Thank you, this is really powerful and helps one think through a lot. To pick up a theme, we are clearly living in an era of "hodgepodge". Neither candidate is offering anything like a coherent vision of a way forward, just opportunistic pandering, on both sides. I would, however, quibble with one point. Is it so obvious that the working class needs housing, child care, and health care "first"? Doesn't stability of the prospect of reasonable employment a necessary precondition, both economically and psychologically?
George Friedman's STORM BEFORE THE CALM (2015) advanced many of the same considerations. To name my trope: if one discounts individual agency (which much of the discourse you anatomize visibly does), your powerful and salient point re 'history is not a womb' is, I suggest, diluted to near impotence. I'll go further: the limiting case to change agency is social currency—trust. That's what's being reassembled, mostly on the quiet. Not an interregnum but rather a process within emergent (non-linear) change. Big big challenge, to be sure. But that reassembly is fuelled not by tropes (detailing notably linear policies) but by individual acts of generosity and, reciprocally, gratitude. Nothing else actuates what you seek to identify. That's our toolkit. That ain't policy: it's driven by how we feel about how we feel: metaemotions. So what scales trust? Valid hope...and that's what's bubbling away, everywhere, far from oversight or the data scientists. Emergent human action isn't captured well by GAAP or the scientific method: it's a network effect...and that no AI or policy wonk can parse. What 'saves' us ain't policy: it's the ability, like the'citizen juries' in deeply Catholic Ireland that enacted a revolution in reproductive rights, to 'see the other.' End rant. Thank you: your work is a profound inspiration to think...and act. Onward.
Your hegemony series is very insightful. Have you considered creating a sub-substack on the topic. I try to save them all and print them off to read them (I'm old and printed paper works better for my comprehension) but they can be hard to track down in you feed. Maybe this is the beginning of a book, but being able to have all of this series in one place would be helpful.
BTW, if there is a way already to do this and I don't know how it works, just let me know.
I would also be grateful for suggestions as to how to find series (and specifically the hegemony one) within a given substack archive. I get the impression that working with substack's archive system is not easy for others as well. It may be that one simply has to scroll through, item by item, all the way back.
"In its classic period in the 20th century US hegemony was built not born. Hegemonic crises are problems of construction not organic obstructions. History is not a womb. We are on our own. As far as historical process of change are concerned, we have no mother. We live amongst the wreckage of what we have made and unmade."
This reminds me why Panitch and Gindin (two who take heavily from Gramsci) are so important. U.S empire was made and it will either be re-made or un-made by policy decisions in response to contradictions and crises
You seem to conclude that the world economy is not going to change in the near future. China and the global South will continue to do the manufacturing. The United States will prioritize the service economy and financial manipulations.
Great post. I would add: the greatest fear of American parents of a child who does not fit into the American education"system" is this: that the child will "end up" working in a factory. Note this is regarded as the end of a life in the literal sense and not the beginning of a career. Thank you for highlighting in a much needed way the absurdity of endowing some scattered chip fabricators. Naive, senseless, and as you hint it may never come to fruition. US President as Santa Claus.
I suppose the overall project to resolve this contradiction has to take the form of decarbonization of the world economy and building resilience to the effects of climate change that are unavoidable on our current trajectory. If we don't do that all of our other plans and visions for the future will be overwhelmed.
Some aspects of that strategy would fit very well into the current trade dispensation, e.g. China's current dominance of solar panel and lithium ion battery manufacturing, which are very amenable to an export-driven policy. Other aspects are difficult to imagine in the current dispensation, e.g. relocation of vulnerable populations, which is hard to compel in any way that's compatible with liberal ideas about freedom of movement and hard to pay for. You're certainly quite right that the expenditures required are on the order of trillions and no one seems prepared to even contemplate that possibility.
On a more practical note, will _More and More and More_ be published in the US? It appears to be only available in the UK at the moment but it's very much up my street.
I can't help but contrast this with the China/Climate series and wonder if the West's policy chaos ('hodgepodge of elements') vs China's potential path ('shaping our planetary future') can be reduced to a 'model of governance' debate...
Buy of an aside, but I loved the reference to military spending as being extravagantly decadent. I read an article in the New York Review of Books about the US spending upwards of $1.3 trillion modernising its nuclear arsenal. I mean think of that as an unprecedented hurricane hurtles towards Florida. We’re spending an eye-watering sum on absurd weapons to defend ourselves against an illusionary threat and yet we’re not spending anywhere near what we should on the imminent threat that is displacing millions and killing thousands.
“ But where would you even start in a world whose shapes we can see, elements of which are clearly familiar - we made them after all - but whose underlying logic is obscure. What does realism under these circumstances entail?”
My attempt for what its worth borrows from soft systems thinking, the conceptual model for the problem situation is The Human Activity System, it is teleological but can serve as a tool for thinking about all relevant factors https://brianfishhope.com/part-1-review/the-human-system
Lots of concepts to unpack. At the risk of being myopic, the US certainly stands alone on how it has run its economy as well as the world economy. Most countries concern themselves with balance of payments and fiscal responsibility. US, oppositely, appears little concerned with fiscal deficits or balance of payments. It is up to the Central Bank to resolve the incongruity. Under such conditions it would be interesting to analyze those who get the increase in wealth and who gets the inflation, within both the US as well as the rest of the world.
While rummaging about looking for tropes to help us understand these "hinge points" maybe Adam might find biological metaphors helpful in some way -- I am thinking here of the "hopeful monsters" which inspired the idea of "punctuated equilibrium."
You correctly note that we are between paradigms. I humbly submit “Empowering Freedom” as a candidate, described in this “Good Fences Make Good Governments”essay:
With respect, my impression is that AT is challenging the very presumption or trope that history consists of discrete "periods" that have ruling paradigms, and specifically with reference to our current moment. In this sense, we would not be "between" paradigms; rather our moment entails, like much (most?) of history, multiple contradictory systems or paradigms or discourses or whatever terms one wants to use, all in tension with each other. Tension is not an exception confined to moments between stages, but the general rule of all historical moments, or at least of ours. If I am misreading AT's essay, I hope I may be corrected.
Loarre - indeed you seem correct. I saw the Gramsci quote and inferred the rest. I should have read more closely. FWIW, I do think we are in a transition period as Neil Howe (Fourth Turning is Here) and Peter Turchin (End Times) have argued. Nonetheless, thank you for politely pointing out my error.
Thank you, this is really powerful and helps one think through a lot. To pick up a theme, we are clearly living in an era of "hodgepodge". Neither candidate is offering anything like a coherent vision of a way forward, just opportunistic pandering, on both sides. I would, however, quibble with one point. Is it so obvious that the working class needs housing, child care, and health care "first"? Doesn't stability of the prospect of reasonable employment a necessary precondition, both economically and psychologically?
George Friedman's STORM BEFORE THE CALM (2015) advanced many of the same considerations. To name my trope: if one discounts individual agency (which much of the discourse you anatomize visibly does), your powerful and salient point re 'history is not a womb' is, I suggest, diluted to near impotence. I'll go further: the limiting case to change agency is social currency—trust. That's what's being reassembled, mostly on the quiet. Not an interregnum but rather a process within emergent (non-linear) change. Big big challenge, to be sure. But that reassembly is fuelled not by tropes (detailing notably linear policies) but by individual acts of generosity and, reciprocally, gratitude. Nothing else actuates what you seek to identify. That's our toolkit. That ain't policy: it's driven by how we feel about how we feel: metaemotions. So what scales trust? Valid hope...and that's what's bubbling away, everywhere, far from oversight or the data scientists. Emergent human action isn't captured well by GAAP or the scientific method: it's a network effect...and that no AI or policy wonk can parse. What 'saves' us ain't policy: it's the ability, like the'citizen juries' in deeply Catholic Ireland that enacted a revolution in reproductive rights, to 'see the other.' End rant. Thank you: your work is a profound inspiration to think...and act. Onward.
Adam,
Your hegemony series is very insightful. Have you considered creating a sub-substack on the topic. I try to save them all and print them off to read them (I'm old and printed paper works better for my comprehension) but they can be hard to track down in you feed. Maybe this is the beginning of a book, but being able to have all of this series in one place would be helpful.
BTW, if there is a way already to do this and I don't know how it works, just let me know.
I would also be grateful for suggestions as to how to find series (and specifically the hegemony one) within a given substack archive. I get the impression that working with substack's archive system is not easy for others as well. It may be that one simply has to scroll through, item by item, all the way back.
"In its classic period in the 20th century US hegemony was built not born. Hegemonic crises are problems of construction not organic obstructions. History is not a womb. We are on our own. As far as historical process of change are concerned, we have no mother. We live amongst the wreckage of what we have made and unmade."
This reminds me why Panitch and Gindin (two who take heavily from Gramsci) are so important. U.S empire was made and it will either be re-made or un-made by policy decisions in response to contradictions and crises
You seem to conclude that the world economy is not going to change in the near future. China and the global South will continue to do the manufacturing. The United States will prioritize the service economy and financial manipulations.
Do I understand you correctly? Please respond.
Great post. I would add: the greatest fear of American parents of a child who does not fit into the American education"system" is this: that the child will "end up" working in a factory. Note this is regarded as the end of a life in the literal sense and not the beginning of a career. Thank you for highlighting in a much needed way the absurdity of endowing some scattered chip fabricators. Naive, senseless, and as you hint it may never come to fruition. US President as Santa Claus.
I suppose the overall project to resolve this contradiction has to take the form of decarbonization of the world economy and building resilience to the effects of climate change that are unavoidable on our current trajectory. If we don't do that all of our other plans and visions for the future will be overwhelmed.
Some aspects of that strategy would fit very well into the current trade dispensation, e.g. China's current dominance of solar panel and lithium ion battery manufacturing, which are very amenable to an export-driven policy. Other aspects are difficult to imagine in the current dispensation, e.g. relocation of vulnerable populations, which is hard to compel in any way that's compatible with liberal ideas about freedom of movement and hard to pay for. You're certainly quite right that the expenditures required are on the order of trillions and no one seems prepared to even contemplate that possibility.
On a more practical note, will _More and More and More_ be published in the US? It appears to be only available in the UK at the moment but it's very much up my street.
I can't help but contrast this with the China/Climate series and wonder if the West's policy chaos ('hodgepodge of elements') vs China's potential path ('shaping our planetary future') can be reduced to a 'model of governance' debate...
Buy of an aside, but I loved the reference to military spending as being extravagantly decadent. I read an article in the New York Review of Books about the US spending upwards of $1.3 trillion modernising its nuclear arsenal. I mean think of that as an unprecedented hurricane hurtles towards Florida. We’re spending an eye-watering sum on absurd weapons to defend ourselves against an illusionary threat and yet we’re not spending anywhere near what we should on the imminent threat that is displacing millions and killing thousands.
“ But where would you even start in a world whose shapes we can see, elements of which are clearly familiar - we made them after all - but whose underlying logic is obscure. What does realism under these circumstances entail?”
My attempt for what its worth borrows from soft systems thinking, the conceptual model for the problem situation is The Human Activity System, it is teleological but can serve as a tool for thinking about all relevant factors https://brianfishhope.com/part-1-review/the-human-system
Lots of concepts to unpack. At the risk of being myopic, the US certainly stands alone on how it has run its economy as well as the world economy. Most countries concern themselves with balance of payments and fiscal responsibility. US, oppositely, appears little concerned with fiscal deficits or balance of payments. It is up to the Central Bank to resolve the incongruity. Under such conditions it would be interesting to analyze those who get the increase in wealth and who gets the inflation, within both the US as well as the rest of the world.
I'm currently re-reading Robert Fogel's The Fourth Great Awakening; perhaps this is the fifth.
While rummaging about looking for tropes to help us understand these "hinge points" maybe Adam might find biological metaphors helpful in some way -- I am thinking here of the "hopeful monsters" which inspired the idea of "punctuated equilibrium."
You correctly note that we are between paradigms. I humbly submit “Empowering Freedom” as a candidate, described in this “Good Fences Make Good Governments”essay:
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1989&context=mpr
With respect, my impression is that AT is challenging the very presumption or trope that history consists of discrete "periods" that have ruling paradigms, and specifically with reference to our current moment. In this sense, we would not be "between" paradigms; rather our moment entails, like much (most?) of history, multiple contradictory systems or paradigms or discourses or whatever terms one wants to use, all in tension with each other. Tension is not an exception confined to moments between stages, but the general rule of all historical moments, or at least of ours. If I am misreading AT's essay, I hope I may be corrected.
Loarre - indeed you seem correct. I saw the Gramsci quote and inferred the rest. I should have read more closely. FWIW, I do think we are in a transition period as Neil Howe (Fourth Turning is Here) and Peter Turchin (End Times) have argued. Nonetheless, thank you for politely pointing out my error.