what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Why the reluctance to seek consensus?

Few people realise the scale of money and civil service time spent on international jamborees which focus on issues such as millennium goals, migration and debt relief – let alone global warming. It amounts to tens of billions of dollars and thousand of man-years.
In stark contrast, little energy seems to be spent attempting to get consensus on the way forward for the deficiencies which have been so visible over the past decade in the economic system which we know, variously, as “globalization” or, increasingly, as “capitalism”.
·       The UN had its fingers burned when, in 2009, it organized the first and only Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis. The G77 group of 130 developing countries tried to insert text that mandated a major role for the UN in dealing with the crisis and backed a comprehensive set of reforms, but northern countries including the US and the EU played a blocking game. Joseph Stiglitz was the author of what remained a Preliminary Report (which I wrote about in 2011)
·       the OECD remains a fan club for unrestricted growth although it does occasionally allow agnostics to produce reports – see, for example, Stiglitz’s latest opus Beyond GDP Measuring what counts
·       The World Bank’s latest World Development Report is as neo-liberal a document as you could imagine

So it has been left to The Club of Rome to come up (a few weeks ago) with Come On! Capitalism, short-termism, population and the destruction of the planet; (Club of Rome 2018) - which is superbly summarized in this article in the current issue of the fascinating Cadmus journal
There’s also a video of a recent introductory presentation at Chatham House.

So the question I want to pose today is why there are so few such attempts to seek consensus on the dominant question of our age – whether at a national or international level; governmental or non-governmental??

I confess I didn’t pay much attention to Yannis Varoufakis’ recent Democracy in Europe initiative (however fascinating his writing, the man is a bit too domineering for my liking) – but I now see that it is a rare and impressive attempt to bring people together to challenge at least one of the dominant players in the economic/financial system. A short 3 page version of its manifesto is here – and the full nine page version here

Few others, it seems, dare venture down such a path – presumably because they know how easily and aggressively they would be accused of “leftism”, “populism”… and even greater crimes….

I would like to seek readers’ help in identifying other initiatives – however minor.

I am aware of The Great Transition Initiative which encourages individuals to comment on a monthly question and paper. Of course it can be criticized for catering only for nerds – but at least it is reaching out to form a network…

The Next System is also a good source of well-written material - project of the US Democracy Collaborative. It had an initial report – The Next System Report – political possibilities for the 21st Century (2015) and references to good community practice in various parts of the world. It has since followed up with a series of worthwhile papers.

Monday, January 7, 2019

How will it all end?

I have long had this naïve belief that the next non-fiction book I select will clear the fog of confusion which seems to hover in my mind. I know I’m going to be disappointed but, somehow, the hope still lingers. And so the books continue to pile up on my shelves….
Wolfgang Streeck is a modest 70 year-old German sociologist currently taking the world by storm. I had bought and thoroughly enjoyed his Buying Time – the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism (2014) and am now reading his How will Capitalism End?. (2016). He puts the rest of us to shame by being able to draft his material in English…(all but two chapters of the present book).
His quiet,unassuming manner belies his history as a Social Democrat party activist and one of the founders of (although latterly critic of) the Varieties of Capitalism school. His global profile came only in the past decade - since his book Re-forming Capitalism – institutional change in the German political economy (2009) was published by Oxford University Press and New Left Review published in 2011 what was to be the first of a series of articles from him - The Crises of Democratic Capitalism (2011).

The bottom Line
Basically he is an example of a disillusioned social democrat – who used to believe that it was possible to reform capitalism but has, at some point in the past decade, been forced to recognize that this is no longer possible…This paper is probably the easiest introduction to his arguments - complete with some good graphs - and this is an excellent summary of a discussion he took part in on the question of the future of capitalism
The introduction to his latest book is particularly enticing – first interrogating the five authors of Does Capitalism have a future? before suggesting that the totality of our responses to the global challenges we face can be summarized as one or other variant of “Coping, hoping, doping and shopping
The "endgame" he suggests will be drawn-out, disjointed and uncomfortable - although he doesn't really spend all that much space on the issue......and the book is remarkably light on the question of AI and robotisation which has been exercising a lot of people.– let alone on the environment which rates only a couple of references in the index..... 

His book does encourage me to go back to this issue of the shape of the future which beckons – it was March 2018 when I last posted on it - uploading the (short) version of Dispatches to the Next Generation. This is the only introduction I know of to the literature which has been trying to make sense of the world we live in

A Streeck Resource
The Rise of the European Consolidation State (2015) https://www.mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/dp15-1.pdf
politics of public debt 2013 https://www.mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/dp13-7.pdf

Monday, December 31, 2018

The Search for the Holy Grail

I’m proud  this last day of the year to present The Search for the Holy Grail – the 2018 posts – being the fourth annual collection of my blogposts but the first to emerge from a strenuous process of editing.
It was 2015 when I started the habit of publishing annual collections of these posts - although In Praise of Doubt – a blogger’s year cheated a bit by actually covering 15 months and therefore running it at 250 pages – a bit too much perhaps for the average reader. Most of the images I used for this first effort were from my collections of paintings and artefacts…
The Slaves’ Chorus was more manageable at 120 pages (including the Sceptic’s Glossary I had included the previous year) and it kept the focus of the images on my own collection.
Last year’s Common Endeavour covered 76 posts and 180 pages – with the images being – initially at any rate – more eclectic but, ultimately, petering out…

Why the title?
The very first little book I wrote (way back in 1977) was called The Search for Democracy; the first effort I made some 15 years ago to crystallise some of the key lessons from my organisational endeavours bore the title “The search for the Holy Grail”; and the visiting card I now use bears the epithet “explorer and aesthete” – so “searching and exploring – if not discovery” seem clearly to be part of who I am..….

What’s different
Until now, I have let the posts speak for themselves. I chose this year to start rereading and reflecting on them from about October and soon realised it might add a little coherence if I grouped posts with a common theme together. So some of the posts are not quite in the order in which they appeared….
This in turn inspired me to use, for the beginning of each section, the tables which I had started to use last year. The first column gives the title of the post – with the other compressing what I was trying to say into a few lines (a real challenge!)…… Most of my readership is not using English as their first language and such summaries seem therefore a useful endeavour 

What’s the same?
The blog is not a diary – it does not record what I do on a weekly basis – although events such as exhibitions, wine-tasting or trips do make the occasional appearance. I made two trips to Scotland this year – my first such visits since a wedding in 2012 – which didn’t feature in the posts but are covered here. The blog remains a record of more cerebral activities – of the thoughts sparked by books and general reading…

Key points
The year started with some advice for the Davos set; some deaths; and some Italian and German writers before returning to a subject which had occupied the blog in previous months – Reforming the State
Change, of one shape or form, was the dominant theme of this year’s posts – exactly half of them, not counting several posts on Brexit in the early part of the year.
But it was how ideas are conveyed that seemed to exercise me as much as the ideas themselves – with quite a few posts being devoted to examples of both good and bad writing as well as that of the future of the blog
This is the first year for a decade I have spent fully in Romania – so a few posts about the country figure in this year’s collection….
At one stage I thought the posts had dried up – for almost 3 months I lacked anything to spark inspiration. I realised some time ago that my mind/body was telling me something when this happened – but what exactly? When I was younger, I could blame stress – but this was high summer…..and in blessed Sirnea of the meadows and high peaks…
It’s true that I had just finished a challenging series of posts about “administrative reform” and the nature of the State – so I could be forgiven for being a bit alienated….And that I had spent most of the winter holed up in Ploiesti……but reasonably active with walking and swimming….

I knew, of course, that one of the curses of retirement is that time can hang heavily but I had, since at least 2012, managed to avoid this….I had discovered wines from both sides of the Lower Danube; written a little book about Romanian culture (see Mapping Romania - notes on an unfinished journey); and started a serious collection of Bulgarian painters - Bulgarian Realists – getting to know the Bulgarians through their art. And the morning discipline of a blogpost had seemed to keep me ticking over…..but suddenly vanished….Even the taste for reading disappeared…in what was to be a three-month hiaitus…

But late October saw the blog back with a bang – not just the posts but a flurry of the first book purchases (at Bucharest’s annual Book Fair) since the spring…  And November saw the reader numbers over the entire period of the blog hit the 300,000 mark. Quite a landmark ….
Once this year the monthly viewing hit the 10,000 mark and twice just missed but, generally, the monthly figure has been around 4,000

America's lost soul

It was, of course, Jimmy Carter whose words graced the last post.....uttered in 1979 at the height of America's fuel crisis.
I've used both quotations not so much to make a contrast with the present incumbent as to emphasise how warped the US perspective has become over the years. In a lifetime, any sense of social responsibility has disappeared....

I had no sooner posted this than I came across an article by George Monbiot which demonstrates the scale of the work being carried out by big business to identify and exploit our weaknesses for their benefit – and the extent of academic and university complicity…..
As it happens, my bookshop browsing had made me very aware of the huge number of titles now available on the latest social psychology research – of which Before you Know It is  good example
Indeed, I even devoted an important post last month to the subject

Later today I will upload my little E-book of the year's posts....

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Another Teaser

The (perhaps surprising) answer was - Dwight Eisenhower - in his final Presidential address of 1960!!
 And let's see what you make of this quotation....Who said it - and when???
“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.” 
Our people have turned to the …. government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life……. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide.” 
“What you see too often …… is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a (n elected Chamber) twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests.” 
We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path -- the path of common purpose and the restoration of (our) values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.

Seasonal Teaser

 Who said this???

We . . . must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. 

Saturday, December 22, 2018

Seasonal Taste

Romanian wines seem at last – after almost 30 years - to be coming in from the cold. No fewer than three significant “events” occurred in this domain in the past few months. First the publication in the summer of a substantial book The Wines of Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova; by Caroline Gilby (2018) who has apparently been a wine connoisseuse for the past decade and is the first English-speaking specialist to produce a book about the local wines. (An expensive coffee-table The Wine Book of Romania was produced a couple of years ago by a Romanian)
Gilby's book came to my attention because of the wine blog of Mike Vesseth - who made his first visit to Romania this autumn; took part on some wine tasting at Iasi and posted about these experiences this month.

I had no sooner asked to see a copy of the Gilby book (50 euros!) than, a few days later, I alighted on a copy of the first ever Gault Millau Guide to Romanian Wines 2019 – which describes (all too briefly) 63 wineries and 152 wines. There’s a good summary of the Romanian wine varieties here

At the same time, the various Crama (bulk wine cellars) which are such a pleasant feature of life here have been giving us access to the dry white wines of Averesti (Iasi), Macin (Dobrogea), Jidvei (Alba Iulia), and Vissoara (Constanta) – for 2 euros a litre! The famous Obor market not far from us has the last two including a new grape for me, the Sarba, available from Girboiu - one of the many new vineyards which have developed in the country in the past decade or so

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Why is the UK media coverage of Brexit so superficial?

The recent post about Brexit was a long one simply because most of the British commentary about the issue is so superficial – tending to focus on personalities rather than issues. It was left to the “Open Democracy” website to offer the sort of analysis we need - with this article which applies Dani Rodrik’s impossibility trilemma to the Brexit issue. This states that democracy, national sovereignty and cross border economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full.

In the context of Brexit, it means that we can do any two of the following:
a) Retain the benefits of economic integration that come via membership of the EU’s single market and customs union;
b) Reclaim national sovereignty by returning powers to the British parliament that currently lie with the European institutions;
c) Uphold democratic principles by ensuring that we have a say over all the laws we are subjected to.

Theresa May’s plan partially achieves a) and b), while sacrificing c). Her strategy has been to retain some of the benefits of economic integration to avoid the damage resulting from a cliff edge, while reclaiming national sovereignty over certain key areas (immigration, agriculture, fisheries etc). 

The Labour Party’s position has become clearer over time. In a speech delivered earlier this year, Jeremy Corbyn stated that Labour’s priorities were as follows:
– Negotiate a deal that gives full “tariff-free access” to the single market;
– Negotiate a new customs union with the EU, while ensuring that the UK has a say in future trade deals;
– Not accept any situation where the UK is subject to all EU rules and EU law, yet has no say in making those laws;
– Negotiate protections or exemptions from current rules and directives “where necessary” that push privatisation and public service competition or restrict the government’s ability to intervene to support domestic industry.

The first two of these seek to keep the benefits of economic integration that come via the single market and customs union. The third is about maintaining democracy, while the fourth is about reclaiming national sovereignty. Labour is trying to have all three ends served at once. This is an internally contradictory position that falls foul of the Brexit trilemma, meaning that trade-offs will likely have to be made

I’ll continue the analysis in a minute - but first let me give you a taste of how the serious British media has been covering the issue. Andrew Rawnsley is one of the country’s most respected political journalists and concludes his weekly overview of what has been perhaps the most dramatic week of the past two years in this style

The risks to Britain are enormous and yet Britons have no more faith in the official opposition than they do in a government falling apart before the country’s eyes. In the midst of the worst period for the Conservative party since the ERM crisis, the poll tax, Suez, the Corn Laws or any other precedent of your choice, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has become less popular and the leader’s personal ratings are even more negative than those of the prime minister.
Labour is getting a similar warning from the private polling that the party commissions. However lustily they may demand a general election when in front of a live microphone, some members of the shadow cabinet are muttering privately that they are not at all eager to go to the country for fear that their party will get a verdict from the voters that it will not like.

The endless ducking and diving about when they might call a no-confidence vote against the government makes Labour look like opportunists desperately hoping to luck into office on the back of Brexit turmoil rather than a party with the national interest at heart. You can’t keep demanding that the Tories “make way” for Labour, the daily mantra of Mr Corbyn and his drones, and then never trigger the only mechanism for making that happen.
At the heart of it is Labour’s continuing refusal to come clean about whether it will or will not support another referendum. What has always smelled of unprincipled tactical prevarication now reeks of a refusal to be honest with the electorate.

Failed by both its major parties, the biggest loser of all is Brexit-broken Britain. Our country is careening towards disaster. All of its political institutions know this. None of them seems capable of arresting it. They continue to play their games of charades as we lurch towards the abyss.

Now this is a very concise and fair assessment - but what it fails to offer is any analysis of the reasons why the politicians are behaving in such an apparently childish way….For this we have to go to sources which the public rarely access – the Think Tanks - but one which few Brits would be aware of - The Dahrendorf Forum. There I found (on its Publications List) a fascinating paper “ Cultures of Negotiation – explaining Britain’s hard bargaining in the Brexit negotiations” which, plausibly, points to three explanatory factors for the embarrassing mess the UK has made of these negotiations –
the Conservative “ideology of statecraft”,
- the adversarial political culture of the UK
- its “weak socialisation into European structures

But revenons aux moutons – ie to the rare analysis the Open Democracy article offers of the options the British parliamentarians currently have at their disposal -

Some MPs have backed a so-called ‘Norway plus’ option, which would see the UK remaining in the European Economic Area (EEA) and joining a customs union with the EU. However, with the exception of a car crash disorderly Brexit, this represents the worst of all worlds – sacrificing both democracy and national sovereignty in order to maintain the benefits of economic integration with the EU. It amounts to “all pay, no say” – accepting all EU laws and regulations while sacrificing any democratic say over them, while also contributing to EU budgets.
It is hard to imagine a world where our politicians and electorate – who voted for Brexit in order to “take back control” – would stomach such an outcome. In any case, Norwegian leaders have made it clear that they would oppose Britain’s application to join such an arrangement.

This leaves two possible options which, on the face of it at least, do not involve a significant loss of democracy and sovereignty.
Firstly, Labour could favour a harder Brexit which seeks to reclaim national sovereignty and take back control of our rules and laws, while sacrificing economic integration with the EU – and incurring whatever economic cost that might carry (hereafter referred to as the ‘Lexit’ option). This effectively combines options b) and c) in the list above, while sacrificing a).

Secondly, Labour could favour a second referendum and campaign to remain in the EU, and seek to transform it from within – and incur whatever political cost this might carry (hereafter referred to as the ‘Remain’ option). This effectively combines options a) and c) in the list above, while sacrificing b).

The case for Lexit relies heavily on four key assumptions.
-        that EU membership places significant constraints on key levers of domestic policy that would prevent a left-wing government from implementing its agenda.
-       that these constraints can only be escaped by leaving the EU (i.e. reform within the EU is impossible).
-       that once outside the EU, the UK will be able to exert sovereignty over these areas of policy as an independent country.
-       that the benefits of this will more than offset the economic and political costs of leaving the EU. In the following sections, each of these will be examined in turn.

This post is long enough – for the detailed assessment of the extent to which these assumptions can be sustained read Labour’s Brexit Trilemma for yourself!

Further Reading
- EUReferendum daily blog  A critical daily blog from someone who long argued for Brexit - but also drawn attention to the triviality of the UK press see http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87090
- The Brexit Blog – a sane voice of sense from an organisational sociologist of all people!! A weekly
- LSE Brexit a good selection of items
https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/