Notes on the News

By Gwydion M. Williams

Global Liberalism – its Second Massive Failure

Broad Liberalism Isn’t Working

Democracy – the Sinatra Principle

China and its Pen-Foes

Unhappy Britons

Snippets

India Very Foreign

Nuclear the Least Dangerous?

Ukraine – A Collapsing Crusade

Global Liberalism – its Second Massive Failure

The true history of the 20^th century is how Europe’s advanced societies ripped themselves apart in the First World War. It injected a habit of violence that took decades to heal. Renewed by a Second World War that had been widely expected after the botched Versailles peace.

Imperial Germany can’t be blamed in isolation. They were provoked by Serbian terrorists who murdered the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, as part of their claim to the whole of Bosnia. This used to be mentioned freely, before the West suddenly decided that the claim was wicked. British talk of ‘brave little Serbia’ lurks embarrassingly in past publications. But most commentators are non-investigative journalists when the rich media moguls want the truth covered up.

Awkward truths usually ignored are:

Germany asked if Britain would be offended by a march through Belgium. They were given to believe that it would not be a reason for Britain to join in. Only once it was done was it ‘discovered’ it made war unavoidable.
When Germany failed to win a quick victory, they wanted to call the war a stalemate. Everyone could go back to where they were at the start of the war. But Britain’s rulers insisted that the war could not end until Germany was broken.
Though the U-boat campaign gets the most publicity, the British blockade of Germany caused far more deaths. (See Starving the Germans: The Evolution of Britain’s Strategy During The First World War, by Eamon Dyas.)
There is zero difference between a U-boat and a submarine. The sudden wartime habit of using an odd foreign term helps obscure it.

There was not a single socialist government in 1914. The main blame rests with Broad Liberalism. A liberalism that went well beyond people and parties that called themselves liberal.

Europe’s mainstream political parties insisted on the disastrous First World War. They failed to stabilise the wounded Europe that emerged from it. Were nearly displaced by the rival movements of Fascism and Leninism. Tried to use Nazism to destroy Leninism. Then needed Leninism to avoid Nazism becoming the dominant force in Europe.

Leninism broke the back of the Nazis land forces.^[1] Helped by a USA that was further from liberalism than it has ever been before, or since.

Roosevelt had found a Fourth Way, correctly denounced as a break with liberalism until its success became overwhelming. He borrowed the Mixed Economy from Mussolini, who implemented the interventionism that Keynes theorised about. And Roosevelt borrowed much progressive ideology from Leninism, but carefully on race since his power depended on openly racist Southern Democrats. He kept the culture and constitution of US liberalism, but with a vastly expanded state.

Non-Communist Europe mostly followed this pattern. Surviving fascist states found it easy to join. Dictatorial Portugal was in NATO. Spain was kept out until after Franco’s death, but did fine with a solid US alliance.

But like a dog returning to its vomit, the USA tried to revert. Did so when Freedom went beyond what the elite of the time could tolerate.

Young people insisted that freedom meant freedom for them to have sex – and also drugs, which proved less wise. This caused social rupture, until the older members of the elite died off and their replacements saw it as normal.

African-Americans demanded real equality. They got enough of it for the Southern Democrats to switch to being Republicans.

Republicans had always been the party of Big Business, even though it was a Progressive Radicalism of the Rich when Abraham Lincoln led them in the USA’s Civil War. The capture of the state by business interests was what they were about. Democrats were often the main resistance, linked to Trade Union power.

Nixon and then Reagan paved the way for a revival of Global Liberalism.

The weakening of the Soviet Union was misunderstood. Not seen as Khrushchev and Brezhnev messing up a loosening which a new elite in the Party Machine wanted after Stalin’s death.

It could have gone otherwise. It did go otherwise in China: Deng and his heirs never abandoned the notion that general equality was a good aim. Nor did they bad-mouth the man who had created the state that the new leaders had inherited. China’s alternative is only now being properly noticed.

A bunch of lightweight thinkers spread the glad tidings that the West and its liberalism had been right all along. Vast shifts on racial and sexual equality were glossed over. Also the abandonment of Imperialism under pressure from Moscow-influenced protest movements.^[2] The new vision was that liberalism had been right all along.

The new Historic Truth was that the 1914 order was an ideal that suffered an unexpected and unmerited outbreak of Trench Warfare: something that it had now recovered from.

Sadly, it was welcomed by some in a British Labour Party that had emerged out of Liberalism. That had in the 1920s absorbed many of its leading characters.

But failure is now obvious.

Broad Liberalism Isn’t Working

Broad Liberalism is built on an abstract ideal of equality of opportunity. This remains real, though imperfect. But it often denies that equality of outcomes is even desirable.

My socialist bias? Look at the Wikipedia:

“Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity among Western philosophers and economists. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings and traditional conservatism with representative democracy, rule of law, and equality under the law. Liberals also ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies, and other trade barriers, instead promoting free trade and marketization.”^[3]

Liberals were comfortable with slavery, for as long as it was people quite unlike them. Britons never shall be slaves.

Comfortable with work contracts that oppressed the poor and weak. Comfortable among the privileged. And from 1979, eager to grab more privilege after the Soviet Union lost its attractions for Europe’s working class.

Younger readers mostly won’t know that Communist Parties got a quarter or a third of the vote in France, Italy, etc. A truth evaded by today’s Western authors, but an undeniable fact.^[4] ^[5]

Liberalism was built on an assumption of privilege. The claim is talented people need that privilege – but that’s only true when the basic human instinct for Mutual Care is weak. And it need not be extreme – a ceiling of maybe five times the average income or wealth would be enough.

A real social order that is built by people raised within selfishness cannot go straight to equality of outcomes. People need motivations to work hard. They need reasons to disrupt their lives, which no-one likes doing. And the collective feelings of particular human communities may not accept equality for all humans.

It’s difficult. But that’s no reason not to try. And best to first reject liberalism as such.

Having undermined socialism, the new Global Liberalism is widely disliked as empty and selfish. And nothing special for wealth creation.

In much of the world, its weakness allowed a revival of things that a mix of socialism and moderated liberalism had kept down.

A revived Islam accepts vast inequality in wealth – Muhammed was a rich man, after all. And strengthens separation and inequality for the sexes.

A revived Hinduism is very much about caste inequality. Accepts women at the top levels, but allows gross abuse of women who are not protected by family power. Is full of pseudo-science and phoney history. Ready to accept other religions only if they are confirmed as inferior. And likewise homosexuality – still technically illegal, if always tolerated.

China is the best hope, but imperfect from a liberal-left Western viewpoint. China decriminalised homosexuality, as part of a general drift to Westernisation. But moves toward more openness and possible legalisation of homosexual marriage have been reversed sharply. It makes them culturally acceptable within the Global South alliance they are making through BRICS. Few people would mind what a few Chinese do in private: as a cultural influence they are moderate.

The media are certain that this is wickedness by the dictatorial Xi. To me, the reason was a sudden shift to hostility by the West. Both Hong Kong and Taiwan were encouraged to reject a balance that Beijing had been happy with. It was accepted that full integration with Mainland values would take time: intolerable to reject it as the final goal.

Democracy – the Sinatra Principle

In his famous song My Way, Sinatra boasted “more, much more than this / I did it my way.”

He said nothing about helping others.

He was a bully, and might sensibly have sung I did it my way, you’ll do it my way.

A defector from Democrat to Republican, who got on very well with Ronald Reagan. (And with his highly influential wife, we are told.) He could be generous when secure, but not interested in equality. Nor in doubt about his own superiority:

“Regrets, I’ve had a few / But then again, too few to mention”.

Part of a wider pattern, with Western liberals deciding that whatever the West decided yesterday must be accepted by everyone as eternally true.

They also say as little as possible about the massive growth in inequality since 1979. They see no problem if the decision-makers do nicely out of it.

How many British prime ministers entered office with modest upper-middle-class status, and are now multi-millionaires? If there is another case besides Tony Blair, please let me know.

For the core leaders – the smarter ones who understand that ‘freedom’ means a finite range of freedoms defined by law and custom – there is nothing so crude as to be illegal. Useful politicians can be rewarded with gigantic book advances and well-paid lecture tours. Or nice consultancies.

In the USA, we now learn how a right-wing Supreme Court was fed favours. No evidence of payment for a specific ruling. But they are friendly to business, and business is friendly to them.

They also make judgements on race and sex that please the racist and chauvinist voters that the whole Neoliberal project depends on. Theoretically committed to universalism, those politicians have to feed the prejudices of their voters. And in many cases share them.

This messy system is recommended to the rest of the world in the name of Democracy.

Parliaments were invented to be Consultative, not Democratic. It was common for monarchs to have a Council of the most important men, plus occasionally a female heir to what had been male power. But much of Europe remembered the Senate of Classical Rome. They evolved Parliaments where the lesser elite could have a House of Commons chosen by an open election among the richer minority. Numbers varied, but Britain’s grand reform in 1832 gave the vote to about one man in seven. A big improvement on a few hundred rich families controlling most House of Commons seats.

The electorate did not include a majority of males living in the British Isles until the 1880s.^[6] For the Empire, regional assemblies excluded or marginalise those not of the White Race, an official category until after World War Two.

And sadly, a democratic electorate has always been prevented from having real control. Various tricks are used, including scaring those with a hazy notion of politics.

The liberal left moan a lot about Parliamentary systems losing ground. But don’t reflect on what a bad job they have been doing.

They play games with language. Get offended when the democratic choice is not to their taste, like Russian liberalism reduced to a ridiculous rump in a series of entirely open elections. Or Singapore favouring a party that began as a front for the illegal regional Communists, and gets on splendidly with Beijing. Or India’s sectarian hard right, who have called a halt to moves towards freer capitalism that once got them praised in the West.

The Western media try to deny that these are democratic choices, but can’t explain why. I did it my way, you’ll do it my way.

China and its Pen-Foes

China is being bad-mouthed, because it has replaced the fallen Soviet Union as an alternative to the West and to Neoliberalism. And has not repeated the Soviet error of thinking they could bend the wider world to their will. BRICS is a pragmatic alliance: its members have a range of different values.

China also shows that a Mixed Economy works, and can be used for the socialist aims of curbing the rich and spreading equality. Optional choices – the West has remained Mixed Economy under the rhetoric, but has followed Feed-the-Rich choices.^[7]

China in 1949 rejected a Western system that had kept it poor and weak. And then in 1959, they rejected the Khrushchevite reforms to Stalin’s harsh but very successful politics and economics. Reforms that were to prove a dismal failure.

What Deng accepted in the late 1970s was the Mixed Economy, with none of the New Right rubbish that did such damage in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Western leaders were slow to realise this:

“‘Trade freely with China and time is on our side.’ That was the confident view of George W Bush, the former US president, in the run-up to China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. A generation later, many in the west have come to the conclusion that time was, in fact, on China’s side.

“Bush was making a political judgment. He believed that a China that integrated deeply with the global economy would become more open and more democratic. But under Xi Jinping China has become more closed and authoritarian. It is also more overtly hostile to the US. Meanwhile, China’s rapid economic growth has funded a massive military build-up.”^[8]

Not actually a huge build-up for the world’s second richest economy. They noticed the Iraq Wars. The double-cross when Gaddafi tried to please the West.

Unhappy Britons

“According to a study of 24 countries, Britons are less likely than people from elsewhere to place importance on work. Increasingly, they also no longer believe that hard work brings a better life…

“People in the UK ranked low for believing that hard work would bring a better life in the long run. Just 39% of people held this opinion, leading to a ranking of 12th out of 18 countries and a decline since a peak in the early 2000s. This is notably below the US, where 55% of people hold this view.

“The study also reveals generational differences. While most generations’ opinions on whether work should always come first have remained stable, millennials, born in the early 1980s to mid-1990s, have become much less likely to agree with this view: in 2009, 41% felt this way; by 2022, this had fallen to 14%…

“People in the UK have also become more likely to say luck counts for as much as hard work since 1990, rising from 40% to 49%. They also increasingly believe that it would be a good thing if less importance were placed on work, a figure that has risen from 26% to 43%.”^[9]

Thatcherism did not do what it promised. It just multiplied rewards for the rich.

“If his prognosis is correct, then an entire consensus around taxing and spending could start to crumble. Since the 1980s ushered in Reaganomics in the US and Thatcherism in the UK, the dominant political idea in many advanced economies has been smaller states that do less and tax less.

“But challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the transition to greener energy and rising geopolitical tensions have emboldened governments to be more hands-on. The current US administration is intervening in the economy in a way not seen since the 1930s.”

But the establishment are strongly against taxing the rich, who gained most from the Thatcher / Reagan system.

Sn ippets

India Very Foreign

A long-standing demand that a third of parliamentary seats be reserved for women has become law, with Mr Modi’s support.^[10] Positive.

I’d also back them, if they decide their country’s name in Global English should be Bharat. The Indus Valley Civilisation was a root, but the culture of ancient Hindu religious writings was very different. The mysterious Indus civilisation lacked palaces or temples. The core of modern ‘India’ was much more the Ganges. Most of the Indus and its tributaries are now in Pakistan.

Depressing are suggestions that the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ be removed from the constitution. Added in 1976, when Indira Gandhi tried to be a modernising authoritarian.

Inequality remains bad. They were accused of hiding slums during the recent G20 meeting.^[11]

But is there a good alternative?

Nuclear the Least Dangerous?

There was a recent report of a climate activist saying the anti-nuclear prejudice is out of date.^[12] Something I’ve long felt, but panic about nuclear matters is widespread. China has a strong nuclear power program, but finds fears about tritium useful in its long-running arguments with Japan.^[13]

It would be good to separate Green issues and Survival Issues. They overlap, but are not at all the same.

It would be tragic if unregulated greed exterminated the whales and other beloved wild creatures: but we would get away with it. Likewise for spoiling the world’s surviving natural beauty. But we are almost certain to have to help hundreds of millions of displaced people, thanks to several decades of pig-headed neglect of the need to control Greenhouse Gases.

It may well get much worse, if we delay action. Yet people try to evade the costs, or dump them on someone else.

In Britain, Sunak is following the classic Tory policy of ‘Weep for the Poor, but Feed the Rich’. A Wealth Tax could easily fund subsidies to cover the cost of asking poor people to replace boilers and polluting cars. But the whole point is to get them angry, but do as little as possible for them.

Labour under Starmer may be just as bad.

Ukraine – A Collapsing Crusade

Step by step, it is admitted that the Grand Offensive gained no more than tiny nibbles on what Russia holds.^[14]

The war-mongering Guardian suddenly has an article about far-right Russians fighting for ‘Kyiv’.^[15] Not mentioning that the Ukrainian Far Right has been running free and killing people since 2014, but it is a start.

The awkward fact that most Russians back the war gets shoved aside with denials they are free to speak. But now we learn that 59% of Indians back Putin.^[16] Typical of the world beyond NATO.

They express amazement at a row with Poland. Hostility to Poland has been a large part of Ukrainian identity since it separated itself from other branches of the Rus peoples. It can be mutual; a 2016 Polish film tells how Ukrainian nationalists massacred them during the Nazi occupation, and Jews also.^[17] The same people that Kiev now treats as heroes.

US Senator Bob Menendez is an enthusiast for Armenia and for Ukraine’s anti-Russian crusade. Is it just a coincidence that he is now hit with allegations of massive bribes from Egypt?

And now we have a second blunder from Canada, this time praising a veteran Nazi. I could believe they do have infiltrators, just not the people they are chasing!

Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams

^[1] https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams/Nazi-Germany-Was-Defeated-in-Russia

^[2] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/m99-topic-menus-from-long-revolution-website/998-from-labour-affairs/the-french-revolution-and-its-unstable-politics/against-globalisation/the-left-redefined-the-normal/

^[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

^[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Communist_Party#Legislative

^[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Communist_Party#Italian_Parliament

^[6] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/40-britain/665-2/

^[7] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-mixed-economy-won-the-cold-war/

^[8] https://www.ft.com/content/0f37f540-b87b-4e95-9249-162d3fd54a1b – pay site.

^[9] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/sep/07/britons-view-work-less-important-other-nationalities-study

^[10] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-66878565

^[11] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/08/ashamed-of-our-presence-delhi-glosses-over-plight-of-poor-as-it-rolls-out-g20-red-carpet