Imperialism
Russia
Ukraine
Fig. 1. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,[1] fair use.
Yevgeny Prigozhin is back to claiming he hasn’t received promised munitions and threatening to leave Bakhmut. Ukraine appears to have pushed Russia’s 72nd Brigade back two kilometers in a battle that has seemed to be about inches clawed back and forth for months.[2] This, as the U.S. claims Russia needs both more ammunition and fighters to mount any offensive at all.[3]
I strongly suspect the U.S. has underestimated the depletion of Russian forces. I think those around Vladimir Putin dare not tell him the truth. And I think Putin’s humiliation draws nearer.
Matthew Luxmoore, “Ukraine Regains Ground Around Bakhmut as Fighting Rages,” Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-claims-gains-around-bakhmut-as-fighting-rages-74d391e9
Silicon Valley
I think what’s most interesting about financial newspapers covering social inequality is that they’re covering social inequality.
Of course, they’ll soft-pedal accusations against capitalists’ motivations. This is their audience, after all, and in show business, you must always flatter your audience.
Of course, they’ll shed a crocodile tear for the working class or the poor, whose exploitation and abuse they help enable, if only to appear “objective” and “balanced.”
And this isn’t the sort of thing I would normally pay much attention to. But in this case,[4] it suggests a certain introspection, even if barely past the “Oh My God! People really think that about us!” stage. (As if, somehow, we, the rest of us, wouldn’t have noticed that yawning gulf between what is possible for us and what is possible for them.[5])
But in his review of a book which, he suggests, is too simplistic in a class division between the rich and everybody else, Richard Waters cannot escape observing that the optics of widening social inequality are a problem.[6] But against a context of debacles like the Silicon Valley Bank collapse so soon after we should have learned the lessons of the 2008 Financial Crisis, and like the COVID-19 pandemic, whose handling was unsatisfactory whether you are on the left or the right, and recent wars whose outcomes have fallen far short of vindication, and the necessary moral justification for a hierarchical authoritarian system of social organization that leaders should be more competent and more moral than the rest of us looks pretty nearly eviscerated. Or that the emperor wears no clothes.
The emperor may have no clothes but s/he has guns and lots of bought-off people to shoot them. This, of course, reduces our hierarchical authoritarian system of social organization to what anarchists say it is, with authority predicated simply on violence or the threat thereof and therefore illegitimate. It’s precisely the appearance that elites sought to avoid, for the forces available to suppress a population will always necessarily be a fraction of its size, and the constant din of violent uprisings disrupts elite intentions and diverts elite resources.[7]
Richard Waters, “Palo Alto — the California enclave where it all went wrong?” review of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, by Malcolm Harris, Financial Times, May 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/a9ec0d6f-122b-4430-b0ac-4849e6c31666
- [1]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q↩
- [2]Matthew Luxmoore, “Ukraine Regains Ground Around Bakhmut as Fighting Rages,” Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-claims-gains-around-bakhmut-as-fighting-rages-74d391e9↩
- [3]Patrick Tucker, “Without A New Draft, Russian Offensive Operations Are Over, US Intel Chiefs Say,” Defense One, May 4, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/05/without-new-draft-russian-offensive-operations-are-over-us-intel-chiefs-say/386003/↩
- [4]Richard Waters, “Palo Alto — the California enclave where it all went wrong?” review of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, by Malcolm Harris, Financial Times, May 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/a9ec0d6f-122b-4430-b0ac-4849e6c31666↩
- [5]John Asimakopoulos, The Political Economy of the Spectacle and Postmodern Caste (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2020); Peter W. Cookson, Jr., and Caroline Hodges Persell, “The Vital Link: Prep Schools and Higher Education,” in Great Divides, ed. Thomas M. Shapiro, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005), 380-391; G. William Domhoff, “The American Upper Class,” in Great Divides, ed. Thomas M. Shapiro, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005), 156-164; Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (New York: Crown, 2012); C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956; repr., New York: Oxford University, 2000); Ralph H. Turner, “Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System,” in Great Divides, ed. Thomas M. Shapiro, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005), 71-76.↩
- [6]Richard Waters, “Palo Alto — the California enclave where it all went wrong?” review of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, by Malcolm Harris, Financial Times, May 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/a9ec0d6f-122b-4430-b0ac-4849e6c31666↩
- [7]Gerhard Lenski, Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).↩