Successful Revolution

«Successful revolution depends on what happens at the top, not on disaffected and impoverished masses from below. The chief ingredients are: first, a fiscal crisis of the state; the state becomes unable to pay its bills, and above all to pay its security forces, its military and police. State fiscal crisis becomes lethal when it is joined by the second ingredient, a split among elites over how to deal with it. We could add secondary factors, back in the chain of antecedents, typically although not always including military causes; a state fiscal crisis often comes from accumulated military expenses, and elite deadlock is especially exacerbated by military defeat, which delegitimates government and provokes calls for drastic reform. Splits among elites paralyze the state and open the way to a new coalition with radical aims.

It is in this power vacuum—what social movement theorists now call the political opportunity structure—that social movements are successfully mobilized. Often they do so in the name of grievances from the bottom, but typically such radical movements are led by upper-middle-class fractions with the best networks and organizing resources. As de Tocqueville recognized long ago, the radicalism of a movement is not correlated with the degree of immiseration; exactly what does determine the degree of radicalism is more in the realm of the ideological and emotional dynamics of exploding conflict, although just how to theorize this remains unfinished».

«Does Capitalism Have A Future?»

Justice and Equality

«I have no interest in denouncing inequality or capitalism per se—especially since social inequalities are not in themselves a problem as long as they are justified, that is, “founded only upon common utility,” as article 1 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen proclaims. (Although this definition of social justice is imprecise but seductive, it is rooted in history. Let us accept it for now. I will return to this point later on.) By contrast, I am interested in contributing, however modestly, to the debate about the best way to organize society and the most appropriate institutions and policies to achieve a just social order. Furthermore, I would like to see justice achieved effectively and efficiently under the rule of law, which should apply equally to all and derive from universally understood statutes subject to democratic debate».

«Capital in the twenty-first century» – Thomas Piketty

The Economic Consequences of the Peace

«A policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable—abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe . . . . Nations are not authorized, by religion or by natural morals to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of parents or rulers».

J. M. Keynes

Ουκρανία και Σοβιετικοί Ηγέτες

«The disproportionate importance of Ukraine in Russian and Soviet history was reflected in the Soviet leadership itself. Both Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev were Russians who hailed from eastern Ukraine—Khrushchev returning there in the 1930s as First Secretary of the Ukrainian Party. Konstantin Chernenko was the son of Ukrainian ‘kulaks’ deported to Siberia, while Yuri Andropov had risen to the top as a consequence of occupying the strategically central post of KGB head in Ukraine. But this close association between the Ukrainian republic and the Soviet leadership did not imply any special regard for its inhabitants.
Quite the contrary. For much of its history as a Soviet republic, Ukraine was treated as an internal colony: its natural resources exploited, its people kept under close surveillance (and, in the 1930s, exposed to a program of punitive repression that amounted to near-genocide). Ukrainian products—notably food and ferrous metals—were shipped to the rest of the Union at heavily subsidized prices, a practice that continued almost to the end. Following World War Two, the Ukrainian Socialist Republic was considerably enlarged by the annexation from Poland of eastern Galicia and western Volhynia: the local Polish population, as we have seen, was expelled westwards in exchange for ethnic Ukrainians forced out of Poland itself.
These population exchanges—and the wartime extermination of much of the local Jewish community—resulted in a region that was by Soviet standards quite homogenous: thus whereas the Russian Republic in 1990 contained over one hundred minorities, thirty one of them living in autonomous regions, Ukraine was 84 percent Ukrainian. Most of the rest of the population were Russians (11 percent), with the remainder comprising small numbers of Moldovans, Poles, Magyars, Bulgarians and the country’s surviving Jews. Perhaps more to the point the only significant minority—the Russians—was concentrated in the industrial east of the country and in the capital Kiev.
Central and Western Ukraine, notably around Lviv, the second city, was predominantly Ukrainian in language and Eastern Orthodox or else Uniate (Greek-rite Catholic) in religion. Thanks to the relative tolerance of the Habsburgs, Ukrainians in Galicia had been allowed to preserve their native tongue. Depending upon district, anything from 78 percent to 91 percent of the local inhabitants used it as their first language in 1994, whereas in the territories once ruled by the Czar even those who identified themselves as Ukrainians often spoke Russian more readily.»

Tony Judt: «Postwar»

Σολωμός

    «7. Και οι δίκαιοι κατά την Θεία Γραφή πόσοι είναι; Και συλλογίζοντας αυτό, επέσανε τα μάτια μου στα χέρια μου οπού ήτανε απιθωμένα στο φιλιατρό.
    8. Και θέλοντας να μετρήσω με τα δάχτυλα τους δίκαιους, ασήκωσα από το φιλιατρό το χέρι μου το ζερβί, και κοιτώντας τα δάχτυλα του δεξιού είπα: Τάχα να είναι πολλά;
    9. Και αρχίνησα και εσύγκρενα τον αριθμό των δικαίων οπού εγνώριζα, με αυτά τα πέντε δάχτυλα, και βρίσκοντας πως ετούτα επερισσεύανε, ελιγόστεψα το δάχτυλο το λιανό, κρύβοντάς το ανάμεσα στο φιλιατρό και στην απαλάμη μου·
    10. και έστεκα και εθεωρούσα τα τέσσερα δάχτυλα για πολληώρα, και αιστάνθηκα μεγάλη λαχτάρα, γιατί είδα πως ήμουνα στενεμένος να λιγοστέψω, και κοντά στο λιανό μου δάχτυλο έβαλα το σιμοτινό του στην ίδια θέση.
    11. Εμνέσκανε το λοιπόν αποκάτου από τα μάτια μου τα τρία δάχτυλα μοναχά, και τα εχτυπούσα ανήσυχα απάνου στο φιλιατρό, για να βοηθήσω το νου μου να εύρει κάνε τρεις δίκαιους.
    12. Αλλά επειδή αρχινήσανε τα σωθικά μου να τρέμουνε σαν τη θάλασσα που δεν ησυχάζει ποτέ,
    13. ασήκωσα τα τρία μου έρμα, και έκαμα το σταυρό μου.
    14. Έπειτα, θέλοντας να αριθμήσω τους άδικους, έχωσα το ένα χέρι μες στην τζέπη του ράσου μου, και το άλλο ανάμεσα στο ζωνάρι μου, γιατί εκατάλαβα, αλίμονον!, πως τα δάχτυλα δεν εχρειαζόντανε ολότελα».

«Η Γυναίκα της Ζάκυνθος» του Διον. Σολωμού. Πέθανε σαν σήμερα πριν από 157 χρόνια

Mainstream Journalism

«Journalists in the 21st century rarely stop to recall that ‘mainstream’ journalism has only been a short period in the history of public information. The supply of information to democratic societies only matured as a mass-market industry in the 20th century, allowing journalism to be practised and controlled in more concentrated and organized ways. Journalism of an earlier era was smaller scale, more intimate, opinionated and much of it resembled the social networks now carried by the internet.»

George Brock. «Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age.»

Τα πλοία

«Θλιβερόν, θλιβερόν είναι άλλο πράγμα. Eίναι όταν περνούν κάτι πελώρια πλοία, με κοράλλινα κοσμήματα και ιστούς εξ εβένου, με αναπεπταμένας μεγάλας σημαίας λευκάς και ερυθράς, γεμάτα με θησαυρούς, τα οποία ούτε πλησιάζουν καν εις τον λιμένα είτε διότι όλα τα είδη τα οποία φέρουν είναι απηγορευμένα, είτε διότι δεν έχει ο λιμήν αρκετόν βάθος δια να τα δεχθή. Kαι εξακολουθούν τον δρόμον των. Oύριος άνεμος πνέει επί των μεταξωτών των ιστίων, ο ήλιος υαλίζει την δόξαν της χρυσής των πρώρας, και απομακρύνονται ηρέμως και μεγαλοπρεπώς, απομακρύνονται δια παντός από ημάς και από τον στενόχωρον λιμένα μας.
Eυτυχώς είναι πολύ σπάνια αυτά τα πλοία. Mόλις δύο, τρία βλέπομεν καθ’ όλον μας τον βίον. Tα λησμονώμεν δε ογρήγορα. Όσω λαμπρά ήτο η οπτασία, τόσω ταχεία είναι η λήθη της».

Κ. Π. Καβάφης: «Τα πλοία»

The Iron Law of Oligarchy

«…the German sociologist Robert Michels called it the iron law of oligarchy. The internal logic of oligarchies, and in fact of all hierarchical organizations, is that, argued Michels, they will reproduce themselves not only when the same group is in power, but even when an entirely new group takes control. What Michels did not anticipate perhaps was an echo of Karl Marx’s remark that history repeats itself—the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.(…). The essence of the iron law of oligarchy, this particular facet of the vicious circle, is that new leaders overthrowing old ones with promises of radical change bring nothing but more of the same. At some level, the iron law of oligarchy is harder to understand than other forms of the vicious circle»

D. Acemoglu: «Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty»

Barrels of Lard Provide Relief

"8/12/1788: Death of the great French admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez, who saw to the amatory needs of his sailors by providing them with three lard-filled barrels, each with a hole of a different diameter, labelled, respectively, ‘Grandmère’, ‘Fille’ and ‘Nymphette’."

"History Without the Boring Bits: A Curious Chronology of the World"

The Mirror

«But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth’s surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected. Marcel Proust: «Within a Budding Grove»
From: Christopher Hitchens. «Why Orwell Matters.»