Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Notes on Everyday Life + Hobsbawm

Every morning, I wake up with big thoughts about the state of the world (usually intercut with fragments of a catchy song I've played recently). My self-imposed news embargo has helped to sideline many major irritants, but I remain cognizant of deeper problems, and I'm able to come up with some fairly novel solutions. Just to note one example, I have a very rough scheme for war insurance, which could operate in the absence of any sort of world governing authority. Or another concept from a year or two back: a scheme for representative democracy which would end such perversions as gerrymandering, and significantly disincentivize the import of money in politics. Those are just examples, possibly worth exploring in long essays, but that's not where I want to go with this. I just want to introduce something I read with a description of how I got there.

Mornings are very routine for me. I become conscious, in thought and (often) tune. If it seems too early, I turn over and try to go back to sleep, but that rarely works. After some shifting around, I disconnect the CPAP machine, take a couple free breaths, take two pain pills, pick up my book, stumble to the bathroom, turn on the space heater, sit to give my body a chance to purge itself, and as I'm trying to focus my eyes, I read a few pages. After a while, I'll get up, maybe take a shower and/or weigh myself, get dressed, head downstairs, take some pills, put some music on, check email, see if I have any social media, possibly work on the jigsaw puzzle, and eventually eat some breakfast: a cup of yogurt with raisins, washed down with Diet Coke.

Since the election, I've mostly been reading old books from my Marxist heritage. I read such material quite deeply from 1967 up to about 1973, as I was searching to understand and develop some rational command of a world that deeply disturbed me, one that shook my confidence in everything I had been taught, and all that I once believed in. I stopped when I rather accidentally slipped out of academia and into the so-called real world, where I finally found jobs I could do, people I could care for, and the prospect of an ordinary life, as I have indeed enjoyed in my own peculiar fashion over the past forty years.

I've read steadily during those forty years, but very little from the Marxists, whose insights I had internalized to the point they seemed reflexive, and whose rhetoric seemed superfluous and sometimes petty. But mostly I went where my curiosity led me, which included rock criticism in the 1970s, followed by science and technology in the 1980s, business management and antitrust in the 1990s, with a return to political matters with the "war on terror": it's easy to cite 9/11 as the turning point, and for my attention it was, but it is clear now that it was just a skirmish, not a cause, and that the real story started with the desperate defense of American hegemony, leading inexorably to the genocide in Gaza. (If you don't understand this, you must have missed the clue that PNAC, the original neocon lobby, was originally formed to fight against the Oslo Accords.)

Along the way, I did pick up a few Marxian tomes that struck me as particularly close to my earlier interests, but I never got into them. One was Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (1983). Another was Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes (1994). I suspect that the November election will eventually be regarded as a fateful pivot date, comparable to 9/11, 12/7 (1941), 10/24 (1929), and 6/28 (1914). But the one big thing that Marxists know is that such fractures result from much deeper tectonic stresses, and are incomprehensible apart from understanding the forces that drive them. I can't say that was instantly clear to me on Nov. 6, but certainly I had that intuition. Since then, I read Berman and have slowly worked my way into the fourth of Hobsbawm's Age Of volumes (Revolution, read earlier in 2024, followed by Capital and Empire since the election). And I've met with profound insights nearly every day.

I've often felt like I should post these bits as I've read them, but rarely get around to doing so. But today's choice quote, from The Age of Extremes (pp. 102-103), is worth the trouble. I'm giving you the whole paragraph below, but my first thought was just the first bit in bold, with the second bold line there to drive the point home (so you might read the bold first, then go back for the elaboration):

The Great Slump confirmed intellectuals, activists and ordinary citizens in the belief that something was fundamentally wrong with the world they lived in. Who knew what could be done about it? Certainly few of those in authority over their countries, and certainly not those who tried to steer a course by the traditional navigational instruments of secular liberalism or traditional faith, and by the charts of the nineteenth century seas which were plainly no longer to be trusted. How much confidence did economists deserve, however brilliant, who demonstrated, with great lucidity, that the Slump in which even they lived, could not happen in a properly conducted free-market society, since (according to an economic law named after an early nineteenth century Frenchman) no overproduction was possible which did not very soon correct itself? In 1933, it was not easy to believe, for instance, that where consumer demand, and therefore consumption, fell in a depression, the rate of interest would fall by just as much as was needed to stimulate investment, so that the increased investment demand would exactly fill the gap left by the smaller consumer demand. As unemployment soared, it did not seem plausible to believe (as the British Treasury apparently did) that public works would not increase employment at all, because the money spent on them would merely be diverted from the private sector, which would otherwise have generated just as much employment. Economists who simply advised leaving the economy alone, governments whose first instincts, apart from protecting the gold standard by deflationary policies, was to stick to financial orthodoxy, balance budgets and cut costs, were visibly not making the situation better. Indeed, as the depression continued, it was argued with considerable force not least by J.M. Keynes who consequently became the most influential economist of the next forty years -- that they were making the depression worse. Those of us who lived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impossible to understand how the orthodoxies of the pure free market, then so obviously discredited, once again came to preside over a global period of depression in the late 1980s and 1990s, which once again, they were equally unable to understand or to deal with. Still, this strange phenomenon should remind us of the major characteristic of history which it exemplifies: the incredible shortness of memory of both the theorists and practitioners of economics. It also provides a vivid illustration of society's need for historians, who are the professional remembrancers of what their fellow-citizens wish to forget.

This may look like tough reading, but even if you can't identify Say's Law, you should recognize the recurring economist-logic -- what Paul Krugman and John Quiggin have enjoyed debunking as "zombie economics" -- if not from the 1930s or 1980s, at least from its revival in the 2000s, immortalized in yet another major slump. (Since 2008, a lot of books have been written on the failures of neoliberal economic doctrine -- Quiggin's Zombie Economics (2010) and Economics in Two Lessons (2019) are good primers, but Philip Mirowski's Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown is a sober assessment of how those in power avoided learning the obvious lessons of the meltdown. There is much less literature on the 2020 pandemic recession, probably because it differs in several significant ways, and the political response remains in radical flux. Quiggin promised a post-pandemic book, and posted parts of it, but he seems to have held it back, possibly because the inflationary recovery now seems to matter more than the short but largely controlled collapse.)

The note about forgetting is also freshly relevant right now, applicable as it is not just to convenient economic theories but to all matters political, where public discourse is marked both by dementia and schizophrenia. The amount of forgetting it takes for Trump to be elected to a second term is really staggering. On the other hand, our ability to reason by historical analogy is increasingly suspect. We wasted a ridiculous amount of time and energy last year debating how fascism fits into the Trump campaign, while overlooking its novel features, which while less ominous than Hitler's are likely to harm us in ways we can hardly imagine. Indeed, our historical models seem likely to keep us from seeing, much less effectively countering, many of their threats -- a task made even harder by the clouds of nonsense they spew as camouflage.

I have one more Hobsbawm quote (p. 78) I wanted to share (again, the key bit in bold, but less context here, because I need neither Napoleon nor Mao for my point):

The road to revolution through long guerrilla war was discovered rather late by twentieth-century social revolutionaries; perhaps this was because historically this form of essentially rural activity had been overwhelmingly associated with movements of archaic ideologies easily confused by sceptical city observers with conservatism, or even with reaction and counter-revolution.

My point, of course, is that "sceptical city observers" continue to make the same mistake today. I could write tons unpacking this line, but for now just focus on the double-edged sword of "easily confused." The bottom line is that the viability of opposition to Trumpism -- which for the moment seems like a fair label, given that all alternatives theories of G.O.P.-ness have been obliterated -- depends on us learning not to be so easily confused, not just on this point but on many more.

And now, having said my small piece, I return to everyday life: a lunch with a bit of salt-cured salmon and onion on a poor excuse for a half-slice of bread; a bundle up to walk the dog; more music; back to my computer problems, and my silly lists; a few more pages when I find the moment; and some prefab frozen thing for dinner, possibly livened up with a dab of chutney or some extra cheese; more music and more computer; an hour or two of mystery on TV; and back to bed, only to wake up thinking again.

Next day, I picked up Hobsbawm on pp. 114-115, with a paragraph that follows mention of Antonio Salazar (Portugal) and Francisco Franco (Spain). I can skip over some of the details here:

Yet if reactionary regimes of this kind had origins and inspirations both older than fascism, and sometimes very different from it, no clear line separated the two, because both shared the same enemies, if not the same goals. Thus the Roman Catholic Church, profoundly and unswervingly reactionary as it was in the version officially consecrated by the first Vatican Council of 1870, was not fascist. Indeed, by its hostility to essentially secular states with totalitarian pretensions, it had to be opposed to fascism . . . What linked the Church not only with old-fashioned reactionaries but with fascists, was a common hatred for the eighteenth century Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and all that in the Church's opinion derived from it: democracy, liberalism and, of course, most urgently, 'godless communism'.

The next page goes into the evolution of Catholic politics as the Church and its followers slowly sought to disentangle from fascism, but the bold line reminds us that it has always been ready to offer intellectual and moral authority against the left -- as have the more authoritarian elements of American protestantism, although the latter have always been more comfortable with capitalism, just not its liberal pretensions. The line also reminds us that opposition to fascism, then and now is practical basis for liberals and the left to join in a common front, then and now much more urgent than our shared roots in the Enlightenment and faith in progress. The difference between liberals and the left is that the former are easily satisfied with their own freedom and prosperity, while those on the left seek to extend freedom and prosperity to everyone. With their focus on individualism, "liberal elites" isn't an oxymoron. It is the telos of their ambition, and the more they succeed, the easier it is for the right to turn them against the left.

It should also be noted that for most leftists, fascism isn't a fixed ideology but a common bind among multiple groups of people who agree on one thing: they want to crush your hopes in order to secure their authority, and they have few qualms about killing you in the process. Among fascists, Hitler was champion not because he exemplified some ideology but because he killed the most real and imagined leftists.

Hitler is also the most totally discredited figure in history, but it should be recalled that before his fall, he was widely admired by nearly everyone on the right, and their reasoning had little to do with Hitler's personal quirks -- I'd include his anti-semitism here, although that was more widely shared than his vegetarianism or his mustache -- and everything to do with his violence against the left. As a historian, Hobsbawm is careful to make distinctions, even pointing out that more than a few conservatives eventually turned against Hitler when their nationalism was threatened -- he mentions the French far right, but Churchill is an obvious example, De Gaule another.

Further down (p. 117), Hobsbawm explains how fascism differed from older forms of right-wing reaction:

The major difference between the fascist and the non-fascist Right was that fascism existed by mobilizing masses from below. It belonged essentially to the era of democratic and popular politics which traditional reactionaries deplored and which the champions of the 'organic state' tried to by-pass. Fascism gloried in the mobilization of masses, and maintained it symbolically in the form of public theatre — the Nuremberg rallies, the masses on the Piazza Venezia looking up to Mussolini's gestures on his balcony — even when it came to power; as also did Communist movements. Fascists were the revolutionaries of counter-revolution: in their rhetoric, in their appeal to those who considered themselves victims of society, in their call for a total transformation of society, even in their deliberate adaptation of the symbols and names of the social revolutionaries, which is so obvious in Hitler's 'National Socialist Workers Party' with its (modified) red flag and its immediate institution of the Reds' First of May as an official holiday in 1933.

The latter point proved useful for those who orchestrated the post-WWII Red Scare, especially the cowered liberals who implemented the Cold War, as they redefined the fascism which by then everyone opposed to be an archaic subset of totalitarianism, while doing the right the favor of anointing America as "one nation under God" and purging the "pinkos" from the labor unions. But the bold line is of more immediate import. (It is also, by the way, a pretty good one-line synopsis of Robert O. Paxton's 2005 book, The Anatomy of Fascism.) The reason Trump has drawn so much attention for his "fascism" is not just for the "retribution" he promises for his "populism," which shows that he's developed a popular base for an extremism that more conventional Republicans would have had the good taste to hide behind euphemisms (like the "kindler and gentler" Bushes).

That Trump is a colossal fraud -- much more P.T. Barnum than Benito Mussolini, although the first-generation fascists drew heavily on the mass entertainments that developed so rapidly in recent decades -- matters little here. As with Italy and Germany, the leaders just set the tone, while the followers do the dirty work, and as such prove decisive. And when you look at Trump's lieutenants, cronies, operatives, and groupies, they sure seem closely aligned with their predecessors from the 1930s. There can be little doubt that they want to crush the hopes (and if necessary or convenient, the bodies) of the left, and that they are equally antagonistic to the residual liberalism of wealthy cosmopolitan elites.

While the left was the first to recognize the implicit fascism of the "new right" -- see Chris Hedges' 2007 book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America -- as indeed the ability to spot a fascist has always been a survival skill. (That liberals were always much slower to anticipate peril was pretty clearly admitted in their characterizing the pre-WWII left as "premature anti-fascists." They seemed to feel that the only time they needed the left was when the fascists threatened them personally. Otherwise, they weren't all that bothered by fascists killing leftists.) But the mainstreaming of the "Trump is fascist" meme came from the liberals, partly because they feared the mass popularity of Trump's illiberalism might impinge on their elite liberty, and quite possibly because they feared Trump might sacrifice their beloved "war for liberal democracy" in Ukraine.

I don't wish to try to unpack the political failures of 2024, which could fill up a book, but I will note that the charge that Trump is a fascist met very different reactions from different parts of the public: on the left it was "sure, we already knew that"; on the right it ranged from "no, you're the fascist" to "hell yes!" with a lot of blank incomprehension in between; only a few liberals seemed to think that the label accuracy made any practical difference. But the net effect was that, like most attacks on Trump, by failing to make any dent it allowed and encourage Trump to become even more flagrantly fascist, which only made him more appealing to people gullible enough to believe that "Trump will fix it."

I don't think this is because Trump voters understand, let alone approve of, his fascism. (Sure, some do, especially in Republican activist ranks, and among disaffected loners who take his appeals to "second amendment people" literally, but these are both tiny minorities, important only when they act on their deranged beliefs.) But what it does show is that the liberal-dominated Democratic Party has no clue how to talk to people beyond their urban, educated, well-heeled donor class. Sure, they've managed to use fear-of-Trump to keep most of the rational left in line, but having blown two elections so far, they have little credibility on that score. (On the other hand, left-leaning but less rational people appear to be one source of defections to Trump -- most conspicuously RFK Jr., but the shifts in Black, Latino, and Arab-American votes also appear carelessly reasoned.) The popular appeal of fascism seems to rest on attributes like clearly defining enemies, and on promising resolute action against them. You don't have to be a fascist to do those things, as Franklin Roosevelt showed in the 1930s. Democrats have lost that, especially those who spend more time with donors than with the people.

One more Hobsbawm quote here (p. 118):

The past to which they appealed was an artefact. Their traditions were invented. Even Hitler's racism was not the pride in an unbroken and unmixed line of kinship descent which provides genealogists with commissions from Americans who hope to prove their descent from some sixteenth-century Suffolk yeoman, but a late nineteenth-century post-Darwinian farrago claiming (and, alas, in Germany often receiving) the support of the new science of genetics (or more precisely of that branch of applied genetics ("eugenics"); which dreamed of creating a human super-race by selective breeding and the elimination of the unfit. The race destined through Hitler to dominate the world did not even have a name until 1898 when an anthropologist coined the term 'Nordic.' Hostile as it was on principle to the heritage of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the French revolution, fascism could not formally believe in modernity and progress, but it had no difficulty in combining a lunatic set of beliefs with technological modernity in practical matters, except where it crippled its basic scientific research on ideological grounds. Fascism was triumphantly anti-liberal. It also provided the proof that men can, without difficulty, combine crack-brained beliefs about the world with a confident mastery of contemporary high technology. The late twentieth century, with its fundamentalist sects wielding the weapons of television and computer-programmed fund-raising, have made us more familiar with this phenomenon.

Hobsbawm wrote this in 1994, before the World Wide Web, before Social Media platforms emerged, let alone AI-based "deep fakes" -- one of the few things that now seems certain is that the Trump campaign was much more adept at exploiting advancing technology, although it's also possible that the nature of the campaign -- rampant lies and disinformation, faux outrage, double standards with scant efforts to expose their machinations -- fit especially well with the technology.

I was about to mention Al-Qaeda as another example of technologically savvy pseudo-archaism, before I opted to drop AI into the new technology mix. It's a sure bet that whatever remnants remain -- or, unless conditions change, revive -- will be quick to adopt such novel technology, as well as numerous state (and private) generators of disinformation, including our own unaccountable "deep state." Fascism is one of many risks in this free-for-all. That suggests much more to write about, but enough for now. I'm barely a quarter into Hobsbawm's book. And even when I finish, he will have come up thirty years short of today.

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