Month: June 2024

Review: Garments of Court and Palace by Philip Bobbitt

My review of Sheild of Achilles is linked here. Garments of Court and Palace is an examination of the first of the transitions (from the feudal order of the European Middle Ages to the “Princely State”) that took place (in Europe) in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

My purpose in this essay is to examine Bobbitt’s projection—in the epilogue to this book—of the next, presently occurring evolution in statehood from “Nation-State” to “Market State.”

Bobbitt tells us a State, of whatever kind, must draw legitimacy from the people living in it by serving “the common good” of the people living within it (or at least that those people perceive their good to be served). What “common good” means, what percentage of the State’s citizens must believe they are being so served, and in what way (something that surely varies with the times and the politics of any particular State), Bobbitt does not say. 

In the last chapters of his Achilles book, Bobbitt sketches three broad types or variations on the market state theme, using the U.S., China, and Western Europe as examples. In Garments, his purpose is merely to remind us that the market state is the next chapter in the present evolution of political organizations. But he does say a few things about it. 

He tells us that as the present nation-state secured its legitimacy by providing services (electricity, water, education, security, medical care in much of the world”) and thus fostering “the common good,” the market state will legitimize itself by providing opportunity and choice.  Opportunity means the market state does not care if you are black, white, gay, straight, or anywhere in between. So long as you have the education, skill, and desire to serve in a presently required—worth remuneration—role, you will have a job.

He makes two problematic observations:

  1. In a market state, the “wealth gap” will naturally widen as some are better able to take advantage of available opportunities.
  2. The media (and he means all types: TV, newspapers, social media) will assume the role of watchdog over the doings of the market and its players.

Some wealth gap will exist in any economy that the government does not strictly control, in which case the executive splits such wealth as may exist. However, recent history has taught us that the extreme gap manifesting in the U.S. and Western Europe is corrosive to social cohesion. Nothing about our present situation supports the “common good” unless that is perversely defined as the top one or two percent of the wealthiest people in the nation. In End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration (Peter Turchin, 2023), the author cites historical data going back thousands of years, points to an excessive wealth gap as one of the main progenitors of socio-political turmoil and usually,, collapse. I will undoubtedly review that book when I’ve completed it.  

If capitalists really wanted, for example, to improve their own productivity twenty years on, they would, among other things, generously fund education. But twenty years (most corporations do not survive even that long) is far too long a horizon for corporations competing in the market for investors who want, naturally enough, to maximize their gains today, or at most in a very few years.

If capitalists paid all of their employees a living wage, invested in education, and at least slowed the adoption of labor-replacing technology, giving people time to adapt, that would foster the common good. However, with rare and minor exceptions, corporations have not taken this course—unless forced by the government or unions—in the history of capitalist markets. 

More is to be said about this, but I do not want to belabor the point. The short and sweet of it is that I cannot find any plausible interpretation of “the common good” that could, in the long term, be satisfied by the present market paradigm.

Even if a market state would not be particularly good for most people, Bobbitt can well be correct in that we (the world’s advanced industrial nations) are transitioning into versions of it. His analysis was prefigured by the movie Rollerball in 1975—even the greatest of philosophers “stand on the shoulders of giants.” (Isaac Newton 1675)! Bobbitt does, however, make a correlated prediction that appears to have been falsified. He tells us that “the media” (social media included) will operate as a check on the market’s participants—corporate and individual.

In this 2012 book, he was aware that local newspapers were disappearing all over the U.S. Twelve years later, this trend has accelerated. Why? Because all these little news outlets are owned by three of four gigantic corporations (who also own local and national TV and big-market papers), the little papers, in particular, are not profitable. Since profit is the ultimate aim of the market, they’ve got to go. It is possible, in 2012, that Bobbitt thought evolving social media would compensate for this local news extinction, but it does not. In 2012, the public was, by and large, unaware of social media’s capacity for convincing and indiscriminate disinformation and propaganda, something that came—to Americans anyway—as rather a shock in 2016-17 and has become far worse since then.

Far from being checks on corporate shenanigans, the media are quickly being transformed into shills! From the viewpoint of markets, this makes perfect sense. There is more profit to be made if everyone speaks highly of you. This across-the-board trend in media is another piece of evidence that “the common good” is not an objective at which the market aims.

Lastly, I want to say something about China and the intrinsically international nature of market states. In Shield of Achilles (2002), Bobbitt cites China as an example of one sort of evolving market state. In 2012, when he wrote Garments, it was possible to believe that China would continue on this trajectory. In 2024, it is moving back toward a centrally planned economy. Bobbitt is smart enough to know that geopolitical evolution is not a straight line, and some backsliding cannot be uncommon. But he does not tell us how long before a temporary reversal becomes a different direction altogether, nor what happens, globally, when a major pole of the evolving system reverses course.

If a belligerent nation reverses course for the sake of military adventurism—as China appears to be doing for the sake of Taiwan and the South China Sea—can the other major, still evolving, nation states just permit that evolution to continue naturally? Are market states as efficient as nation states in providing for their defense—of crucial importance and Machievelli’s primary concern? Can a substantial military that always costs more (in its totality) than any individual corporate profits made by equipping it, be supported in a fully formed market state? I’ll leave such questions for my readers.   

Garments of Court and Palace by Philip Bobbitt 2012

In 2002, Philip Bobbitt published The Sheild of Achilles, in which he traces the European evolution—from the feudal order of the fourteenth century—of the modern “nation-state” through prior phases, roughly every one hundred to two hundred years. Garments is a book about the times of the first of these changes, the appearance of the “princely state,” and in particular one man’s perception and foreshadowing of it.

Besides explaining Machiavelli’s “The Prince” (which Bobbitt tells us was the name given by the publisher after Machiavelli’s death. Machiavelli called it “The Principalities,” an important distinction that helps Bobbitt to make his points), the author makes the perfectly reasonable argument that, taken in historical context and with regard to another of Machiavelli’s major works (The Discourses), Machiavelli was not the renaissance Rasputin, but rather a highly insightful and articulate geopolitical analyst and theorist of his day.

Far from being the person who advised tyrants to be as tyrannical as possible for the sake of maintaining their personal power, Machiavelli attempted to direct princes (and often he spoke of republics, his example early Rome) in what might be necessary to preserve his state acting, it is hoped, for the good of the people who are its residents—at least its citizens. Today, Machiavelli would not only be the world’s consummate political philosopher and exponent of “realpolitik,” he would be considerably more moral—in Christian terms—than some of the infamous practitioners of realpolitik in the past seventy-five years. Making this case, in addition to painting a picture of Machiavelli’s political times, is the overall purpose of Bobbitt’s book.

Bobbitt uses an epilogue to remind us that the nation-state is not the end of the matter and that we are now moving into the market-state. I think Dr. Bobbitt is too sanguine about this development, even if he is right that it is occurring. Perhaps he is trying hard to remain neutral. A market state in the modern Capitalist paradigm cannot, almost by definition, be legitimated in the way Bobbitt claims it must be. There have been a few reversals since he wrote this book in 2012. I will take this matter up on my blog.

The reader should note that only 52% of the pages listed are Bobbitt’s text. The rest are references, acknowledgments, and so on. It was a good read. I enjoyed it!

Review: It’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism by Bernie Sanders

I like Bernie Sanders. I have a lot of sympathy for him, and I agree with most of what he says in this book. However, I have a few quibbles I’m going to discuss here. 

Mr. Sanders addresses seven primary areas:

  • Collapsing Health Care
  • Collapsing Education
  • The Crumbling Media
  • The Obscene Wealth Gap
  • Monied capture of the Democratic Party
  • Climate Change and the Petroleum Industry
  • Labor – Unions, Corporate Representation, and the work-day

I have nothing to say in this essay about the first five. Sanders makes a superb case for every one of them. I’m going to talk about the last two, and concerning labor, only his work-day proposal because, unfortunately, like petroleum, it is linked to climate change.

THE CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM

Climate change is the existential crisis of our time. It is a crisis we can no longer block or even substantially mitigate for much longer. Our present global industrial and economic system is doomed. It does not mean the extinction of humanity. It does mean the end of our present way of life (see my review of The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells with many other links). 

The petroleum industry is not solely responsible for the problem as Sanders implies. They did not force us, from the earliest decades of the 20th Century, to rest our entire economy on oil. Before there was an oil economy there was coal, the basis of early industrialization for both Europe and America. Coal is even dirtier than oil, but the Earth had far fewer people in those days, and few developing industrial nations. As early as 1850 scientists warned that carbon dioxide would begin to warm the planet when annual production of the gas exceeded the Earth’s capacity to absorb it. At the time, no one knew when that would be, or how the warming would manifest itself in weather patterns. Some suggested a new ice age. Wait a thousand years. That may still happen.

By the 1970s, there was enough data to see that the warming process had already begun. The petroleum industry didn’t have to lie about it—although they did lie. No one listened to the science, which, by then, was long available to the public. The petroleum industry did not force consumers to buy more cars, and then bigger cars. They did not force the American government to build out a national highway system (instead of improving the railroads) or deregulate the airlines resulting—over the ensuing decades—in a hundredfold increase in flight miles per year. Consumer choice, abetted by government policy did all that. Lastly, the petroleum industry did not force other large nations—China and India in particular—to choose to industrialize like the U.S. and Europe spending the latter half of the 20th Century “catching up,” which, in their case, meant burning a lot of coal.

The petroleum companies never had to lie. Even had they told us one hundred years ago that increased use of fossil fuels would eventually upset the global climate balance, people, and in particular governments (think military competition and technology), would have felt compelled to use fossil fuels to feed growing populations, expand their economies, defend their territories, or engage in naked belligerence. One hundred years ago a fully formed sovereign world government might have acted effectively to prevent what is happening to the climate now. There was no world government then and there isn’t one now. The competition goes on. It is impossible to stop—until we are all dead.

Curtailing the use of fossil fuels sufficiently to bend the temperature curve down even one hundred years from now—it is too late to do anything about the next hundred or more years—we would have to cut their use by ninety percent immediately. No more vacation flying or driving, no more plastic, no more automobile or boat racing, no gas-powered lawnmowers—no recreational or entertainment-related use of fossil fuels whatsoever! Batteries will not save us. A Tesla must be driven fifty-thousand miles before the carbon cost of its manufacture (including the batteries) drops below that of a gas-powered car and that doesn’t count the carbon cost of battery recycling. We do not even ban professional automobile racing, a sport built around burning petroleum! That’s insane! 

The only fuel that could have saved us is hydrogen from seawater produced by renewable energy (whose manufacture has its own enormous carbon cost). Had the world begun that conversion seventy-five years ago—a conversion requiring a lot of carbon to build out—we might be there now. It is far too late.   

Of course, my recommendation above is both economically and politically impossible—globally! Every modern economy in the world would collapse immediately. A billion people would be thrown out of work and many would starve. Every politician in power, or who hopes, someday, to be in power, lies about climate change. The lie is that we can still do much about it. We cannot. 

THE THREE OR FOUR DAY WORK WEEK

Climate change is not specifically an issue of the political left. Labor policy very much is such an issue and Sanders tells us the forty-hour work week (established roughly a hundred years ago) has outlived its utility. Believe me, I get it. I’m retired now but I worked for “the man” for forty years always, officially anyway, a forty-hour week. Would I have supported a shorter week for the same pay? You shouldn’t have to ask. Bernie’s suggestion ensures full (or fuller) employment, and that would be a good thing.

The problem (I said above this issue is connected to climate change) is what the bulk of the working population would do with their extra leisure time. If people used the time to advance their education, to read—or write—more books, if they used their leisure to do philosophy, to produce art, to help aged neighbors, foster local athletics, exercise, play with their children in their own backyards, or help to grow food in local gardens, the three or four-day workweek would be a social and cultural blessing. But that is not what most people would do. They would use that time to travel, to drive and fly, to water ski, pilot ATVs across the eroding Earth, jet ski over increasingly polluted waters, or to go (travel) to more concerts and professional sporting events—automobile racing anyone? In short, they would consume more fuel belching even more carbon into the atmosphere, and that is all I’m going to say on the subject.

It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders 2022

A “cry of the heart” from a principled politician is refreshing. I have no objection to some people being more prosperous than others, and neither does Mr. Sanders. But the wealth disparity in the U.S. is genuinely obscene and more so in that the wealthiest among us do not contribute proportionally to maintain everything needed to keep their capital flows going. Every branch of the U.S. government is now captured by monied interests, the legislature most of all, and this is true at both national and State levels. Sanders repeatedly touches on this issue, and rightly so. It is the core of our problem.

In some detail, Sanders covers health care, education, child care, the media (all types), and our political process. His overarching issue is the class conflict between labor and capital; between the owners of concentrated capital, and the population who labor to produce the goods and services that generate the wealth. He is right. Sanders is no Marxist. He is not opposed to class distinctions. He wants to make the distinctions more balanced and he is right to do so because the present disparity is causing tens of millions to suffer in one way or another. 

Sanders paints with a broad brush—necessary to keep the book of moderate length and easily read. He succeeds on both counts, but there is a price to be paid. Many of his arguments are oversimplified. The petroleum industry—even despite its decades of obfuscation on the subject—is not solely responsible for climate change. A great deal of that accountability belongs to consumers, most of whom are of the laboring class.

Sanders writes a lot about the disarray of the present Democratic party and how it has come about. He is right about much of it. Citizens United in 2009 did not help, forcing Democrats into the same fund-raising frenzy from the rich as the Republicans. But one thing he doesn’t mention is the present cultural obsession with identity politics, a phenomenon whose emergence has been solely an effort of the political left beginning in the 1970s. As much as anything else, besides money, this has distracted the Democratic Party from the wider issue of class. No matter to what race you belong, or LGBTQ+ letter you choose for yourself, you are still, most likely, among the laboring class. That most fundamental, political divide is now diffused by the demands of alternate identities. 

I am being perhaps unfair to Sanders. His goal is not an exhaustive analysis of factors responsible for America’s social, cultural, and political unraveling. He wants us to aspire to a better American society for all, even capitalists who will face less resentment should Sanders’ vision for balancing the scales ever come about. It might never be possible, but it is a good and hopeful vision.