Bcc: FYI
Original article here.
Peter Meyer wrote:
Hi Richard,I read all the interview with Fusaro. My overall reaction is that I’m insufficiently acquainted with political thought to be able to form an opinion on his views of the subjects discussed, but I am not inclined to disagree with them. I perceive the effect of a global amoral and supremacist financial elite hijacking the world to its own rapacious advantage, to the extreme disadvantage of almost everyone else, at the cost of major economic, social, financial and moral collapse (or at least dissolution) of Western society. I protest via some of my writings, but I doubt that has much effect, since (I suppose) there are few readers, and anyway there are much better writers who draw attention to the aforementioned collapse more effectively. All I can do is observe, think, try to survive by honest work, and hopefully be somewhere not near ground zero when the worst happens (if it does). I agree, sadly, with Albert Einstein’s observation that human stupidity (at least in the modern world) is infinite (or at least, unlimited). The likely consequence will be the Darwinian Award of species extinction, or, worse, enslavement to machines. A less likely but more desirable consequence might be a near-death experience for the human species followed eventually by a recovery of sanity. Miracles can happen.Regards,Peter
I like the way you express yourself, and thanks for sharing your ideas about right livelihood in today’s circumstances. We are certainly in agreement about financial elites hijacking the world, and about the collapse of Western society as we have known it. As regards ‘human stupidity’, however, there are a few things I’d like to say. If we look at the overall state of humanity, with all the unnecessary poverty and strife, in a world that could be an Eden paradise, then the judgment ‘a stupid species’ does seem to apply. But that doesn’t mean us people are stupid, because we aren’t the ones running the world. We can’t even say the ones running things are stupid. It’s just that they’re sociopaths and don’t care about the general welfare of humanity. Stupidity is not the problem. Rather the problem is dysfunctional systems of governance. Not an easy problem to solve. Folks have been trying ever since Plato.
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Marc Bombois wrote:
Well Bravo! and molto bene! That is refreshing. Serendipitous that you send this now since I’m presently learning to speak Italian. Nice to see that he’s young, articulate, and learned. I think someone like John Ralston Saul, who said that government is the only way we have to organise ourselves against tyranny, would be in agreement. Also the anthropologist David Graeber, who wrote “Debt: the first 5000 years”, wherein he clearly shows that before the invention of money we had communism. Then came money, debt, and elite rule via credit systems, continuing to today. Also George Monbiot, who says we have to go to the heart of capitalism and overthrow it. Will we wake up in time?Keep up the good work Richard. Ciao,Marco
I’m glad you resonate with the theme of the interview, which is basically about the best way to ‘organize ourselves against tyranny’. Representative government has many flaws, but at least it is based on institutions that could theoretically give people a real voice in governance. Globalism, on the other hand, is based on top-down bureaucracies, like the World Trade Organization, IMF, and World Bank, none of which have any interest in what you or I think or want. Within nations, wealthy elites run things indirectly, by corrupting our institutions and our media; with their globalist institutions elites can run things directly. Within nations, as citizens, we can at least hope to make the institutions work as they were intended; in a globalist world we become ants in a vast anthill, drones in a global machine.
What Graeber and Monbiot don’t understand is that capitalism is being abandoned from on high. Growth cannot continue forever on a finite planet, and in a post-growth world capitalism is no longer a relevant economic paradigm. That’s why the Rockefellers launched the Club of Rome and published their Limits to Growth. That’s why globalist elites are pushing the environmental movement, the Extinction Rebellion, and the Green New Deal. They want people to demand the future that has been planned for them, to voluntarily swallow the kool-aid. In a post-growth world, economics will be based on resource allocations and production quotas, like under the Soviets. Jobs will be assigned according to ‘social need’, and carbon credits will be issued depending on your ‘social value’. Communism is not a grassroots antidote to capitalism, rather communism is what elites are luring us into, with resource allocations to be determined by the globalist institutions. Absolute unaccountable tyranny, accompanied by politically-correct unnecessary austerity.
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Thomas Greco wrote:
Not an easy read. I’d like to see your summary of it.
I was intrigued by the interview because his analysis and conclusions resonate, to a considerable degree, with my own thinking. Fusaro’s main point, argued from a few different angles, is that we need to be rallying behind the nation state as our best bulwark against “the true fascism of today: that of the market society”. He says, “Today it is necessary to re-establish the link between the national state and the socialist revolution. This is the fundamental point.”
While being a strong advocate for the sovereign nation state, Fusaro distances himself from outright nationalism: “We must flee from the cosmopolitanism that destroys nations and from nationalism, which is a selfishness thought at the level of the nation.” He says, “…it is necessary to assert, against these two opposites, a model of internationalism between sovereign states of solidarity, based on democracy, socialism and the rights of the weaker classes…”
This distinction of positions, between ‘pro-nation state’ and ‘nationalism’, is a distinction that mainstream narratives routinely and intentionally ignore. Fusaro puts it this way: “Today who reaffirms the need to politically control the economy and, therefore, reintroduce sovereignty against the cosmopolitan opening, is vilified and immediately branded as ‘fascist’, ‘red’ and ‘Stalinist’ ”. Fusaro notes the damaging effect of these narratives: “many fools who call themselves ‘left’ fight against fascism, that no longer exists, only to fully accept the totalitarianism of the market”. These “are the ones who fight in France against Le Pen only to accept Macron willingly”.
As I made clear in my response to Marco, above, I have my own reasons for being a strong advocate of the sovereign nation state, and a strong opponent of globalism. While Fusaro values the nation state as a potential path to socialism, I value the nation state as a potential path to democratic self-governance. While he sees the enemy as capitalism, I see the enemy as elite rule. While he sees socialism as an antidote to capitalism, I see socialism as a rallying cry that elites will gladly surrender to, gifting us with a socialism of their own design, aimed at micromanaging populations in a post-growth, post-economics world.
rkm
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