h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for straightening me out on that. I think the evil dentist numbed my brain.

Indeed. Orin Scrivello would do that.

Now, spit

I can spit, but not here. H2G2 forbids spitting.

DO they allow swallowing...or maybe the odd gargle?

Well some people certainly *are* revolting!

Back in the vague direction of the topic...

It's been pointed out that the Egyptian revolution may not be counted a success yet. Other revolutions can be said to have been abject failures - most notably the Russian. So are *all* revolutions doomed to fail?

I'd have thought that the late 20thC revolutions in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary must count as successes (although Hungary shows some disturbing signs of autocracy). Yeltsin's Russian revolution has arguably turned out to be a failure. Algeria's turned out OK...but only after a long and nasty time. Portugal and Mozambique did quite well. So too did Angola once South Africa was forced to stop destabilising it. South Africa also. Their transition to democracy *was* by means of revolution. Sure, they still have problems - but who doesn't?

So...accepting that revolutions are a messy business and best avoided if at all possible...at what stage can we judge whether all the commotion has been worthwhile? Is it still too early to say in the case of France?

<Well some people certainly *are* revolting! -

Ed, I'm hoping for a QOTD with that one - if they've got the cajones

"at what stage can we judge whether all the commotion has been worthwhile? Is it still too early to say in the case of France? [Edward the Bonobo]

Does it have to be judged by *us?* Why not leave it up to the citizens of a country to decide whether they have the government they want? Granted, people are often of two minds. Still, no one has to put up with the French government as much as the French people themselves do. There doesn't seem to be a mass movement of French people to other countries. Quite the contrary, the French tend to stay in France, while tourists from other countries visit in droves. This doesn't look like a desperate situation tome.

The more I find out about the French, their government, their way of life, their politics, their economy, their attitudes to things like work/life balance and religion, the more I envy them. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud to be an Englishman, but goodness me the French know how to live.

Indeed. On of the pluses, to me, of the EU has always been that we get to throw in our lot with some sensibly run countries like Germany and France. Complain all you want about loss of sovereignty, but I'm quite relieved that the crew of gangsters in London have their hands tied on at least some matters.

So are we needing a Robespierre figure to make heads roll?

Genuine question.

They went through a bit of a bad patch in the 19thC, but they seem to have come out of it with their liberté, égalité et fraternité more or less intact.

And then we might go on to wonder whether Mao's revolution might turn out, after all, to have been worth it...



End with a song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DegGwZnySmk&feature=related

The fundamental problem with this concept [a People's Revolution] is that most revolutions as people's movements have been against the inadequacies of the existing government and in favour of a better one by some other group, party or individual.

This certainly seems to be the case with the current people's movements which are angry with their governments for not raising even larger debts than their countries already have, for not providing them with enough jobs, for expecting them to work longer for the pensioner-life that Capitalism has normalised.

Why have a dog and bark yourself? Most people feel that they have paid their taxes for good government and feel entitled to receive it, not go back to DIY.

If people really wanted to run everything for themselves and not be State-ridden they would be rushing to sign up for all the inititiatives of David Cameron's "Big Society". But a People's Revolution would presumably mean choosing to give everyone-as individuals or groups according to choice- the right to live their lives without the State and therefore having no recourse to those powers that are the State's 'raison d'etre"- the powers to compel, coerce, punish and destroy. When employed by the "Common People" without due process, as when handled by experts in these affairs, these are criminal activities, as they are when mishandled by agents of the State.

Casseroleon, your world-view is influenced strongly by the Glorious Revolution. No?

KB

Possibly -- but then the Glorious Bloodless Revolution and England's successful Parliamentary democracy was probably the main inspiration for revolutionaries in other countries who believed that the English State model could either be imported or modified to their needs.

"No taxation without representation".

The USA, and modern France, Germany, and Russia/USSR were all built on the legacy of the GBR.

My argument is that- in spite of arguments like the Marxist "withering away of the State"- the reality is that for several hundred years people have pursued power on a non-human scale as the main source of their security. So, for example, in the dawning of a new age of Revolution after 1917, Adolf Hitler told the new Nazi Party that they should not worry about what they would do once they had power. Their struggle should only be directed at seizing the power of the State, and no doubt restoring the power that Germany had been stripped of by the Treaty of Versailles.

The fundamental problem of the evolved "English type" of government, however, is that the way that the modern world is run is such that neither the electorate nor the professional politicians actually understand what the way things work.. The GBR made possible the National Debt, and therefore the current financial crisis.

Our daughter is one of those "super-brain Actuaries" with an MA in Physics followed by more than a dozen other professional examinations, equivalent to several more degrees. It seems that only such people, aided by the capacity of modern computers, give us some chance of navigating the complexities of the modern world. And all political parties and governments have to take their lead from a small number of Think Tanks that try to model the future trends of the economy- which is master of us all. I have just been quoting C.Delisle Burns whose study "The First Europe AD 400-800" was published in 1947 when people were arguing for a similar kind of Europe where people lived under an over-arching "moral authority". Burns called Charlemagne "The Play Emperor" because as Holy Roman Emperor he had no additional power to those that he had as King of his own Kingdoms. And it is interesting to reflect that the Holy Roman Emperorship, like the Papacy, was an elected monarchy. One might say that "playing at politics" is really what modern democratic politicians do, and it is significant that Europe and the financial markets felt much more secure when both Greece and Italy finally ditched their political leaders and appointed "political technicrats" of the kind popular in France since De Gaulle's elevation of Pompidou.

I started a couple of weeks ago, however, writing a piece entitled "Economics as if people really mattered" using Dr. Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" as a starting point.. And I am just re-working the first draft into what I hope will be a finished piece soon.

I wrote to Dr.Shumacher back in 1973 that the fundamental flaw in his approach was that his intermediate technology concept could be seen as offering a cheap alternative kind of Development Economics for what was then "The Third World". Third World Politicians, like any politicians seeking votes, will always tend to present the electorate with visions of great prestige projects that will be a source of national pride, and nowhere more so than in post-colonial places like India, where Dr.Schumacher worked as an economic advisor.

The root of the problem I argued was that people have adjusted to a condition of dependence and compliance, fitting in with the mechaninisms that have been developed in order to harness Nature to the service of Man, leaving Man ideally unemployed with only leisure- but that is more or less to say of no positive account. All cost and no benefit. I felt that he moved on to address these points in his last work "a guide for the perplexed".

Cass

Further to my last

I was reading Henry Pellings biography of Churchill recently and was intrigued by the relevance of Churchill's experience when he was invited as a lone Liberal to join a Conservative Government as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pellings final comment on Churchill was that his most endearing quality was his humanity, that he was geniunely concerned about the man or woman in the street. And Pelling had the opportunity to study Churchill's own ideas about what he would like to do. Interestingly his ideas were almost Keynesian in wishing to reduce unemployment and give people something to work on. But reluctantly he felt compelled to bow to the Treasury experts who insisted that debt-reduction should be the over-riding first priority.

Very much a current debate, though- all three main parties agree with that idea, they just disagree about the need to reduce the public debt faster or slower.. Labour being more Conservative. And the Conservatives being more radical.

Cass

Cass

Cass:

>>My argument is that- in spite of arguments like the Marxist "withering away of the State"-

Ah. Now. The way I see Marx is that he didn't think there'd be a big, one-off revolution whereby we'd reach communism, the withering away of the state, etc.

Remember he was a Philosopher. He was talking about a state in which the contradictions of Capitalism are resolved. He sees history as asymptoting towards this state - most likely through a series of revolutionary events. Importantly, Capitalism is a necessary precondition of the state.

Edward

Well certainly "withering away" implies gradualism and not revolution.

The revolution was to be achieved thanks to spread of the industrial revolution on the Lancashire model- familiar to Engels, a Lancashire Industrialist.

As Marx and Engels said large-scale industry produced "industrial armies": and perhaps as Germans they understood the potential of an army without a leader.. For the need for proper leadership was implicit in the whole Marxist argument that "the working class"- though actually the source of all power and wealth- had always allowed themselves to be robbed of their due by superior classes. Communist intellectuals would win their support and guide them in the overthrow of all of the superior classes creating a classless economy and society, which would eventually make it possible for Communism to emerge.

Of course Marx and Engels were very much of their period- and place. Richard Cobden was another Lancashire industrialist, and a utopian internationalist, who believed fervently in Adam Smith's argument that unrestricted trade, freed from eighteenth Century Mercantilism, would produce a peaceful and harmonious world in which the need for States would eventually disappear.

But more generally this was the whole rationale of what French historians called "laissez faire. Laissez Passez" politics that they accused Britain of the 1830's of exporting to the Bourgeois Monarchy of Louis Phillippe.

In fact, as I have been writing about recently, that era saw a calculated attempt to scale down the war economy/war society that had been necessary to meet the threat of Revolutionary France from 1793 to 1815, and to deal with the worst Gothic Horror consequences of steps taken during the press of war- e.g. the Lancashire Industrial Revolution and the Union with Ireland.

Eventually, when Britain came through the European Year of Revolution 1848 without blood running in the streets as in so many parts of Europe,[ but not even in Ireland where there was merely the incident of Mrs McGinty's Cabbage Patch], a mood of optimism encouraged Britain to believe that the Cobdenite Era could commence starting with "The Great Exhibition of the Works of All the Nations" housed in the Crystal Palace. Exhibits literally came from all around the world as a model of internationalism and the coming together of the best peacefulachievements of humankind. The great Gladstone Budgets reduced all kinds of taxes and dues in the interest of the Free trade ideal and international friendship.

Cass

Capitalism, Hmm a world where so few, reap the rewards of the labours of so many

Revolution comes about when the snooty greedy few, whether cooperate or individuals, show sufficient self consuming arrogance to the masses so as to p**s them off big style and in so doing so get their arses whooped.

You won’t find that definition of Capitalism in Wikipedia

But even Socialism and Communism embraced their own form of Capitalism- which at base means a major focus on the potential of Capital in the exploitation of Land and the harnessing of Labour in order to "best meet" the basic needs of the ever-growing human population. Stalin's Five Year Plans were "State Capitalism" the only way that "modernisation" and the large-scale exploitation of the intellectual Capital of Science and the material Capital of technology could be achieved in that era.

Having just come back from France, the headlines there are all about how Monsieur Holland, now backed by a Socialist Majority in the French Assembly will now enjoy "absolute power" in order to try to recreate a French version of the "command economy".

But I notice that no-one seems to want to do away with old-age retirement and pensions, nor National Health Services- just some of the things that "modernism" made possible.

Cass