ORTHODOX CHRISTMAS 2016

S Rozhdestvom Christovym!

Alexander and Galina.

FREE MARKETS AND FREE SOCIETY

 Is there, indeed, a correlation between free markets and free society, at least in the way free societies start, that is, with a free market? This point is not altogether facetious. My central point running throughout this section that free market, in today’s regulated capitalist economies, is wishful fiction at best, on the part of the champions of laissez-faire, does not skip over the well-established fact that all these regulated economies had started with a much greater degree of market freedom than the society would later allow. Perhaps, the celebrated European socialism could not have happened without its original struggle against the heartless capitalist, exploiter of the masses, maximizer of profit at any cost, le bête noire of Karl Marx, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and Charles Dickens (may the countless hosts of fighters against the evils of unrestrained capitalism forgive me for picking out just these three!)?

The main proponent of the market freedom equals social freedom theory is Milton Friedman, but the roots of this theory have been observed by the theory’s proponents in much earlier times.

World’s GDP per capita shows rapid upsurge since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Theorists and policymakers in predominantly capitalist nations have emphasized capitalism’s ability to promote economic growth, as measured by the GDP, capacity utilization or the standard of living. This argument was central to Adam Smith’s advocacy of letting a free market control production and price, and allocate resources. Many have noted that the increase in global GDP over time coincides with the emergence of the modern world capitalist system. While measurements are not identical, proponents argue that increasing per capita GDP is empirically shown to result in improved standards of living, such as better availability of food, housing, clothing, health care, reduction of working hours, freedom from work for children and the elderly. Proponents also believe that capitalist economy offers greater opportunities for individuals to raise their income through new professions or business ventures than other economic forms. They believe that this potential is greater than in traditional feudal or tribal societies, or in socialist societies.

Austrian School economists have argued that capitalism can organize itself into a complex system without an external guidance or planning mechanism. Hayek coined the term catallaxy describing what he saw as the phenomenon of self-organization underpinning capitalism. From this perspective within the process of self-organization the profit motive has a key role. From the transactions between the buyers and the sellers price systems emerge, and the prices serve as the signal as to the urgent and unfilled wants of people. The promise of profit gives entrepreneurs incentive to use their knowledge and resources to satisfy these wants. Thus the activities of millions of people, each seeking his own interest, are coordinated.

Milton Friedman has argued that the economic freedom of competitive capitalism is a requisite of political freedom. Friedman argued that centralized control of economic activity is always accompanied by political repression. In his view transactions in market economy are voluntary and the wide diversity that voluntary activity permits is a fundamental threat to repressive political leaders and greatly diminishes the power to coerce. This view was allegedly presaged by Hayek and Keynes, both of whom may have pointed out that capitalism is vital for freedom to survive and thrive. (Summarized from Wikipedia.)

Later on, I will explore this web of connections more thoroughly, checking out whether Hayek and Keynes (the latter in particular) have indeed been precursors of the Friedman view, rather than simply put forward something that can be subjected to a variety of interpretations.

HAPPY 2016!

Happy New Year

to the readers of our blog!

 

Alexander and Galina.

CHRISTMAS 2015

Merry Christmas to the readers of our blog! May the good cheer of the season have a lasting effect!

Alexander and Galina.

HISTORY OF CAPITALISM: A SHORT COURSE

Alas, the delicious charade of the title (its allusion to the historically famous and supremely consequential History Of The VKPb: A Short Course) will be lost on practically anybody who reads these lines, so what? At least, I have amused myself and a few other fossils of my ebbing generation…

This entry may be rightfully classified as a reader-edificational piece. But there is definitely more to it than can be squeezed into that definition. It is also part of a triptych, to be read in conjunction with my other two already posted entries:

2. History Of Socialism: No Corpus Delecti? Posted on March 30^th, 2012.

3. History Of Communism: The Life Of A Specter. Posted on March 31^st, 2012.

***

History of capitalism virtually begins with the prehistoric times, as a history of private ownership. Whether such a broad brush is justified or not is a moot matter. After all, capitalism, both good and bad, is always in the eye of the beholder.

Private ownership of some means of production has existed since the invention of agriculture. However, in feudal society much of this property was considered inalienable, thus capital markets were not established. (The last sentence, from Wikipedia, is practically nonsensical, considering the general capitalistic attitude toward all private property. In fact, it used to be much easier for the monarch in feudal times to dispossess a vassal of any or all of his possessions than for one capitalist to dispossess another. But, in so far as property transfer is concerned, a liege could not pass his property to another, because it was not his to begin with, but effectively belonged to the sovereign who on the other hand would have no qualms whatsoever to have such property change hands five times a day, if he wished so.)

Some writers see medieval guilds as forerunners of modern capitalist concerns (especially through the use of apprentices as a kind of paid laborer); but economic activity was bound by customs and controls, which, along with the rule of the aristocracy that would expropriate wealth via arbitrary fines, taxes and enforced loans, meant that profits were hard to accumulate. By the 18th century, though, such barriers to profit were overcome, and capitalism became the leading economic system in much of the world. (Which only proves that modern Western economies imposing high taxes and tariffs are either not capitalist or that capitalism has a different meaning in reality than in its attempted definitions.)

In the period between the late 15th century and the late 18th century the institution of private property was brought into existence in the full legal meaning of the term. Notable contribution to the theory of property is found in the works of John Locke, who argued that the right to private property is one of natural rights. (In fact, Locke argued in his 1690 Treatises on Government that “the reason why men enter into society is the preservation of his property.” How different that society must have been from the Demosthenes ideal, as he unequivocally declares that “the property of the lazy and shiftless belongs to those who are willing to face labor and danger.” Demosthenes, First Philippic.)

The earliest stage of modern capitalism arising between the 16th and 18th centuries is known as merchant capitalism and mercantilism. (For more on mercantilism see my Ethics Of Commerce entry.)

Mercantilism declined in Britain in mid-eighteenth century when a new group of economists led by Adam Smith challenged the basic mercantilist doctrine that the amount of the world’s wealth remained constant and that the state could only increase its wealth at the expense of another state. However in less developed economies, such as Prussia and Russia, mercantilism still continued to find favor. (I’ll need to examine this claim regarding Russian mercantilism in other sources and either write a substantial commentary or drop the subject altogether. As of now, there is nothing particularly interesting in this narrative, but I will keep it here just in case, until the question is resolved either way.)

The mid-eighteenth century gave rise to industrial capitalism, made possible by the accumulation of vast amounts of capital under the merchant phase of capitalism and its investment in machinery. It marked the development of the factory system of manufacturing, characterized by a complex division of labor between and within work process and the routinization of work tasks; and finally established the global domination of the capitalist mode of production.

The rise of industrial capitalism was also associated with the end of mercantilism. Mid- to late-nineteenth-century Britain is widely regarded as a classic case of laissez-faire capitalism supplanting mercantilism in the 1840s. Following Smith and Ricardo, Britain embraced liberalism, promoting competition and market economy.

So far, so good. Industrial capitalism, related to the Industrial Revolution as a chicken to an egg, must have been an all-right thing. The trouble with capitalism was not what they did with the machines, but what they did with the money. Noam Chomsky, although referring to a much later event, puts his finger on the right spot, when he finds the origin of today’s catastrophic degeneration of the international capitalist system in the murky waters of financial machinations getting out of the Bretton-Woods control. So, here we are, say welcome to the gravedigger of all capitalism, the wonderful Mr. Hyde, or, officially, finance capitalism.

Finance capitalism and monopoly capitalism. In the late 19th century, control and direction of large areas of industry came into the hands of financiers. This period is defined as “finance capitalism,” characterized by a subordination of production to accumulation of money profits in a financial system. Major features of capitalism in this period include the establishment of huge industrial cartels or monopolies; the ownership and management of industry by financiers divorced from production processes, and the development of a complex system of banking, an equity market, and corporate holdings of capital through stock ownership. Increasingly, large industries and land became the subject of profit and loss by financial speculators.

Late 19^th and early 20^th century capitalism is also described as an era of “monopoly capitalism,” marked by the shift from laissez-faire to capital concentration into large monopolistic or oligopolistic holdings by banks and financiers, and marked by the growth of large corporations and a division of labor, separating shareholders, owners, and managers.

By the last quarter of the 19^th century, the emergence of large industrial trusts had provoked legislation in the United States to reduce the monopolistic tendencies of the period. The federal government was playing a gradually larger role in passing antitrust laws and regulation of industrial standards for key industries of special public concern. By the end of the 19th century, economic depressions and boom and bust business cycles had become a recurring problem. In particular the Long Depression of the 1870’s and 1880’s and the Great Depression of the 1930’s affected almost the entire capitalist world, and generated discussion about capitalism’s long-term survival prospects. During 1930’s Marxist commentators often raised the possibility of capitalism’s decline or demise, often in contrast to the ability of the Soviet Union to avoid suffering the effects of the global depression. (Aha! It was the bagman unchained who had caused the depressions, and forced the hand of the government, whose interference was to defeat the capitalist dream.)

Capitalism after the Great Depression. The economic recovery of world’ s leading capitalist economies in the wake of the Great Depression and World War Two, accompanied by rapid growth, eased the doomsday talk, as far as the future survival of capitalism was concerned. (Yes, and here is the catch:)

In the period following the global depression of the 1930’s, the state played an increasingly prominent role in the capitalist system throughout much of the world. In 1929, for example, total government expenditures in the United States, federal, state and local, amounted to less than one-tenth of GNP; from the 1970’s they amounted to around one-third. Similar increases were seen in all industrialized capitalist economies, some of which, such as in France, have reached even higher ratios of government expenditures to GNP than the United States. These economies have since been widely described as mixed economies.

In other words, capitalism as-such ceased to exist at that time, validating Chomsky’s assertion that there’s nothing remotely like capitalism in existence, that, to the extent there ever was, it had disappeared by the 1920s or ’30s.

Which in my book brings the history of capitalism to an end, and this short course with it.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXXX.

Margarita: Queen and the Revolution Concludes.

 

“Where would I find a loved one, like myself?..”

V. Mayakovsky. To Myself the Beloved…

“You alone are equal to me in height,

So stand side by side with me, eyebrow to eyebrow.”

V. Mayakovsky. Letter to Tatiana Yakovleva

 

Horror coming last in Mayakovsky’s Monstrous Funeral… Isn’t this like the last grand entrance of Woland at Satan’s Ball in Master and Margarita?

And here the real horror at Satan’s Ball starts. This is how Bulgakov conveys this horror, once again through the eyes of Margarita:

“Woland stopped, and instantly Azazello appeared in front of him with a platter in his hands, and on this platter Margarita saw a severed head of a man with knocked-out front teeth…”

Now the reader may begin to understand the words of Azazello, spoken by him to Margarita, as she was watching the “strange funeral” of the headless Berlioz:

“And the most important thing, it is unclear who needed this head and why.”

It turns out that Woland has the head.

“Mikhail Alexandrovich, --- Woland addressed the head in soft voice, and then the eyelids of the killed man lifted somewhat, and Margarita, shuddering, saw living, full of thought and suffering eyes. --- Everything has turned out the way it has been predicted, hasn’t it? --- Woland continued, looking into the eyes of the head.” [Much more about this in my chapter Cockroach, posted segment CIX: Littleman.]

Here I’d like to run ahead of myself somewhat into my surprising chapter The Bard, and note that not only did Bulgakov read fairytales, following A. S. Pushkin’s advice to Russian writers, but he also used them in his works.

The severed head of Berlioz, cut off by the woman-operator of a Moscow tram, brings to mind in Bulgakov the cut-off head of John the Baptist. This is why Bulgakov makes such a big emphasis on the fact that the tram driver was a woman.

“All of it has come to pass, hasn’t it?.. The head severed by a woman…” Woland tells to the dead head of Berlioz.

Meantime, what comes to my mind is the wonderful tale of A. S. Pushkin Ruslan and Lyudmila. There are certain similarities between these two works.

The Russian warrior-hero Ruslan, in his search for his abducted newlywed sweetheart, must fight and overcome the enormous, large as a hill, head of a previously slain giant, sitting guard over the magic sword with which alone it is possible to cut off the magic beard of the evil dwarf, who, out of envy, had treacherously killed his elder brother, the giant.

In both these works there is a dead man’s head which happens to be alive on its own, and just like Woland talks to the head of Berlioz, the warrior Ruslan talks to the severed head of the slain giant.

Pushkin’s genius is amazing. Not only did he write an original fairytale in verse about the struggle of love against the evil dwarf, but he also evoked the interest in this poem in six songs of the great Russian composer-trailblazer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, famous for his first Russian opera Ivan Susanin (also known as A Life for the Tsar) about the struggle of the Russian people against a Polish invasion and occupation, crowned by a great Russian victory and the establishment of the Romanov Dynasty, which lasted for three hundred years.

Incidentally, the number 300 is by now well-known to the readers of Master and Margarita, considering that M. A. Bulgakov mentions it twice, as I have pointed it out earlier in this chapter.

In the aftermath of the huge success of the first Russian opera, one had to expect from its creator a fearless musical experimentation. No wonder that up to this day M. I. Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila remains a one-of-a-kind revolutionary endeavor in world music.

Glinka was so much inspired by Pushkin’s fairytale that he could finish it successfully despite the sudden premature death of Pushkin who had promised the composer a wholehearted cooperation on the libretto. The whole world knows Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila for its virtuosic overture, one of the favorite and challenging musical numbers performed by every major orchestra in the world.

One must not fail to mention that this great musical event took place in Russia in 1842, that is, 34 years before Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle (1876). As for Pushkin’s fairytale itself, it was first published in 1820.

The revolutionary poet V. V. Mayakovsky used Ruslan and Lyudmila in his message to a Russian (sic!) woman in Paris, whom he had taken a liking to. A. S. Pushkin can already be felt in the title of Mayakovsky’s poem: A Letter to Tatiana Yakovleva. This time, however, it is Eugene [V. V. Mayakovsky] who is writing a love letter to Tatiana. We have a second proof of the fact that this poem is connected to Pushkin’s poetry, namely, to his fairytale Ruslan and Lyudmila, in the following lines of  Mayakovsky:

“You alone are equal to me in height,

So stand side by side with me, eyebrow to eyebrow.”

And in Pushkin we have:

“Lyudmila started turning the hat around;

Down to her eyebrows, straight, and tilted to a side,

And then she put it on backwards…”

It is most interesting to observe how in A. S. Pushkin the pointed cap (“kolpak”) of the evil dwarf who had abducted the poor prisoner-princess, turns into a “hat” for the princess who knows how to stand up for herself, making her invisible.

In other words, the ‘fool’s’ cap of the dwarf points to his stupidity, whereas the hat of the princess reveals to us her cleverness.

In Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, for some reason, everything is the other way round. Bulgakov endows master with a “shapochka” (a little hat) already in his first meeting with Ivan (that is, during master’s first appearance in the novel). And then, contrarily, he replaces the little hat with a “kolpak” when, having said farewell to Woland, master and Margarita are headed toward their final destination: Rest.

So far, I am not sure what Bulgakov wishes to say by this. Perhaps it is the fact that they never asked Woland to join his cavalcade…

Or perhaps, Bulgakov may have used V. V. Mayakovsky’s striking metaphor here:

“All you people are just bells

On God’s kolpak…”

But this will be another story in my future chapter Margarita Beyond Good and Evil.

The End.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXXIX.

Margarita: Queen and the Revolution Continues.

 

“Had you loved like I do,

You would have killed love…”

V. Mayakovsky. From the Play Vladimir Mayakovsky.

 

Waking up from her “prophetic” dream, Margarita had “a premonition that something was about to happen today, at last. Having had this premonition, she started warming it up and nurturing it in her soul…”

Sitting in solitude on the familiar bench under the Kremlin Wall, Margarita was again “saddened and dispirited. But right then, suddenly, that same wave of anticipation and excitement which she had experienced in the morning, jolted her chest.”

Having remembered her morning “premonition,” Margarita received reassurance: “Yes, it is going to happen!”

She is only a few moments away from Azazello appearing on the scene.

Having seated his Margarita under the Kremlin Wall, Bulgakov definitely likens his heroine to V. V. Mayakovsky’s “woman with a banner, bowing over those who lay down under the wall.”

And indeed, while sitting on the bench, Margarita watches the funeral procession for the headless Berlioz. Although Berlioz did not lose his head on the executioner’s block at the Lobnoye Mesto, on Red Square, the funeral procession goes by the Lobnoye Mesto.

Even in her condition, even having no idea whose funeral that is, Margarita realizes that it is “a strange funeral.”

The point is that rumors of the stolen head of Berlioz cut off by a tram were circulating all around Moscow. “Even from a distance, Margarita was able to see that the faces of the people in the funeral vehicle… were somewhat strangely at a loss… Equally confused were the faces of those on foot, who, numbering approximately three hundred (sic!), were following the catafalque…”

This funeral for the headless Berlioz is a godsend for the researcher. To begin with, already in the tragedy [play] Vladimir Mayakovsky the poet not only introduces a “headless man,” but he shows how this idea has come to him already in the Prologue to the play.

Saying in the opening of the Prologue that he “may just as well be the last poet,” Mayakovsky, offering his “soul on a platter,” accuses mankind:

“In your souls, a slave [sic!] has been kissed up.”

Insisting that “I am fearless,” Mayakovsky makes an offer to humanity, to the effect that he was going to open, “with words as plain as mooing,-- our new souls.” And then, having done his good deed, V. V. Mayakovsky, having given to humanity a “tongue native to all peoples” and “limping with his little soul” [most probably because he has crumbled his enormous soul, so that everybody can have their share], intends to “leave for my railway platform with holes where the stars used to be, along the worn-out domes.”

So, what is Mayakovsky going to do after performing his “good deed”?

“I am flying, all bright, in robes of laziness,

To the soft bed of genuine manure…”

“…And with a soft kissing of the [railroad] sleepers’ knees,

The wheel of the locomotive will embrace my neck.”

Hence, Woland, cutting off Berlioz’s head by means of a tram, gives us another indication that Woland’s prototype is Vladimir Mayakovsky…

So, here we have the number 300 again. [Bulgakov’s “Nonsense! In another 300 years it will go away!” in Master and Margarita is taken from Mayakovsky’s “…And having considered the lasting effect of my poems, please recalculate my income, spreading it over 3oo years!” in A Conversation With a Financial Inspector About Poetry.]

Here is also the “slave.” [“So, what did He {Yeshua} ask you to tell me, slave?” The idea is taken from Mayakovsky’s tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky.]

Here is also the train. [“Somewhere in the distance, for some reason greatly perturbing her heart, a train was puffing along. Margarita soon saw it. It was crawling slowly, like a caterpillar, scattering sparks into the air.” The idea is again taken from Mayakovsky’s tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky. “The wheel of the locomotive will embrace my neck.”]

As we see, all roads lead to V. V. Mayakovsky’s poetry.

Now, the idea of the “bright queen” in Master and Margarita. [“Oi, do forgive me magnanimously, Bright Queen…”] This is how Koroviev [alias A. S. Pushkin] calls Margarita. This idea also proceeds from Mayakovsky’s tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky, where Mayakovsky associates it, in his Prologue to the tragedy, with the word “fearless.” (“I am flying, all bright…”)

Here we also have the theft of Berlioz’s severed head in Master and Margarita, which once again leads us to Mayakovsky’s 1913 tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky, who introduces alongside “a man without an eye and a leg,” “a man without an ear,” and also “a man without a head.”

However, I could not find Annushka-the-Plague in Mayakovsky’s poetry. He liked “silent” women, perhaps because he liked to speak and explain all by himself. Whatever anybody says, a poet is “a being of a different dimension.” Thus, in his tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky, he makes up his list of Dramatis Personae putting himself first: “Vladimir Mayakovsky. (Poet of 20-25 years of age.)” Next after him is named “His [that is Mayakovsky’s] Female Acquaintance, 2-3 sazhens [4-6 meters in height]. (Does not talk. [sic!])”

Although Bulgakov does not put Annushka-the-Plague among the crowd of mourners in Berlioz’s funeral procession, he still shows us a similar “citizen” “in the left rear corner of the motorized catafalque. The fat cheeks of this citizen were as though pumped up from the inside… with some kind of piquant secret, in her puffy eyes played ambiguous little fires…”

Bulgakov has a field day describing that funeral, which cannot be explained by his animosity toward Berlioz.

“…It seemed that any time now, the citizen, no longer able to restrain herself, would wink at the deceased, and say: Have you ever seen anything like this? Veritable mystique!”

…The reader has obviously noticed the fact that Bulgakov’s character in Master and Margarita does not actually speak, same as V. V. Mayakovsky’s “Female Acquaintance” in the tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky, who does not speak either.

But the funeral itself comes to Bulgakov from another Mayakovsky poem, namely The Monstrous Funeral, written in 1915. The reader is already familiar with this poem because it is precisely the poem which explains to us why Woland is celibate. (See my chapter Woland Identity, posting CXCII.)

Out of this poem, Bulgakov takes several ideas for Master and Margarita, including the “secret” of the funeral, which Margarita watches from a distance, sitting on a bench under the Kremlin Wall.

In Bulgakov, the secret is that the corpse is headless. He writes:

“Horribly skillfully stolen it was. Such a huge scandal!”

And he immediately explains that it was stolen because someone must have needed that head:

“And the most important thing, it is unclear who needed this head and why.”

The word “horror” is also present in Mayakovsky’s Monstrous Funeral.

It’s just that, like a real gentleman, Horror opens the door and lets everyone pass before him.

First, the secret of the funeral is revealed:

“Suddenly from the coffin sprang a grimace,

Thereafter, a scream ---

They are burying the deceased laughter!”

In V. V. Mayakovsky’s funeral procession, the participants are:

1.      “The white-haired mother of the deceased laughter… weeping, the old woman life.’

2.      Also, “the large, big-nosed, weeping, Armenian joke.”

3.      “And behind him, stripped and shorn, squealing, ran the witticism,” not knowing where to find shelter, once laughter was dead.

4.      Then, “great hosts of semi-smiles and smiles.”

5.      And only then, closing the Monstrous Funeral like a real administrator and organizer, was Horror itself. “And, anon, through their soaking-wet ranks... entered Horror, all in funeral march.”

To be continued…