Lawrence,
No need to apologize. I am not responding directly to Milanovic; I know nothing
about him. Still, the argument as you present it sounds plausible to me. Why?
Because whether you call them patricians (Ancient Rome), mandarins (imperial
China), the New Class (former Comecon countries), or plutocrats (gilded age and
contemporary one-percenters in the USA), the recurring pattern seems to be the
same: those that have take more and life at the other end of the stick gets
worse until a regime is overthrown. This seems to happen regardless of
ideology. Plus, of course, an obvious fact; overthrow is no guarantee of
improvement.
Not a very cheery outlook. I worry about my grandkids. Glad that their parents
are Naval Academy graduates, pilots who have experienced SERE training, avid
gardeners who grow a lot of their food, and employed in jobs that put them at
the comfortable low end of the top 10% of annual incomes. The grandkids will
have a good life until the whole thing blows up.
Cheers,
John
Sent from my iPad
On Feb 2, 2020, at 13:57, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John,
No doubt I didn’t present these matters clearly. I didn’t mean to say that
Milanovic was disagreeing with Fukuyama, merely that he was assuming
Fukuyama’s arguments (originally presented in an article in 1988-89 and then
expanded in his book published in 1992) and then advancing them in accordance
with modern events. Actually, Fukuyama has done that himself. He has been
pitted against Huntington in most discussions I’ve read and in a recent
magazine article conceded that Huntington seemed to have things more correct
than he did.
Also, Milanovic wasn’t pitting China against the U.S. or even the West in his
article. He seems to be saying that in order for the Political Capitalistic
nations to continue to see such high rates of economic growth, they will
probably be required to exert more and more control over their economies
which may be counter-productive to the creativity of its entrepreneurs and
thus reduce economic growth. The West while perhaps having fewer engineers
wouldn’t be exerting such controls over its entrepreneurs and so might
outperform the Political Capitalistic nations in the long run – except . . .
And I pause at “except” because that is the area where I had a problem with
Milanovic. He concludes and I didn’t take this part of his argument as quite
a prediction, but he concludes that unless Liberal Capitalism reduces
inequality, the Liberal Capitalistic nations may become Plutocracies much
like the Political Capitalistic economies. It was that last part that I
didn’t think followed from what he previously presented.
I don’t know anything about Milanovic beyond what I read in the Foreign
Affairs article; so if I have misjudged his intent, I apologize.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
On Behalf Of John McCreery
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2020 7:41 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Liberal vs Political Capitalism -- sort of
For what is worth, IMHO Milanovic’s predictions are more solidly grounded
than Fukuyama’s ever were. If there is one thing that history teaches, it is
that regardless of political culture elites form and cling to their
privileges until they are overthrown. In this respect there is not
significant difference between the Roman Senate that caved to Caesar, the
mandarins who ruled imperial China, China’s current leadership, the “New
Class” that Milovan Djilas saw forming in the USSR and its satellites, and
the technology-enhanced plutocracy extending its control over ostensibly
democratic societies including, most notably, the United States of America.
To this observation we must add the key material conditions underlying
China’s current rise. China accounts for a quarter of the world’s population.
Its middle class is already bigger than the total population of the USA. As
Apple CEO Tim Cook has observed, China now graduates more production
engineers each year than the USA by an order of magnitude. The global
hotspot for hardware innovation is Shenzhen. China is now a world leader in
supercomputing, and its space program is first rate. Alibaba is bigger than
Amazon.
Cheers,
John
Sent from my iPad
On Feb 2, 2020, at 5:35, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The lead article in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs is “The Clash
of Capitalisms, the Real Fight for the Global Economy’s Future” by Branko
Milanovic who is “a Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic
Inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center and Centennial Professor at the London
School of Economics.”
Milanovic’s title is a take-off from Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of
Civilizations, but Milanovic is in reality is dealing more with Fukuyama’s
theory. That is, Fukuyama saw Liberal Democracy as representing the end of
history. Milanovic uses the term Liberal Capitalism and Liberal meritocracy
for Fukuyama’s Liberal Democracy and introduces Political Capitalism as a
challenge to it – sort of.
Milanovic writes, “In the states of Western Europe and North America and a
number of other countries, such as India, Indonesia, and Japan, a liberal
meritocratic form of capitalism dominates: a system that concentrates the
vast majority of production in the private sector, ostensibly allows talent
to rise, and tries to guarantee opportunity for all through measures such as
free schooling and inheritance taxes. Alongside that system stands the
state-led, political model of capitalism, which is exemplified by China but
also surfaces in other parts of Asia (Myanmar, Singapore, Vietnam), in Europe
(Azerbaijan, Russia), and in Africa (Algeria, Ethiopia, Rwanda). This system
privileges high economic growth and limits individual political and civil
rights.”
If memory serves me, Fukuyama took Political Capitalism into consideration,
saw it as taking baby steps toward Liberal Democracy, and thought it would
get there eventually. Prior to that time it would be at a disadvantage, for
Liberal Democracy with its freedom for entrepreneurs to develop whatever they
liked will always defeat (economically) economies where entrepreneurs are
more subdued. China is doing better than expected (by Fukuyama?), but will
it maintain its success in the long run against freer forms of capitalism?
In his concluding section, entitled “Plutocratic Convergence?” Milanovic
suggests that Western capitalistic societies will not be able to move toward
“a more advanced stage” (which he doesn’t define) unless “inequality” is
reduced. Thus, Milanovic is interested in seasoning Capitalistic Meritocracy
with a bit of Socialism. To make what seems to be his point I would think he
would want to show how his seasoning will enable Liberal Capitalism to
out-compete Political Capitalism. Milanovic writes that taking the
unmodified present path, “The economic elite in the West will become more
insulated, wielding more untrammeled power over ostensibly democratic
societies, much in the same way that the political elite in China lords over
that country. The more economic and political power in Liberal capitalist
systems become fused together, the more liberal capitalism will become
plutocratic, taking on some features of political capitalism. . . .”
Hmmm.
Lawrence
