>We have found that people living in the same location tend to adopt common cultural and psychological mindsets. Such examples of bounded rationality include when <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315684574-12/student-choices-uncertainty-bounded-rationality-behavioural-economics-neil-harrison">people make similar career choices</a> at university. </p>
<p>It can also influence local government leaders’ decisions about <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0160323X12452888?casa_token=xoWFCyBQN6oAAAAA:E1KI8ex5-U1_ipn6GKsEcBbH63FULvDuyqdBUGTpBk9cn3dGnaAyxOOZKwP1Dpu2ytkPSRHXoXHmOw">reducing spending on services</a>, for example. These decisions have an impact on economic and social wellbeing.</p>
<p>People’s <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0084078">voting decisions</a> provide another common example. In the case of the <a href="https://pure.rug.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/40617241/The_mismatch_between_local_voting_and_the_local_economic_consequences_of_Brexit.pdf">Brexit referendum in the UK</a> it has been argued that the results of local-level voting were unexpected because the areas that voted to leave the EU were the most likely to suffer the negative economic outcomes of Brexit. </p>
<p><a href="https://pure.rug.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/55331687/rsx031.pdf">Other researchers</a> have suggested that even slight changes in local mindsets may have led to a different outcome from the Brexit vote.</p>
<h2>The levelling up regime</h2>
<p>Either way, this research suggests that rationality is spatially bounded – that is, people’s beliefs and decisions tend to align around local values, which can significantly affect an area. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00130095.2021.1973420">Our research</a> shows that people living in many places in the north of England and in Wales have very different cultural and psychological personality traits compared with those found, for example, in some London boroughs. These differences affect the economic fortunes of these places.</p>
<p>Of course, one set of traits or mindset is not “better” than another, but some are more in tune with the UK’s national economic model. For example, in these parts of London people are perhaps more likely to prioritise profits (<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/free_enterprise.asp#:%7E:text=The%20U.S.%20economic%20system%20of,%2C%20competition%2C%20and%20consumer%20sovereignty.">free market capitalism</a>). </p>
<p>This belief system ties in with the UK’s economic system. Also, when more people have an entrepreneurial mindset geared to creating high growth and highly productive businesses, this tends to attract more of these types of businesses, further bolstering the local economy. </p>
<p>On the other hand, we found that mindsets based on values relating to local community action, rather than a spirit of entrepreneurship, are far more common in parts of the north of England and Wales. While such a mindset can generate significant benefits for social development, it does not easily allow these places to improve their economic fortunes under the current system using national-level policies and priorities. </p>
<p>The UK government says it is tackling these challenges with its “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/levelling-up-the-united-kingdom">levelling up</a>” agenda. Its vision of creating a more economically level playing field across the nation is laudable. Funding a range of economic development initiatives and projects across all regions of the UK will generate positive outcomes. </p>
<p>But this is unlikely to achieve the step change most left-behind places really need. Levelling up represents a largely top-down, one-off, project-driven approach to local economic development.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-levelling-up-bidding-process-wastes-time-and-money-heres-how-to-improve-it-198638">The 'levelling up' bidding process wastes time and money – here's how to improve it</a>
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<h2>Future policy intervention</h2>
<p>Instead, and in order to overcome the deep-rooted challenges these places face, they need to regenerate over the long term via effective local decision-making. </p>
<p>A key weakness of contemporary democratic capitalism is that there is a lack of knowledge in many places of the real challenges they are facing, or of potential routes to addressing those challenges. Any future policy intervention should ensure people have better access to knowledge on the state of the place where they live or work.</p>
<p>Local authorities should be mandated to provide accessible, objective and timely information on the local economy. They should provide transparent information through a standard platform on the initiatives that are seeking to tackle challenges, the funding available for these initiatives and the restrictions authorities are facing due to a lack of finance. </p>
<p>This would go some way to addressing issues of bounded rationality. It would help create informed and inclusive development strategies that are established and accountable at the local level. </p>
<p><a href="https://camoinassociates.com/resources/metric-scorecard-tool-economic-development/">A number of US cities</a> already <a href="https://www.greatermsp.org/regional-indicators-2019/#:%7E:text=This%20Regional%20Indicators%20Dashboard%20is,improve%20our%20region's%20economic%20competitiveness.">provide more transparent</a> economic information on issues like local workforce quality, commuting or access to high-speed internet. This positive step forward should be adopted in the UK too.</p>
<p>Addressing the bigger picture of the crisis of democratic capitalism will only happen with this kind of decentralisation of power to local places. Improved and inclusive governance must also be fostered in these areas. </p>
<p>Without this, democratic capitalism will not just creak on the global stage. Its local foundations will also start to shake.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Huggins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why addressing inequality in ‘left-behind’ places requires more than ‘levelling up’.Robert Huggins, Professor of Economic Geography, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2038242023-04-28T12:45:49Z2023-04-28T12:45:49ZIn ‘Air,’ Michael Jordan’s silence speaks volumes about the marketing of Black athletes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522369/original/file-20230421-26-t3g1lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C3089%2C1896&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jordan wears his iconic 'Air Jordan' Nike sneakers during a game in 1985.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/detail-of-the-air-jordan-nike-shoes-worn-by-chicago-bulls-news-photo/53033254?adppopup=true">Focus on Sport/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16419074/">Air</a>,” which tells the story of Nike’s signing of Michael Jordan, isn’t actually about Michael Jordan at all.</p>
<p>It’s about the beauty of design and the seduction of marketing. It’s about power suits, purple Porsches and Rolexes. It’s about white men languishing through midlife crises who salivate over the branding potential of a star basketball player.</p>
<p>As for Jordan? Audiences just see his back as he strolls into the Nike offices and his hands as he admires the Air Jordan prototype – but never his face. In the entire film, he utters only three words.</p>
<p>Much has been made about <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2023/04/air-movie-ben-affleck-matt-damon-sonny-vaccaro.html">Michael Jordan’s representation</a> or lack thereof in “Air.”</p>
<p>How could a film about one of the most famous Black men in the world obscure his presence?</p>
<p>The film’s true power is its ability to convey an unnerving truth about the sneakers’ mystique: Jordan’s athletic ability was crucial to the success of Nike and Air Jordan; not so much his face – and definitely not his words.</p>
<p>In this way, “Air” becomes the story of how a struggling company created one of the most successful brands in the world on the back of a Black body, a tale as old as the nation itself.</p>
<h2>Liftoff</h2>
<p>In 1983, Nike’s marketing director, Rob Strasser, wrote an <a href="https://www.pdxmonthly.com/articles/2016/6/13/meet-the-man-who-reinvented-nike-seduced-adidas-and-helped-make-portland-the-sports-gear-capital-of-the-world">internal memo</a> explaining the importance of using star athletes to sell their products: “Individual athletes, even more than teams, will be the heroes; symbols more and more of what real people can’t do anymore – risk and win.” </p>
<p>This memo appeared during a turbulent period for Nike. The company <a href="https://s1.q4cdn.com/806093406/files/doc_financials/1981/1981%20annual%20report.pdf">had gone public in 1980</a> with a listless opening. In 1984, the company posted its first losing quarter and initiated a monthlong wave of layoffs employees called the “<a href="https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2016/06/meet-the-man-who-reinvented-nike-seduced-adidas-and-helped-make-portland-the-sports-gear-capital-of-the-world">St. Valentine’s Day Massacre</a>.”</p>
<p>Who would be that hero? The ailing shoe company sought a body brimming with transcendent talent, a superhuman athlete. </p>
<p>Enter the Chicago Bulls’ Michael Jordan, of whom Boston Celtics legend <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2887426-god-disguised-as-michael-jordan-when-everything-changed-for-his-airness">Larry Bird once said</a>, “I think he’s God disguised as Michael Jordan.”</p>
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<img alt="Bald man in red shirt adjusts his watch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523305/original/file-20230427-22-g91hvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523305/original/file-20230427-22-g91hvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523305/original/file-20230427-22-g91hvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523305/original/file-20230427-22-g91hvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523305/original/file-20230427-22-g91hvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523305/original/file-20230427-22-g91hvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523305/original/file-20230427-22-g91hvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sports agent David Falk represented Michael Jordan during the entirety of his career.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sports-agent-david-falk-looks-on-during-a-game-between-the-news-photo/382245?adppopup=true">Doug Pensinger/Allsport via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549826/sneakers-by-rodrigo-corral-alex-french-and-howie-kahn/">During the summer of 1984</a>, Nike shoe designer Peter Moore and Strasser gathered in the Washington, D.C., office of Jordan’s agent, David Falk. </p>
<p>In a scene authors Rodrigo Corral, Alex French and Howie Kahn detail in their 2017 book, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/549826/sneakers-by-rodrigo-corral-alex-french-and-howie-kahn/9780448494333">Sneakers</a>,” Falk, after exchanging pleasantries, looked to Strasser and said, “Rob, I’ve got an idea. I want to marry Michael to your airbag technology.” </p>
<p>Nike had developed <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Sneaker_Book.html?id=Drg9PgAACAAJ">its air cushions</a> in 1977. It involved infusing the midsoles of shoes with pockets of pressurized gas to absorb shock, but the company was having a difficult time marketing it.</p>
<p>Falk then paused for dramatic effect, before uttering, “Air Jordan.”</p>
<p>In 1985, Nike released the first Air Jordan sneaker. A year later, <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-10-07-9310070083-story.html">Nike sold US$100 million</a> worth of Air Jordan shoes and apparel, boosting the company’s profits to $59 million from only $10 million the year before.</p>
<p>After 38 years and 37 iterations of their flagship line of basketball shoes, Jordans have become a transcendent cultural talisman memorializing Michael Jordan’s career and basketball’s influence on American life – but also, his labor.</p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/nike/?sh=52574e9c6eb5">Nike is worth a staggering $200 billion</a>. Meanwhile, the Jordan brand, which was <a href="https://www.si.com/fannation/sneakers/news/jordan-brand-launched-25-years-ago-today">spun off into its own company in 1997</a>, brings in billions of dollars per year, of which <a href="https://frontofficesports.com/jordan-more-than-doubled-his-nba-career-earnings-in-2022-from-nike-deal">Jordan pockets 5%</a>.</p>
<h2>Buying a piece of Blackness</h2>
<p>I’m writing a book that explores the intimate connections between sneakers and Blackness. In it, I argue that the Black body’s long history of objectification and commodification undergirds the branding, mass consumption and culture of sneakers.</p>
<p>What “Air” does better than anything else is to unbox a provocative, sobering truth about Jordans’ meteoric rise: They are cast as literal extensions of Black bodies. They represent the literal molding of a Black man’s feet, with their vulcanized rubber, leather and laces encapsulating Black athletic greatness and cool. </p>
<p>Finally figuring out how to sell Nike’s airbag technology was the other side of Air’s recipe for success. </p>
<p>In truth, Nike Air was a curiosity. It was unstable and unreliable. But runners became enamored with the idea of a cushioning technology they couldn’t see and much less understand. People knew they loved the sensation of Air even though the “how” remained a mystery. </p>
<p>The seemingly simple concept of explaining Air had eluded the company. <a href="https://powerhousebooks.com/books/sole-provider-thirty-years-of-nike-basketball/">In an interview with journalist Scoop Jackson</a>, Bruce Kilgore, Nike designer responsible for the <a href="https://www.kickgame.co.uk/blogs/sneaker-news/how-bruce-kilgore-encapsulated-sneaker-culture">Air Force 1</a>, articulated the difficulty of taking the air midsole from idea to execution to market: “How do you take something inherently unstable and put [it] into [a basketball shoe] that is all about stability?” </p>
<p>But six years after the development of the air midsole, David Falk cracked the code of Nike’s transparent, little black box: Don’t market the technology. Market the body that wears it.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The first TV ad for Air Jordans features the iconic line, ‘Who says man was not meant to fly?’</span></figcaption>
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<p>This marketing ploy to shift the attention of consumers from mundane pockets of polyurethane to on-court performances, while indeed innovative, centers an incredibly old tradition of Americans seeing Black bodies as being spectacularly convertible to profit.</p>
<p>Air Jordans romanticize an American wistfulness for the stoic and branded Black workhorse. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/the-legend-of-john-henry-talcott-wv.htm">John Henry</a>, the legendary steel driver, was a hero, and so, too, is Jordan. For Black bodies – Jordan and Henry, but also athletes like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/sports/football/damar-hamlin-bills-hit.html">Damar Hamlin</a>, who suffered a near-fatal injury during an NFL game in early 2023 – heroism is articulated through the hypnotizing anthem of toil and exhaustion.</p>
<p>Sports provide an easy cover for the perpetuation of this myth. Disgraced sports commentator Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder <a href="https://www.espn.com/espnplus/catalog/64d88369-89db-4c8a-a1b9-ba80986a4def/the-legend-of-jimmy-the-greek">once said</a>, “The Black is a better athlete to begin with … They can jump higher and run faster.” </p>
<p>How far removed is the marketing of Air Jordans from the words of Jimmy the Greek?</p>
<p>As the voiceover in the first Air Jordan television ad proclaims, “Who says man was not meant to fly?”</p>
<h2>Bodies ripe for the picking</h2>
<p>Before Nike’s dominance, brands like Pony, Converse and Adidas were popular on street corners and basketball courts around the country – a history told by DJ and author Bobbito Garcia in his 2003 book, “<a href="https://www.circlea.com/product/where-d-you-get-those-tenth-anniversary-edition/2264">Where’d You Get Those?</a>”</p>
<p>Nike and the Air Jordan, however, represented a watershed moment in which this bubbling market of “sneaker fiends,” as Garcia calls them, went mainstream. Through artful placement in Black films – specifically Spike Lee’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc6_XgtOQgI">Do the Right Thing</a>” – and with an assist from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbHI1yI1Ndk">Michael Jackson and hip-hop</a>, the Air Jordan line transformed sneakers into one of the most important footwear items and fashion brands the world has ever witnessed.</p>
<p>Nike would go on to feature scores of other Black athletes in its ad campaigns, and the names of these heroes ring off the tongue sharp and proud like a trumpet’s blare: <a href="https://img.cdn-pictorem.com/uploads/collection/S/SO5PKP9NEK/900_Row-One-Brand_bo_jackson_1988_nike_ad_sc_trainer_shoe.jpg">Bo Jackson</a>, <a href="https://sneakernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Penny-Hardaway-Air-Penny-1-from-Lil-Penny-book.jpg">Penny Hardaway</a>, <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/33/bb/17/33bb17bce839e40918615c12c98e95c7.jpg">Kobe Bryant</a>, <a href="https://cdn.musebycl.io/2020-08/You%20Can%E2%80%99t%20Stop%20Sisters%20%7C%20Nike.jpg">Venus and Serena Williams</a>, <a href="https://cdn.wallpapersafari.com/26/46/nLoMke.jpg">Lebron James</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">An ad from Nike’s iconic ‘Bo Knows’ campaign, featuring star athlete Bo Jackson.</span></figcaption>
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<p>None of this would be possible without Nike’s big bet on Jordan.</p>
<p>So why does a film give Michael Jordan, the man who had so much to do with Nike’s success, so little to say? </p>
<p>I believe the answer is as uncomfortable as it is simple: Michael Jordan isn’t the film’s subject, but its object.</p>
<p>In one of the film’s more memorable scenes, Nike marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, played by Matt Damon, goes to visit the Jordan family in Wilmington, North Carolina. </p>
<p>When he arrives, he greets James, Michael’s father, before being passed off to the real decision-maker: Deloris Jordan, the matriarch of the Jordan clan. Viola Davis portrays Deloris with a drowning depth. Every utterance and glance simmers. </p>
<p>“Five generations of Jordans are buried in these forests,” she announces as she sits with Vaccaro in their backyard. She’s polite but distant. Her piercing eyes know to be wary of unannounced visits from white men in shiny cars. Everyone wants a piece of her son, and it’s her job to keep him whole. </p>
<p>In the film, before unveiling the Air Jordan 1 to Vaccaro and Strasser, Peter Moore, played by Matthew Maher, describes the shoe: “It has the logic of water, like shoe was always here, like it always existed.” </p>
<p>What Moore cannot know is how right he really is. Deloris Jordan and those five buried generations have always been here. </p>
<p>The Black body, from America’s inception, has always been there, as cotton and as sugar, ripe for the picking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203824/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A. Joseph Dial does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The film conveys an uncomfortable truth: Jordan was merely a vessel for Nike’s meteoric rise.A. Joseph Dial, Disco Network Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Purdue UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024722023-04-13T10:00:32Z2023-04-13T10:00:32ZTraditional masculinity is a vague, unhelpful term we should abandon – here’s why<p>Most of us think we know what we mean when we talk about “traditional masculinity”. A term commonly used to describe a broad range of men’s traits and behaviour, it includes things like violence and aggression, emotional restraint, and hunger for power and dominance, to more positive characteristics such as reliability, stability, physical strength, independence and integrity. </p>
<p>Men’s homophobia and misogyny can be framed as traditional masculinity, yet when men sacrifice their comforts and health to provide for family, or give their lives to defend their country, this is regarded as traditional masculinity too. The term has many meanings, yet these are rarely explained.</p>
<p>South African psychology researchers <a href="https://www.psychologistbrittany.com/">Brittany Everitt-Penhale</a> and <a href="https://www0.sun.ac.za/psychology/staff/academic-staff/prof-kopano-ratele/">Kopano Ratele</a> maintain that if we want to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21528586.2015.1025826">explore traditional masculinity</a> in a specific context or culture we should not approach it as “a static set of features associated with men that has been timelessly passed down through generations”. In other words, we need to look at its use in its context – geographically, culturally and within specific periods of time.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/shifting-masculine-terrains-russian-men-in-russia-and-the-uk">work</a> looks at how masculinity is defined, experienced and negotiated by Russian men living in Russia and Russian <a href="https://www.rescue.org/article/migrants-asylum-seekers-refugees-and-immigrants-whats-difference">immigrant</a> men in the UK. I used to refer to the term “traditional masculinity” to talk about certain views and attitudes of my research participants, but over time I have come to re-evaluate it.</p>
<h2>What are we talking about?</h2>
<p>When we refer to traditional masculinity, which tradition do we have in mind? The Buddhist <a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/the-bodhisattva/"><em>Bodhisattva</em> vow</a> – the commitment to put others before oneself? Or the Jewish tradition of <a href="https://blog.flexfits.com/periods-and-judaism/"><em>niddah</em></a> where men can’t hold hands or hug their wives during or the week after menstruation? Or do we think of the famous English stiff upper lip? There is a wide spectrum of masculinities in any society alongside a plethora of cultural traditions.</p>
<p>Approaching “tradition” as something singular and static doesn’t help us to understand men and masculinities in global and <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/superdiversity-institute/about/about-superdiversity.aspx">superdiverse</a> contexts.</p>
<p>Journalists, activists, academics and organisations such as the <a href="https://eige.europa.eu/publications/gender-equality-index-2021-report/traditional-norms-masculinity">European Institute for Gender Equality</a>, the <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/332974">World Health Organisation</a> and <a href="https://trainingcentre.unwomen.org/RESOURCES_LIBRARY/Resources_Centre/masculinities%20booklet%20.pdf">UN Women</a> often overlook these nuances. It is commonly stated that traditional masculinity reflects old-fashioned ideals of manhood based on the cult of power, ownership, homophobia, sexism, racism – effectively (and falsely) constructing these phenomena as things of the past. </p>
<p>The label is therefore used to describe some men’s behaviour and attitudes as “stuck in the past” or “backward”. This logic suggests that the opposite of traditional masculinity would be modern masculinity – non-violent, enlightened, caring, compassionate, supportive of women’s emancipation and sexual freedoms.</p>
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<h2>Imperial views</h2>
<p>It is common in western commentary to call non-western and migrant men traditional, portraying them as stuck in <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/refugee-crisis-demilitarising-masculinities/">oppressive and backward gender roles</a>. Post-colonial theorist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gayatri-Spivak">Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak</a> famously captured how white British colonisers in India portrayed brown Hindu men as a <a href="http://www.bahaistudies.net/neurelitism/library/subaltern_speak.pdf">problem that needed fixing</a>: “White men are saving brown women from brown men.”</p>
<p>This kind of binary thinking about traditional and modern masculinities is troubling. It conflates chronological and social progress, sustains division of the world into “<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/2555/chapter-abstract/1360482/The-West-and-the-Rest-Discourse-and-Power-1992?redirectedFrom=fulltext">the west and the rest</a>” and, as I have pointed out in previous <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380385221110724">research</a>, popularises the assumption that every country will go through the same stages of development and eventually acquire the same levels of gender equality and sexual liberation as the western world.</p>
<p>Conflating a European understanding of gender and sex with the notion of “progress” and imposing it on the diverse societies of colonised countries was a tactic used by <a href="https://enriquedussel.com/txt/Textos_200_Obras/Filosofos_latinos_EU/Heterosexualism-Maria_Lugones.pdf">European colonisers</a>.</p>
<p>Nigerian scholar <a href="https://easteast.world/en/posts/292">Oyeronke Oyewumi</a> describes how the British “civilisational” mission brought gender discrimination to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yoruba">Yoruba society</a>, one of the three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria. Before British colonisation, Yoruba women had occupied leadership positions and owned land. Conversion to Christianity promoted strict separation between the world of men and that of women and gradually led to women’s exclusion from public life, education, trade and land ownership. </p>
<p>It’s important to remember that all countries and societies in any period exist in one historical time, yet systems such as imperialism and capitalism continue to <a href="https://www.arabstudiesjournal.org/asj-online/decolonizing-middle-east-men-and-masculinities-scholarship-an-axiomatic-approach">stigmatise</a> boys and men who are poor, resistant to western values and beliefs or racialised (meaning, reduced to racist stereotypes) as backward or traditional.</p>
<p>While masculinity is a historically changing concept, we need to bear in mind that dominant masculinities have been shaped by colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44981834">writes</a> that masculinities of the French and British empires were:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bound up with enabling violence – violence sufficient to overcome the considerable military capabilities of the colonised societies … [imperial masculinities] adapted to the need to dominate a colonised population. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Violence against racialised “others” in the name of civilisational progress continues today in the states with pronounced neo-imperial ambitions such as the <a href="https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clevstlrev/vol52/iss1/9/">US</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380385221110724#bibr12-00380385221110724">Russia</a>. So tradition is hardly enough to understand or explain gendered violence, domination or risk-taking behaviour among men in post-imperial states. </p>
<p>Contemporary Russian masculinities reveal the complexity of the issue. Scholars see Russian masculinities as <a href="https://theconversation.com/vladimir-putin-the-czar-of-macho-politics-is-threatened-by-gender-and-sexuality-rights-180473">traditional, patriarchal and macho</a>. Yet my <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380385221110724#bibr12-00380385221110724">study</a> demonstrates that Russian men think they are not as “progressive” as European men, but are far less “backward” and “traditional” than Arab or Muslim men.</p>
<p>In essence, such thinking has nothing to do with tradition. It is the same Eurocentric hierarchy of modernity/backwardness in which Russian men see themselves as being somewhere in the middle. </p>
<p>The language we use to talk about social problems associated with men’s aspiration to power and control is critical. Although a seemingly convenient shorthand, the term traditional masculinity is unhelpfully broad, rooted in the history of colonialism and works to deem masculinities of migrants and non-western countries as something that needs to be remedied.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, the term traditional masculinity feeds racism and imperialism. We need to <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455">decolonise</a> the discussion and use a more nuanced language when talking about men’s lives and behaviours.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marina Yusupova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The rarely explained term is nebulous at best, and can mean many things – negative and positive – to different groups of people.Marina Yusupova, Lecturer in Sociology, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2023642023-04-12T13:41:03Z2023-04-12T13:41:03ZSouth Africans have starkly unequal access to a healthy diet - the solution requires tackling deep-seated historical injustice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518726/original/file-20230331-26-f4s645.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa has a food crisis. The <a href="https://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/what-food-system">food system</a> - made up of all of the activities and actors involved in the production, processing, transportation, selling, consumption and disposal of food - produces starkly unequal access to nutritious foods.</p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/15528014.2023.2175483?needAccess=true&role=button#page=5">many households in the country cannot afford</a> a healthy diet, <a href="https://dhsprogram.com/publications/publication-fr337-dhs-final-reports.cfm">27% of children under five are stunted</a>, and the <a href="https://dhsprogram.com/publications/publication-fr337-dhs-final-reports.cfm">prevalence of diet-related diseases is rising</a> rapidly. </p>
<p>The food system contributes to <a href="https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cc0071en">pollution and climate change</a> through the use of agro-chemicals, fossil fuels for transport, processing and refrigeration, as well as unsustainable packaging. On top of this, over one-third of the <a href="https://www.csir.co.za/food-supply-south-africa-wasted-shows-new-csir-study">food is wasted</a>. These harms <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1854&PPN=03-00-14">disproportionately affect</a> poor people and women. Black-headed households are seven times more likely than white-headed households to have <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1854&PPN=03-00-14">inadequate access to food</a>.</p>
<p>This inequitable distribution of the benefits and harms of the food system is called <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262518666/food-justice/">food injustice</a>. It is also a violation of the <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/chapter-2-bill-rights">constitutional right to food</a>.</p>
<p>To date, attempts to address the food crisis have had limited success. Measures such as emergency food parcels, soup kitchens and food garden projects do help to meet immediate needs, but they <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/an-empty-plate-why-we-are-losing-the-battle-for-our-food-system-why-it-matters-and-how-we-can-win-it-back/">do not address the underlying causes</a> of food injustice. The same is true of social grants, which are <a href="https://foodsecurity.ac.za/news/why-south-africas-social-grants-arent-eradicating-malnutrition/">insufficient</a> to tackle food insecurity.</p>
<p>I argue in my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15528014.2023.2175483">ongoing research</a> that these structural challenges are rooted in colonialism and capitalism. I use the term <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502380601162548?casa_token=TJ1LY3kEDFIAAAAA%3A2VIBhIVSTJU5oG9_eYCOrhuy05gmGVS3y7Qi54NBparBm4Jinqf10Wq26pwYw0fDtw9OQm1QvWTE2g">“coloniality”</a> to refer to the persistence of patterns of capitalist, racial and patriarchal power that continue to inform who controls the food system, and who has access to good food.</p>
<p>My research seeks to expand our knowledge of those colonial origins. Historical texts and archival materials, despite their Eurocentric bias, give clues about precolonial, indigenous food systems and how these were violently disrupted by colonialism. By speaking to elders who still know about traditional foodways, we can learn more about indigenous ingredients as well as traditional ways of gathering, producing, preparing and eating food. Most importantly, elders can help us reconnect with the worldview and values that underpinned indigenous food systems.</p>
<h2>Colonialism, violence and dispossession</h2>
<p>Food has been central to the colonial project in South Africa since the 1500s, when <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=mkkKAQAAIAAJ&dq=Before%20van%20Riebeeck%3A%20Callers%20at%20South%20Africa&source=gbs_book_other_versions">European ships</a> carrying spices from Asia to Europe stopped at the Cape to replenish food and water. Once <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jan-van-riebeeck">Jan van Riebeeck</a> established the first European settlement on behalf of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape in 1652 and <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Old_Company_s_Garden_at_the_Cape_and/Di8MygEACAAJ?hl=en">started a garden</a> to provision the ships, the process of colonial conquest, forcible removal of indigenous people from their land and exploitation of their labour began.</p>
<p>Both the Dutch and the British seized vast swathes of land, often <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Record_Or_A_Series_of_Official_Paper/vpRRAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">granting it to European farmers</a> and then charging them with defending it against the erstwhile owners.</p>
<p>Seizure of land from the indigenous Khoi and San people was justified on the basis that they failed to “properly use” the land <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=mkkKAQAAIAAJ&dq=Before%20van%20Riebeeck%3A%20Callers%20at%20South%20Africa&source=gbs_book_other_versions">by cultivating it</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A display of seeds saved by small-scale farmers in Limpopo, South Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brittany Kesselman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Colonialism brought with it large-scale, labour-intensive <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533958308458332?journalCode=rsdy20">agriculture for domestic markets and export</a> to Europe and its other colonies. Colonists coerced locals into working on European farms. In the Eastern Cape, the British waged <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Struggle_for_the_Eastern_Cape_1800_1.html?id=KImhZwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">outright war</a> against the Xhosa people, destroying their crops in a scorched earth policy designed to convert them into landless labourers. </p>
<p>Later, authorities imposed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02590123.1986.11964243?casa_token=TsTmT_jtCnAAAAAA:a1y4xY-9bqT4lXndTTllxRubQ7_uJ5UNl0GJ0Zm_itqRhqYAuZTb1-LsL6mFpmBqbX4_kXn1zAhcvg">the hut or poll tax</a> to force self-sufficient African farmers into the wage economy. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533958308458332?journalCode=rsdy20">Forced labour</a> in the form of enslaved Africans and Asians, indentured labourers or captured indigenous people, <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Travels_in_the_Interior_of_South_Africa/7l42MwAACAAJ?hl=en">including children</a>, became common.</p>
<p>The spread of white-owned farms <a href="https://www.academia.edu/14430020/THE_COMPANY_S_GARDEN_AND_THE_EX_CHANGE_OF_NATURE_AND_KNOWLEDGE_AT_CAPE_OF_GOOD_HOPE_1652_1700_">transformed the landscape</a>, replacing indigenous plants to cultivate wheat, barley, maize, fruits, wine grapes, sugar and other commodities. Indigenous people lost access to areas where they had previously gathered wild foods, hunted, farmed and herded cattle. They also lost access to water.</p>
<p>There was a strong cultural component to colonialism’s disruption of traditional foodways. Europeans expressed contempt for indigenous foods and eating habits. The missionaries perpetuated this in their churches and schools, imposing European crops, farming styles and ways of eating as part of their <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/za/academic/subjects/religion/church-history/missionary-labours-and-scenes-southern-africa?format=PB&isbn=9781108007948">“civilizing”</a> work. This disdain for indigenous foods has carried on into the present, with traditional foods seen as backwards or <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/4302">poverty foods</a>.</p>
<h2>Decolonising food systems</h2>
<p>More than 25 years into democracy, South Africa’s food system continues to reflect the highly unequal patterns of power and exploitation from the colonial era, in terms of both domestic inequalities and the country’s place in the global food system. </p>
<p>The skewed <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/land-matters-south-africa%E2%80%99s-failed-land-reforms-and-road-ahead/9781776095964">distribution of agricultural land</a> reflects colonial and apartheid patterns of white ownership. Much of the best produce, including <a href="https://www.namc.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NAMC-DAFF-TradeProbe-69-May-Issue.pdf">most of the fruit</a>, is exported to Europe, while most South Africans <a href="https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-7254-7">cannot afford</a> to meet their nutritional requirements. The food system is highly <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/4597">concentrated</a>, with a few large national and international corporations dominating food processing and retail. </p>
<p>The call to decolonise food systems is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21683565.2018.1468380">growing globally</a>. Indigenous peoples around the world want to shift the fundamental worldview that informs what foods are eaten, and how they are obtained and distributed. </p>
<p>This requires moving from a capitalist, profit-driven food system in which food is simply a commodity, to one <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/pgdt/17/1-2/article-p173_173.xml">based on values</a> such as collectivity, reciprocity, kinship with the natural world, spirituality, and respect for the land. </p>
<p>In indigenous food systems, people often worked collectively – for example, in collective work parties known as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44126995">ilima</a> in isiZulu and isiXhosa or <a href="https://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/14451">letsema</a> in Setswana. They held rituals such as the first fruits ceremony to express their gratitude for the harvest. When collecting wild greens or fruits, they understood the importance of taking only what was needed and leaving enough behind for other people, animals, and for the survival of the plants.</p>
<p>When they hunted, they used every part of the animal and were shocked to see European colonists waste so much of it. People had ways of preserving and storing foods to ensure they would have enough during leaner times. </p>
<p>These kinds of values, and the practices based on them, would serve as a good basis from which to imagine and create a more just and sustainable food system, with all of the transformative changes that will entail.</p>
<p><em><strong>(*)</strong>: Different groups in different parts of what is now South Africa had very different diets, for cultural as well as ecological reasons. The foodways of the San or Khoi in the Western Cape, for instance, were very different from those of the Batswana to the north. It is not my intention to suggest that all indigenous food systems were the same, but rather to suggest that they shared certain similarities, and that they were violently disrupted by colonialism</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research received funding from the South African National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>The inequitable distribution of the benefits and harms of the food system is a violation of the constitutional right to food.Brittany Kesselman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2030422023-04-05T20:03:10Z2023-04-05T20:03:10ZNo, BlackRock is not leading a Marxist assault on capitalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519214/original/file-20230404-19-x7khhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Five years ago it would have been unimaginable, but today there is a <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/conservative-activists-wage-war-on-the-woke-capitalism-of-esg-20220531-p5apzn">global movement</a> convinced the world’s largest corporations are engaging in stealth warfare to transform liberal democracies into neo-communist dictatorships.</p>
<p>At the heart of this corporate-led Marxist revolution, apparently, is the trend towards businesses not just focusing on profit maximisation but taking into account environmental, social and governance responsibilities (called ESG for short). </p>
<p>According to ESG opponents this is putting democracy on a downhill <a href="https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/stakeholder-capitalism-and-esg-the-road-to-socialism">road to socialism</a> – or worse.</p>
<p>Purportedly central to this sinister plan is United States company BlackRock and its chief executive, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-fink/?sh=2c0d97e420f4">Larry Fink</a>. BlackRock is the world’s biggest funds manager, overseeing <a href="https://www-ft-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/content/7603e676779b-4c13-8f46-a964594e3c2f">more than US$10 trillion</a> in investments on behalf of clients such as superannuation funds. Fink is paid more than US$30 million a year, and his wealth is estimated to be more than US$1 billion. </p>
<p>You might think this would make Fink a very unlikely champion of destroying capitalism. But due to his support for ESG – particularly for business taking action on climate change – he’s been accused of advancing a form of “<a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/blackrocks-larry-fink-rattles-employees-amid-political-posturing">corporate socialism</a>”, with ESG criticised as “<a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/03/22/esg-investing-fossil-fuels">socialism in sheep’s clothing</a>”.</p>
<h2>All the way to the president</h2>
<p>Concerns about the “woke” politics of ESG don’t just live in the dark recesses of the internet. In the US it has become a mainstream fixation. Anti-ESG opinions abound in the pages of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/opinion-free-expression/the-rising-backlash-against-esg-investing/633ad782-974f-495b-955d-a7c62a0fd8a3">The Wall Street Journal</a> and on the infotainment network Fox News. It is a hot battlefield in the culture wars.</p>
<p>In 2020, the Trump administration proposed a rule requiring pension funds to put “economic interests” ahead of “non-pecuniary” concerns – in other words, to force them to ignore issues of long-term social and environmental sustainability and focus on short-term profits. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sustainability-rankings-dont-always-identify-sustainable-companies-157023">Sustainability rankings don't always identify sustainable companies</a>
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<p>The Biden administration <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-retirement-fund-rule-on-esg-that-trump-blocked-and-biden-wants-to-save/2023/03/01/af05f8a2-b880-11ed-b0df-8ca14de679ad_story.html">reversed this plan</a>. But last month the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/us-senate-poised-consider-blocking-biden-esg-investment-rule-2023-03-01/">US Congress passed a bill</a> to reverse that reversal, with support from two Democrats in the Senate. Biden then used his presidential power to veto the bill – the first veto <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/biden-vetoes-resolution-block-labor-dept-rule-esg-investing-2023-03-20/">of his presidency</a>.</p>
<p>In all likelihood ESG will be a major campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election. The speaker of the Republican-majority House of Representatives, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/biden-vetoes-resolution-block-labor-dept-rule-esg-investing-2023-03-20/">Kevin McCarthy</a>, has accused Biden of wanting “Wall Street to use your hard-earned money to fund a far-left political agenda”. Republican presidential contender and Florida governor Ron DeSantis has also been <a href="https://www.flgov.com/2023/02/13/governor-ron-desantis-announces-legislation-to-protect-floridians-from-the-woke-esg-financial-scam/">railing hard</a> against the “woke ESG financial scam”.</p>
<h2>A short history of stakeholder capitalism</h2>
<p>What’s notable about all these emotive denunciations of ESG is that they demonstrate little understanding of how capitalism works.</p>
<p>This point was made by Fink in his 2022 annual letter to the chief executives of the companies in which BlackRock has invested clients’ money.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In today’s globally interconnected world, a company must create value for and be valued by its full range of stakeholders in order to deliver long-term value for its shareholders. It is through effective stakeholder capitalism that capital is efficiently allocated, companies achieve durable profitability, and value is created and sustained over the long-term. Make no mistake, the fair pursuit of profit is still what animates markets; and long-term profitability is the measure by which markets will ultimately determine your company’s success.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The idea that business owners have responsibilities to wider society is not new. It dates back at least <a href="https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/976/JBA-6s1-Davoudi-McKenna-Olegario.pdf">to the 17th century</a> when the modern corporate form began to emerge through innovations such as joint-stock ownership and the legal privilege of limited liability. </p>
<p>The origins of the corporate social responsibility and ethical investment movements can also be traced back hundreds of years – generally to groups and individuals motivated by religious values – and have been mainstream business <a href="https://www.morningstar.in/posts/57694/history-sustainable-investing.aspx">ideas for decades</a>. </p>
<p>Why? Because paying attention to social and environmental sustainability, ESG advocates argue, produces <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-says-stakeholder-capitalism-is-not-woke.html">better long-term investment returns</a>. If it didn’t, businesses wouldn’t be interested.</p>
<h2>Arguing over the best way to do capitalism</h2>
<p>This is not to say the application of ESG principles isn’t above criticism – for <a href="https://theconversation.com/danones-ceo-has-been-ousted-for-being-progressive-blame-society-not-activist-shareholders-157383">going too far</a>, or not going far enough – being mere window-dressing for the status quo. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/esg-investing-has-a-blind-spot-that-puts-the-35-trillion-industrys-sustainability-promises-in-doubt-supply-chains-170199">ESG investing has a blind spot that puts the $35 trillion industry's sustainability promises in doubt: Supply chains</a>
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<p>But such arguments are over <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2018/03/12/why-blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-is-not-a-socialist/?sh=23ff2f80685b">the best way to do capitalism</a>. It’s all about as far from interest in a <a href="https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2021/05/19/the-neo-marxist-insurgency-in-america/">neo-Marxist insurgency</a> as can be imagined. Debating the best way to produce shareholder value has nothing to do with wanting a “<a href="https://www.intpubnyc.com/browse/class-struggles-in-france-1848-50/">revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat</a>” and to see <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm">private property abolished</a> – key features of Marxism.</p>
<p>Capitalism is changing, that is certain. But it is doing so in a way that has accepted, and is willing to commercially exploit, changing public sentiment concerning climate and change social inequalities. </p>
<p>This is what businesses that make money do. They listen to customers, and other stakeholders - their workers, suppliers, the communities in which they operate, and the governments that regulate them. They plan for the future. They mitigate future risks.</p>
<h2>Impoverishing democracy</h2>
<p>So what explains this fantastical rhetoric about ESG being the road to Marxist tyranny? In my view, it shows just how much the intellectual foundations of conservatism and liberalism have been debased in a media marketplace that favours reactionary emotionalism over tempered thought.</p>
<p>Economic conservatism (rooted in the belief in free markets, globalisation and small government) has become disconnected from social and political conservatism (especially as related to climate activism, social justice and diversity and inclusion).</p>
<p>All of this is a fatal distraction from the broader political and economic problems we face both locally and globally. It pushes serious discussions – such as what to do about <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11366-021-09772-1">economic inequality</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-global-decline-in-democracy-linked-to-social-media-we-combed-through-the-evidence-to-find-out-193841">political polarisation</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hijacking-anxiety-how-trump-weaponised-social-alienation-into-racialised-economics-147366">declining social capital</a> – into the background. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hijacking-anxiety-how-trump-weaponised-social-alienation-into-racialised-economics-147366">Hijacking anxiety: how Trump weaponised social alienation into 'racialised economics'</a>
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<p>There are biting criticisms to be made about ESG that don’t make the headlines. You don’t often hear business-friendly ESG supporters campaigning for increases to the minimum wage, progressive taxation, worker solidarity or the need to curb the runaway train of executive compensation. Climate and social justice are pressing issues, to be sure. But they shouldn’t push fair economic distribution and shared prosperity off the agenda. </p>
<p>Ironically, the bogus labelling of ESG as a Marxist plot also helps do this. It serves the interests of the very elites populist pundits and politicians claim they oppose. It works against the interests of the working-class people they claim they care about. That is not socialism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Rhodes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ‘ESG’ agenda has become a hot battlefield in the culture wars. Claims it’s a slippery slope to socialism show no understanding of how capitalism works.Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.