There was a time when the New Statesman affected Government policy. The Spectator was a place where elderly adolescents like Christopher Booker discovered Jung as the first step to understanding Heidegger and unleashing their inner Nazi.
Back then Amartya Sen looked like he might be good at Econ- Arrow rated him- and Philosophy- Rawls quoted him- because people hadn't realized that Arrow's Econ depends on the existence of an ubiquitous coordinating mechanism such that Language would not be necessary. Instead of saying 'Congrats on getting ass-raped by all the snobs at the party to which you didn't invite me' you could buy and instantaneously have delivered a Hallmark card with that message and an appropriate illustration of your friend ruefully applying a soothing ointment to his prolapsed rectum. Rawls, on the other hand, wrote stupid shite because nobody told him that even people 'behind the veil of ignorance' would know that the way to deal with risk is to buy insurance. It is isn't to agree to a crude type of Marxist redistribution.
With the Spectator's ex-editor now more firmly in the saddle at Number Ten, the New Statesman is trying to reverse 40 years of increasing irrelevance by going back to the Seventies. It's current issue carries an interview with
Amartya Sen:
who says
“Learning is always an act of imagination”
presumably because that is what the ignorant imagine must be the case so as to talk bollocks. By contrast, Knowledge has to verify stuff.
The philosopher and Nobel Prize winner on identity,
he thinks we have lots of them but we don't really unless we can actually do astral projection and occupy many bodies at the same time
decolonisation
which happened when the dude as in short pants
and how to change the world.
Coz New Statesman readers can really do that.
The history of economics owes many of its greatest contributions to the philosophers.
Just as the history of a meadow owes much to the cows that take big dumps on it.
Like Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx and Friedrich von Hayek, Amartya Sen,
is a White man seeking to advance the interests of White people like himself
who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998, has a formidable reputation both as a world authority on development,
an authority on how to prevent it happening by wasting resources on a pointless bureaucracy. Development happens by mimesis- imitation- not third rate mathematical calculations or endless virtue signalling.
welfare and famine,
Sen, uniquely, comes from a place where, during his life time, the the transition to Democracy was responsible, not once but twice, for massive excess mortality after a food availability deficit. Naturally, he argued that Democracy has a magic power to prevent famine though, in East Bengal, the reverse was the case.
and as a distinguished theorist and moral philosopher. Born in Bengal in 1933, Sen’s life has been one of border-crossings – geographic and intellectual – as well as the rejection of narrow identities.
His people were chased out of East Bengal because they weren't Muslim. He had to leave India because he ran off with his best friend's wife. He left the UK for the US because salaries are higher there. Sen's identity may be narrow, but it is well rewarded.
He is, as he once put it:
“An Asian, an Indian citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or Great Britain resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskritist,
who thinks the Sanskrit word 'niti' means 'justice' rather than policy.
a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a non-religious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin, a non-believer in an afterlife, and also, if the question is asked, a non-believer in before-life. This is just a small sample of diverse categories. There are a number of other categories which can inform and engage me.”
No. These are predicates Sen has used about himself. None are 'categories'- i.e. pure concepts of the understanding which exist prior to experience. Sen is ignorant of philosophy.
Home in the World (2021) is a memoir of an intellectual life, one that trades inner revelation for sharp scholarly observation and social insight.
It is recycled from other recycled shite.
Humbly recounting his upbringing and then his career as a young academic, the book charts Sen’s peregrinations through the key imperial quarters – India, Burma, Cambridge – as well as offering elegant disquisitions on those thinkers who helped shape his own work and world-view.
So, the same old warmed up sick.
Amartya Sen recently spoke from his home in Cambridge Massachusetts to the New Statesman’s ideas editor, Gavin Jacobson.
Gavin Jacobson: One of the most enjoyable parts of your memoir Home in the World is the way in which your intellectual life has been about breaking down the divisions between academic disciplines. Why do you think that is so important and do you think that your early background in the sciences helped prepare you for working on philosophical problems?
Sen did not breakdown any such barriers. He ploughed sterile furrows.
Amartya Sen: I think you are right in thinking that my early involvement in the sciences has been helpful for my interest in philosophical issues, particularly in epistemology.
Sen had no involvement in Science. His undergrad degree was in Econ. So was his second undergrad degree. So was his PhD. It should be remembered that Indian high schools taught up to the 'O' level standard. This means BoJo too had an early involvement with the sciences as did Trump and Amy Winehouse.
In the 1930's, Econ engaged in a foolish methodenstreit which culminated in the utterly pointless triumph of 'revealed preference'. Sen has spent his career arguing the toss in this regard. But since he was shit at policy prescription this type of 'Epistemology' was the safest playpen to let him shit all over.
In an odd way, the sciences also helped me to think a bit more about ethics.
Gravitation should be nicer. Why aren't more Quarks queer? Is it because of homophobia?
It has been important to be able to question the false distinctions that are often made, generating unnecessary hostilities.
This guy is very very hostile to everybody who isn't constantly praising him.
It is hard to decide what has been helpful, since one’s earlier knowledge, to the extent one can be sure of it, tends to be so merged together with one’s contemporary understanding.
Stuff that has been helpful is embedded in cool new tech or mechanisms like Uber or Ebay which makes our lives soooo much better. Maths has helped a lot there. Amartya was mathsy but his stuff was shit.
GJ: Another key feature that seems to define your life is the breaking down of the division between thinking and acting, between ideas and praxis.
Rothbard's Law says that Economists specialize in what they worst at. This allows them to go on saying the same thing year after year, decade after decade, so as to become a commodity on a globalized market for paranoid shite.
This seems to hark back to earlier conceptions of philosophy, embodied by Rabindranath Tagore
who did useful stuff for his own people
but most famously associated with Marx’s adage that the point “isn’t to interpret the world, but to change it”.
Sen helped change Econ from a prestigious discipline, at least in India, into a dumping ground for IIT burnouts.
Do you think intellectuals and philosophers today have forgotten the art of converting theory into practice?
Which fuckers converted theory into practice? Lenin? Who the fuck wants a repetition of that sort of praxis? Apparently Putin has some cockamamie theory of 'passionarity'. He is converting it into practice and getting his ass kicked.
And if so, do you think that retreat into pure contemplation has helped enable the various political and social crises we’re now facing?
The New Statesman may or may not have retreated into 'pure contemplation'. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. It can't enable us to face shit.
AS: We do live in a world that values actions as well as contemplation.
No. We live in a world that values smart decisions. A guy contemplating shitting on the sidewalk and a guy who actually completes the action of shitting on that sidewalk are not greatly valued.
And that combination is certainly important as you are rightly pointing out. Karl Marx was indeed emphatic on the need to combine the two.
in a manner that fucked up Society- sure.
But it is important to recognise how much of a theorist Marx remained even when he was involved with assessing the types of action we needed.
Why? It is obvious that Marx couldn't assess 'needful' actions because he was aware of none- at least none he approved of. Theoretical assessment is the sort of assessing you can do with respect to stuff which don't fucking exist. Thus my ranking of super-models on the basis of their ability to make me happy in bed is of a purely speculative and theoretical kind.
For example, in the “Critique of the Gotha Programme” (1891), in which he is very critical of the German Workers’ Party (SDAP), Marx detects in the writings of the SDAP a confusion between payment according to work and that according to need.
He says 'to each according to his contribution' till scarcity disappears. The Chinese communist party justified their reforms in the Eighties on this basis. However, unlike Gorby, they didn't surrender residuary control rights over the economy thus causing a scissors crisis and the collapse of the Soviet Union. One reason for this is that China couldn't rely on oil & gas exports on open markets.
Was Marx right? No. Knightian Uncertainty obtains. The regret minimizing course is for Income to be contribution less sensible hedges against various contingencies- including that of the ruling Party turning as stupid and evil as Putin.
He also emphasises the importance of “nature” in production (not just labour and capital), and particularly on the need to see distinctly each of the different identities any person contingently has.
Marx wrote-
First part of the paragraph: "Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture." Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.
GJ: Tagore looms large in the memoir, and although he is one of the most important thinkers in the history of philosophy
Fuck off! The guy was a big bearded cretin. Why is the New Statesman pretending otherwise? Is it coz Tagore was bleck?
he is perhaps not as well known in the West as he should be.
He is known as a deeply boring cunt wherever he is known.
Do you think the way we teach the history of philosophy has obscured thinkers from the non-Western world?
Only utter imbeciles study the 'history of philosophy' anywhere the thing is taught- because the teachers are obviously utter nincompoops.
If so, do you think university curriculums need “decolonising”?
Tagore's Shantiniketan was plenty 'de-colonised' but then it turned into a Central University. Bengal has proved that decolonizing stuff tends to mean a fall in standards and reduced life-chances for the decolonized.
AS: The need for “decolonising” is certainly important in our general understanding of the world, and also (as you say) in university curriculums, but this has to be a two-way relationship.
I have a selfish reason for opposing decolonization. Its logical culmination would involve the reversal of population movements from colonies and ex-colonies to the metropole.
I am not sure I have done it very well in my own work, but it is a concern that has been present in my mind.
Sen has done the reverse of what Gandhi, Tilak, Tagore etc did by seeking to explain the Bhagvad Gita entirely in terms of Western philosophy that too of a purely utilitarian type.
GJ: I want to turn now briefly to the situation in India. What is your view of the Modi administration, especially its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic?
Sen will be rewarded by Mamta- who rules his State with an iron fist- for bad mouthing Modi. He is too smart to criticize the administration in West Bengal because they he himself will be targeted by the thugs who rule the roost there.
Do you believe that the idea of inclusiveness and unity championed by Tagore can withstand the current ascendency of Hindu nationalism?
Tagore warned that the Muslims would drive the Hindus out of Sen's own East Bengal. It was a bad idea to get rid of the British. If Hindu nationalism did not exist there would have been no where for Sen's people to run to.
AS: I am afraid I think Narendra Modi’s record as a political or administrative leader of India has been a big disappointment. The reasons for his failure are not hard to see.
In the sense that the reason for Bill Gates's failure to make any money are not hard to see.
First of all, his mode of thinking is strictly sectarian, focusing on a very narrow version of Hinduism,
It is broad enough to appeal to all Hindus- who represent over 80 percent of the population.
and no less importantly entertaining a deep-rooted hostility against Muslims.
Though it was America, where Sen lives, which was responsible for the death of millions of Muslims in its soi disant War against Terror.
It is hard to think that in a country where Hindus and Muslims have lived very well together over hundreds of years
That was the case of the Bangladesh Sen's people have fled only to be followed by those lower down the socio-economic scale. Parts of Mamta's West Bengal are becoming Muslim majority. That is the reason the BJP is now the main opposition there.
and who have both welcomed and cheered India’s secular constitution, Modi can, at will, bestow certain privileges (including in matters of citizenship) to the Hindus,
No. It was in 1948 that a law was passed denying Muslims and only Muslims the right to return to India to claim citizenship and property. Non-Muslims from Pakistan were given citizenship.
and arbitrarily deny them to Muslims.
Muslim refugees from Pakistan can be given refuge. The problem is that the Indian Muslims put a price on their head so they have to run away again. That's what happened to Dr. Taslima Nasrin.
But on top of that, Modi’s inclination to help the rich and not feel particularly sympathetic to the very poor is also a huge handicap.
Why not simply say that he snatches little babies from their mothers and devours them while laughing maniacally? Sen has nothing for the 'very poor'. He has pretended to care about them so as to gain a 'Mother Theresa' type status.
When, in four hours’ notice, Modi produced his version of a “lock-up” in response to the spread of Covid, he apologised to people with nice homes, saying that he was sad to curtail their freedom of movement, but he overlooked the severe handicap of people without a decent home to live in or work from.
If a lockdown had not had immediate effect, there would have been large population movements which it would have been impossible to stop. You can read Modi's speech here. Sen is lying. Modi told the affluent class to show empathy and not deduct salary of employees and payments to others normally dependent on them. The States were supposed to make provision for migrant workers who lived in cramped conditions. Kerala did manage this but most states did not.
The poor working people very often lacked even a tiny shelter to work from, or to do a job from to earn an income (which they very often lacked). They could not also travel back to their original home location when they were far away from there as migrant labour. You are absolutely right that this is very far removed from the idea of inclusiveness and unity championed by thinkers like Tagore and also, in these respects, other leaders like Mahatma Gandhi.
Sen thinks ideas have magical powers. Go on talking about 'inclusiveness' and rich people will build houses for every poor person they can see. Mention 'unity' often enough and suddenly the entire population will turn into one single physical body.
GJ: Given the political direction India has taken in the last few years, does that make you think differently about the country’s founding and the nature of its constitution?
Sen does not understand that the constitution embraced the notion of 'autochthony'- i.e. it deemed all extant laws as indigenous and of ancient origin. Yet the nutter keeps talking of 'colonial' laws.
AS: This is a very interesting question, and we have to think about the history of India
why not the history of Bangladesh- which is where Sen is from?
and, as you say, the nature of its constitution. India has of course been a country with divisions between different castes,
Sen's people did not have to run away from Bangladesh because they were of a different caste.
and of course between the rich and the poor. The constitution, led by Dr BR Ambedkar [who headed the committee drafting the constitution after Indian independence in 1947], did pay special attention to inequality and made attempts to introduce various provisions of affirmative actions. But the connection between economic inequality and social divisions did not get the kind of attention it could have.
If only the Constitution had abolished poverty and gravity then everybody would be affluent and, what's more, could fly around rather than having to take the train.
This would not have mattered so much had Indian history not been as fragmented and divisive for centuries, but while the constitution was basically fine on its own, it did not go far enough with remedial arrangements (also, despite the historical presence in India of thoughts directed towards the removal of inequality, the politics of Hindu revival has tended to take the shape of positively and supportively focusing on divisions of caste, privilege and religion).
Tagore was part of that Hindu revival along with Swami Vivekananda. So was Mahatma Gandhi. Motilal Nehru was a founding member of the Hindu Mahasabha. Sen's own grandfather and father identified as Hindus and supported Hindu, not Muslim, political leaders. His people fled to India because it was a Hindu nation where they would be protected. Sen himself was perfectly happy living in America even though that country launched a bloody war of revenge against a particular strain of Islamic militancy.
Tagore did his best to focus on equity and the spirit of solidarity in Indian historical thinking, but that was not enough to subdue the ancestry of inequality and its revival in Hindu politics in the shape that modern India acquired over time.
But 'ancestry of inequality' had nothing to do with Sen's people being killed or having to run away from their ancestral homeland. Tagore was a sensible chap who told the Hindu Bengalis that they should rest content with British rule. Otherwise they'd be chased out of Burma and Bangladesh and perhaps West Bengal and Assam and so forth as the Muslims prevailed. Indeed, Tagore's grandfather had lobbied Westminster to lift restrictions on White migration into Bengal precisely because only the Brits could defend the Hindus against the Muslims.
GJ: In the memoir you write about your time in Burma. What’s your view on what happened to Aung Suu Kyi’s leadership?
What leadership? Obama patted her on the head and promised loads of money. That money failed to materialize. Some Rohingyas from Saudi Arabia got Rohingya Muslims to kill Hindus- which was fine- but then they went on to attack the police and the army. Then they got stomped. Suu Kyi, a Buddhist Nationalist like her dad, took a strong line against the separatists and thus lost Western support. However it wasn't till the US decided to Magnitsky senior Army officers that she lost her political role. This is a story about America propping up a beautiful lady but then dropping her and handing the place to China because...urm...American foreign policy, as Obama said, consists of doing stupid shit. Now the Americans have Magnistskied some Bangladeshi officials thus pushing that country into China's camp. Sri Lanka and Pakistan were lost long ago. Sen & Co are trying to get the US to give up on India as well. Oddly, the Chinese aren't paying him for this. They don't need to. Anti-nationalism is bred in his bone.
Is she a cautionary tale about the fragility of liberal ideals against the cold realism of politics? And what are your thoughts on the coup d’état that took place there in February 2021?
How the fuck would that lady ever come by 'liberal ideas'? There would be no Myanmar if liberal ideas prevailed there. It was hoped that her Buddhism would undercut Christian leadership of some separatist movements.
AS: Suu Kyi, whom I knew first in Delhi and then in Oxford, is a disappointment to me since she seemed like such a fearless leader
A fearless leader does not stay away from her country. She only returned when invited to do so by the Army. But she was shit at politics. Then the Americans propped her up but America has a habit of destroying those they pick up.
of all Burmese people, using her privileged ancestry to try to build an independent and free collective of people.
He brother used that privileged ancestry to get a big pay-off from the military. Suu Kyi was more ambitious. But Obama's support was the kiss of death. She should have been getting cozy with Chairman Xi. Sihanouk was restored to the Cambodian throne, his son now rules that country, because he chose China and kept America at a distance.
I don’t think her downfall reflects “the fragility of liberal ideals against the cold realism of politics”.
Liberalism is perfectly comfortable with population exchange on the basis of religion. Indeed, it prevailed where much more extensive ethnic cleansing occurred.
At least I don’t believe so. The success of a political leader facing a ruthless enemy
e.g Zelenskyy
depends
on killing that enemy and then killing some more of that enemy. This involves getting nice shiny guns from the enemies of that enemy. But mainly it involves killing the enemy whenever and wherever possible.
both on courage and self-sacrifice, but also on the ability to undertake far-reaching political analysis.
If Zelenskyy, a comedian by profession, had done 'far-reaching political analysis' he'd have taken his family and made a run for it. This is a guy whose entire family Putin's picked goons are targeting. His wife knows this. His kids know this. But so do the Ukrainian people. They are prepared to run the same risks. This is a levee en masse Europe has not seen since the French Revolution (actually, this one is much bigger).
It is not surprising that like many people in Burma, Suu Kyi did not fully grasp how integrated the Rohingya community was in Burma
it wasn't integrated. Those guys wanted to join Pakistan in 1948. Like other Indic origin people- most of whom were chased out during the Sixties, they weren't accepted by the Burmese.
and she tolerated – and supported – big inequalities.
only in the same sense that Sen tolerates and supports big inequalities.
The military was in effect smarter than she was and decided to surround Burmese thinking with a strong cultivation of racist history.
No. The military used guns to shoot people. It didn't give a shit about history or philosophy or other stuff that only Professors think matters.
They were able to produce a nasty but very powerful racist mentality across the country aimed against the Muslim Rohingyas.
Very true. After 9/11 Americans wanted to cuddle and kiss Osama bin Laden. Then the American military produced a nasty but very powerful racist mentality across the country aimed against the Muslim Al Qaeda. The question is, why are Ivy League professors like Sen not able to produce a very powerful anti-racist mentality? Sen says the Myanmar army- which is good at killing people but which is not known for its cognitive sophistication- was smarter than his highly educated pal. Why does attending Oxbridge make you stupider than a bunch of guys who spent their time shooting insurgents in the jungle?
By the time Suu Kyi would have considered encountering it,
1988?
it was just too late, with a propaganda-driven population lacking in sympathy for the minority group of Rohingyas.
They had also lacked sympathy for other Indic groups most of whom had run away by the end of the Sixties. But then Bangladesh too got rid of most of its Hindus.
Once the propaganda had taken effect, Suu Kyi could not support Rohingyas without losing her standing among others in Burma, and without having weakened the sense of national solidarity, after her neglect not only of Rohingyas but also of other tribal groups.
Armed violence between Rohingyas and Muslims dates from the Japanese invasion. Had Aung San not switched sides, it is possible that the Brits would have transferred power to Muslims and Christians and Buddhist aristocrats. Burma might not have turned to shit- provided the Commies were massacred as they had been in Malaya and Indonesia. Otherwise, one way or another, the place was bound to go down the tubes.
It is not so much the fragility of liberal ideals but the weakness of a divided population that made it very hard for Suu Kyi to stand against the military,
But the population was only 'divided' because 'liberal ideas' aint just fragile, they are completely shit.
and when she was displaced recently she did not have the strength that could have helped her to take on the military.
America had dropped her. Then they Magnitskied senior Army generals. Myanmar had no choice but to go over entirely into the Chinese camp. Suu Kyi is an outward and visible symbol of America's irrevocable exit from the region.
GJ: Who are the living writers and thinkers that you read to make sense of the world?
i.e.- which fairy tales did you read to turn you into such a cretin?
AS: There are a great many people whose writings illuminate and inspire me. They vary from literary writers like the South African writer Nadine Gordimer
who wouldn't have been South African if the Whites hadn't had lots of guns and the support of Uncle Sam
to political thinkers of various persuasions. I wish I could find one great writer who could guide my thinking comprehensively, but unfortunately for me
even more unfortunately for his acolytes
the wisdom that I need has to come from different sources, and sometimes different countries.
on planets in galaxies far far away.
I also have a strong need for thought experiments. For example, I would like to understand how Nelson Mandela would have approached divisions within Europe or between communities in America.
Sooooo random! Mandela approached divisions within Africa the same way other African Heads of State did.
It is useful for me to think about actual leaders in circumstances they did not in fact face. I don’t know whether I make a mistake in going into such thought experiments, but learning for me is always closely related to imagining.
Nothing wrong with gedanken or counter-factual imaginings provided you have a good Structural Causal Model. That is what Sen lacks. Essentially his approach is theological. If we all pray hard enough, or virtue signal obnoxiously enough, injustice and inequality and nastiness will disappear. Zelenskyy could have taken his family to safety in Geneva or New York. He could be virtue signalling on our TV screens right now. But had he done so, Ukraine would have been lost to Putin's vicious hordes.
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