Evren Balta:
Let me start by asking what made the Western model so attractive, and why is it crumbling today?
Some western countries were increasing in size and security and prosperity. Thus they were attractive models for other countries which wanted to be stronger and richer and thus fare better in competition with their neighbors or with alternative elites within their own country. But the extent to which emulation was possible was severely constrained by endowments and preferences.
However, it is true to say that there was one moment in history when a particular 'Western model' became normative. This was after European Emperors had fucked up by going to war with each other. The death of Empires created modern nation states which, on paper, all looked similar. However, at the same time, a new 'Western' model- the Communist state- was created which in turn led to the creation of a new type of Fascist state. This meant that from 1945 onward there were Nation States which might look similar from the legal and constitutional point of view but which had very different economic regimes. This was a case of cutting your coat according to your cloth. Attraction didn't come into the picture.
Pankaj Mishra:
The model is currently deeply inadequate, since back then no one thought about if the model is politically or environmentally sustainable in the long run.
Mishra lives in London. He hasn't noticed that London has become more livable- there are no more 'pea-soup' fogs and there are plenty of fish in the river Thames- precisely because the 'model' has been changed to make it more politically and environmentally and economically sustainable.
The answer is that it is neither. What we are seeing now is that countries such as the United States and Britain are struggling with the pandemic, for instance, but countries such as China, South Korea, and Vietnam have done much better than the rich countries.
Why? The answer is that East Asia embraced social distancing long ago. Indeed, after the Spanish flu, the Japanese started wearing masks any time they came down with a cold.
The US and the UK- but also India- did not embrace social distancing. Indeed, Sweden- which took a 'herd immunity' approach- actually has more, not less, such behavior, at least among the indigenous population.
This is a story about preferences- not type of political regime.
What exactly is this achievement of the West, and why has it become so helpless suddenly today? What made the Western model so attractive is the success of imperialism, the invasion, occupation, and colonization of large parts of the world.
Nonsense! Spain and Portugal were great Imperial powers. But they weren't 'models' anyone wanted to emulate. Britain and Holland developed a type of mercantile Imperialism which increased the competitiveness of their Navies which in turn gave them more security from rapacious Catholic monarchs on the continent. But many other western countries took Adam Smith's advise and developed without Imperial possessions and the costly navies that would require.
Even countries that were not occupied believed that sovereignty was radically impaired, like China and Japan.
The Brits forced the Chinese to accept opium. They burned down the Summer Palace to get their point across. The Americans forced Japan to open up to international trade.
It became clear to them that in order to survive, they had to duplicate the Western model within their own countries. Japan did it, and so did Turkey.
Japan took a 'dual economy' approach- conserving a traditional sector while transferring resources to the modern sector. Three different things enabled Japan's rise
1) Compulsory education got a shot in the arm after Japan started winning wars against China and Russia. Boys were happy to get a bit of education which would make them better soldiers.
2) Rural girls were pushed into big factory dormitories. This kept down wages and permitted investment in R&D. By the Twenties, the Japanese were innovating in Textiles and other fields.
3) The Government launched new industries and then privatized them. Egypt had previously tried to industrialize through State controlled enterprises but this scheme backfired.
Japan's 'Westernization'- outside the military sphere- was distinctly Japanese because exposure to Western ideas was much less prevalent. Indeed, people like Herbert Spenser and Alfred Marshall constantly warned their intellectuals that they must find Japanese solutions to their own problems.
On the other hand, it must be said that after the War, Japanese industries eagerly learned from the Americans and improved on what they were taught. However, duality remained pervasive in their economy. That's why Japanese thinkers and writers in the Sixties considered that their country had only achieved superficial modernity.
China's rise is based on pure Tardean mimetics of East Asian 'tigers'. But those 'tigers' had to adopt 'export led growth' based on moving up the value chain because of existential economic and defense related threats.
What has happened in the past few years is that people have realized that the Western model is unattainable. This is huge progress, since it has affected much of intellectual and emotional life; so much of our political processes and economic processes have been shaped by that hope that we will get there one day. But now we have realized that there is nothing there to reach out to achieve.
This is sheer stupidity. Everyone can see that some Western countries have enviable quality of life. Thus everyone wants the same 'Subsidiarity based Tiebout sorting'-- i.e. different regions adopting their own fiscal policy mix and encouraging particular high value adding industries with large potential external economies of scope and scale. Indeed, this is what BoJo is promising his new ex-'Red Wall' voters.
Mishra is ignorant of this because he knows zero about either Western politics or economics. On the other hand he has read, but not understood, some Western literary fiction.
Evren Balta:
Two immediate questions came to my mind. The first one is about the role of intellectuals and ideas.
They exist for us to laugh at- though no doubt, like prostitutes, they have other uses.
The critics of the 19th century, such as Marx, saw the Western model as destructive and discussed it in the context of capitalism.
No. Marx saw the Eastern model was shit. The West would arrive at Socialism through Capitalism. Rosa Luxembourg and Lenin and so forth had some silly bee in their bonnet about Imperialism. But Marx had said the US was the most modern state. America didn't bother with Imperialism.
If you look at the critics of the model today, the debate is mostly normative and civilizational.
and occurs in empty rooms.
The most radical criticism is coming from extremist militant groups.
Till they get drone striked or just beaten to death.
Do you think this lack of substantial criticism coming from inside is one of the reasons for the current crisis ofthe Western model?
There is no crisis. There is the inconvenience of COVID. But if we were sensible and masked up and got our jabs then there would never have been much of a problem.
Pankaj Mishra
I think it is an important question, because we find ourselves intellectually helpless in many ways.
Mishra is intellectually helpless. So am I. Like Mishra, I didn't study STEM subjects. Nor did I make a lot of money. I was too lazy.
The critics of the Western model of expansion, acquisition, appropriation, capitalism, and imperialism are looking at it and thinking that it is not politically and environmentally sustainable.
The West gave up Imperialism long ago. They are all 'mixed economies' with a large Public sector. Mishra hasn't noticed.
Gandhi, for instance, also noticed that this model was not going to work.
But it did work. His stupid programs didn't. That is why India abandoned, khaddar, ahimsa, nai talim, and so forth.
Japan, as an example, had a calamitous experiment in imperialism, which came to an end with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But they still have an Emperor.
In the late 19th century, people had a broad realization that this model is deeply problematic as it is built on violence and dispossession.
But, by the mid Twentieth Century Colonial Empires were disappearing all over the place. Why mention the subject now? It is obvious that 'violence and dispossession' went up, not down, as Nation States replaced Empires.
The other place where such criticism can emerge is from the intellectual class and the educated class to which you and I belong.
The trouble is nobody thinks guys with shite degrees in non-STEM subjects are 'intellectual' or 'educated'. Maybe things are different in Turkey. I'm kidding. The Turks are sensible people and very good at Engineering and Sciencey stuff I don't understand. The whole world has heard of Dr. Ugur Sahin and Dr. Özlem Türeci, the couple who founded BioNTech. This Balta dude- who, I must say, looks quite ravishing with his long flowing hair- is not considered as being in the same league. I've just taken another look at Balta's picture. Am I turning gay?
Now, one reason why it does not emerge in quite the same way is that the cultural and intellectual hegemony of the West is much greater than it was in the late 19th century.
It is much less. Biden is saying China is America's rival. He promises to try to stop it overtaking the US.
What is more, Western ideologies and ideologies of capitalism have become hegemonic.
No. China's model is becoming hegemonic. Even in America, the talk is now of Corporate 'Social Responsibility'. To fight back against China, the West is likely to intervene in Board Rooms more and more openly. Capitalism is on the back foot.
Intellectuals in India, in Indonesia, and also Turkey all talk about the same thing in similar ways.
There are no intellectuals in India. There are Sciencey guys and there are rich guys and then there are worthless jhollawallah andolanjivis- or there would be if they hadn't already emigrated.
This is because they are part of a network.
Which is doomed. Turkish intellectuals may once have hoped that the Army would crush Islamism. Now they have woken up to reality.
The problem around the world is quite extraordinary. If an intellectual wants to make a living, you must become a mouthpiece for existing ideologies.
But uneducated Instagram stars do a better job and get paid more.
I think that the possibility of dissent in the intellectual world has been foreclosed.
Because intellectuals shunned smart people. There were plenty of Leftists who did good research. But their work was not promoted. Why? If merit is rewarded then people think merit matters. Intellectuals need to make sure that stupidity is rewarded so that people see that only ideology matters.
Another reason why thinking about such problems has not happened until the current crisis is that we kept on molding these ideas that we picked up from a Brooking’s Institution report, the Economist, or the Financial Times.
I may be lazy, but I pick up my ideas from papers published in Academic Journals. I might glance over an Economist or FT article only if I have no interest in the subject matter.
We never examined just how practical it is and whether it is even applicable to our respective situations.
So Mishra admits that he and this Balta dude are stupid and ignorant.
For instance, what does urbanization mean in the context of India?
It means getting rural girls into factory dormitories. The boys can work construction or do security. This will cause demographic transition. Then comes rural depopulation. This is the only sustainable way forward. Either it can happen under the Rule of Law or it can be done by local thugs who kill any official or NGO which tries to get in the way.
Is it even sustainable? The answer is obviously “no,” but we keep talking about it.
The thing was happening but was under-reported. The true number of migrants, as revealed during the lockdown, came as a shock to policy makers
We cannot stop because there is no incentive to challenge that. In that sense, intellectual life has become an industry that does not interrogate existing paradigms. This is something that we need to change.
Mishra is not aware that there is a new generation of Social Scientists at places like Azim Premji University who are doing good grass roots research. The sad thing is that they will soon become disillusioned and go back to parroting woke nonsense.
Evren Balta:
This reminds me of your criticism of modernizing elites in the beginning of the 20th century, who blindly copied certain ideas that were bound to fail.
The reverse was the case. Anti-modernizing elites had salience but sank without leaving much of a trace.
Mishra often quotes Lohia's condemnation of people like Nehru as 'a premature universalist, an imitator of superficial attainments of dominant civilizations, an inhabitant of the upper caste milieu without real contact with the people.” Lohia was against English education. But his biggest follower was Mulayam Singh Yadav who sent his son to study in Australia. Voters preferred the son to the father greatly to the old man's vexation. Still, Lohia would be happy now Modi rules the country. Hindi has prevailed over English.
I want to shift the conversation to the models that became successful in the non-Western world.
Models did not become successful. By the Sixties everybody understood that they were shit. Still, Tardean mimetics- i.e. imitating what more successful people are doing- continued to operate.
What if the failure is not coming from the Western model itself but rather from how we adapt it, issues of corruption, and a lack of strong institutional base for these societies?
By the Sixties, it was obvious that legislators like passing all sorts of crazy laws just for virtue signaling purposes. Thus 'models' were masturbatory merely. Corruption and weak institutions enabled Societies to 'grow by night'.
Could that be a reason for the crisis we are going through? More recently, with reference to the COVID crisis, you argue that the problem was not being able to create strong state institutions and an educated citizenry.
This is silly. State capacity doesn't matter if rulers have the same preferences as citizens and those preferences are for not bothering with face-masks and social distancing. Education doesn't matter. Agamben is highly educated but, like David Icke, he thinks COVID is a hoax.
In many cases, this was not because of the lack of capacity but an intentional choice of the elites.
Nope. Elites soon figured out that nobody wants to go to rural shitholes to teach or be a Doctor or whatever. Voters figured out that money spent on Schools and Public Health was money that would be stolen.
Therefore, maybe the collapse of the Western model was not just about blindly copying certain ideas, but it was also about ignoring the essential ones. Do you agree?
There was no model. There was legislative masturbation and, in India, Judicial activism from the Eighties onward of an essentially masturbatory type. NGOs and academics soon got in on the act. Everybody was virtue signaling like crazy while guys like Modi got elected because they concentrated on very basic 'booth management' and 'last mile delivery'
Pankaj Mishra
First of all, there is no historical evidence that supports the idea that the Western model is universally applicable.
Why not? Just change the parameters and any model can fit anything under the Sun.
When the West modernized, built up its industries and its administrative power, it was not at all democratic.
In some places, it was democratic according to prevailing ideas. This was certainly true of the US.
Most people such as women did not have the right to vote.
So what? Views were very different then. But that is perfectly compatible with Democracy.
England and the United States were not democracies when they embarked upon the project of nation-building and industrialization.
England became so while the US was so from the 1780s.
That is what made them so powerful.
England's 'nation-building' was completed in the Fifteenth Century. However, some nations failed because they were conquered or because of internecine conflict. Others, like Portugal, remained weak even if they had large Empires.
Once you move away from a certain kind of moralizing language that the Western model uses, then you will see a different reality—a reality of violent and bloody processes of state and institution building.
Reality is about stuff which really exists or which really happened. The reality of State formation and consolidation is that violence and bloodshed decreased and so the 'stationary bandit' got an increasing return for the service provided by his strong right arm. Of course, if he did crazy shit then he might himself lose his head.
Second, the Western model basically universalized through imperialism and colonialism, through destroying local capacities, local knowledge.
Nonsense! Imperialism conserves local capacity and fosters local knowledge so as to make a profit. By suppressing violent conflict, it permits increasing surpluses some of which can be repatriated.
Mishra was taught Hindi, not Urdu, at School. Why was this? The answer is that the British Raj fostered mother tongue instruction. Vernacular literatures displaced 'Classical' literatures thanks to the Brits.
There was no capacity to build all these institutions to begin with.
Nonsense! Areas that were colonized but not 'settled' (i.e. there was no demographic replacement) had pre-existing institutions though these may have been in abeyance because of conquest or civil war. Imperialism revived these institutions and added a 'Western' layer at the very top. Interestingly, the colonized decided that the Western layer was better and wanted it to be extended downward.
They had to accept the normative parts of the Western model—parts that the West ignored when building its own model.
This is nonsense. The West promoted the Rule of Law within its own territory. The Belgians may have been beastly in the Congo but were perfectly well behaved in Brussels.
Currently, we see that some other states are building large state capacities.
China had large state capacity when most Westerners were dying themselves blue with woad.
China has emerged from the pandemic and already restarted its economy due to its state capacity.
Taiwan did even better. Why? It's people are sensible.
In many ways, these states saw the whole Western model—liberalism, individualism, democracy—as hollow at different levels.
No. They saw that the West was cohesive in a manner that was as yet unattainable back home. The Bengali or the Chinese or the Afghan visitor saw that the British or the French were prepared to sacrifice their self-interest to defeat a common foe. Their civic life was marked by an attention to rules. Britishers of all classes would form, quite spontaneously, an orderly queue.
The great Bangladeshi leader- Mujib ur Rehman would tell his people, with a bluntness few Indian politicians were capable of- that they must learn civic responsibility. After the cyclone, British troops took on the task of burying the dead. The Bangladeshis would only do so for their own kith and kin. Their individualism was a great failing. Since then, the Bangladeshis have come together to tackle their own problems. Even their academics have assisted this by their own example and commitment. That is why Bangladesh has overtaken Pakistan and will soon overtake India- if it hasn't already done so.
If you embark on the adventure of modernity, then what South Korea and China did, even though violent and bloody, brought success.
Both attained success when they stopped doing stupid shit which involved bloodshed and violence. It is not commonly known that it was the corruption and criminality of the South Korean Government which caused the North- which has half the population- to invade.
They built powerful states with strong state capacity.
So did Saddam. But he did stupid shit. Not doing stupid shit is vital for success.
They created a system of social welfare, public health structures, and proper educational systems.
China and Korea were Confucian and thus there was a strong preference for education. Japan had much less of this but success in wars led the peasant to want his sons to be educated so they could join the Army and win booty for the Nation. However, South Korea was doing less for public health than parts of India during the Sixties and Seventies and even into the Eighties. Only in the Nineties did it follow the 'Social Democracy' model. China broke the 'iron rice bowl' to begin its rise. But its coercive birth-control and internal passport system were key to its success.
They did not necessarily copy the normative parts of the model.
What Mishra does not get is that 'normative' stuff can be copied merely 'normatively'- i.e. with nice words but no matching actions.
Mishra ends up saying what everybody was saying by the end of the Sixties- viz. fine words butter no parsnips. There are no 'Development' models. There is only mental masturbation. Still, if the Left can make mischief, it may be safer to keep your mouth shut or- if you can- emigrate.
This is where I think we need to examine all these ideas and assumptions that we have inherited.
Mishra emigrated. Whatever it was that he inherited- he ran away from it long ago.
The problem is that the West itself did not live up to those ideas in the past. Why should the burden fall upon the countries that are currently trying to achieve the Western model?
So, pi-jaw of the Amartya Sen or Pratap Bhanu Mehta stripe is utterly useless. Next time somebody starts talking about how we must impose sanctions on this country or boycott that country- tell them to shut the fuck up.
Evren Balta:
Branko Milanović recently argued that we are now alone with capitalism, and competition is between the two variants of capitalism: the liberal Western variant, which is collapsing, and the political capitalism of China, which is rising. Are we in between these two alternatives? What would happen if all the normative claims of capitalism are gone? Will we end up with Chinese model, which offers no substantial protection from state power? Isn’t the Western model, or its normative claims, a result of centuries of fighting as well—such as protection from arbitrary authority?
This is deeply silly. Milanovic & Balta know very well that lots of European countries didn't have either 'liberal' or 'State' Capitalism. They had authoritarianism with some populist features. Now that the EU has lost its illusions re 'ordoliberalism', countries will go back to being, more or less openly, what they always were. China is exceptional because it can really overtake the US. Putin's Russia is a more likely trajectory for much of the West.
Pankaj Mishra
That is a tragedy of modern history that we must recognize—which is that the so-called self-evident truths have only been realized for a minority.
Mishra ran away from India to London. He is happy now he is part of a minority. Thankfully, Priti Patel will chase away- or bite the face off- would be immigrants so he and me can recognize that the tragedy of modern history is shite going down far far away.
To make them available for the majority, we must
stop running away from shitholes.
rethink our whole political and economic systems.
But that would involve knowing a lot about Economics and Jurisprudence and so forth. Why not just write virtue signaling shite instead?
Unless we recognize this I do not know how we can move forward. You will either end up with the capitalism of the Western style, which offers protection only to a minority and claims falsely that protection is universal; or you end up with the Chinese model, which offers no protection.
Why not settle for the Indian model? Some will be able to get protection from the Courts though, no doubt, the country will teeter between a 'middle-income' and a 'low-income' trap.
Neither the Western model nor the Chinese model is appealing and attractive. It is generally an impasse, but it is not an unprecedented one.
Neither model is accessible for most people around the globe.
Evren Balta:
There is a growing demand among middle-class citizens of non-Western societies to acquire citizenship in the West. What they are seeking is not better material conditions. In fact, if they move to the West, their material conditions will probably get worse. What they seek is rule of law and stability, and the West still fares better in that regard. What do these individual aspirations tell us about the Western model?
They tell us that rights are only meaningful is they are associated, under a bond of law, with justiciable remedies of an incentive compatible type. The problem here is that some existing 'welfare' rights are not incentive compatible- i.e. the Government or other responsible body will renege on providing them just when people need help most. Look at the plight of the Greek pensioner who had to take a 'hair cut'. Still, there was a mechanism which forced their Government to toe the line. By contrast, Lebanon had no such mechanism. Many Lebanese want Macron to take over their country!
Pankaj Mishra
It is easy to generalize from these experiences. People from Myanmar, for instance, escape to India although the country is certainly not flourishing right now. For them, it is preferable to what they have back in Myanmar. You must consider the fact that their lives could be intolerable due to being part of the wrong ethnic minority, which leads to fear of death and inferior material circumstances. It is natural for them to seek another country where they will feel safer. Europe was hell for most of the early 20th century, but after that it created a better society in which law is generally respected. Of course, it will be attractive to many people who feel the absence of it elsewhere. But, I am not sure if that proves that the Western model is sustainable or what the Western model can achieve.
Yet Mishra lives in London. That suggests he thinks the 'Western model' is sustainable- provided Priti Patel can continue to bite the faces of undocumented migrants.
Evren Balta:
In your book Age of Anger, you argue that emotions play a huge role in contemporary politics. Was it always like that, or is it a new phenomenon? What role do emotions play in today’s world?
Emotions are 'Darwinian algorithms of the mind'. For Social Choice, they represent preference intensity. Sadly, they may be wholly strategic or just an end in themselves. Some people like being in a permanent state of righteous indignation. Sell them T-shirts on Ebay.
Pankaj Mishra
Emotions play a bigger role for individuals today, because they are more exposed to the outside world than before. The less you know about the world around you, the more control you have over it.
Aha! There speaks the U.P bhaiyya! Knowledge is Maya- a delusion. Those who know absolutely nothing control the world. Why vote for Rahul? He already has all power! That is his cunning. Let Modi do the work- world will continue to decline just as Rahul wishes. Truly this is Kali Yug- Age of Decline and Darkness!
This is the world that you can somehow manage and deal with.
While starving to death or dying of typhoid.
Now, social relations have become abstract, and that has happened dramatically over the last few decades.
Previously, Mishra Sahib would shout loudly at you to get away from his fine Brahminical body. Now such relations have become very abstract. Mishra Sahib has to go to London and talk to some Turkish dude with long flowing hair who- I confess- has turned me totally gay. This too is the fault of Erdogan.
(Evren Balta- whom I'm totes gay for)
You suddenly find yourself alone in this new area. You have no buffers, as well,
because Mishra Sahib is not beating you with his lathi
due to the way we process and receive information today. This results in much greater pressure on our minds and souls, and much more emotional intensity at the same time.
Information is very bad. If we get information, our mind and soul become poisoned. West is very evil for inflicting information on nice Brahmin boys from U.P.
This is a very underexplored subject that is not featured in our general discourse.
We should appoint an Ostrich as Minister of Education. It will show us how to stick our heads in the sand so as to avoid getting any information or knowledge or other such unclean mleccha inventions.
Sometimes it feels like there is just too much stimulus out there. Not to mention that there is a possibility that you are being triggered by something or someone millions of miles away as in the case of the United States and Twitter.
Millions of miles? Good to see Mishra was protected from learning Geography at school.
Evren Balta:
The radical challenges to Western modernity are coming from organizations like ISIS, which exhibits an extreme form of hyper-masculinity.
Whereas looking at Evren Balta's face makes me go all soft and gooey inside.
Might this be seen as another piece of evidence that the current crisis is a crisis of masculinity?
Professor Balta's picture is causing very big crisis of my masculinity. Perhaps it is a Sufi thing. The attraction I feel for Balta is purely spiritual and Platonic.
Pankaj Mishra
Yes, and at the same time we have movements reflecting that type of masculinity, ranging from the Jordan Peterson type to far-right militiamen such as Trump.
Trump is a militiaman. Who knew?
In this search for power, you become unassailable. But the nature of power is that the moment you feel closer to it, it slips away, and you start chasing it more and more.
No it isn't. The nature of power is that you get it and then use it to get more of it. The nature of Mishra's intelligence may be such that it slips away just as you think you are getting closer to it. Equally, it may not exist at all.
At the same time, you become vulnerable to fantasies like Donald Trump and Erdoğan, who are preying on your insecurities and deep emotional inadequacies. They offer themselves as surrogate fathers and models of the strong man in front of the nation, which is what many men want to be.
Which politician says 'I'm a great big sissy. I can't be a Daddy to anybody coz I just keep soiling my diapers' ?
Evren Balta:
What do you think of movements like Black Lives Matter, which are coming from inside the West? Coupled with the collapse of Western societies in the context of COVID, these major protests against institutionalized racism and other types of inequalities may offer a self-reflexive moment.
Or they may cause better 'mechanism design' based on 'consent decrees'. This was Obama's approach which, hopefully, Biden and Harris will revive.
Could this be the moment where Western societies drop their fantasies and realize themselves for what they are? On that note, do you think these movements are transformative?
Pankaj Mishra
There is this danger that people might want to go back to the way things were before, and that temptation would be strong if Joe Biden wins.
So Mishra is against the approach advocated by African American economists, lawyers and political scientists.
We have made progress in the past few years, not because of intellectuals, webinars, or seminars but because young people have entered politics and have come up with new ideas.
In other words, Trump's victory was 'progress' because Obama's approach was ditched.
An example of this is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Who is dividing the Democrats on the Hamas issue and thus giving the Republican's breathing space. Toxic wokeness may yet derail the Biden presidency.
When it comes to organizing our society with new ideas, that happens through political struggles. Intellectuals need to be brought back into the dialogue with society.
No. Celebrities we are happy to dialogue with. Smart people should get together with other smart people and sweat the small stuff and then implement them through consent decrees or whatever.
They also need to breakaway from big business corporations and test their ideas against reality, especially in the case of the United States.
Very true. Give up your day-job. Become homeless.
They also need to make sure that their ideas are not promoted as universally applicable to all national and regional contexts.
This can be easily done by wearing a tin foil hat and urinating copiously on anyone you talk to.
Evren Balta:
When we look at the global distribution of wealth, what we see is that global wealth is more equally distributed among nations now—or at least it is less dominated by the West. What we also see is that inеquality has increased within Western societies. The middle class in the non-Western world is broadening, while it is shrinking in the West. These groups now ask for more recognition, more status. The leaders of their states are also asking for more recognition, more power. In a way, what we are experiencing right now is a system that is generating more equality outside of the West. On a hopeful note, can we argue that this challenged the hierarchies of the past two centuries and created new voices? Even though this equalizing dynamic comes with a lot of instability now, can it be transformed into a more positive force in the future?
Instability declines when regions rise up economically. Inequality is difficult to measure. Furthermore, where Knightian Uncertainty increases because of unpredictable technological changes, it is rational to prefer more, not less, inequality. We don't know what 'Permanent Income' should be so it is regret minimizing to opt for a lower 'basic income'.
Pankaj Mishra
Several things are happening here. The Western model is built upon successes and achievements that came at a time when the West had no rivals.
In other words, its navies were globally dominant.
Then, because of the United States, the liberal international order was created. Now China is challenging the West with its large population, its resources, and its training.
But Japan and South Korea were the first to emerge as big ship building powers. Now China has joined them and gone one up with its 'Belt & Road' initiative. India continues to miss out.
Going back to your question, I think you will find that most of the changes that have happened in the non-Western world have happened because of China.
But China only rose after it started imitating the Tigers.
But, is it sustainable if China continues to rise like this?
Yes. At one time there was an 'elevator' theory. You can't get hundreds of millions into an elevator. Then it turned out that's the only way forward if you have a billion strong workforce.
Nobody knows, and it would be foolish of me to say anything at this point.
Nonsense! It is obvious that, unless Xi does stupid shit, China will continue to rise. The 'bottlenecks' people were pointing to fifteen years ago have been fixed.
Is the process of middle-class consolidation in places like Turkey or India going to continue?
Yes. Preferences have changed. Tardean mimetics has a clear run.
I do not think anybody knows. What we are looking at right now is a partial result of the investments and new policies adopted in the last few decades. Yes, you have a sizeable middle class, but when you start looking at economic fundamentals, I do not see a strong basis for sustained growth of middle class over the next few decades.
Because you are not an economist or a business man.
Yet, until it all plays out, no one would know what is going to happen.
No. Expectations create Reality. Rational Expectations create better Realities. That is all you need to know my child.
Yes, some things can be easily identified; as you just mentioned, the kind of relative equalization has helped. But, I think the larger gains have gone to a minority in the West.
Questions from the audience
Q: Has the structural transformation of capitalism contributed to the end of the Western model?
Pankaj Mishra
This is true in that capitalism broke free of the kind of national boundaries it was bound to.
National boundaries only mattered under Post War reconstruction aka Bretton Woods.
Once it became global after the 1990s,
Free floating exchange rates and the end of Exchange Controls turned Capitalism global in the Eighties. The collapse of the Soviet Union sealed the deal.
the idea that democracy and capitalism go hand in hand fell apart.
They were never together. Spain and Portugal were capitalist but not democratic till the Seventies.
All of a sudden, you start hearing of tax havens.
Harold Wilson was talking about them in '68. Even Heath babbled about the 'unacceptable face of Capitalism'- i.e. Tiny Rowland whose business was plenty global.
The relationship between democracy and capitalism broke, and then it became difficult to sustain and to hold it up as a model for the rest of the world.
Nonsense! The fall of the Soviet Union meant that everybody was talking about the 'end of History' and a 'rules based' International Order with all countries limping towards the same Democratic finish line.
Q:
How can one go beyond or even without these discursive circuits of the knowledge industry as you describe?
One can say- 'Leftists in Academia are full of shit. Fuck them. I'll study something useful or just quit school and get a job or start a business'.
Is it a desire to be part of it, or aren’t we in a relationship of interdependency? Is a self-critical stance then enough to overcome that interdependency, or is an institutional breakdown necessary?
It isn't enough. Quit your job. Become homeless. Wear a tin foil hat and urinate copiously on anyone you talk to. Capitalism will see that you aren't 'interdependent'. Then it will have a heart-attack and die. World will become very nice nice.
Pankaj Mishra
I have no ideas about how to solve the problem,
which is why I keep shitting out books
but I think it is a problem and it should be recognized widely as such. Yes, our intellectual discourses are homogenized to the point where they are extremely sterile.
Which is why we should urinate copiously when talking to each other. Also we should shit into our cupped palms and fling our feces about. That will make things less sterile.
This is especially apparent in mainstream publications, periodicals, or think tanks. How does one change that? Setting up alternative institutions might replicate the same problem as it would be creating special spaces for dissent and also might condemn them to marginality.
So just go be homeless right away.
In that regard, we need to respect the role of the unaffiliated, free thinker. I often argue that people from countries that are colonized by the West offer some of the most interesting critiques of the so-called Western model.
Unless they are nice places to live in which case they incarnate the Western model.
Why do we not pay so much attention to them?
Why does India pay no attention to Gandhi's various nostrums? It is because they were tried and they failed immediately.
That is because there is more infrastructure supporting other voices rather than theirs.
There is a big Gandhian infrastructure. But even those who talk that shite don't bother to listen to that shite.
There are prejudices preventing us from seeking out alternative sources of ideas, knowledge, and wisdom. We need to reach out to the people working on the ground, whether from environmental groups or people fighting mining corporations in India.
Then we must publish some virtue signaling shite and go on the Lefty talk-show circuit.
Q:
Your introduction to the Time Regulation Institute, also in The Guardian, has been criticized for misplacing facts and misrepresenting the author/novel, e.g., the shift to Western time started with the Ottomans, although Tanpınar (in Yaşadığım Gibi) is known to express his appreciation for some Kemalist policies. What was your reading of Tanpınar based on? The English translations of his novels, including A Mind at Peace, other Turkish novelists such as Pamuk, or the Western model as a descriptive tool?
In an attempt to reveal your fascination with Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, I would like to ask what, in your opinion, are the damages caused by top-down modernization? What are the political impacts of coming to grips with such damages?
Pankaj Mishra- I lack knowledge of Turkish, and I am delighted to be corrected on the mistakes I have made. I think he is not the only writer that talks about the subject of modernization and what happens as a result of that. Those things also happened elsewhere in Asia, but Turkey came relatively early to that process. Yet, let us not forget it also happened first in Japan, and the first generation of modern Japanese writers did the same. This deliberate destruction of the past is a recurring theme in many works of fiction in Japan and later in places like India, too.
No it isn't. Japanese and Indian ontologies already have a notion of 'kshanikavada'- momentariness. Neither had anything similar to forcible 'Romanization'. Furthermore, the West was seen as having an interest in recovering the Japanese or Indian past- especially with respect to Buddhism.
Tanpinar had a good knowledge of Sufism but was a progressive who argued that pre-Tanzimat Turkish literature should not be taught. However, like many Turkish intellectuals, he took a strong interest in Scientific advances. The theories of Time of the Mathematical Physics have resonances in mystical literature. But there are 'jadidi' aspects to this. Sufism could be seen as compatible with or as encouraging Social Reconstruction. This is a complicated field. We must remember that Turkey was playing a complicated ideological game during this period. In any case, this is a literature which delights in ambiguity and allusiveness.
Perhaps, if Mishra had written in Hindi, rather than English, he might have understood that writing is not about being ignorant and thus, solipsistically, feeling you control things. Rather it is about finding out things about both yourself and the world. But this means having to live with ambiguity, with suspending judgment. This is what Mishra fails to do. He may well feel that, as a UP Brahmin, his people were led down the garden path by Nehru. But it was the Brahmin part of Nehru, not the Edwardian Englishman inside him, which gave him his grandiose sense of dynastic entitlement. Like Nehru, Mishra's too copious writings represent a manic type of protestation. They are using English- the language of power- but meaning is what slips away from them. Nehru did wield power but came to feel his manner of doing so was meaningless. Precisely because he was doing everything- by the end he was himself holding both the External Affairs and the Defense portfolio as well as presiding over the Planning Commission- he was achieving nothing.
Mishra is the exact opposite of the Indian Professor of Literature. He likes reading 'heavy' books. But he doesn't understand them. Never mind, there's always some new book to read. But this also means that his oeuvre moves in ever diminishing circles. Naipaul had already carved out the literary realm of the Hindi speaking Brahmin. Not being Naipaul, when you can be nothing else, is the Sisyphean torment Mishra has condemned himself to.
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