Sublime

The challenge is how to get the state to do the job when avoiding the free market outcome is precisely the goal.

In the first, man as an individual can exercise authority on his own behalf and therefore assume responsibility. In the second, the machine takes over–first reducing the range of choice and motivation in both the operator and the client, and second imposing its own logic and demand on both. Survival depends on establishing procedures which permit o

By enrolling all comers, Marius cut through that, but in the process he created a dependent, quasi-professional Roman army, which destabilised domestic politics for eighty years or so. These new-style legions increasingly relied on their commanders not only for a share of the booty but also for a settlement package, preferably of land, at the end o

The goal of such tactics is to restrict competition as much as possible because competition breeds choice, and choice makes exploitation difficult.

Even in the capitalist West where they have tried throwing money at problems, what is the end result? You go down New York, Broadway. You will see the beggars, people on the streets. Worse than in the 1950s and in the early ’60s before the Great Society programmes. Why? Why did it get worse after compassion moved a President, motivated with a great

Why Is CCP Martial? From 1978 to 2013, from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, the CCP was focused on economic growth. But under Xi Jinping, it’s taken a turn towards militarist nationalism. It builds most of the world’s physical products, its military budget is already >1/3 that of America’s, it has a more focused task (“reunify China”

Furthermore, the actual developmental path taken seems to fit with the aim of preventing the formation of any coherent capitalist class power bloc within China itself. Heavy reliance upon foreign direct investment (a completely different economic development strategy to that taken by Japan and South Korea) has kept the power of capitalist class own

Au début, ce fut à cause de la politique extrêmement libérale menée par José Manuel Barroso, abandonnant l’idée même d’un « agenda social européen », lors de son premier mandat, puis, dans la crise financière, se faisant l’accompagnateur discret des gouvernements des États-Unis et de l’Union européenne. Le mot d’ordre généralisé fut de « faire des