What’s Going on in the USA?

The penultimate post was a long quote from a US blogger which identified two schools of thought currently dividing the USA and analysed each. It offers one of the best interpretations of what’s happening in that benighted country.

Today, I want to focus on another right-wing US blogger, Micha Narberhaus whose substack is called PROTOPIA and suggests that

The dogmatism and the shutdown of pluralistic conversation in Western societies stifles the creativity that is needed for solving the most pressing deep-rooted social and ecological problems. We need to start having real and honest conversations to plant the seeds for the renewal of trust in our polarised societies and find cooperative solutions to our most pressing problems. With the Protopia Conversations we have created such a space for a new and fresh conversation.

He offers a two-part analysis of the “Open Sociaty” of which this is the first

The role of the European Court of Human Rights in preventing member states from democratically deciding how to deal with illegal immigration is another example of how the rules-based international order is often highly dysfunctional. When unaccountable international bureaucracies prevent national governments from passing laws to protect their countries from illegal mass immigration, they lose their legitimacy.

In his historic speech at the Munich Security Conference last February, JD Vance held up a mirror to the European establishment and told them the uncomfortable truth. He effectively told them that the post-war project of 'defending democracy' against the 'irrational masses' was finally over, when he said:

But what German democracy—what no democracy, American, German, or European—will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. [...] To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little.

European elites now see themselves as the sole defenders of the open society project, while acknowledging that the rules-based international order is most likely a thing of the past. 

Since the European elites now believe that Putin is the new Hitler who wants to conquer Europe and that Trump is also a fascist and therefore an enemy of Europe, their seemingly logical conclusion is that Europeans must prepare for war to defend the open society. But very few young Europeans are actually prepared to defend their country if it is attacked - 17% in Germany, for example. You can't have it both ways: first undermine their sense of national identity and then expect the same people to accept dying for the very nation they were told to disown. It's hard to see how the European liberal establishment can hold on to power for much longer. The anger of ordinary people will probably lead to some major political changes in Europe sooner rather than later.

The second part of the series focuses on free trade

The 19th century American economist Henry Charles Carey was a critic of David Ricardo's ideas on free trade. In his view, trade between a country with strong labour laws was a perversion of the natural associational ties that underpin trade between close neighbours and fellow citizens. His analysis of the negative effects of free trade is probably even more relevant today than when Carey wrote it 200 years ago:

Instead of binding people together more closely in a shared system of law, morality and culture, trade escalates external rivalries and mutual jealousies. It pushes a society away from internal self-sufficiency and toward external dependency. Reliance on external trade makes a society’s economy more and more dependent as it becomes more and more specialized. The more a nation’s vital interests exist outside its own borders, the more that nation will face a choice between being a bully and being a patsy. 

Having a variety of employments within one’s own country [is] important for the full flourishing of citizens with naturally differing abilities. An economy focused on only certain industries is going to reward the aptitudes and talents of some citizens while leaving others to languish. Most people must find work within their own cultural, linguistic and political boundaries, even if they rely on international trade to supply their needs. A society that offshores its manufacturing base does not offshore those citizens most suited to thrive within that sector of the economy. It merely abandons them. A society that relies too much on external trade provides for its citizens’ varied needs as consumers but neglects their equally varied aptitudes as workers.

This is exactly what has happened in the United States, where the share of prime-age men who are neither employed nor looking for work has risen steadily from around 3 per cent in 1965 to 12 per cent in 2016.

Suggested Reading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lNDgLR_DSI return of the strong gods

https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/american-strong-gods NS Lyons

Return of the Strong Gods – nationalism, populism and the future of the west RR Reno (2019)

https://michanarberhaus.substack.com/p/the-meaning-of-saving-democracy

https://unherd.com/author/n-s-lyons/

APOLOGIES

 My heartfelt apologies for the way the text on the last post is overlapping with existing text on the right-hand side of the blog.

I REALLY HAVE TO FIND AN ALTERNATIVE SITE - but this involves the transfer of 13 years' work!!

The Right-wing Intellectuals driving the Trump Revolution

A new mood seems evident in “the West” (by which is generally meant Europe and the USA). It’s best expressed in the latest post from “The Long Memo” run by US-based William Finnegan – although this one is actually written by one Martin Luz

Here in the U.S., narrative warfare is playing out as a pitched battle between two completely 

different ways of explaining the radical breakage we’re seeing daily—one from the autocratic 

right (Narrative A) and one from a pro-pluralism coalition that includes just about everyone 

else (Narrative B).

• Narrative A: Government is a tyranny against individual liberty, and the Trump administration 

is finally giving America a long-overdue and much-needed radical realignment of priorities, 

streamlined decision making, and shrinking of government to make it more efficient and 
accountable. Government is too big, too bloated, too tyrannical, and this administration is fixing it all by removing bureaucratic obstacles and entrenched interests that want to enforce their out-of-touch, anti-American ideology on everyday Americans. The administration also prioritizes American interests over international interests that cost too much and return too little. They’re using the nation’s political and economic power to get more for the American taxpayer. They are championing individual liberty here at home and refocusing the agencies of law and order to hold to account those who have misused the government to launch “woke,” radical, racialist attacks on political foes, free expression, and individual and religious liberty. And they are going to bat for American business, aiming to power growth and innovation by reducing the heavy hand of regulation and fighting anti-competitive behavior of other nations. This is the beginning of an American resurgence that gets our nation back on the right (i.e., conservative) track toward personal and economic liberty.

Narrative B: The Trump administration is gutting American democracy in an unprecedented autocratic power grab. They are removing all obstacles to authoritarian control by gutting independent offices of accountability (e.g., Inspectors General, Boards of Governors, Joint Chiefs, etc,) defanging critical media, and attacking and defunding educational institutions. 
They are assaulting the separation of powers, as well as trying to control and intimidate the 
judiciary, in a naked effort to centralize state power in the person of the executive. They are purging apolitical career civil servants to install political loyalists answerable to the executive, rather than to American citizens and the Constitution—destroying essential capabilities and expertise that have taken decades to build. 

They are instituting Orwellian “newspeak” and memory-holing critical data and information, especially scientific information: holding truth hostage to ideology. Their tactics include criminalizing dissent and intimidating private businesses that oppose their unconstitutional aims and tactics. They are intentionally creating chaos to distract from their autocratic attacks, and they’re on the verge of leaving tens of millions of Americans destitute to deliver more wealth and economic/political power to wealthy and corporate benefactors. This is a crisis moment, in which a lying power-hungry elite is seizing control of the most powerful democracy on Earth, supplanting the will of the people for their benefit, to install themselves as a permanent kleptocratic oligarchy.

Is there a middle ground? There used to be, but not so much anymore. Are there kernels 

of truth within Narrative A? Sure. But Narrative B runs much closer to the objective truth 

of our current moment. For the moment, Narrative A is the hands-down winner. 

Trump’s backers (the ones who matter) got their way, and now they’re using their 

government-is-tyranny narrative as a justification for giving us exactly what they’ve been 

promising for decades: a complete dismantling of the old order.
Meanwhile, the pluralist, pro-democracy, anti-autocracy coalition arguing Narrative B is 

stumbling badly and struggling to respond effectively. Why?
They are stuck in the past.

But as William Finnegan observes:
The same business elites forced to accept these regulations never stopped 

trying to undo them.

• They hated high taxes.

• They hated powerful unions.

• They hated financial regulations.

The Reagan-Thatcher years brought a “neoliberal” revolution based on Milton Friedman's ideas. 

Friedman argued that corporations exist solely to make money for shareholders and that any 

impingement on the private economy is akin to moral heresy.
Democrats, cornered and out of power, struck a “neoliberal compromise” with Bill Clinton, 

making a deliberate triangulation: “You let us keep much of our government spending and 

expansive social programs, and we’ll give you your low taxes, reduced regulation, and a 

massive liberalization of capital markets and trade. We’ll sell it as the best of both worlds.”
It worked a bit, enabling Clinton to turn budget deficits into surpluses. But in the long run, 

that compromise sparked a decades-long shift toward concentrated market and political power 

among a small group of wealthy elites and giant corporations.
The editor of this publication has cited some of the primary results of the neoliberal agenda’s 

dominance for decades: stagnant wages, dominating corporate monopolies, squelched competition, 

and the labor exploitation of a gig economy. On a larger scale, we are also contending with:

• Regional wealth inequality that drives immigration pressure and destabilizing backlash 

politics in developed economies, especially in Europe.

• Economic practices that are crashing through planetary boundaries in terms of species 

extinction, ecosystem collapse, endemic chemical pollution, and climate change.

• The dehumanizing financialization of everything: professional investors and huge, 

monopolistic businesses are consolidating and squeezing return out of everything from 
rental housing, to your local doctor’s office, to the local lakeside boat dock, to vending machines everywhere, right down to our attention span and social relationships.

The neoliberal compromise's structure was great for business: it provided high labor mobility, 

expanded international trade, and deep, liquid, transparent capital markets.
But it delivered devastating social outcomes: discontent and dislocation, increasing economic 

hardship and inequality, and a frustrated, angry politics that seeks increasingly extreme 

solutions to people’s pain.
The marketplace of ideas, as consistently expressed through “protest voting” on the right and 

left over the past two decades, has rendered its final determination. The jig is up.

The Forces of War Are Not Slowing Down
One has to take to heart Yascha Mounk’s caution that Anyone Who Knows What's About to Happen 

Is Lying. But in the short term, there’s plenty of directional data to indicate that conflict 

drivers that are still gaining momentum:

1. The information ecosystem has been thoroughly “enshittified,” and that’s not changing. 

2. If anything, it will get worse as unregulated AI is released into the wild and the power of 
tech oligarchs continues to grow. A recent poll showed that GOP voters believe the opposite of what’s true on almost all the key issues they claim to care about.

3. The anti-democracy disinformation and propaganda campaigns of foreign enemies are going 
nowhere (Enabled by tech oligarchs, see above.)

4. Never underestimate the staying power of autocracies even if they deliver terrible outcomes 
for citizens—e.g., on 3/16 protests against hard-right governments “swept” eastern Europe, 
including Hungary, but two days later, on 3/18, a lopsided majority in the Hungarian parliament (137-27) voted to outlaw public LGBT pride celebrations as a “child protection” measure.

More Diaries and Memoirs

Diaries, Letters and Memoirs

I’ve taken to adding memoirs, diaries and letters whenever I come across them and can download them to the file I last accessed a year ago. Here, therefore, is the new 54 page version Diaries, Letters and Memoirs and a selection of some of the more interesting -

• The Burden of German History – a transatlantic life Konrad Jarausch (2023) a fascinating read from a German emigre

• Economics in America – an immigrant economist explores the land of inequality Angus Deaton (2023) a Scot exposes the harsh realities of his new homeland

• Myself and other More Important Matters; Charles Handy (2008) a famous 

UK management guru reflects on his life (see also LETTERS)

• A Life Looking Forward – memoirs of an independent Marxist Samir Amin 

(2006) An Egyptian by birth, he became a Professor of Political Economy and active in the World Social Forum and in discussions about the African future. This is a nice tribute

• There is Nothing for You Here - finding opportunity in the 21st Century 

Fiona Hill (2021) A miner’s daughter from NE England recounts how she found 
the missing opportunity in the USA where, as a Russian expert, she testifyied at Trump’s impeachment but argues that opportunity is no longer available.

• Through the Looking Glass – writers’ memoirs at the turn of the 21st Century 

(Robert Kusek 2017) The go-to text for its summary of memoirs in the English language. Produced by and with the financial assistance of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow

• Escape to Life Erika and Klaus Mann (1939) Both famous, not least for their familial link to their father, Thomas, with the entire family forced to leave Germany because of the Nazis. This is a brilliant evocation of others who followed a similar route.

• The Noodle-maker of Kalimpong Gyalo Thondup (2015) The Dalai Lama’s brother tells the story of his life serving the DL.

• Familiar Stranger – a life between two islands Stuart Hall (2017) The New 

Left’s British guru first describes his life in the West Indies and then in the UK

• You Can’t Please All – a memoir Tariq Ali (2024) Another New Leftist 

describes his eventful life.

A New Voice

 At the start of the month, I did a post about the ongoing coup in the USA which listed some of the key articles helpful to an understanding of what is going on in that strange country.

Claire Berlinski is a blogger I need to add to the list. She has just started a series of posts called – Profiles in Cowardice, with this being the second and this, so far, the third. She uses a book produced in 1940 by a French historian Marc Bloch who was a resistance fighter eventually executed by the Nazis

Bloch was a medievalist, but his account of the Battle of France showed him to be 

just as skillful an analyst of contemporary politics. His book Strange Defeat 

(produced posthumously in 1946) is not a personal memoir, although it incorporate 

his perspective as a witness to the events. It’s a work of history, written by a 

participant in the battle, and it is written to the standards Bloch believed history 

should be written, even though he was writing of events, as he described them in a 

letter to Febvre, that “surpass in horror, and in humiliation, all we could dream in 

our worst nightmares.” 

He assesses both the proximate and the deeper causes of the catastrophe 

No segment of French society escapes his scrutiny. All are weighed in the balances, 

and all are found wanting. He carefully describes the failings of military, from the 

high command to the conscripted soldier, and the inadequacies of the French ruling 

class. He describes the shortcomings of the French bourgeoisie, the worldviews of 

rural and the urbanized Frenchman. He details the failures of politicians, of the left 

and the right, and those of the press, academics, teachers, and labor unions. 

All failed to prepare the country to confront the threat it faced. 

What drove the French army to disaster, Bloch concludes, was the accumulation of 

many mistakes. What characterized them all, however, was the inability of the French 

leadership to think in terms of a new war. “In other words,” he writes, “the German 

triumph was, essentially, a triumph of the intellect—and it is that which makes it so 

peculiarly serious.” It’s important to consider what he means in saying that France’s 

defeat was a defeat of the intellect. So is ours, and it is that which makes it not only 

serious, but extremely difficult to fix.

When Bloch writes of the failures of the High Command, it calls to mind two images. 

First, there are the elderly Democrats, who cannot be made to understand that this 

unleashed version of Trump, and the cult he commands, are not like anything in their 

experience. They cannot see that laws of politics with which they grew up no longer 

apply, and the strategies with which they’re familiar no longer work. They are in an 

entirely new fight, shaped by technologies they don’t understand—but their opponents 

do—and they lack the alacrity the circumstances demand.
Her second image is more dubious – its the so-called Russian invasion of our minds….

Other relevant posts are

Adam Przeworski’s February-March posts - 39 pages long!

Rules for Destroying a Liberal

From the Berghof to the Oval Office

The Great Capitulation

Why do we ignore the State?

I’ve been trying in these last posts to make sense of the sudden turn of the US to …. what exactly? Fascism? (as per Snyder) Autocracy? (as per Applebaum). But we really need more attention paid to the STATE which accounts for so much of a country’s GNP but which has come under increasing attack from free-marker ideologues. I have been trying to draft a book on the subject – using some key texts to help me. This is what I’ve come up with – with an outline of the book chapters to follow.

Essential Reading

The State in Capitalist Society Ralph Miliband (1969) Still the clearest exposition – if Marxist

What does the Ruling Class Do when it Rules? Goren Therborn (1978) A good analysis from a Swede

The Great Arch – English State development as Cultural Revolution Philip Corrigan and 

Derek Sayer (1985) Very good on the slow development of the UK state

The Future of the Capitalist State Bob Jessop (2002) Jessop is not an easy read. I would suggest instead Pierson’s book

The Modern State Christopher Pierson (2^nd ed 2004) All you need to know about the State

On the State – lectures at the College de France 1989-92 Pierre Bourdieu (2014)
The Origins of Political Order F Fukuyama (2011) The definitive 2 volume book
Political Order and Political DecayF Fukuyama (2014) The definitive 2 volume book

The State – past, present and future Bob Jessop (2016) Rather turgid going

Reclaiming the State – a progressive vision of sovereignty for a new-liberal world William Mitchell and Thomas Fazi (2017) An interesting take by economists

On Tyranny – 20 lessons from the 20th century Timothy Snyder (2017) A short book from 

a US political scientist
How Fascism Works – the politics of us and them Jason Stanley (2018) from a US political 

philosopher
The Return of the State – restructuring britain for the common good ed Allen et al 

(PEF 2021) A social democratic interpretation
Mission Economy Mariana Mazacatto (2021) An Italian economist makes a strong case for

the State. see also https://www.philosopheasy.com/p/the-entrepreneurial-state-unmasking

The Problem of the State Michael Mair (2021) A bit too philosophical for my tastes
The Return of the State and why it is essential for our health, wealth and happiness 

G Garrard (2022) A Canadian/British social democrat makes a strong argument
The Project State and its Rivals – a new history of the 20th and 21st Centuries 

Charles Maier (2023) An economic historian puts the discussions about the State in 

historical perspective

Autocracy – the dictators who want to run the world Anne Applebaum (2024) A Polish/American journalist dissects the beast

The Structure of the Book

is unusual for reasons I explain in this Warning

• People do not normally read a book about administrative reform with any expectation of pleasure.

• Such texts will normally figure as required reading in student courses, for example, in public administration reform.

• But this is not a textbook on administrative reform….

• It starts with my involvement, in the late 1960s, in community politics rising to a position of strategic influence in the West of Scotland local government - one held for some 20 years.

• On the basis of the innovative strategies I helped develop in a Regional authority covering half of Scotland, I then found myself working and living for the next 20 plus years in Central Europe and Central Asia - as a consultant in “institutional development”

• These are my musings about how and what I think I’ve learned (so far) about the process of change from my experience of attempting it in some dozen countries

• As I’ve dared to suggest that we need to ration books, I need to explain why I’m inflicting this one on you and why I’m fed up with books which have nothing but text. So I’ve tried to liven things up a bit by the use of tables and boxes and the odd diagram

Preface

in which I recall how a radio series first aroused my interest in organisations, reflect on the book’s origins and on why I think it may be of interest

1. The state of the State - in which I encounter the deficiencies of local bureaucracy (56 years ago), forcing some of us to start rethinking the role of the State - privatisation had, in the 1980s, left us wondering how far this development could redefine its role; and the unexpected fall of the Berlin Wall and of communist regimes then had us concocting pathways to capitalism and democracy.

2. Administrative Reform in the new millenium - which captures one man’s attempt in 1999 to convey to a foreign audience his understanding of the organisational changes which had taken place in the 30 years from 1970 to the new millennium

3. Impervious Power – the eastern approaches - which reflects on the experience of western con-sultan ts in central Europe and central Asia as they wrestled with the transition to what their tiny minds assumed to be democracy and free markets.

4. Question Time

A little British book about “the attack on the state” provoked me in 2018 into exploring some questions about the huge literature on public management reform (mainly academic) which has developed since the 1990s. include the following -

- How does each particular public service (eg health, education) work?

- Where can we find the measures of the efficiency and effectiveness of public services?

- How do countries compare internationally in the performance of their public services ?

- Has privatisation lived up to its hype?

- what alternatives are there to state and private provision

- why do governments still spend mega bucks on consultants?

5. The Management Virus - The private and public sectors alike seem to have been taken over in recent decades by hordes of managers. How has this happened? How do we stop it?

6. The echoes of Praxis - As someone who has straddled the worlds of politics, academia and consultancy, I am disappointed by the sparseness of the practitioner contribution to the literature. By default we are left with academics who interview those in government and sometimes train them and with consultants – although the former are the more voluble

7.Take Back Control? - which explores the implication of the quotation which adorns the book’s cover and asks how exactly might democracy improve the operation of our public services? Is this just a question of giving local government more power, as some would argue – ie giving a greater voice to the local public through their local representatives having a stronger legal and strategic role? Or does it require a more open and participative process – as many would argue? Or does it perhaps mean a greater say by the workforce in the everyday management of public services? Or a combination of all the above?

Hilary Wainwright is amongst the very few who have taken this question seriously – although the Dutch, with the Buurtzog model, are now exploring the question

8. Theories of Change - in which I question the compartmentalisation of the subject of change into studies of psychology, technology, organisation and society.

9. Inconclusion - Back to democracy

Notes; chapter by chapter