There is a Catechism that dominates American discourse on Russia today. Just flip through The Washington Post’s editorials, peruse American political science journals or listen (cringe) to a Joe Biden interview. It goes something like this:

In the past decade, Putin’s Russia has forsaken Western values and returned to its authoritarian past. Ordinary Russians, bribed by the Kremlim’s oil largesse and misled by its controlled media, expressed only apathy at this development. Granted, the regime may enjoy superficial support (given Putin’s strangely stratospheric approval ratings), but the accelerating population decline proves that Russians are discounting the nation’s future with their loins. And so should we, for what’s the point of taking a “Potemkin country” ruled by a “kleptocratic thugocracy” seriously?

There’s only one problem – many of the underlying assumptions of this Catechism are unsupported by any facts, figures or statistics.

A major cornerstone of the Catechism is that electoral manipulation under Putin has become so egregious that the regime has lost the political legitimacy that many Westerners believe only stems from democracy. But opinion polls from the Levada Center strongly belie these concerns. In the 2008 Presidential elections, Medvedev’s 71% mandate was exactly the same as the percentage of voters who later recalled casting a ballot for him (and significantly lower than the 80% who intended to vote for him three weeks prior). [see poll 1 & 2] Obviously, this is not the Soviet-scale fraud of Kremlinologist fantasy.

There are two main rejoinders to this argument. First, doesn’t the Kremlin make ample use of its “administrative resources” – unfair media access, illicit campaign financing, etc. – to skew election results to its liking? True. As a “plebiscitary regime,” it not only relies on but revels in popular approval. But it’s genuine approval for all that – because if it weren’t, one would expect most Putinistas to be old, sour-mouthed “sovoks” who are fed news from state TV, right? But that’s not the case. Though pro-Kremlin, West-skeptical views are prevalent across all major social groups, they run highest among young, university-educated Muscovites – the very Russians most exposed to the West through the internet and foreign travel.

But that’s heresy! Don’t these inconvenient results imply that the Kremlin has coopted the polling agencies? Sorry, false cause fallacy. Furthermore, Lev Gudkov, the current director of the Levada Center, writes stuff like this: “Putinism is a system of decentralized use of the institutional instruments of coercion… hijacked by the powers that be for the fulfillment of their private, clan-group interests.” Doesn’t exactly sound like a raging, pro-Kremlin fanatic, does he?!

A second major theme of the Catechism is that Russia’s plethora of economic and social ills – best manifested in its demograpthic “free-fall,” “death spiral” (insert your own appropriately apocalyptic term here), etc. – doom it todecline and eventual irrelevance. Yet according to the state statistics service, Rosstat, the population stopped falling in 2009, as part of an ongoing recovery from the “lowest-low” fertility and “hyper” mortality rates of the post-Soviet transition period. True, its long-term sustainability is uncertain, and Russia’s demography is still nothing to write home about; for instance, death rates for today’s middle-aged men are unchanged from those of late tsarism (also according to Rosstat). That said, considering today’s Russia has an above-European average fertility rate and a stabilized population, there is no point in flogging this “death of a nation” meme any further.

Locked within their larger Meta-Catechism of Western universalism, the Commissars of Kremlinology are oceans separated from the lives of ordinary Russians, who by and large like their country, consider Putinism a fair balance between order and freedom, and are relatively optimistic about Russia’s future. One does not have to be a useful idiot, Kremlin stooge or “whataboutist” apologist for “Chekist dictatorship” to point this out – all it takes is a few minutes and a few mouse-clicks online.

So, until the Western commentariat can provide evidence that the claws of the Kremlin extend to Rosstat and Levada – as opposed to relying on generalized claims, hearsay and tea leaves – its Catechism of a secret police dictatorship leading brainwashed Russians to a national pyre is best appreciated as dystopian fantasy.

However, another point of view on the US economy can be developed by drawing on observations of factors such as median income, energy consumption and inequality. Broadly speaking, this picture is one relative stagnation from 1890-1940, and again from 1973-today, punctuated by the truly remarkable “miracle economy” of the post-war boom. Furthermore, the US is now about to transition to a new phase: economic stagnation and anarchic stasis, to be followed by oligarchic Caesarism. This first post will be, for now, just a series of observations that I believe to be inextricably linked, but lack the theoretical foundations to put on a sound footing. Feel free to skip it, as it might be hard to follow and I’m mostly writing it to get greater understanding for myself. More polished version(s) to follow.

1. Median incomes (the ones that matter to ordinary Americans) tell a radically different story from the GDP figures. As shown below, they remained at a virtual plateau from 1914 to 1940. During the WW2 mobilization, spare capacity filled up, as factories began to produce the tanks, ships, planes, jeeps and misc. that played a crucial role in the Allied victory. After the war, what might have been a new plateau from the 1940-50 base accelerated, literally driven by the automative revolution; it is during this time that the US became a suburban, oil-based civilization.

However, the oil shocks of the 1970′s threw a jackhammer into that arrangement. Since then, the only discernible rise took place in the 1990′s: a period that saw the opening up of the Chinese “reserve army of labor” and the Soviet resource base to global markets. These began creating powerful deflationary effects in the US. But things went into reverse altogether during the past “lost decade“.

The median household income in 2008 was $50,303. The median household income in 1999, expressed in 2008 dollars, was $52,748.

You’ve got to figure 2009 will see another decline in income, in which case Americans will end the decade significantly less well off than when they started it. We’re not just treading water. We’re going backwards. …

Still, the 2000s have been especially barren. Median income rose only in three years—2005, 2006 and 2007, and even at the cyclical peak in 2007 it was below the levels of 1999 and 2000.

2. More on the energy developments during the period. During 1950-70, the US enjoyed very rapid growth both in absolute energy consumption and the energy efficiency of its techno-industrial base. Therefore, the quantity of “useful work” available for exploitation by American labor and capital increased very rapidly.

But this growth moderated since the 1970′s. Given the continuing reduction in the EROEI of oil, the peaking of the net energy flowing into the US economy from coal in 1998, and the turn to costly shale gas to maintain natural gas production volumes observed within the last decade, this trend must have only strengthened in the 2000′s. Graphs are taken from Economic Growth and Cheap Oil (Robert Ayres).

The growth in the”technical efficiency” with which exergy is converted to “useful work” by the American economy has been flattening since the 1980′s (probably due to diminishing returns to investments into more efficiency: see Tainter, etc). Though Obama’s drive to increase energy efficiency is laudable, it will be hard to achieve big results given that most of the low-hanging fruit have already been picked.

If further improvements in technical efficiency are low, then the US will be going into a permanent hyper depression in the years ahead according to Ayres’ calculations. As of today, the observed results match the Low forecast.

There’s little reason for hope. The potential for squeezing more “useful work” – the single biggest factor in GDP growth – out of the current US energy base are very limited. Coal, oil and natural gas are roads to nowhere. While nuclear and renewables are far more sustainable in the long-term (for maintaining an industrial base), they need 1) several decades to be build up and 2) given the same investments in K and L generate less useful work than today’s hydrocarbons because of their low EROEI’s.

3. Another interesting thing is that the period of stagnant US median incomes is linked with rising inequality. (This explains the continued moderate growth in consumption and GDP – its just that since 1973 a very large portion of it has been accruing to the guys at the top of the pecking order).

Now in stagnant systems – e.g. overpopulated agrarian societies – this is explained (Turchin) by the fact that land, food and credit prices have a tendency to go up, benefiting the elites (landowners, financiers, etc) relative to the rest of the population. While similar processes apply to industrial societies (see Marx), its effects can be combated by the powerful redistribution mechanisms available to the modern state (that were lacking in the agrarian states of yore). Hence, despite the fact that since the 1980′s Western Europe has been on much the same vastly lower growth trajectory, inequality in states such as France and Germany has remained low.

On the other hand, the US – having progressively deregulated the financial sector and knocked down marginal tax rates – has experienced a massive increase in inequality that may now be approaching the levels of the Gilded Age.

4. Fertility rates are linked to economic conditions. One of the many explanations for the post-war baby boom in the US is that soldiers were returning home, social conservatism, etc. But none of them are very convincing as comprehensive explanations.

Instead, one may interpret the above graph as follows:

• 1900-1940: stagnant median incomes; TFR approaches replacement level rates as the US ceases being an agrarian society.
• 1940-1970: the baby boom as US middle class living standards expand rapidly. Populations tend to expand rapidly when their resource base expands. Interesting why TFR expansion started dropping in early 1960′s, though: perhaps looking at cohort TFR’s (which adjust for average age of childbearing) would yield a better fit with the economic stats?
• 1970-2010: roughly replacement level TFR’s, stable median incomes.
• 2010+: if median incomes begin to fall in the future, due to energy constraints and/or fiscal collapse, we might well see the TFR drop to something like 1.5.
• A comparison: Russia completed its post-agrarian fertility transition by the mid-1960′s; after that, the TFR remained stable at around 1.9-2.1 until 1990 (as we know this was a time of zastoi / stagnation, esp. in the later part of this period). But in the 1990′s Russia’s TFR fell off a cliff, along with real living standards (not only did average incomes fall, soaring inequality made most people’s income fall even faster). The nadir was reached in 1999 (TFR=1.16) and has since risen up to 2009 (TFR=1.56).
• Of course, non-material factors also play a big role: e.g., why is German TFR so much lower than France’s? etc…

5. Preliminary speculations. The reason I’m very skeptical on the Keynesian / Krugman vs. Austrian / Tea Party “debate” is that both positions, though ostensibly opposite, are based on the same presumption: that further economic growth is still possible, if only their policy prescriptions were to be followed. (In a recent Oil Drum posting Gregor MacDonald laid out my thoughts very well in Hollow Men of Economics.

So, Krugman draws many simplistic graphs showing how growth was bigger during the (Keynesian) 1950′s-1960′s than during the (monetarist) 1980′s-2000′s, ergo, the government should throw more and more money at the economy, the deficits and debts be damned. Then there his ridiculous “invisible” bond vigilantes argument: if the US can sell debt so cheaply, why should we worry about exploding budget deficits? Only a few things wrong with this theory…

1. It’s a complete strawman! By the time the bond vigilantes take off their invisibility cloak, the costs of servicing debt – much of it now in short-term bonds which have to be frequently rolled over – will begin to spike, leading to an irreversible death spiral.
2. Makes the questionable assumption that the US will grow at 2-3% in the future, whereas 1) the necessity of deleveraging, 2) the exergy situation and 3) the fragile geopolitical situation makes this highly unlikely.

Of course, the Austrians / WSJ are no less insane. If only the rich could get more tax breaks, if only banksters and oil corporations could be coddled even more than they are already, everything would be fine and dandy and we’ll be growing our way into a Randian paradise of abundance.

Both sides UTTERLY fail to consider the vital factor of useful work to economic growth. Useful work is a function of exergy & technical efficiency. Exergy is likely to peak and go into decline within the decade, given the trends in the energy base; technical efficiency appears to have a trend of flattening out. If investors were to suspect there are no prospects for future growth, the credit system – the economic equivalent of fertilizer in agriculture – as it exists today would collapse (why give out loans if there’s little prospects they will be repaid?), and the consequent drop off in investment will lead to depreciation overtaking and the capital stock beginning to contract. Finally, while the labor force will continue to expand, its quality will not because American IQ has been flat since around the 1980′s because of the cessation of the Flynn effect. (The *only* positive, productivity enhancing trend at work is the continued informatization of the economy, which may gain a boost with the appearance of ubiquitous, specialized and highly effective AI’s by the 2020′s.)

This is not an attractive view to take, because it basically means that whatever the government does or doesn’t do, GDP decline is inevitable. But the alternatives aren’t rosy either:

• If Krugman “wins” the debate: the economy sputters along for a few years, never getting onto a sustainable growth trajectory. Awning budget deficits and ballooning of the public debt (which is now at 140% of GDP if you also count local/municipal debt and Freddie Mac/Freddie Mae liabilities). The result: an Argentina 2000/Latvia 2009-style collapse, probably sometime around 2012-15 (might be triggered by a “geopolitical shock”). End-result: some kind of American Caesarism.
• If Austrians “win” the debate: the decline is grinding and gradual, rather than sudden and catastrophic.

Instead, it would perhaps be a better idea to craft policies in such a way as to minimize the harm done for (as I suggested in my abortive “Collapse Party” project) and at the same time make the foundations of the American state stronger.

• Reintroduce the high marginal tax rates of the 1950′s-60′s to reduce inequality and shift the burden to those able to shoulder it. Might prevent the soaring inequality / corruption / resentment that leads to crony Caesarist outcomes. Problem: ACHTUNG SOCIALISM!
• Allow the financial system to contract / collapse as needed. Today, it is a rotting dead weight on the US – both economically (there’s no need for such a huge financial sector in the first place) and morally (they are a class apart from normal Americans). Problem: institutional capture means same banksters wield immense influence over both parties of power.
• Reduce military expenditures. There’s a lot that can be cut. First, the metastasized “war on terror” apparatus. Second, the expeditionary/naval component can be cut. There’s no long-term hope of containing China, but the Western US itself is secure. The Pacific Fleet can be reduced. Get out of Afghanistan. On the other hand, maintaining dominance in the Atlantic (core US interest) and the Middle East (oil) is useful. Third, saved money can be used to 1) continue research into next-generation military technologies, 2) reducing deficit. It’s not really a choice, actually. Military contraction is inevitable in the next decade: the only question is whether it will be uncontrolled (as during 1990′s Russia, when c.70% of Soviet military assets depreciated into junk) or controlled (with the result that core strengths will be preserved). Problem: suggesting reductions in military spending is unpatriotic & goes against the powerful defense & MIC lobby.
• Obamacare is imperfect, but one of the administration’s best achievements. Leave as is.
• Use savings from cutting off subsidies to the MIC & financial mafias – and the bigger tax intakes – to launch a coordinated restructuring of the US energy base. To accelerate the transition to sustainability, start planning and building lots of new nuclear power plants, and renewables. Start phasing out coal. First, makes a positive contribution to helping the world avoid catastrophic climate change. Second, this transition is in any case inevitable once the EROEI of hydrocarbons dips to lower levels – but by then, switching will harder because there’ll be many other challenges on the plate (e.g. mitigating the increasing effects of global warming; coping with the dearth of capital). So make a head start now. Problem: requires the kind of forward thinking that institutions are chronically incapable of.
• How do solve all these problems? Obama needs to take a gamble, revolutionize his leadership, launch an all out political assault against the enemies of progress. Problem: not going to happen.

And that’s the story of it.

If I had to bet on it, I’d say US GDP per capita will be 5-25% lower in 2020 than it is now – even though we’re in recession. (Unlike with the 1930′s Depression, there’s no abundant, very high-EROEI energy subsidy on the horizon waiting to propel the US to another level). Inequality will be no lower than today, because of the power of today’s stakeholders in the system, hence – coupled with lower output and the waning of the credit system – median incomes will be a lot lower; hence, many more people in outright destitution. The center of gravity (economy, population) shifting back to the north and east (above all the Great Lakes region) from the south and west. The Presidency will have transitioned to some kind of Caesarism, served by a clique of politically-connected oligarchs. Any imperialist adventures now confined to the Western hemisphere. The citizenry too atomized, apathetic and preoccupied with quotidian concerns to do much about it.

I appreciate your thoughts and criticisms of this post, but do note that it is not meant to be final or “serious”; more like a strange mix of relatively obscure economic concepts, lazy extrapolations and personal impressions. As I said at the beginning, I hope to refine and connect these ideas into a more rigorous and logical framework in the future.

You say "fascist", as if it's a bad thing. But dude, people love fascists!

Depressingly fatalist, morbidly truthful, irresistibly Nietzschean. That’s Howard Bloom’s “The Lucifer Principle” in a nutshell: a meandering trawl through disciplines such as genetics, psychology and culture that culminates in a theory of evil, purporting to explain its historical necessity, its creative potential and the possibility of it ever being vanquished. The odds do not appear to be good. For in the world painted by Bloom, peace is submission, social hierarchies are natural, ideas are polarizing, and liberal individualism is invidious to the collective “superorganism” that both oppresses, nourishes and saves us. Fascism really is the “natural state” in every sense of the term.

Bloom, Howard – The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (1995)
Category: human society, psychology, history; Rating: 5/5
Summary: Amazon reviews, James Schultz

More S/O material on related topics:

• Violence is Reality – the grisly reality of prehistoric war.
• If Malthus and Ibn Khaldun were to meet for coffee… – the overwhelming importance of social cohesion, or Asabiyah, to national success.
• The Belief Matrix – my own ideas on the role of sobornost’.

Superorganism, or: The Whole is Greater than its Parts

Bloom starts off by providing reams of evidence on why it is completely logical for nature to be “red in tooth and claw”. Selfish genes need to replicate and it is no great loss if they doom billions of individuals to untimely deaths in the struggle for evolutionary survival. Hence, creatures battle for the “privilege of procreation”. High-ranking gorilla females kill their harem rivals’ offspring. Existence in primitive societies is so brutish and short that it is as if they were fighting World War Two every year and life eternal (the myth of the “noble savage” really is just that). The wellspring of Western civilization, the Romans, have the rape of the Sabines as one of their proudest foundational myths. In short, violence is reality.

[The Rape of the Sabine Women, Pietro da Cortona.]

One interesting theory he mentions is that of the triune brain, according to which the human mind is actually composed of three brains – the reptilian (stimuli, mating, territoriality), mammalian (loyalty to family and clan) and primate (reasoning faculty). The reptilian component makes creatures nasty and violent, while the mammalian reinforces the power of social groups. It is only the latter that allows man to dream about peace, even as they hack each other to pieces in the waking world.

In the next section, Blooms asks why people commit suicide. He cites a lot of research showing that isolation is the ultimate poison – without social approval, people not only tend to become depressed, but their physiology goes on self-destruct mode, encouraging illnesses, insanity and suicidal tendencies. This is a negative feedback loop because once you are depressed, other people no longer want to be around you or make friends with it (but that, too, works in the interests of the group). He ties this in to the larger idea that just as cells, sponges and ants can only survive as constituent particularly of a greater whole or not at all, so humans are part of a greater “superorganism” that is society.

Paradoxically, the logic of “group selection” encourages loyalty to the superorganism that cares little if at all for the individuals that owe it their fealty. For instance, upon seeing a pride of lions beginning to stalk a herd of gazelles on the African savanna, the beasts that notice the predators begin prancing about in warning. This actually diminishes their individual chances of survival, since lions are likeliest to go for animals that are acting unlike the rest of the herd. The best outcome for the individual gazelle upon noticing the lions would be simply to retreat slowly to the safe center of the herd. However, over the evolutionary eons, groups with many individuals exhibiting these self-preserving tendencies presumably got weeded out, for self-interest is the bane of group interests. Hence in real life we do get a lot of genuinely altruistic loyalty to the group – amongst ants, gazelles, humans.

Humans who are no longer needed by the group really are no longer needed and might as well wane and die (“the Moor has done his duty, he can now go home”). Durkheim suggested suicide was essentially individuals altruistically relieving society of their own burden to it, and I would suggest that this is especially evident in societies like Japan without the traditional Western Christian guilt. I would also suggest that this is the reason why ostracism and exile were so much more fearful punishments in the pre-industrial world than they would seem in today’s global rootless cosmopolitanism. In an age when bonds were strong and essential, but geographically tied to small regions, being shorn of human contact would have been psychologically crippling.

All this of course has a more than passing resemblance to Turchin’s and Ibn Khaldun’s work on social cohesion and Asabiyah. There’s a reason why through the ages soldiers have willingly charged cold steel pikes and machine gun fire for the glory of their nation. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and far more important too – and the superorganism knows this.

[The Battle of Gettysburg. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!]

Though shalt not kill… but only as long as they’re members of your tribe. Otherwise it’s cool. Note that primitive societies believe “humans” to be only their own tribe or clan (in fact if you look at the etymology, many ethnicities call themselves “the people” in their own tongues). Civilization has expanded the definition of those considered to be human to their own nations: in the case of the Jews, to the Israelites; in the case of later “universal” religions, potentially to all humanity (except inveterate heathen, of course). Even many modern liberals are intolerant of those who don’t share their liberal ideals. Why these divisions? Having enemies is really good for social consolidation (see “castle identity”, “residential fortress”, “siege mentality”); human societies are defined not by what they are, but by what they oppose and hate. Or as Orwell would say, war is peace.

There is always a deep wellspring of frustration in any society. Bloom quotes interesting research showing that fro cells to ants to humans, each unit performs a preordained role. In any ant colony, there are industrious workers and lazy workers, soldiers and queens. Separate the industrious and lazy workers into separate group and new social roles are created as some former busybodies become idlers and former idlers become industrious. In observations of summer campers, it was noted that after a few hours, bunk-mates assumed four specific social roles: dominant “alpha male”, unpopular “bully”, “joker” sidekick and the over-eager “nerd” who is kicked around by everyone.

All human minds possess thousands of unrealized personalities which could have been but aren’t. This results in an undercurrent of frustration, which can be channeled into the hatred of the interloper that binds it together. Early cellular lifeforms discovered that they could dispose of calcium, poisonous in high quantities, by using it to build shells. In similar fashion, common hatreds glue societies together, such “that every tribe regards outsiders as fair game; that every society gives permission to hate; that each culture addresses the demon of its hatred in the garb of righteousness; and that the man who channels this hatred can rouse the superorganism and lead it around by the nose”.

From Genes to Memes, Yet Us vs. Them Always

In another chapter full of worthy insights, Bloom notes that the main vector of evolution shifted from genes swimming through “the protoplasmic soup of the early earth” to memes floating through a “sea of human brains”. Both genes and memes mercilessly exploit their hosts in their struggle for survival and bid to overspread the earth. Though rat broods are normally loving to each other, insert a rodent from a different clan that smells different, and they tear the unfortunate apart – even if he carries their genetic stock (rats tell who is who by smell). Humans are more advanced: they have language, culture and religions that bind closer than any uniform. The Hebrew genocide of the Canaanites was just and splendid, for their ethno-genetic stock was chosen by the LORD God.

Over the millennia of ancient history, memes gradually divorced themselves from the genetic level altogether, appearing in “universal” religions like Zoroastrianism and Christianity after St. Paul. Competing universal religions and ideologies now encompass nearly the whole world. The confer several advantages. First, the effective illusion of control, which is good guarantor of health and mental agility (note that most medical procedures even today are based on getting the patient to believe she will recover and hence doing so). Second, memes help consolidate huge communities, and hence ensure their own long-term survival.

A society is, in effect, a vast, problem-solving neural net – humans are to it like brain cells are to a mind. As a swarm of individuals interact in limited and simply ways (bees, humans), an extraordinarily complex structure emerges (a beehive, the modern economy). One feature of human society is male expendability – from cradle to old age, men have weaker immune systems, are more accident-prone and die quicker. This is especially marked in primitive societies where warfare is brutal and incessant.

The reasons are biologically obvious: whereas one man can inseminate dozens of women, one woman can only reproduce about once a year at most. So Mother Nature can afford to play with men as dice, ensuring that only the fittest survive. Interestingly, life is most brutal and profligate in the south, where resources are plentiful. In the tropics, male birds tend to have bright plumes to attract female attention (which also makes them highly visible to predators); but in the north, birds have grayer colors designed to blend into the surroundings, and their sex tends to be indistinguishable to the human eye. That is because the female needs male help to rear her chicks through the hard winter months of dearth. Likewise with humans, polygamy has been most prevalent in southern cultures – even if many guys die in battles for prestige, territory and slaves, the women can continue the race without most of them.

Most men failed, and died early or had little reproductive success (in primitive societies only 50% of men end up having offspring, compared to 80% of women). But those who made it, like Chinggis Khan, became the biological fathers of millions (King Saud was probably the last such very influential warlord). But as history progressed, memes steadily took center place. The generators of successful memes, like St. Paul, Marx or Sayyid Qutb, took the center place in the lives of millions and billions!

The Pecking Order: Hierarchy is Good

Stalin was right: the weak get beaten. That’s what happens to those at the bottom of the pecking order, the phenomenon observed in the 1920′s where chickens formed a fixed hierarchy that determined priority access to food and shelter. While the top hen was well fed, warm and respected, the one at the bottom was ostracized and pecked by everyone else. Likewise, those at the top are most sexually successful in primitive societies. In a series of experiments in which three male rats and three female rats were brought together in a cage, some 92% of offspring accrued to the dominant male!

Success breeds success, failure breeds failure. Low ranking baboons suffer increased levels of glucocorticoids, a stress hormone that acts as a slow poison, and walk around slouched and defeated. The same thing operates in human societies – being at the bottom of the pecking order is bad for you, as you suffer from increased rates of depression, blood pressure, heart attacks, etc – obviously this also makes you unattractive and entrenches your gutter status. In contrast, higher ranking monkeys people walk upright and their testicles hang down further. (So consequently no wonder that that is the reason why men are recommended Alexander posture and walking with one’s legs wide apart… it is to project the image of the physical aspects of the alpha male; on third thought that would explain society’s dislike for the “pick-up artist”, since their craft essentially cheats the naturally emergent hierarchy by getting men to mimic alpha traits instead of actually being one).

There’s a very good reason for the existence of these feedback loops that reinforce social hierarchy – the alternative to hierarchy, with its inherent, diffuse coercion, is anarchy. This entails a state of constant expenditure of previous, limited energy on banditry and defense. In this situation, the weak and friendless get trampled down even more quickly and ruthlessly than if they were (merely) oppressed within a hierarchic system. So it is actually in the interests of everyone, including even its lowliest members. (The exceptions are, of course, those who believe that their position in the hierarchy is unjustified on the basis of their abilities or beliefs, e.g. the Bolshevik insurrectionist, the Islamist cell member, etc, who would like to level the current hierarchic system in a cleansing purge before rebuilding it in their own image). Bloom notes that “superior chickens make friends”, not only within societies, but within the community of tribes and nations. Just as powerful Yanamamo tribes attracted allies and clobbered the weak and friendless tribes, and Rome maintained coalitions awed by its political and military prowess, so the modern US draws on the loyalty of many of its allies in the West and elsewhere through the visibility of its hegemonic power. (It even gets financial credit at low prices due to an effect called American alpha!)

In the last few chapters, Bloom ingeniously – or in an act of unintentional hypocrisy, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt – shows “us vs them”, memes and hierarchy at work in his own book! He states America’s refusal to support France and Britain in their neo-colonial 1956 endevour to seize back the Suez Canal was morally wrong, proclaims the superiority of the West over the cultures of the Third World and labels Islam a “killer culture” harboring the next barbarians. (Of course, the Islamist crazies promptly did their best to prove him right). No, you don’t need to be a PC-head to realize that in the last hundred pages Bloom strays from his fascinating insights into a morass of opinion(ated) projections of his social theories onto modern geopolitics and the “clash of civilizations”. They can be skipped. The only more or less useful additional point he makes is that giving gifts is insulting, like the World Bank does with Africa, because it created humiliating cultural dependency relationships (e.g. demands to Africans to do things the way armchair economists with no practical experience there want them to). China’s straightforward infrastructure or cash for resources approach is better for Africans, both spiritually and probably even economically.

The Lucifer Principle: Superorganism, Memes & Hierarchy

These elements combined form the Lucifer Principle. The superorganism – be it body, village, nation (“imagined community”) or civilization – curtails your individuality, and has no qualms about throwing your life and health away if doing so would serve the greater good. It can throw you against another superorganism so as to weed out the weak, identify the strong, and consolidate itself internally and ideologically (war is peace). It can – and does – trample your mental and physical health under the social stratification it requires to maintain its own complexity (peace is submission). But it also nurtures and protects you with a love harsh but true… for while you can surmount the burdens and realize yourself (slavery is freedom), without society, that would be impossible… survival itself is impossible (freedom is death). I would say that the essence of the Lucifer Principle is that fascism is the natural state.

[The essence of the book in one comic. Translation: "What's the matter, you fat monkey?" "Fuck off, fucking fascist!" "You say 'fascist', as if it's a bad thing. But dude, people love fascists. Have you ever met a woman who fantasizes about being tied up and raped by a *liberal*?"]

Though Rome “had been an oppressor, it was also “the source of nourishment and peace”. It’s end brought not freedom, but death, says Bloom, as roving bandits moved in to pick its carcass. (Though I would make the caveat that by its end the Western Empire armies were themselves no better than bandits). In conclusions: “Superorganism, ideas, and the pecking order – these are the primary forces behind much of human creativity and earthly good. They are the holy trinity of the Lucifer Principle”.

There were several problems with the book. It was tied in loosely with the book and while chock full of fascinating details, many of them did little or nothing to advance or support the argument. The poor organization made writing this review rather tedious. The two chapters at the end, in which Bloom tried to apply disjointed elements of the Lucifer Principle onto modern politics and geopolitics, were largely irrelevant and should have been split off into a separate volume.

The evil Russian Bear. But not a substitute for stats.

Still no economic collapse. Still no anti-Putin bunt. Still no demographic apocalypse. As the years pass by, Russophobe canard after Russophobe trope is relegated to the dust-heap of history, only to rise back out of its grave, zombie-like, whenever Boris Nemtsov pens a brilliant indictment hysterical screed on the failures of Putinism or when the militsiya roughs up a few hundred (unsanctioned) protesters in a Russian city of millions. “Surely,” the Western commentariat says, “the system is rotten, the people hate their Chekist oppressors, and guys like Kasparov and Latynina will soon lead the people’s revolt back to pro-Western democracy?”

Unfortunately for their purveyors, these Manichean narratives mostly rely on anecdote, hearsay and the fluff and snake oil that is more commonly known as “political science”. When one looks at the objective evidence – things like economic and demographic statistics and Russian opinion polls – a rather disquieting picture emerges, for Russian limousine liberals and Western Commissars of Transitionology alike. This picture shows that Russians do more or less like “Putinism”, that liberals are despised when they are not ignored, and that most socio-economic indicators really are improving. True, it would be ridiculous to claim that they constitute a full vindication of the regime. Russia still has many serious problems and Russians frequently complain about the system’s corruption and social injustice. But the hard data from Levada Center (Russia’s Gallup) and Rosstat (state statistics service) does tend to invalidate around 90% of what is written about Russia in the Western press and political science*. The onus is on them to present serious evidence that these two organizations manipulate their figures to serve the Kremlin’s interests. And if they can’t, they’ll continue to rant and rave in big media while I spitefully snipe at them from my little blog and accomplish nothi… anyway, let’s not go there.

It is not my intention in this post to demonstrate the full range of ways in which the Russophobe narrative falls face down faced with the evidence from Rosstat and Levada. Though I’ll give just one or two examples, it is easy to extend them near indefinitely.

Let’s first take a look at Rosstat. Now one of the most prevalent narratives about the failure of Putinism is that Russia’s population is in “free-fall”, a “death spiral” (insert your own appropriately apocalyptic-sounding term)… The government couldn’t care less about the soaring murder rate or the plight of Russia’s children and HIV sufferers… Russian women are voting on their country’s future with their wombs and life expectancy has sunk to unimaginable lows… etc in a similar vein. There’s really no need to cite any examples here – anyone familiar with the Western commentary on Russia (or knows how to Google) can easily find many, many articles with these premises in “respectable” publications.

Yet according to the statistics, this narrative is increasingly obsolete, and sustained only by ever more brazen manipulations and misinterpretations of the data. Just to throw out some figures, from 2000 to 2009: the fertility rate rose from 1.20 children per woman to 1.56; life expectancy rose from 65 years to 69 years; infant mortality fell from 15.3/1000 to 8.1/1000. The rates of death from alcohol poisoning, murder, suicide and accidents have all fallen by around half relative to the early 2000′s. Now this is NOT to say that Russia’s demography is all nice and prim nowadays, nor that all the improvements can be chalked up to Putin’s policies. Death rates amongst middle-aged men remain stratospheric relative to the developed world. And it is not clear to what extent recent falls in mortality were due to better anti-alcohol or healthcare policies, and what share was accounted for by Russians simply beginning to drink less hard booze**. Nonetheless – and unless Rosstat is lying through its teeth – the improvements are real enough and denying them will not make them go away nor cause the “bloody Putin regime” to collapse any time soon.

Ironic that an institution once infamous for its statistical manipulations for the USSR now serves as a weapon against them... in the Western press.

The main argument remaining to the Russia pessimists is that Rosstat is simply lying. It is, after all, descended from Goskomstat (its web address, http://www.gks.ru/, underlines this), an institution which used to cover up the Soviet figures on infant mortality when they increased in the 1970′s and whose bogus accounting of Soviet economic growth implied that the USSR should have been several times wealthier than America by the time of its collapse. Michael McFaul, in his response to a blog post debunking many of his supposedly “factual” assertions in The Myth of the Authoritarian Model, claims that “the real experts on this stuff (which I am not) have become very suspicious of goskomstat’s work of late”. Funnily, as if in anticipation, Rosstat makes sure to proclaim the exact opposite on its front page: “International expert examinations confirm that the data of the Federal State Statistics Service are reliable.” I guess everyone is susceptible to appeal to (unsourced) authority when their integrity is at question! So who’s right?

To be absolutely honest, there is no real way to find out (unless official stats are grossly out of sync with perceived reality as in the late USSR, but that cannot be said for today’s Russia). Let me try to explain. In general, only national statistics services have the manpower and regulatory resources to compile comprehensive demographic (economic, etc) statistics on their own countries. The stats you see from international institutions like the World Health Organization or the World Bank are mostly drawn and aggregated from national statistics services. We just have to take them at their word. The only exceptions are when the countries they operate in are so chaotic (Somalia) or closed (North Korea) that their stats cannot be relied upon, in which case multinational organizations try to come up with their own guesstimates (with the emphasis on the “guess” part). Russia is not one of these exceptions. International institutions do use Rosstat’s figures. Heck, guys like McFaul and Nemtsov use them, even though they cherry-pick them wildly to make their ideological points.

Furthermore, it is not entirely clear who will benefit from expending massive stats to subvert Rosstat. Cui bono? Certainly no private interests I can think of. While Putin or his circle may wish to “pad” some bad stats, this would be a very risky endevour. It explode in their faces (analyses from outside expert observers, revelations from whistle-blowers, etc) – and even if they can keep up the deception in the long run, the cessation of reliable information on the country will severely hurt the strategic vision of the leadership as happened in the late USSR. So given all the arguments for Kremlin non-interference, and in the in the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary***, we must assume Rosstat reliable.

Now let’s go over to Levada Center and a couple more examples. Though I know they have their limitations, I am a big fan of opinion polls. Why listen to the inane ramblings of self-important political scientists from their comfortable armchairs, when one can listed to the voice of the people directly? The Western chauvinists have one compelling reason to stick to the former, of course. What Russians say is deeply discomfiting to their worldview, in which Western values are held to be some kind of universal religion. For what Russians say goes far beyond expressing stratospheric approval ratings for Putin (at least that can be “explained” by the pro-Kremlin “propaganda” on state TV or Russians’ “traditional” preference for a strongman at the helm). But “explaining” the following is much harder for them:

1) The Internet is no more censored in Russia than in the West (which is to say very little), and the latest figures show penetration in Russia steadily creeping up to encompass more than a third of the population, which implies near universal access amongst groups like educated, urbane Muscovites. So one would presumably expect most Putinistas to be old, sour-mouthed “sovoks”, right? (As per classist, Russophobe thinking). Wrong. Support for the Kremlin – and disillusionment with the West – runs highest amongst young, university-educated Muscovite men, the very segment of the Russian population that is most exposed to the West through the the Internet and foreign travel! (Hell hath no fury like a Westerner scorned…)

Though the dinosaurs in the MVD may temporarily confiscate Nemtsov’s scribblings on how Putin is really, really bad, they could be freely accessed in cyberspace throughout the whole affair. Apparently, his works simply do not make much of an impact on their own (de)merits! All said, it is hard to see the merits of the Western chauvinist argument that Russians would reject Putinism if only they could discern the beacons of freedom beyond their borders… No. Said beacons already caused a Russian housefire in the 1990′s, and they have no desire to repeat the experiment.

2) Another cornerstone of the Russophobe narrative is that under Putin, elections have become so fraudulent that they have completely decoupled from reality. The corollary is that the regime no longer has democratic legitimacy. Now I’m certainly not one to deny that the Kremlin doesn’t make ample use of its “administrative resources” to slant election results to its liking, both formally (e.g. stricter registration requirements, unequal TV access) and informally (e.g. state employer pressure to vote for the party of power). I am also not denying that in a few regions, like Chechnya, elections really are risible and entirely meaningless. Yet is there really this huge black hole between public sentiment and the ballot count?

Well, we could actually take the unimaginably revolutionary and incomprehensibly convoluted extremely obvious and logical step of actually asking Russians whom they intend to vote for and whom they actually voted for, and compare it with the election results. In fact that is what Levada did for the 2008 Presidential elections:

[Medvedev is Putin's anointed successor and of United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party of power; Zyuganov is of the Communist Party of the RF; Zhirinovsky is of the (fake) nationalist Liberal Democratic Party; Bogdanov was the token "liberal"].

Based on the above, it is fair to say that Russians got whom they wanted in the Presidency. The March 2 election results match both the February voter intentions and voter reminiscences some two weeks later. While one can certainly question the amount of real choice Russians got to exercise in what was a managed succession, it was hardly foisted on them by the jackboot.

3) Last but not least, most Russians themselves think they live in a free country and a democracy. Political scientists may disparage them for it, claiming that Russians don’t understand what democracy is all about. This misses the point. Democracy is more than just free, fair elections and some civil rights. Above all, it needs popular support for its long-term survival. Without that, the political scientists can (and do) go to hell.

Quite an indictment of most Russia commentary in the press today, wouldn’t you say? The Russophobes have two responses to this. First, as with Rosstat, they claim that “Levada’s institute is no longer fully reliable”**** (remember that getting results that can be construed as being pro-Kremlin disqualifies you from being “reliable” almost by definition). This is really laughable. I mean the director of Levada Center, Lev Gudkov, writes things like this:

… Putinism – is a system of decentralized use of the institutional instruments of coercion, preserved in the power ministries as relics of the totalitarian regime, and hijacked by the powers that be for the fulfillment of their private, clan-group interests. The regime is unstable, with questionable chances of long-term survival or peaceful transferal of power.

Yes, Gudkov sure sounds like a raging Russophile maniac skeptical sociologist with no particular love for the Kremlin!*****

The second critique is downright loony, and is never made by even halfway serious Russia watchers. They say that Russians are too afraid to answer opinion pollsters truthfully or reveal their real feelings towards Putin. There’s really no way to argue with such people. To them, if Russians say things are bad in Russia then they are bad, and if they say things are good in Russia then they are either paid shills or trembling slaves of the Kremlin. It’s a closed loop, unfalsifiable, fallacy.

There are three main conclusions to be made. First, the “moderates” in the Russia debate (Stephen Cohen, Ben Aris, “The Mutual Admiration Society“, etc) can rest assured that they’re on the right track. Second, the (extreme) Russophiles and Sovietophiles shouldn’t rejoice. The polls indicate continued low trust in most institutions, unsatisfactory access to healthcare and education and a very corrupt bureaucracy. Likewise, despite recent improvements, Russia’s demographic situation remains very unsatisfactory: middle-aged Russian men still have the life expectancy of their late Tsarist forefathers! Third, the (extreme) Russophobes would be wise to reconsider most of their positions in a fundamental way, because as it stands they are wrong on almost everything. Unless they are really, really good at digging up dirt on national statistics agencies and opinion pollsters, in which case they should get to work on “exposing” Rosstat and Levada!

* For a standard statement of the “Russophobe” position by which the Western mainstream media perceives Russia, see McFaul and Stoner-Weiss on The Myth of the Authoritarian Model. Their mendacity and cherry-picking is exposed by Fedia Kriukov here.

** Russia’s life expectancy is tightly coupled with per capita alcohol consumption. For more info see here.

*** The one serious criticism of Rosstat’s reliability that I’ve encountered in my Russia-watching career was made by Russian economist Gregory Khanin in “Economic growth and the mobilization model” in Ellman’s Russia’s Oil and Natural Gas: Bonanza or Curse? He argues that Rosstat’s methodology caused GDP growth to be overstated by 3% points from 1999-2003, most egregiously during the first two years. His alternate figures do not appear very rigorous. They are derived from analyzing concurrent growth rates of physical proxies like freight transport and fuel consumption, constructing three (widely differing) alternate GDP series based on said proxies, and averaging them to arrive at one alternate GDP series. There is little in the way of explanation why this is the logical and correct course to follow.

Incidentally, Khanin’s own methodology appears to be very similar to several (mostly) American attempts over the years to “prove” that China is *not* growing at 10% per annum by pointing to (occasional) dips in its electricity consumption… I would also like to add that not even the US is immune from suspicions that it is fiddling its numbers:

… Since the time of Reagan the definition of inflation used by the government was being continuously reworked to make the figures appear better than they otherwise would have been, using substitutions and hedonics to spruce up the figures (i.e. adjusting for consumers switching to other products when similar products become expensive, and trying to put values on quality improvements). If the BEA… continued using its old standards, then a) the economy would have been in stagnation during the 1990′s and recession in the 2000′s, b) inflation would have been steadily increasing to a peak of nearly 14% in 2007 and c) median incomes would have been in steep decline.

So there you go. I haven’t studied the issue in detail, and I don’t know whether it is the establishment statistics services or their contrarian critics who are on the ball. As usual, I suspect the truth is somewhere in between.

**** The political scientist who made this claim also recommended The Forensics of Election Fraud by Ordeshook, Myagkov, and Shakin. Anyone know if it has anything convincing or of interest?

***** Actually the Levada-Center is an independent offshoot of VTSIOM, which was brought under Kremlin influence around 2003. This caused most of VTSIOM’s sociologists to migrate with Yuri Levada and Lev Gudkov to the new outfit. There may be grounds to consider VTSIOM’s results suspect, but again there is no hard evidence to support this. For instance, its conclusions that most post-Soviet countries actually quite like Russia are the same as those produced by Gallup. And I certainly hope no-one will now try claiming that Gallup is controlled by the Kremlin!

И действительно, в последущие годы в Советском Союзе властями разжигалась так называемая «борьба с космополитизмом», против художников и интеллигентов обвиняемых в «космополитизме», «низкопоклонстве перед Западом», и т.д. После создания Израиля в 1948-ом году, являвшегося альтернативным источником лояльности для советских евреев, эта борьба приобрела явно антисемитский характер. Спустя три десятилетия революционного интернационализма, «социализма в одной стране», и тотальной войны, история вернулась в будущее. Да и в выборной кампании 1996-го года, Зюганов заявлял что все было бы хорошо в Советском Союзе, если бы только Сталин прожил еще пять лет и прикончил космополитизм раз и навсегда.

Правда, мягкое понятие «безродного космополитизма» конечно не является исключительно советским. Этот образ «паразитирующего» класса космополитов – общечеловеческий, который существует со времен царя Гороха (в наши дни, полит-корректный термин – «меньшинство доминирующее рынок»). В далеком прошлом, до индустриальной революции, основной массой населения были крестьяне, с резко анти-коммерческим, анти-капиталистическим  менталитетом. Это не являлось примитивом, а было элементарной бытовой мудростью. В крестьянской общине, все были зависимы друг от друга для выживания;  введение неких денежных отношений разрушало уклад взаимной помощи. Поэтому, у крестьянских масс развились глубокие чувства недоверия и презрения к людям, исключительно занимавшимся торговлей, финансами или спекуляцией. Средневековые нравы в Европе запрещали эти занятия христианам, поэтому ими, в основном, занималась еврейская диаспора. В хорошие времена она процветала, а в плохие, особенно во времена мальтузианских кризисов, подвергалась погромам и этническим чисткам. Когда в Европе началась индустриализация, крестьяне стали переселяться в города и получать доступ к грамоте и современным средствам массовой информации. Изначально это происходило при сохранении старо-деревенского, анти-космополитического мировоззрения. Эти обстоятельства, и своеобразные общественные трения в Германии, частично  объясняют трагические события Холокоста.

В наши дни, находящихся по мнению некоторых мыслителей в конце истории, эти старые мировоззрения отмирают  – особенно в США, в стране которая сама является страной-диаспорой и меньшинством доминирующим рынок Всея Глобуса. Несмотря на это, представителей анти-космополитического мышления все еще не сложно найти. Эти размышления вызывают у меня в памяти встречу с неким русофобом и антисемитом Михаилом Вилкиным, который поразил меня своими взглядами, примерно так же как и Набоков был поражен про-нацисткими мнениями товарищей его допельгенгера в “Conversation Piece, 1945”.

– У тебя нет корней в этой стране – говорит Вилкин, с кривой улыбкой, – Ты как безродный сорняк, который летит по ветру и растет везде. Ты людской мусор, который Америка собирает со всех уголков Земли. Скатертью тебе дорога отсюда!

Я считаю эти слова, исходящие от западно- украинского иммигранта в США, несколько ироничными. Но я должен признаться, что в них есть некая доля правды. Ведь я действительно безродный космополит. Для меня, Родина не США, и не России, да и не мир (я не разделяю этот дурацкий лозунг о «гражданах  мира» принадлежащий китчу глобализации). Народные обычаи и обряды мне безразличны. Причинять зло я никому не собираюсь, но вместо с тем, ожидать от меня настоящего патриотизма или соборного поведения тоже не стоит. Да и вообще, по словам российского социолога Константина Крылова, у меня менталитет члена «народа-диаспоры»:

Мне нет дела до других, как и им – до меня. Как другие ведут себя по отношению ко мне, пусть так себя и ведут. Как я веду себя по отношению к другим, так я и дальше буду себя вести. Все действуют так, как считают нужным, и я тоже действую, как считаю нужным.

Только в тишине слово, только во тьме свет. Враг народа в железной маске. Белая ворона летит по голубому небу.

– Безстранный.

Let me recap. First, the UK has a budget deficit of 13% of GDP and a debt to GDP ratio of 80% for 2010. (For comparison, the figures for defaulting Argentina in 2001 were 6.4% and 62%, respectively). According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, ”Britain would have to make across-the-board budget cuts of 5% a year to come close to cutting the deficit in half by 2014″ – and that assumes an economic upturn that may not materialize due to Britain’s deindustrialization, high energy costs, and the growing crisis in the Eurozone. (If Britain doesn’t make deep cuts soon, a descent into a Greek-style compound debt trap is inevitable). Second, the UK’s abysmal energy policy under New Labour – ignoring the depletion of the North Sea gas fields, declining to invest in new generating capacity, and not concluding long-term gas supply contracts – has made chronic electricity shortages all but inevitable by 2015. Third, separatist undercurrents are ever present. Not very visible now, granted, but that tends to change when a state comes under severe socio-economic pressure. Overall, I would say all this qualifies as a “bad situation” for Britain.

But why is a blue-yellow coalition going to make the best of it? For the simple reason that combined, their set of priorities is near optimal, and each will hopefully be able to check the other’s less savory tendencies. I will be drawing from this excellent website explicating the positions of British party candidates on major issues (h/t Fistful of Euros).

Take taxes and spending. The former will have to rise, the latter will have to fall. This is not an ideological statement, it is a matter of fact. The alternative is default, either outright or inflationary, and a forced readjustment. And the ruling parties are in tune with this reality. Only 28% of Tory and 41% of Lib Dem candidates believe that “Britain should increase spending on public sector services” despite the recession, compared with 61% of Labour candidates. This isn’t because they are nasty neoliberals. Some 76% of Lib Dems and even 60% of Tories believe that any tax increases should be “disproportionately” paid by higher earners. Big majorities in every British party are averse to higher inequality. In today’s Britain, we are all social democrats.

The Lib Dems and Tories are also the best bet for a balanced foreign policy. Elements of the Conservative Party (including one “e-friend” and successful local candidate) have expressed an interest in improving relations with Russia, which is a very wise move considering its bleak natural gas and energy outlook. Nick Clegg, the leader of the Lib Dems and to be Deputy PM, “has worked extensively in the post-Soviet bloc”. This will be a welcome change from New Labour’s Russophobia. What isn’t so good is that the Tories are one of the most bellicose parties, with only 39% of them saying they would not support a strike against Iran and 67% supporting British troops staying on in Afghanistan “as long as they are needed” (which is historically synonymous with “until you go bankrupt”). That said, their views on these matters are in line with all the other mainstream parties. The only pacificists are on the fringes – the Green Party (good intentions, no realism) and the BNP (which views these wars as Zionist projects).

Only 6% of Lib Dems and 30% of the Conservatives (that is, their reactionary wing) support beginning negotiations to exit the European Union. That would be an idiotic idea. Now I’m not saying that Britain should integrate further with a European Union that is being riven apart by economic crisis and self-interested nationalisms. But maintaining a foothold in it (and a veto!) is a very useful mechanism for sabotaging moves towards European federalism and manipulating the balance of power on the mainland on the cheap, not to mention the markets it provides. To their credit, most Tories realize this.

In this section I should warn you that my views here are colored by a social liberal bias. (But this isn’t critical – the most important issues that will define Britain’s near future are in how it handles its economic, fiscal, and energy predicament, not on how many gay rights or CCTV cameras it acquires). I should stress that the modern Conservatives are not a party of social reactionaries, Labour propaganda to the contrary. Now there is certainly a large undercurrent of social conservatism there, in contrast to the three “progressive” parties – Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Greens. But these reactionary tendencies on immigration or climate change will be countered by the Liberal Democrats. And with the sole exception of New Labour, all parties agree that there “are too many CCTV cameras in Britain”. In my opinion, not only is the UK’s surveillance culture insidious, it is also a waste of money and resources.

Finally, and most importantly, a blue-yellow coalition really is the best of all possible worlds. It kicks out Labour, just like the voters wanted to. It prevents the Conservatives from becoming entangled with the national-ethnic parties or kooks like the UKIP and the BNP. It presents the possibility of electoral reform to modernize Britain’s outdated “first past the post” system. It offers a (kind of) credible commitment to fiscal stabilization, without connotations of Thatcherite social injustice and insufferable moralism. Their foreign policy is moderate and well-tailored to Britain’s national interests. Most importantly, the two parties balance each other out – the Liberal Democrats will be able to nullify the global warming denying, viscerally anti-EU and anti-immigrant Tory reactionaries, while the Conservative mainstream will be able to squash the dafter Lib Dem ideas like getting rid of Trident.

All in all, a good match – and if it holds together, one that may just bring Britain in decent shape through its biggest crisis since the Second World War.

Putin. Not (quite) my God.

I’ve been accused of being a “Russophile cockroach”, an “amoral Putin lackey”, and overall bad guy. Guilty as charged! Yes, I do like Russia and don’t have much good to say about the Western media’s coverage of it. Yes, I don’t give much of damn for the moralistic posturing that any vapid idiot Kremlinologist can easily excel in. And yes, I do have a positive opinion of Vladimir Putin (as do 75%+ of Russians). Now granted, part of this probably has something to do with the huge amounts of money his FSB minions kindly slip under my door for glorifying their Tsarist godfather on the Internet in my spare time. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that I set my alarm clock to VVP’s speeches, drink prodigal amounts of Putinka for breakfast, and bow before his icon at the Altar of Neo-Stalinism in my basement before logging onto my workstation to fulfill my job description as ein strammer Putin-soldat. In reality, my positive view of Putin is moderate and hedged.

Don’t believe my word as “the dishonest, progangadizing (very, very) little maggot” that I really am? Below I present five major shortcomings of the Putin Presidency.

What Putin did wrong

1. Waiting until 2006, or too little too late.

Since 2006, Russia embarked on a range of policies designed to check its demographic decline, reduce poverty, and recover its status as a Great Power. The main examples would be the National Priority Projects; a revamped industrial policy; health promotion; pro-natality, AIDS containment and anti-alcohol measures; military modernization; and incubation of hi-tech industries such as nanotechnology. Many of these are already bearing fruit – quite literally on the demographic front, where the total fertility rate rose to 1.56 children per woman by 2009, from 1.1-1.3 before 2006. In conjunction with falling mortality rates, this resulted in Russia experiencing its first year of population growth in 2009 since 1994. But why did Putin take so long to start addressing all these issues?

Though there are several possible explanations, I think the most accurate is that at the time Putin was simply too preoccupied with stabilizing the Russian shell of the collapsed Soviet empire. Each functioning state rests on its monopolization of legitimate violence, of tax collection, and of the issuing of money. All three monopolies were under grave threat by the late 1990′s. Homicide rates were sky-high, organized crime infiltrated state structures, and Chechen bandits raided Russia proper. The state was too weak to collect taxes from the oligarchs, producing chronic budget deficits that culminated in the 1998 default. Inflation raged unchecked, most transactions were in dollars or in kind, and many analysts were starting to describe Russia as a failed state. Therefore it cannot be surprising that Putin in his first term devoted most of his attention towards containing and mitigating these mortal threats to the Russian state. The invasion of Chechnya, the political subjugation of the oligarchs, the strengthening of the “power vertical” – all these were intended to restore some modicum of state control over the Russian Federation.

Yet as the political struggle went on at the top, the “real Russia” remained largely stagnant. With the inflow of ethnic Russians from the Near Abroad largely exhausted, demographic decline accelerated in the 2000-2005 period. In contrast to the broad-based growth after 2005/2006, in the early Putin years manufacturing remained depressed, while more than a third of economic growth accrued to the recovery in oil extraction. Little new infrastructure was built. The rate of military procurement dropped even below the miserly levels of the Yeltsin era. Thanks to the Putin government’s myopic negligence or administrative inability, Russia’s manifold, deepgrained socio-economic problems only began to be seriously addressed within the past few years.

Strike 1 – Contrary to most fans and critics alike, Putin didn’t do too much. He did too little, and too late. Under the first few years of his watch, Russia lost historical time just as it did under Yeltsin. On many socio-economic indicators, the RF in 2010 has only caught up to what the RSFSR achieved back in 1990.

2. Red tape and corruption, or the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.

Corruption remains “public enemy number one”, according to President Medvedev. This can be confirmed by any number of horrific anecdotes: the absurdly inflated Moscow housing market,  bureaucrats owning property worth hundreds of their yearly salaries, entrepreneurs losing their businesses to well-connected thugs. Apart from a few cosmetic house-cleaning campaigns under the Putin President, the state’s efforts to control this scourge have been decidedly lack-luster, and Russia continues to be perceived as one of the most corrupt nations on Earth.

[Sources: Transparency International's "Corruption Perceptions Index"; Transparency International's "Global Corruption Barometer", answers to the question, "In the past 12 months, have you or anyone in your household paid a bribe in any form?" (% saying "yes"); World Bank's "Worldwide Governance Indicators" (Control of Corruption), country percentile].

This corruption is directly related to the arbitrary power of Russia’s bureaucracy, and the labyrinth of regulations that “justify” its existence. Love them or hate them – and yes, most Russians hate them – bureaucrats are indispensable for running a modern state. However, in Russia bureacrats are neither accountable unlike in most developed nations nor held under close scrutiny unlike in the USSR or today’s China. Furthermore, their numbers are well in excess of necessity. In contrast to a few post-Soviet nations like Estonia and Georgia which fired many of their bureaucrats, the Russian bureaucracy grew rapidly under Putin.

[Source: Rosstat].

The extractions of rent-seeking bureaucrats stunt the development of small and medium businesses. Furthermore, corruption indirectly kills people (e.g. grocery pharmaceuticals are expensive and unreliable) and fosters a destructive social mentality in which anything and everything is considered exchangeable for money and the privileged and connected can act with impunity.

As the man at the top of the pyramid, Putin was responsible for perpetuating this system during his Presidency. Sensational rumors of foreign villas and multi-billion dollar offshore accounts to the contrary, there is no evidence that Putin is personally corrupt*. However, controlling corruption within one’s circle and further down is extremely hard; no Russian ruler, except the most steely and despotic, has ever managed to rein in his bureaucrats. Now you could go down the neo-Stalinist route, but executing corrupt bureaucrats is now politically incorrect in most places outside China. Perhaps Putin should have simply axed this Gordian knot, like Saakashvili in Georgia**? That might have worked, – no regulation, no bureaucrat, no problem. But something stayed his hand. Maybe he feared chaos, since the bureaucracy is one the forces gluing a nation together. Maybe they were considered necessary to reconsolidate the state and rebuild the power vertical. I don’t know.

Maybe Putin shouldn’t have suppressed Russia’s civil society and media outlets if he was serious about checking corruption? But this is a false narrative. It is not the federal government or Putin, but unreformed institutions such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), the FSB, the Prosecutor-General, etc, that pose the greatest hazards to Russia’s nascent civil society. It is not VVP who runs around killing and harassing journalists, but the “stationary bandits” in government and/or business taking advantage of Russia’s culture of impunity. The ultimate proof of the pudding is Ukraine – despite its pluralistic politics and journalistic freedoms after the Orange Revolution, corruption there remains at least as bad as in semi-authoritarian Russia***. No matter the personal integrity or ability of Russia’s (or Ukraine’s leaders), the entire post-Soviet state system remains unacceptably opaque and unaccountable.

Strike 2 – Putin could have mitigated Russia’s corruption and culture of impunity by: 1) stripping away the reams of red tape that create opportunities for rent-seeking, 2) decimating the ranks of the bloated bureaucracy, traffic police, etc, or 3) increasing the penalties for, or the “costs” of, corruption. In reality, there was some improvement in 1) and 3), and massive backtracking on 2). It is only under Medvedev that government and citizenry are beginning to show signs of taking corruption more seriously.

3. Inequality, or oiligarchs & their little adults.

Russians are not Americans. Though most accept the capitalist system, a majority of Russians believe the state has a duty to narrow down inequality between rich and poor and assure everyone a decent standard of living. Opinion polls indicate that around 63% of Russians are essentially “statists”, while only 25% are economic “liberals” and an insignificant 4% are small-government libertarians. Thouh there has been impressive progress on lifting all boats in the past decade – poverty rates were slashed, consumer goods became much more affordable – the Putin regime also presided over an era of slowly rising inequality****. This does not sit well with many Russians, especially the elderly who put great stock in egalitarian values.

[Source: Rosstat].

It is no great exaggeration to say that Russia’s government is by the rich and for the rich. Though perhaps at first necessary as the most reliable way for a broken state to combat tax evasion, the 13% flat tax on incomes now perpetuates inequalities. A much bigger burden falls on productive companies in the form of (highly regressive) social security contributions, which are set to rise from 26% to 34% of the first 400,000 rubles of income this year to help correct the budget deficit. However, Putin had no problems with reducing taxes for oil companies, so that they could either extract and sell off Russia’s oil the faster, or pocket the extra change.

Worst of all are the effects on social cohesion. All Russian oligarchs earned their wealth through their connections with the state – there is not a single Sergei Brin or Bill Gates amongst them. The inheritance tax was abolished in 2006, and now more than a hundred Russian children, or “little adults“, are set to acquire billions without earning a single ruble. Sure, these “new Russians” get to experience the shallow thrills of conspicuous consumption, and take power in their sleazy connections with state structures to run over ordinary Russians with impunity (sometimes literally). The price Russia pays for tolerating these historyless elites is a perpetual bankruptcy of social capital, the cooperative spirit that welds a nation together. Amongst other things, this dearth of social capital manifests itself in society’s tolerance for petty corruption. After all, why should a simple traffic policeman, doctor, or other low-paid state worker refrain from taking bribes, when oligarchs make off with billions in cahoots with the state?

There has been no effort to check or reverse the growth of inequality under either Putin or Medvedev. Even as the Fair Russia opposition party calls for progressive taxation and a luxury tax, Roman Abramovich is indulging himself to his biggest yacht so far, armed with a missile defense system and laser shield.

Strike 3 – Putin presided over an increase in inequality, made all the more unholy by money’s marriage with socio-political privilege. Though neither the trend towards nor the magnitude of inequality is exceptional by global standards, it clashes with Russian popular sentiments and undermines social capital.

4. Economic mismanagement, or stationary bandits who don’t know or care about limits to growth.

First, the “Muscovite” rent-granting political economy over which Putin presided is both economically inefficient and socially unjust. Take the Russian oil industry, in which politically subservient oiligarchs are given free rein to manage their own companies. This combines the worst of both private and state ownership. Lacking security over their assets, the oiligarchs are loath to plow too much of their own money into maximizing long-term oil extraction and revenue. Far better to maximize short-term extraction by overexploiting their oil fields, pleasing the Tsar with generous rent payments, and to make off once these fields go into premature decline. In the meantime, astronomical profits are diverted into a few oiligarch hands instead of going to the Russian state. Now granted, Putin’s “purgatory”, run by clans of “stationary bandits”, might be an improvement over Yeltsin’s “hell” of asset-stripping “roving bandits”… but they are all still bandits nonetheless.

Yet when all is said and done, it is not entirely clear that Putin could have realistically done better on any of these issues. He inherited the “Muscovite system” from Yeltsin and can be credited with actually making it workable, in the sense that the oligarchs were forced into paying their taxes and Russia’s chronic budget deficits were finally eradicated. Reversing privatization and trying to create a Russian version of Statoil, the efficient state-owned Norwegian energy company, was entirely unrealistic given the institutional rot of the Russian state. The other extreme, a full-scale liberalization of the oil sector, would have probably been counter-productive because of that same weakness of the Russian state. For proof, look no further than how Khodorkovsky used YUKOS’ resource wealth to mount a direct political challenge to the Kremlin… would the Russian people really have been well served if their state had been hijacked by the Menatep bandits?

Second, even accounting for its being a cold, landlocked country with a lot of heavy industry, Russia remains very energy inefficient. There are serious uncertainties over its ability to meet future domestic and European gas demand, and its oil production will soon peak and go into decline. However, by world standards, Russia is supremely well-endowed with energy resources. Thus, it makes manifest sense to use the earnings from foreign hydrocarbons sales to aggressively implement energy efficiency measures and build a green energy infrastructure. The World Bank estimates that investing 320bn $ into energy efficiency could save Russian consumers 80bn $ and generate more than 100bn $ in extra export revenues annually. Putin prefers to go the much more expensive route of greatly expanding generating capacity, e.g. by building many nuclear power plants, while less glamorous but cheaper options like insulating housing, upgrading utilities, or reducing natural gas flaring are neglected. So yes, Russia’s policies on energy are short-termist and “cornucopian”, – but the very same could be said for almost any country one cares to name. Only a bare handful of nations, like Sweden or Germany, have made serious commitments to sustainable development (and none acknowledge the concept of Limits to Growth).

Third, the main reason Russia experienced such a deep recession during the 2009 global financial crisis was because its banks and corporations had become dependent on infusions of Western credit. Once this system throttled up in late 2008, emerging markets were the first to be cut off. Unfortunately, Russia under Putin’s watch had failed to develop the deep indigenous credit systems that enabled countries like Brazil or China to weather the storm in good shape, and it saw a massive GDP decline of 7.9% in 2009. But it’s not exactly clear how Russia could have prepared better. The main reason Russia’s financial system was starved of capital was because instead of reinvesting the proceeds from hydrocarbon sales into the economy, the government bought up foreign currency reserves in order to prevent an excessive ruble strengthening from short-circuiting the revival of Russia’s manufacturing base. Ironically, by trying to reduce its resource dependency, Russia actually increased its exposure to the Western financial system, whose weaknesses only became obvious with the benefit of hindsight. Nonetheless, despite the severity of the GDP drop in 2009, the Russian economy is now showing signs of mounting a vigorous recovery.

Finally, Putin should be given big props for protecting Kudrin – the main architect of Russia’s macroeconomic stability – from the attacks of the spendthrifts and siloviki in his circle. This did nothing to benefit him politically, but as a result Russia today is “one of the world’s most fiscally secure nations”, according to Liam Halligan, chief economist with Prosperity Capital Management.

Strike 4 – under Putin, Russia remained economically unproductive, socially unjust, energy inefficient, and acquired a dependence on Western credit. These problems are deep and are unlikely to go away without intelligent intervention by the state.

5. White elephants, or Siberian bridges to nowhere.

The Russian state has always liked “white elephant” solutions to complicated problems. Putin continued in this proud tradition. Perhaps the best example of this were Russia’s wild-eyed plans to construct six aircraft carriers during the giddy heights of its pre-crisis boom. Let’s look at the problems with this scheme:

1. The global hegemony of the United States rests on the power projection capabilities of its 11 aircraft carrier battle groups. Russia is a regional land power whose strategic interests do not extend far beyond its Near Abroad.
2. Russia’s economic base is seven times smaller than America’s.
3. Even the “structurally militarized” USSR never had much success with aircraft carriers. Russia’s military-industrial complex is now almost an order of magnitude smaller and no longer has access to the big drydocks in Ukraine.
4. Russia can’t even build a decent helicopter carrier, and eventually took the rational decision to order Mistrals from France.
5. The days of the aircraft carrier may well be numbered due to the development of cheap carrier-killing weapons systems.

This particular white elephant never was to be. But far too many are real enough, such as the bridge to nowhere near Vladivostok that will connect the Russian mainland to a small island populated by a few thousand residents, projected to cost more than 1bn $ and intended as a showpiece for the 2012 APEX summit. Meanwhile, the roads from the Urals to Vladivostok remain little more than dirt tracks.

Now admittedly, white elephants are minor nuisances relative to the first four problems. Their attractions are hardly unique to Russia, and it could even be argued that some, like the Sochi Olympics, are a net positive thanks to their impact on national morale. Nonetheless, I still think improving Russia’s energy efficiency or networking its clunky armed forces is somewhat more important than erecting suspension bridges in Siberia or dreaming about multiple carrier battle groups patrolling the Russian Arctic.

Strike 5 – Putin is sometimes too influenced by the traditions of Soviet gigantism to consider humbler, more cost-effective ways of solving problems.

What Putin did right

But what about that KGB spy’s ruthless suppression of freedom and democracy? False narrative. The majority of Russians approve of Putin and his system – as of 2008, some 75% of Russians felt that they either had “enough” or even “too much” freedom. Today’s Russians feel much happier and freer than in either the late Soviet Union or Yeltsin’s Russia.

But hasn’t Putin suppressed the free media and brainwashed Russians into worshipping him? Yet if that were the case, one would presumably expect most Putinistas to be old, sour-mouthed Stalinists, whereas in fact support for Putin (and disillusionment with the West) is highest amongst young, university-educated Muscovite men – the very segment of the Russian population that is most exposed to the West through the Internet and foreign travel! (Of course, to the Western chauvinist, this must mean that the Russian people are ignorant, nationalist sheeple… since nothing can be allowed to challenge their faith, there is little point in talking to them).

What about Putin’s hatred of the West? Again, false narrative. Putin the KGB operative is inseparable from the Putin who served under Sobchak, the liberal mayor of St.-Petersburg in the 1990′s, or the Putin who favored the “civiliki” clan (Surkov, Medvedev, “patriotic liberals”) over the FSB-connected “siloviki” in his choice of successor. But why then does Putin antagonize America by maintaining relations with freedom-haters like Ahmadinejad and Chavez? Newsflash! This is Realpolitik, practiced by all sane and sovereign nations. Bending over backwards to advance Washington’s national security interests is not part of Putin’s job description. Not can it reasonably be expected, due to US support for states hostile to Russia (e.g. Georgia) in its Near Abroad.

One of Putin’s greatest strengths is that he recognizes the immense harm Russia suffered from single-minded past pursuits of abstract ideals, and rejects mindless idolization of the West as surely as he rejects the old Marxist-Leninist dogmas. He is a national figure of post-ideological reconciliation, a leader who sees no paradox in defending the Soviet Union against politicized attempts to equate it with Nazi Germany while honoring Russians like the dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or the White general Anton Denikin.

Zhou Enlai may have been exaggerating when he said the impact of the French Revolution was “too early to tell”, but nonetheless, I think it is fair to say that we must wait at least a few decades before we have any hope of objectively determining Putin’s legacy. Based on the criticisms I’ve made in this post, some analysts would rush to dismiss Putin as an incompetent idiot or malicious enemy of the Russian people. After all, it doesn’t take much to pronounce judgment from the comforts of one’s armchair… Yet none of us have been in Putin’s boots. We didn’t experience his early struggles with the oligarchs, the contraints and frustrations he faced trying to rule Russia through an unwieldy and corrupt bureaucracy, the pyramid of cards he has to build and maintain to balance the warring Kremlin clans. I can do no better than quote a great speech by Theodore Roosevelt to illustrate this point:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Putin’s critics, knowing neither victory nor defeat, are nothing more than the dust at the feet of that great man who continues struggling, striving, and spending himself as Russia’s humble servant.

* To the best of my knowledge, all these allegations of Putin’s 40bn $ of personal wealth originate from Stanislav Belkovsky, a professional purveyor of kompromat and creature of Sechin’s silovik clan.

** Georgia’s success at controlling corruption shouldn’t be exaggerated. In recent years, the Saakashvili regime acquired the habit of pressuring independent businesses to provide “voluntary contributions” in return for not bankrupting them under corruption prosecutions.

*** Russia’s corruption should be viewed in perspective. Is it a serious problem that reinforces privelege and blights the lives of many people? Certainly. Apocalyptic? Not at all. First, Russia is not excessively corrupt by the standards of most middle-income countries, and there is evidence that “everyday” corruption (as opposed to business corruption) fell under Putin’s watch. See here, here, and here. Second, corruption does not seriously affect Russia’s growth potential. Italy was systematically corrupt in the 1970′s-80′s (and still is), as exposed in the short-lived mani pulite investigatations of the early 1990′s. But that did not stop Italy from overtaking Britain’s GDP back in 1987 in the so-called “Il Sorpasso”. Likewise, Russia’s myriad strengths – the strong education system, energy wealth, and macroeconomic stability – means that its systematic corruption is unlikely to constitute an insurmountable barrier against its convergence to Western levels of development.

**** Russia’s levels of inequality shouldn’t be exaggerated, however. The Gini index of income inequality has been stable at around 40 since the early 1990′s, and is only high by European standards. (The US and China are at 45, most Latin American countries exceed 50).

Warre bringeth ruine, ruine bringeth poverty, poverty procureth peace, and peace in time increaseth riches, riches causeth statelinesse, statelinesse increaseth envie, envie in the end procureth deadly malice, mortall malice proclaimeth open warre and bataille, and from warre again as before is rehearsed.

Turchin, Peter – War and Peace and War (2006)
Category: history, cliodynamics, war; Rating: 4/5
Summary: Amazon reviews

Ibn Khaldun, Malthus, and Saint Matthew meet up for coffee

1) According to the Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, empires only form when a tribe, nation, or religious sect attains a high degree of asabiya, – the ability of a group’s members to cooperate with each other, to maintain their identity and discipline in the face of adversity, and to impose their beliefs, values, and control over other groups. Other similar expressions are social cohesion or “social capital”. As Ibn Khaldun wrote, “royal authority and dynastic power are attained only through a group and asabiya. This is because aggressive and defensive strength is obtained only through… mutual affection and willingness to fight and die for each other”. (To put this in context, this is similar to Lev Gumilev’s theories of “passionarity” / пассионарность (willingness to sacrifice oneself for one’s values) or my own ideas on the sobornost’-poshlost’ / rationalism-mysticism belief matrix, in which a state of sobornost’, of course, refers to a high level of asabiya).

This is not surprising – military cooperation and morale is an important factor in military success. See the stunning successes of the early Islamic armies spreading the revelations of Mohammed, or of Nazi Germany. Later in the book, Turchin references the work of Trevor Dupuy, who showed that the Germans had a “combat efficiency” of 1.45, compared to the British 1.0 and American 1.1, in the battles on the western front of 1944 – in other words, excluding equipment and terrain, each Germany soldier was militarily “worth” 20% more than an Anglo-Saxon one.

Now why do some societies have higher asabiya than others? Ibn Khaldun’s analysis covered the dynamics of the desert / settled boundary in the North African Maghreb. Amongst the desert Bedouin tribes, constant inter-tribal warfare exerts group selective pressure favoring the emergence of tribes high in asabiya. These selective pressures are much weaker in settled civilizations with rule of law. Now these defects are more than made up for civilizations’ greater population density and better technologies, which can normally yield much bigger, better-equipped armies than anything the barbarians can muster. However, should civilization fall into a state of internal strife and social dissolution, it becomes “vulnerable to conquest from the desert” by a coalition of Bedouin tribes organized around one group with a particularly high asabiya. However, as soon as the barbarians become ensconced within their new domains, they gradually assimilate into the urban civilization, the high asabiya of the core group dissipates, and the cycle begins anew.

Turchin extends Ibn Khaldun’s beyond the Maghreb into a general theory of the rise of empires, almost all of which arise along “meta-ethnic frontiers” featuring bloody conflicts between starkly alien peoples. The constant military pressure and hatred for the Other binds the borderlanders together, fostering the relative economic equality, social solidarity, and discipline that will in time build an empire. Examples of this include the conflict of the Roman farmer-warriors against the Celtic barbarians of the Po Valley that melded the Latin peoples into the Roman Empire, the centuries-long struggle against the raiding, slave-taking steppe Hordes that incubated Muscovy’s rise, and the violent frontier wars against the Native Americans that formed the “melting pot” identity of the United States. The entire history of Europe from the Roman Empire to Poland-Lithuania has been characterized by the millennial, north-eastern drift of the meta-ethnic frontier between Rome/Christianity and tribal pagans, a frontier which repeatedly spawned new states and empires (Rome itself, the Caroliangian Empire, and the myriad Germanic and Slavic states.

2) The author notes that Ibn Khaldun’s blaming of “luxury” and “senility” for the degeneration of civilizations is an inadequate explanation, being nothing more than a biological metaphor with questionable applicability. Instead, Turchin lays out the theory of cliodynamics, the “mathematized history” that attempts to provide a comprehensive explanation of the “secular cycles” of imperial rise and fall by modeling Malthusian dynamics, i.e., when a great empire arises the resulting stability and prosperity produce overpopulation, which results in dearth, rising inequality (i.e. the old middle-class shrinks, while oligarchs and the landless indigent veer into prominence), and an intensified struggle for scarce resources that undermines social solidarity. Eventually, a severe shock such as a disastrous harvest, peasant uprisings, civil war, or foreign invasion provokes a full-fledged Malthusian crisis that triggers the collapse of the empire. I’ve already written about cliodynamics in detail here.

(Incidentally, I’ve also connected the decline of asabiya (or in my terminology, the transition from sobornost’ to poshlost’) to the socio-demographic cycles of cliodynamics. The theme of The Ages of Man, in which the bounteous Golden Age of the first dynasties (imperial rise) degenerates into the “immorality” and dearth of the Iron Age (social atomization, Malthusian stress, decline), – finally followed by an apocalyptic “cleansing” and start again (Malthusian collapse, barbarian invasions, Dark Ages, etc), is common to all civilizational traditions. See my Musings on the decline and fall of civilizations and explanation of the Malthusian Loop.)

3) Matthew 25:29: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath”. In other words, there is a natural tendency for wealth to become concentrated in the hands of the few, called the Matthew Principle. In other words, if a pre-industrial civilization enjoys socio-political stability, has ineffective redistributive mechanisms, no free land / overpopulation, and a social mentality that accepts (or even glorifies – see “conspicuous consumption”) big levels of wealth inequality, within several generatons it will develop prodigal levels of social stratification. Wealth inequality tends to reach a maximum just before a collapse of the entire system: for instance, the Roman Empire fell for the last time just decades after reaching “peak inequality” in 400AD. Similar things can be said about the end of republican Rome, the decline of medieval France, and even Russia 1917 or Iran 1979.

Why does the Matthew Principle operate so strongly in Malthusian settings? In agrarian societies, private property is the normal way of storing inherited wealth. If a family has lots of children, each one will inherit ever smaller plots. To make ends meet, they will be eventually forced to borrow loans; if they can’t, their land is taken over by their creditors, and they now have to hire themselves out as agricultural laborers or drift into the cities where they can try to join a trade (hence the reason why cities expand so much in times of subsistence stress). Meanwhile, those who have land can 1) rent it out at exorbitant rates (since the demand for it is so high in an overpopulated country) or 2) they can sell the grain their tenants or serfs produce at high prices (again because there are more mouths to feed). The resulting accumulation of drifting unemployed are matchwood for social unrest (e.g. see the role of the sans-culottes in the French Revolution).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the social spectrum, the elites or nobility grow at a faster rate than the commoners because they have better access to food and can afford more children, and die less quickly. Those with land benefit from cheaper labor and the rise in rent prices, while manufactures become easier to afford thanks to the increase in trade and urban artisans. However, intra-elite inequality also increases, and there is increasing tension as some poor nobles see peasant arrivistes rising above them in social status. Because the king depends on the nobles for governing his kingdom, state institutions must be expanded to “feed” all those nobles who are left out of inheritances, fostering corruption, aristocratic intrigues, and social stratification. Those at the very top of the social pyramid engage in the most extravagant conspicuous consumption, provoking envy amongst the have-nots. All these widening social chasms reduce the society’s asabiya.

The plagues, wars, and internal violence unleashed by Malthusian collapse tends to kill off most of the top and bottom of the social period. The landless indigent starve to death, or their weakened immune systems succumb to disease, or they get carried away as the cannon fodder in the uprisings that wrack the failed state. The nobles also die fast, thanks to their status as a military caste. Generational cycles of violence and wars and political purges carry many of them off. After the collapse, land becomes cheaper and labor becomes more expensive. Subsistence stress largely subsides and society becomes much more egalitarian. The cycle begins anew.

Criticisms and Consequences

I think Turchin’s book is a good introductory text to the new science of cliodynamics, one he himself did much to found (along with Nefedov and Korotayev). However, though readable – mostly, I suspect, because I am interested in the subject – it is not well-written. The text was too thick, there were too many awkward grammatical constructions, and the quotes are far, far too long.

More importantly, 1) the theory is not internally well-integrated and 2) there isn’t enough emphasis on the fundamental differences separating agrarian from industrial societies. For instance, Turchin makes a lot of the idea that the Italians’ low level of asabiya (“amoral familism”) was responsible for it’s only becoming politically unified in the late 19th century. But why then was it the same for Germany, the bloody frontline for the religious wars of the 17th century? And why was France able to build a huge empire under Napoleon, when it had lost all its “meta-ethnic frontiers” / marches by 1000 AD? For answers to these questions about the genesis of the modern nation-state, one would be much better off by looking at more conventional explanations by the likes of Benedict Anderson, Charles Tilly, or Gabriel Ardant.

Nowadays, modern political technologies – the history textbook, the Monument to the Unknown Soldier, the radio and Internet - have long displaced the meta-ethnic frontier as the main drivers behind the formation of asabiya. Which is certainly not to say that meta-ethnic frontiers are unimportant – they are, especially in the case of Dar al-Islam, which feels itself to be under siege on multiple fronts (the “bloody borders” of clash-of-civilizations-speak), which according to Turchin’s theory should promote a stronger Islamic identity. But their intrinsic importance has been diluted by the influence of modern media.

Turchin has an interesting discussion of the future of the US, China, Russia, and the European Union based on the conclusions of War and Peace and War. In particular, one very relevant point he made is that to become a true empire, the EU requires 1) the development of a European-wide loyalty towards it, willing to shed blood for it, and 2) its core state, Germany, must continue to underwrite it financially. None of these conditions, I think it is safe to say, will be met. As I’ve recently pointed out, Germany is most emphatically not prepared to sacrifice its national interests in favor of a European project over which it does not have direct control; the Germans have their own problems, foremost among them the demographic aging of the population. Furthermore, only 37% of Germans are today prepared to fight for their own country, according to the findings of the World Values Survey*; if that is the case, then how many Germans would fight (and risk death) for the Brussels bureaucracy? 5% would probably be generous. Quite simply the EU does not have any foundations for an imperial future, nor the will to create one; it is very fragile and will start unraveling at the smallest shocks.

Another major problem with the book that makes it incomplete is that although Turchin touches and speculates about the modern world and the future – in particular, he notes that the rising inequality, crime rates, slower growth, etc, of the post-1960′s industrialized world is similar to the traditional symptoms of an emerging Malthusian crisis – he does not connect the dots with the Limits to Growth, the theory that explicitly states that we are being swept into a Malthusian crisis due to global overpopulation and resource depletion. This is a far more important development than the techno-hype he devotes much of the last chapter to.

In the end I gave a 4/5 for this book, although it could have potentially gotten 5*/5. Turchin did valuable work in emphasizing how the material (e.g. the Malthusian) interacts with the spiritual (asabiya) in history, whereas many lesser theorists regard the latter as a “mystical” factor unworthy of serious attention. However, the book suffered from 1) poor writing, 2) too many marginal details that should have been edited out, and 3) unsuccessful application of the theory to the current, post-agrarian era. He should either have left it out entirely, or spent a lot more time doing it better.

* From the latest “wave” of the World Values Survey, “Of course, we all hope that there will not be another war, but if it were to come to that, would you be willing to fight for your country?” I think this question is an excellent way of gauging asabiya in a nation, since it directly addresses the issue of life, death, and self-sacrifice. The results are very interesting.

The Scandinavian countries – limp-wristed feminist socialists that they are – all say a resounding “yes” (Sweden 86%, Norway 88%, Finland 84%). Similarly, for all the problems of the post-Communist transition, Eastern European nations also retain high levels of asabiya (Poland 75%, Russia 83%, Georgia 70%), though Serbia 61% is lower (maybe because they’ve already fought) and so is Ukraine 69% (its Russophones aren’t as loyal as West or Central Ukrainians). Most of the Muslim countries say “yes” (Iran 81%, Egypt 80%, Morocco 77%), including a whopping 97% in Turkey. Iraq 37% is the sole outlier. Similarly, the Asian nations also have high levels of patriotism (China 87%, India 81%, South Korea 73%).

The United States 63% isn’t as high as one might think, and curiously close to France 61%, Great Britain 62%, and the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world. The nations of Latin America tend to have similar figures. The Mediterranean countries, the old countries, and the countries defeated in World War Two are the last willing to put their lives on the line for their nation (Italy 43%, Spain 45%, Japan 25%, Germany 37%).

2. Is Obama transforming America into Amerika? Let me explain. Take a look at the details of the healthcare bill, which was passed despite my pessimism (to be fair I think I had a good excuse). Essentially, it will eventually require everyone to buy a health insurance, but there will be subsidies for the poor / employers and continuing competition amongst insurance providers. Overall, could it even be said that the current administration is essentially transforming the American welfare state from one based on liberalism (in which markets are the primary guarantors of welfare with government only stepping in to restrict un-competitive practices, streamline market distortions, and assume only minimal relief obligations from private charitable and religious groups) to corporatism (in which the provision of welfare is tied to the imperative of maintaining social stability)?

Second, the US is developing a proper industrial policy in a bit to reverse deindustrialization. For instance, there are the plans to double exports by 2015, expand into foreign markets, and react strongly against currency manipulation by China. In other words, the US may be beginning to abandon its status as the world’s consumer of last resort – an important foundation of the current international system. These is also a higher focus on equality of opportunity, energy efficiency and greentech, closer ties between the state and the “commanding heights” (see Goldman Sachs, General Motors, Google, etc).

This is a suggestion, not a conclusion, and certainly not a moral judgment. Quite possibly, a “convergence to Europe” is inevitable as the US population ages and comes under increasing limits-to-growth pressures (e.g. peak oil). Incidentally, Matt Taibbi has a different take - his best line, ”The whole picture is strange: Democrats running as Republicans, Republicans running as Turner-Diaries conspiracy theorists.”

3. Climate change & energy blast.

• The Oil Drum celebrates its fifth birthday. I wish it well – it has been an invaluable resource on energy and sustainability issues. (I have two articles in the pipeline which I plan to submit to them).
• Tipping Point: Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production – Part 1 – Summary. This is an introduction to a 55-page paper (pdf) on the topic that sounds like a must-read, and I may write more about it in the next few weeks. ”We are living within dynamic processes. It matters little what technologies are in the pipeline, the potential of wind power in some choice location, or that the European Commission has a target; if a severe economic and structural collapse occurs before their enactment, then they may never be enacted.”
• The Logic of Abundance (John Michael Greer) – excellent piece debunking cornucopian myopia.
• Study: “It is clear … that the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice.” Physicist: “If temperatures change just a few tenths of a degree then this oh-so-thin ice cap is doomed.”
• Americans’ Global Warming Concerns Continue to Drop. No comment.
• UK Telegraph Reports, “Oil Reserves ‘Exaggerated by One Third’”–An Analysis – no kidding, “peakists” have been harping on about this for years!
• India-Bangladesh border dispute solved by island in question sinking due to global warming.
• James Cameron, director of Avatar, lashes out at the GW deniers.

4. Geoengineering watch

• 6 Ways We’re Already Geoengineering Earth (Brandon Keim) – draining the rivers; painting the Earth black; the infinite farm; wiping out reefs; the plastic revolution (note: will probably be mankind’s longest-lasting legacy); altering the atmosphere. (h/t Lou Grinzo)
• A Survival Guide to Geoengineering (James Cascio) – “despite its potential to trigger conflict, geoengineering will likely be part of the global response to climate change. Be prepared.”
• On terraforming the solar system, with pictures & What do you think of geoengineering (Randy McDonald) – in my huge post on the topic, I’ve described it as a “final gambit”. We will soon be so far beyond climatic tipping points that sacrificing prodigal resources into geoengineering, in the hope that it will provide a big payoff (e.g. avert the collapse of industrial civilization), will become both rational and inevitable.

5. Global Wellbeing Surveys Find Nations Worlds Apart – Gallup measured life satisfaction for 155 nations by “asking respondents to place the status of their lives on a “ladder” scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where 0 indicates the worst possible life and 10 the best possible life”.

The results? Dernmark 82%, Canada, Australia & Israel 62%, Brazil 58%, USA 57%, Britain 54%, Germany 43%, France 35%, Poland 28%, Russia & Ukraine 21%, Japan 19%, India & Egypt 10%, China 9%, Togo 1%. For some reason, only the the Americas, northern Europeans, and Anglo-Saxons consider themselves to be thriving, while most of Eurasia and Africa are heavily depressed.

6. In other news from Gallup, 49% of Americans believe that the healthcare bill is a “good thing”, whereas just 40% believe it is a “bad thing”. Some have critisized this as an outlier, however. Time will tell as passions die down and Americans get access to more affordable healthcare (and assuming the fiscal situation remains more or less under control – no certainty given the range of possible discontinuities).

7. Russia watch. Mark Adomanis does a good summary of the week’s main issues: START, pipelines, and economic growth. Now for my thoughts.

I agree with Mark that the agreement over START will not overspill into better overall Russia-America relations. What they have is a fundamental geopolitical clash of interests that simply cannot be resolved while both nation-states retain imperial mentalities. The deal to cut nukes is 1) a rational cost-cutting measure – though not an imperative one, ignore the talk that Russia can’t afford maintaining a massive nuclear arsenal, it can but would rather not, and 2) in any case the age of the ICBM is slowly drawing to a close with the proliferation of effective ABM systems covered on this blog.

PS. Nikolas Gvosdev on START.

So what do we have? Based on preliminary reports, the Russians will get language that recognizes that there are important linkages between offensive and defensive systems–acknowledging their concerns over how U.S. missile defense systems could impact the strategic balance–but that language is nonbinding, and does not prevent Washington from moving ahead, if it so chooses, with plans to deploy limited BMD systems in the Black Sea region. Both sides will have an upper limit of 1,675 warheads and may shoot for an even lower number of delivery vehicles than originally outlined in last year’s MOU–from 1100 to an upper limit of 800. Some of the Russian reductions are likely to occur from attrition and the retirement of aged systems. This will test the willingness of the Senate to accept a compromise, because it has been argued that Russia would have “no choice” but to bring down the size of its nuclear arsenal, to a size it can more effectively maintained–but now Russia will get binding limits on the size of the U.S. arsenal as well.

Russia’s potential buyout of the Ukrainian gas pipeline network in return for selling Ukraine gas at lower prices is potentially a huge deal that will further tighten its control over European energy supplies – agreed with Mark. (It would also in large part remove the need for South Stream). Note that Ukraine is now very strapped for cash and its implicit social obligations to provide subsidized gas to the populace are placing it between a rock and a hard place (popular unrest, fiscal collapse, and increased Russian influence).

World Bank predicts Russia will grow at 5.0-5.5% in 2010 (not news: most investment banks predict 4-6%, Citibank predicts 6.2%), but will slow to 3.5% in 2011 “as tight credit and unemployment constrain consumption”. Nonetheless, this means that by 2012, Russia will have regained its peak GDP level of 2008 (which in turn was roughly equal to its peak Soviet-era GDP in 1989 – excellent, a whopping 23 wasted years!). But anyhow, still better than common expectations during the crisis…

8. Military & hi-tech blast (no, I’m not a Sinophobe, I admire good spies).

• Cyber-attack on U.S. firms, Google traced to Chinese (Bill Gertz) – describes how 2000+ Chinese hackers infiltrate US companies to steal industrial R&D. Makes perfect sense for a country looking to leapfrog development, of course.
• Jihadism and the Importance of Place – free Stratfor article on the geopolitics of jihad. The jahidi movement is transitioning from being based on large organizations to clandestine cells and individuals, as country after country is “drained” of its ability to sustain Islamist militants.
• The people have been liberated. China no longer has a People’s Liberation Army, now it’s just the Chinese Army. I think they should go all-out and rename it to Ever Victorious Army!
• Has you Gmail been hacked by the Chicoms? Find out!
• Stratfor has a long, detailed history of Chinese espionage efforts (“mosaic intelligence”). Behind subscriber wall.
• Is Russia Google’s next weak spot? – the Kremlin to launch “national search engine” and give government e-mail accounts to every Russian to rationalize social services. (PS. Paranoiacs hold your breath, totalitarian Turkey already has a system. PSS. Apprecite deadpan humor).

9. This whole nonsense about the “Day of Wrath” and how the foundations of the Putin regime are crumbling in the recent wave of “protests” that are hardly large enough to even deserve the name! According to Barret Brown anyway, who believes that “it is worth noting that a poll conducted this month indicated that almost 30 percent of Russians are inclined to engage in protests of this sort, and that this percentage is higher than it was just a month ago”, hence spelling the apocalypse for the Kremlin. Erm, this is basically the same figure as in early 2005 (coinciding with protests over welfare reform), and LESS than two occasions in the 1990’s. Give me a call when it breaks 50%, then we might have something to talk about.

[Blue line = "yes I think protests are possible"; light blue line = "yes I will probably participate in protests. Opinion polls from Levada].

The fact of the matter is that most Russians if not happy, at least satisfied, with the political system, and 70% believe they are “free” today (this figure was much lower under Yeltsin and the early Putin years).

10. The Israel-US spat over settlements. Nothing will come of it as usual. The two countries are bound together by mutual geopolitical interests – the US needs its Middle East bridgehead, Israel needs its insurance policy.

11. What’s really wrong with Russia? by Ben Aris – (h/t poemless). An excellent article that I recommend very much. It points out Russia’s real economic weaknesses, without succumbing to Russophobia or hyperbole – a rare achievement in the mainstream Russia-watching community, regretfully. A few quick comments:

The big omission here on the Kremlin’s part is that while they are spending on power and trains, they have ignored badly needed investment into social infrastructure.

I agree, but it’s not quite accurate to say that social infrastructure has been ignored – at least, not after 2007-2008. E.g., there is a lot of investment in newly-equipped hospitals and clinics since 2007, and positive results are already showing.

Oil is heavily taxed, with the state taking 90 cents on every dollar when prices for oil are over $27. The extra revenue has been used to subsidise income and profit taxes (13% and 24% respectively) in an effort to boost economic diversification. Even this largesse can’t soak up all the petrodollars, so the excess cash is siphoned off into the “lockbox” of the Stabilisation Fund and kept out of the reach of free-spending MPs by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.

Good points, but note that some extreme free marketeers would decry the heavy taxation on oil (they’re incorrect of course, having never heard or serious studied lock-in or dependency theory).

The Kremlin’s solution is to lift struggling sectors up by the bootstraps by pouring enough money into them so that even if they can’t compete on price, they can compete on quality. The trouble is that state-led rescues of industry look intrinsically wrong-headed to almost everyone.

Katinka Barysch… spoke for many recently in a recent paper when she wrote: “A genuine modernisation alliance would have to be bottom-up and driven by the private sector. The Russian leadership is pursuing a model of modernisation that is state-centric and top-down. It throws money at new institutes to foster research, it nationalises big industries, it tells state-owned banks which sectors to lend to. It does not do the things that would be required for genuine economic diversification. … Barysch assumes there is a foundation of business that will flourish if the shackles of government are removed, but the Kremlin is facing an economy where rafts of products and services are simply missing and can’t get started.

State spending is inherently wasteful, but as Russia has the money thanks to oil, the issue at hand is not the efficiency of state spending, but rather its effectiveness: can the spending create sectors that don’t exist now or upgrade those that can’t compete now? “As there is no vibrant [small and medium-sized enterprise] sector, the only option left is heavy state spending. The Kremlin is doing this not because they want bigger versions of the existing state-owned behemoths, but because how else are they going to change the nature of the Russia economy?” says Plamen Monovski…

Head. Nail. Railing about how a large degree of state involvement is necessary for Russia to develop has been one of S/O’s common themes.

More worryingly, these nascent attempts to remake the system have already led to an increase in political risk. Up until now Russia has grown by first putting bums in empty seats, and then building new factories when the Soviet-era capacity was fully used. To go to the next stage, the system itself has to be liberalised, as it is efficiency not volume that counts now. This means cutting into the vested interests and they are already fighting back. In March, Medvedev told ministers that they had to obey orders “or take a hike” – a rare visible sign of the growing tension.

Conventional wisdom has it that Putin is a virtual dictator, but bne’s sources in diplomatic, business and government circles say that Putin is visibly under an increasing amount of strain, frustrated by the government machinery’s failure to implement his plans. On top of this, bringing in Medvedev has considerably weakened his position. “Two camps have formed around Medvedev and Putin. The first wants to see Medvedev go further with the liberalisation of the economy and politics, whereas the people close to Putin want to keep things as they were prior to the crisis – where they were making money,” says an economist who has been advising the government at a top level. “Putin is visibly stressed, as some people are starting to ignore him and others are openly calling for him to leave.”

1) Demonstrates how the anti-Putinistas have no appreciation for nuance or the institutional intricacies of the system Russia’s leaders have to operate in.

2) The more portentous conclusion one could possibly draw from this is that at times when plans for reform ran into heavy vested opposition, what followed was either a) a period of conservative retreat and stagnation or b) the opposite – an upping of the tempo and increase in coercion, centralization, mobilization. It will be interesting to see what will happen this time round.

PS. One major thing Aris leaves out is Russia’s awfully low level of energy efficiency. Not that it matters for now, given that it is so well-endowed with resources, but nonetheless all good things come to an end. Furthermore, improvements in energy efficiency can translate into higher foreign export earnings or domestic saving (in the form of resources-left-in-the-ground).

13. Germany: Mitteleuropa Redux (Peter Zeihan) from Stratfor (free article) – an interesting take on the rise of German power in Europe in the wake of the financial crisis – and the possible responses of its neighbors.

All this and more has happened. We saw the 2008-2009 financial crisis in Central Europe as particularly instructive. Despite their shared EU membership, the Western European members were quite reluctant to bail out their eastern partners. We became even more convinced that such inconsistencies would eventually doom the currency union, and that the euro’s eventual dissolution would take the European Union with it. Now, we’re not so sure. …

Back-of-the-envelope math indicates that in the past decade, Germany has gained roughly a 25 percent cost advantage over Club Med. … The implications of this are difficult to overstate. If the euro is essentially gutting the European — and again to a greater extent the Club Med — economic base, then Germany is achieving by stealth what it failed to achieve in the past thousand years of intra-European struggles. In essence, European states are borrowing money (mostly from Germany) in order to purchase imported goods (mostly from Germany) because their own workers cannot compete on price (mostly because of Germany). This is not limited to states actually within the eurozone, but also includes any state affiliated with the zone; the relative labor costs for most of the Central European states that have not even joined the euro yet have risen by even more during this same period.

It is not so much that STRATFOR now sees the euro as workable in the long run — we still don’t — it’s more that our assessment of the euro is shifting from the belief that it was a straightjacket for Germany to the belief that it is Germany’s springboard. In the first assessment, the euro would have broken as Germany was denied the right to chart its own destiny. Now, it might well break because Germany is becoming a bit too successful at charting its own destiny. And as it dawns on one European country after another that there was more to the euro than cheap credit, the ties that bind are almost certainly going to weaken.

14. Liberast & Russophobe watch.

• Mark Adomanis in epic blog fight with Barrett Brown.
• A Good Treaty on Ilya Yashin’s escapades.
• Clinically insane Russian “liberal” Yulia Latynina writes about Why Putin Isn’t Afraid of a Free Internet because unlike the industrious Chinese, “Vanya the tractor driver will never vote for a liberal opposition candidate [because] deep in his soul, he understands that he doesn’t deserve anything more in life than his beloved bottle of vodka”. And equally insane or ignorant Westerners wonder why most Russians despise their liberals… (h/t Carl Thomson).
• The Economist’s criminally awful Russia coverage – Mark Adomanis revelas the obvious, kind of like I did with Paul Goble recently. Still, Mark Ames’ The Economist: The World’s Sleaziest Magazine remains the defining pinnacle of the Economist-bashing genre.

15. Odds and Ends.

• Greg Palast on the dispossession of New Orleans by the connected rich (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Whoever says corruption and social injustice are limited to Third World countries and Russia?
• Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 – China hits back at Western cultural imperialism and double standards! As for Russia, it “indignantly dismissed U.S. criticism of its human rights record on Friday, saying the United States was guilty of its own abuses from Afghanistan to “the streets of America”.” Really, I’ve no idea why the State Department insists on bringing out these ridiculous human rights assessments. Nobody likes being lectured, least of all by a black pot.
• Some anti-healthcare bill protesters are racists, thugs.
• La Russie n’a pas à rougir de son passé – “Russia doesn’t have to be ashamed of its past”, a (very rare) “Russophile” article from the French media (Le Figaro in this case). I particularly liked one comment, “Cet article peut nuire a la santé de A.Glucksman…” (“this article may hurt the health of A. Glucksmann” [a famous Russophobe, in fact the denizens of inoSMI.ru have designed a "Russophobe scale" in which a "Gluck" (глюк) is the basic unit!]). (h/t Alexandre Latsa)
• Obama Derangement Syndrom – Republicans are the Party of Stupid: 67% believe Obama is a socialist, 57% a Muslim, 45% a non-US citizen, and 24% the Anti-Christ.
• All the ‘Nuance’ That’s Fit to Print – The New York Times relaxes taboos about Nazi Germany. Probably a natural development as the Holocaust fades from first-hand memory to history.
• Report: Current Knesset most racist of all time
• A lot of fuss about Russian Blackjack bombers invading Scotland. NATO “buzzes” close to Russian airspace all the time too.
• Ukraine’s Yanukovich to repeal Bandera hero decree – about time!
• @ those losers who loved criticising Russia for its below-usual performance in the Winter Olympics because it is not a “a good global citizen” (whatever that is) - Russian Paralympians at Top With 38 Medals!
• A New Human Relative from the Siberian Mountains. (h/t Ali Novruzov)
• CIA, State Department Apparently Acting on Plan to Destroy Wikileaks (Barrett Brown) – I found him through his exchanges with Mark Adomanis. What do you think of this article?
• Russian propaganda poster in Washington Times about why Saakashvili is a madman. (h/t Dmitry Rogozin)
• Journal of Hate Studies founded. (h/t Ali Novruzov)
• Contrary to stereotypes, the Brits have pretty good teeth (best in Europe).
• US states ranked by “size”.

16. Happy Earth Hour Day! (Personally, I think it’s a ridiculous and meaningless gesture that does absolutely nothing except assuage the guilt feelings of green-washy liberals for fucking up the planet).

1. Rising tensions over the Falkland Islands between Argentina and the UK, following the discovery of oil in the region and Britain’s decision to start exploration drilling. Contrary to media hype, war is not imminent; even though Britain, like the US, suffers from “imperial overstretch” and a military-industrial “death spiral”, it is still far, far more powerful than Argentina. The Royal Navy has the world’s second best “power projection” capabilities (amphibious, logistics, aeronaval). Argentina’s military power, never impressive to begin with, has only stagnated since 1982.

On the other hand, this episode does represent two important things. First, the geopolitical factors that constitute negative feedback loops to the resource extraction sector that supports the global industrial system. For instance, as oil production peaks, we can expect an accelerating scramble for the remaining reserves. This may yield short-term benefits for the stronger Powers that will emerge victorious in the neo-colonial gunboat wars of the future, but will accelerate the decline at the global level. Second, we find that most Latin American countries expressed their support for Argentina, even including regional rivals like Brazil and Chile. This illustrates the rising prominence of the “World Without the West” / “Clash of Civilizations” paradigms that will replace neoliberal internationalism in the coming age of scarcity industrialism.

However, I must emphasize that these are incipient trends, not current realities. For now, the overwhelming fact on the ground is that 1) Argentina is weak and 2) it can only count on rhetorical support from its neighbors, not military (Brazil has no particular interest in allowing Argentina to become a potential challenger to its regional hegemony). However, many things can change within a decade. As I wrote earlier, Britain faces a panoply of problems – fiscal, debt, energy, separatism, etc – that will critically undermine its international power, including the ability to sustain the current scope of its armed forces. (In this respect, it is essentially a microcosm of the United States). Meanwhile, though it has plenty of its own problems, Argentina has shown signs that it has outgrown out of its traditional fiscal problems. Following six years of very fast growth, it was little affected by the 2008 economic crisis, its public finances are not unduly bad by global standards, and looking further ahead, its agricultural and natural resource wealth stand it in good stead for the coming age of scarcity industrialism.

If Argentina pursues a rational military procurement and modernization program (amphibious ships, cruise missiles, modern diesel subs, UAV’s, etc) - and assuming it is not once again derailed by the mismanagement and corruption that made it into a unique specimen of a country that went from “developed” to “developing” status after 1950 – then the military balance may swing sufficiently wide in its favor as to enable it to contemplate a successful military solution to the Las Malvinas issue by 2020.

2. Shortly after penning an anti-guvmint screed, Joe Stack crashed his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, in a symbolic copycatting of 9/11. Though legally an unequivocal terrorist (as defined by the PATRIOT Act), he is fast becoming a folk hero amongst the Tea Partiers.

Though I don’t care to comment much on the ethical and moral issues, this does shed light on pertinent current trends. Foremost, the growing disillusionment with the System, the increasing perception by the citizenry that the United States is becoming a “hypertrophied state” hijacked by connected elites, who use it to cushion themselves with corporate socialism while pushing capitalism on the rest. In terms of the Belief Matrix, the country is beginning to lose belief in itself (“rejection of tradition”) and move away from rational-liberalism towards the illiberal populism and patrimonialism that is the common refuge of many post-collapse societies. Also recalls this line from Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies:

According to RM Adams, “By the fifth century, men were ready to abandon civilization itself in order to escape the fearful load of taxes”.

Would this action have any real effect? Rehashing the arguments of proponents of the “propaganda of the deed”, Baudrillard would argue that it would have a profound symbolic impact.

The terrorist hypothesis is that the system itself suicides in response to the multiple challenges of death and suicide. Neither the system, nor power, themselves escape symbolic obligation -and in this trap resides the only chance of their demise (catastrophe). In this vertiginous cycle of the impossible exchange of death, the terrorist death is an infinitesimal point that provokes a gigantic aspiration, void and convection. Around this minute point, the whole system of the real and power gains in density, freezes, compresses, and sinks in its own super-efficacy. The tactics of terrorism are to provoke an excess of reality and to make the system collapse under the weight of this excess. The very derision of the situation, as well as all the piled up violence of power, flips against it, for terrorist actions are both the magnifying mirror of the system’s violence, and the model of a symbolic violence that it cannot access, the only violence it cannot exert: that of its own death. This is why all this visible power cannot react against the minute, but symbolic death of a few individuals.

But in this case Trotsky’s analysis is the more persuasive.

But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one’s goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organisation? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament?

In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy.

3. Yushenko goes out with a provocative bang, making Galician nationalist / Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera into a “Hero of Ukraine”. With Tymoshenko’s challenge to the election results dismissed, the new Ukrainian President is now Yanukovych, who represents the Russophone, pro-Russian eastern and southern regions and Donbass oligarchs. This should come as no surprise to S/O readers, given that I predicted Yanukovych would win the second round from the beginning. (Pic h/t @ Ukrainiana).

According to the election results, the final tally was Yanukovych 49%, Tymoshenko 45%. This was stunningly similar to the result I predicted from analyzing which other candidates’ supporters would vote for Mr. Blue or the Gas Princess.

Adding up these figures, Yanukovych gets 50% of the votes, whereas Tymoshenko gets 46%.

The only question now remaining is how fast Yanukovych will now move Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit, perhaps starting with entry into the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan customs union.

4. The Airborne Laser (ABL), mounted on a modified Boeing 747, finally succeeded in “killing” a low-tech Scud missile in testing. Yes, not very impressive so far. The range was short and the second test failed anyway. But the regular mechanical breakdowns of the first WW1 tanks, far from invalidating the concepts of armored warfare, were instead portents of the future. What we are seeing is nothing less than the dawning of the age of automated laser weaponry.

5. Its official. Russia’s population grew by 23,300 souls in 2009, for the first time since 1995. Though the rate of natural increase remained slightly negative for Russia as a whole (the Siberian and Urals Federal Regions actually saw positive natural population growth for the first time in 19 years), this was more than compensated for by immigration.

This improvement was in large part thanks to an impressive increase in the life expectancy, which rose to 69 years in 2009 – almost as high as in 1963-68 (before the alcoholism epidemic) and 1986-91 (Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign. Birth rates also increased by 3%, hysterical Russophobe predictions of a crisis-induced “abortion apocalypse” to the contrary.

This of course should come as no great surprise to S/O readers, since back in mid-2008 my projections indicated that:

Russia will see positive population growth starting from 2010 at the latest.

Natural population increase will occur starting from 2013 at the latest.

Russia’s total life expectancy will exceed 68 years by 2010 and reach 75 years by 2020.

Now according to my models, in the case of a total fertility rate of 1.5 (i.e., the same as in 2008, when it was 1.49, so that is actually discounting any further increases) and assuming a very modest life expectancy rise (74 years by 2025 – it is already close at 69), and 300k annual migration (currently around 200-250k), “the population size will remain basically stagnant, going from 142mn to 143mn by 2023 before slowly slipping down to 138mn by 2050″. Of course it is also entirely possible that Russia’s LE will converge to developed-country levels quicker and that the TFR will stabilize at 1.7-1.8, in which case its population may grow back to around 150mn by 2025.

Thus far, the reality of Russia’s demographic turn-around is actually exceeding both Rosstat‘s and my own most optimistic forecasts (not to even mention “pessimists” like Eberstadt, Steyn, etc). No wonder that pundits are beginning to read and propagandize the gist of my articles, e.g. from Mark Adomanis at True Slant (h/t poemless).

1) Its population is in steep decline and chronically afflicted by alcoholism.

These are actually two very separate issues, but what the hell, why not, we’ll combine them. As I’ve argued before Russia’s population decline has actually abated rather dramatically. What is Russia’s demographic future? No one really knows (predictions are hard, especially about the future!), but it stands to reason that it’s not nearly as bad as Black, Eberstadt, Steyn, Feshbach, and all the other nameless neocon apparatchiks,  most of whom have made crude linear projections decades into the future, think. And alcoholism in Russia is not some eternal unchanging constant: the country’s current high rates of alcoholism are the result of a trend that started in the 1960’s, not in prehistory. Alcoholism in Russia was and is largely a reaction to bleak socioeconomic conditions and the easy availability and cheapness of alcohol,not the result of some quasi-mythical Russian predilection for booze and penchant for self destruction. Will this trend be reversed? Perhaps! Perhaps not! The truth is no one really knows, but to pretend that Russians are utterly passive in the face of some all-powerful and immutable force known as “alcoholism” is as condescending as it is stupid.

Now the next question – should I now rest on my laurels, or should I continue trying to refute the demographic doomers who continue to insist that Russia’s population will fall to 128mn within two decades?

6. Goldman Sachs helped Greece conceal its deficit spending shenanigans by providing it with loans disguised as currency trades. Can this get any dodgier? This also introduces an interesting philosophical exercise – who’s more responsible, the bank(st)ers or the politicos? (The drug pushers or the drug abusers?). And of course Greece is far from alone. The real elephant in the room is the United States.

7. Russian Twitter hero and unabashed patriot, Dmitri Rogozin, proves that Western diplomats are girly men.

8. Two stories that represent the two most important trends of our world systems – shortage of Rare Earth Metals could thwart innovation (limits to growth) and 10 profound innovations ahead (technological progress). If we could find some way to figure out which trend is the stronger and more stable one, you could make a good guess as to the meaning of the 21st century.

9. What blogging is all about… (h/t Lou).

10. Yulia Latynina, Russian liberal par excellence (that is, in the anti-democratic 19th century sense of “liberal”), on why Letting Poor People Vote is Dangerous. At least she is brave enough (or stupid enough?) to say what many liberasts think, but don’t have the guts to do so outright. H/t Sean.

Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in Sunday’s presidential election — not unlike the victories of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Adolf Hitler — once again raises doubt about the basic premise of democracy: that the people are capable of choosing their own leader. Unfortunately, only wealthy people are truly capable of electing their leaders in a responsible manner. Poor people elect politicians like Yanukovych or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

When the Orange Revolution hit Ukraine five years ago, the people arose in a united wave and did not allow themselves to be deceived by the corrupt elite. That elite had reached an agreement with the criminals and oligarchs of Donetsk to make a minor criminal, who could not string two sentences together, the successor to former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.

And by far my favorite bit:

Can you imagine U.S. voters putting a leader in the White House who is a puppet of the ruling elite and criminal clans?

Socialist democrat Allende = genocidal maniac Hitler? The same US whose regulatory bodies are captured by Wall Street, which confirmed itself as an oligarchy with the recent removal of campaign funding limits for corporations? (I can just about see a few post-peak oil decades down the line Exxon oligarchs sending American conscripts to fight national liberation movements in Saudi Arabia or Nigeria).

Really, why the fuck does anyone act surprised that Russia’s limousine liberals – part disconnected elitist, part neo-Bolshevik, part plain insane – only have the support of 3% of the Russian population?

PS. More inane rantings from Latynina. It appears her disdain for facts extends well beyond Russian politics.

“The global warming is an invention of the global bureaucracy,” says one of Russia’s leading journalists and authors, Yulia Latynina, who in most of her publications exposes controversial activities by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“The IPCC are unable to explain to me why the 10th century and the 16th century in Europe were far warmer than it is today. They are unable even to tell what the weather tomorrow is going to be like, that is doing something that can be verified,” Latynina says in a weekly magazine. “One simple question – why do they think that warmth is bad? Did the human race drown or perish in the 10-13th centuries?”

The global warming threat, she believes “is one of the brightest illustrations of the Global Bureaucracy’s ideology, a phenomenon that is still largely embryonic. But if the current trend continues, it may spell the end of the Western civilization, freedom and progress in science and engineering.”

11. Back in the real world, the news from the climate front, as usual, gets worse by the month if not the week.

Organizers of the recent climate conference in Copenhagen sought, unsuccessfully, to forge agreements to limit global warming to 2 degrees C by the end of the century. But even an increase that small would cause deadly harm. And far greater damage is likely if we do nothing.The numbers — and there are many to choose from — paint a grim picture. According to recent estimates from the Integrated Global Systems Model at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the median forecast is for a climb of 5 degrees C by century’s end, in the absence of effective countermeasures. That forecast, however, may underestimate the increase. According to the same M.I.T. model, there is a 10 percent chance that the average global temperature will rise more than 7 degrees C by 2100, and a 3 percent chance it will climb more than 8 degrees C. Warming on that scale would be truly catastrophic. Scientists say that even the 2-degree increase would spell widespread loss of life, so it’s hardly alarmist to view the risk of inaction as frightening… (The M.I.T. model estimates a zero probability of the temperature rising by less than 3.6 degrees by 2100.)

You bet. A rise of more than 5 degrees C will result in a global collapse of food production and the almost certain demise of industrial civilization. At above 7 degrees C, we may well be looking at human extinction as “zones of uninhabitability” begin to overspread much of the world.

An adaptability limit for large warmings–are we accounting for it?

Steven Sherwood(1), M Huber(2)
(1) Yale University, Department of Geology and Geophysics, New Haven, CT, USA
(2) Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

The consequences of large warmings (>4C), which on current trends look increasingly likely in the 21stcentury if not the 20th, have received little attention. It seems to be widely assumed that humans can adapt to any amount of warming, on the basis that humans live in such a wide variety of climates now. We show that when examined in terms of the peak value of the wet-bulb temperature (Tw), which ultimately governs the possibility of transfer of metabolic heat to the environment, the world’s present-day climates are far less variable than one might think based on mean temperature. A warming of only a few degrees will cause large parts of the globe to experience peak Tw values that never occur today; 7C would begin to create zones of uninhabitability due to unsurvivable peak heat stresses (periods when the shedding of metabolic heat isthermodynamically impossible); and 10C would expand such zones far enough to encompass a majority of today’s population. It is unknown how much of our present 7-10C cushion we can live without before experiencing significant problems, making it difficult to draw conclusions about more modest climatechanges, but the limits themselves rest squarely on basic thermodynamics. These inferences stand in contradiction to damage functions currently used in economic cost-benefit calculations. In these, climate damages increase with global mean temperature according to a polynomial form, and remain moderate (typically <30% of GDP) even for 10C or more despite the implication that most of the surface wouldbecome uninhabitable by humans and most livestock during the warm season…

12. Meanwhile, AGW deniers continue spreading their malicious lies and propaganda over the Internet like a horde of virtual locusts. See IPCC errors: facts and spin at Real Climate for a thorough debunking of their mendacious drivel.

13. Something a bit more encouraging. Old dude beats up pathetic wannabe gangsta on a public bus.

14. An intriguing attempt to rank national naval strengths from Strategy Page – Naval Forces of the World. Unsurprisingly, the US completely dominates with more than half the global naval power. The only other navies of real strength are considered to be the UK, Russia, Japan, China, and France. I more or less agree with this analysis, excpet to note that 1) the importance of specifics – whereas the UK has much better “power projection”, Russia’s strategic naval forces are far ahead and second only to the US, and 2) China’s naval power is growing rapidly, it will soon overtake Japan if it hasn’t already, and by 2020 may even be ahead of the US.

15. China sells $34.2bn of US treasury bonds, indicating its loss of confidence in the credibility of any US promises to ever rein back on its fiscal overstretch. The only nations still buying up US Treasuries are geopolitically-aligned ones (e.g. Japan) and private investors, but the endgame for Pax Americana has begun and the next global credit or geopolitical shock may finish it. Meanwhile, Tokyo welcomes Chinese destroyer. Perhaps this doesn’t mean anything important, or perhaps it is just the beginning of Japan’s road towards bandwagoning with China.

16. Andrey Ternovskiy, a Russian, is behind the site ChatRoulette which anonymously pairs you up with random Internet strangers via webcam. Sounds like the perfect hangout for weirdos… and it is. Wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re interested in live gay porn.

17. Turkish Foreign Minister Calls for Eurasian Union (Leos Tomicek). Turkey is a rising power with energy, cultural, and political interests in Central Asia and the Middle East, and it will be freer to expand once NATO / the West starts becoming irrelevant.

18. Economic catastrophe in Latvia, previously hailed as a “Baltic tiger”. Latvia’s Economy Contracts Almost 18 Percent in Q4 2009 (Ed Hughes). From his Facebook updates:

“Latvia’s GDP fell by 17.7% year on year in the last quarter of 2009,meaning the economy has now shrunk by more than 25 percent in twoyears. The IMF projects another 4 percent drop this year and predictsthat the total loss of output from peak to bottom will reach 30percent. This would make Latvia’s loss more than that of the U.S. Great Depression downturn of 1929-1933.”

“The consequence of this strong recession in Latvia – more and moreLatvians are leaving in search of work elsewhere, while fewer andfewer young people feel confident enough to have children, making thelong term future of the country even more uncertain.”

There follows a graph of Latvia’s birth rates plummeting by around 8% in 2009 y/y, with the rate of decline accelerating to 12% by December 2009.

Perhaps a timely reminder of the dangers of too much economic openness, the (prior?) dogma of our times? In comparison, Russia’s GDP fell by 7.9% and Belarus’ GDP actually grew 0.2% in 2009, and both saw continuing demographic improvements.

19. On my reading list:

The Lucifer Principle – Nietzschean book by Howard Bloom. (h/t Lou).

The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima, my new hero, whose ritual suicide consitutes the epitome of artistic holism.

The Rediscovery of the Mind – Cognitive science is ”the ongoing research program of showing Searle’s Chinese Room Argument to be false”, and it’s not hard to see why.

Towards a New Socialism – Haven’t started reading this year, but looking forwards to it since it’s connected with many of my own ideas about how advances in cybernetics and computer science is making central planning feasible, even for highly complex and advanced economic systems.

Getting ready to post reviews of The Peak Oil Books, When the Rivers Run Dry (Pearce), and The Singularity is Near (Kurzweil).