How would Iqbal- a great believer in Islamic solidarity- have responded to the current Iran war?
This is my guess-
This is a review Orwell wrote of Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' & another book by a Labour party politician/
Taken together, these two books give grounds for dismay.
Why? There was a War on. Even after the War, there was bound to be a long period of high taxes, tight regulations, rationing etc. Everyone would be worse off- whether in
The first of them is an eloquent defence of laissez-faire capitalism,
Which couldn't return for a long while. The UK was deeply in debt. Exchange Controls & rationing would remain in place till at least the end of the decade.
the other is an even more vehement denunciation of it.
It was obvious that under conditions of total war the Government had to take a hand in almost everything.
They cover to some extent the same ground, they frequently quote the same authorities, and they even start out with the same premise, since each of them assumes that Western civilization depends on the sanctity of the individual.
As opposed to his incessant sodomization. Oddly, guys who had the money & education to buy the type of books written by these erudite authors, preferred sanctity to sodomy.
Yet each writer is convinced that the other’s policy leads directly to slavery, and the alarming thing is that they may both be right.
Hitler would have conquered Britain if it hadn't become a command economy & conscripted soldiers. But, if it had a Socialist government- like that of Blum in France- the upper class may have had no incentive to fight. 'Better Hitler than Blum' was quite a popular slogan in Paris. Some still think that Britain should have done a deal with the Nazis. The problem was that Hitler never stuck to any agreement he made.
Of the two, Professor Hayek’s book is perhaps the more valuable, because the views it puts forward are less fashionable at the moment than those of Mr Zilliacus.
The truth is, industrialists were glad of government contracts & 'administered pricing'.
Shortly, Professor Hayek’s thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism,
It was the claim Churchill made in his infamous 'Labour Gestapo' drunken radio speech.
and that in Germany the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialists had already done most of their work for them, especially the intellectual work of weakening the desire for liberty.
Germans didn't want liberty. Everybody wants security & enough to eat & a job which pays a decent wage.
By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want
you anal cherry?
power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it. Britain, he says, is now going the same road as Germany, with the left-wing intelligentsia in the van and the Tory Party a good second. The only salvation lies in returning to an unplanned economy, free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather than on security.
Which was cool provided V2 rockets weren't being fired at you.
In the negative part of Professor Hayek’s thesis there is a great deal of truth.
One better expressed by Lord Acton- power corrupts, absolute poverty corrupts absolutely.
It cannot be said too often – at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough – that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.
Actually, the Brits genuinely didn't like being tyrants. I don't suppose most people do. Maybe it is because British officials don't wear uniforms & click their heels & zeig heil each other. Instead they wore bowlers and carried brollies.
Professor Hayek is also probably right in saying that in this country the intellectuals are more totalitarian-minded than the common people.
They might talk that way, but there was a long tradition of talking bollocks. Doing evil shit, on the other hand, was frowned on. It was...Continental. There is a Napoleonic Code. There is no Wellington Code. There is a Wellington boot and there is beef Wellington- which, sadly, tastes like a old boot if my g.f. makes it.
But he does not see, or will not admit, that a return to ‘free’ competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State.
Capitalists will insist on personally sodomizing every worker at least twice a day.
The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them.
If the most meritorious win, then more seek to acquire merit. The trouble with giving everybody a medal is that there is no incentive to work hard & achieve excellence.
Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led,
Not in publishing. The BBC, at that time, was a monopoly. Newspapers & magazines had to compete with each other.
and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter.
Rationing would change their minds.
Mr Zilliacus’s able and well-documented attack on imperialism and power politics consists largely of an exposure of the events leading up to the two world wars. Unfortunately the enthusiasm with which he debunks the war of 1914
caused by Germany's refusal of a British alliance in 1898.
makes one wonder on what grounds he is supporting this one.
because if the Tories did a deal with Hitler, Labour would split & become unelectable. This is because Labour, but not the Tories, had lots of Pacifists, Vegetarians & other such cranks.
After retelling the sordid story of the secret treaties and commercial rivalries which led up to 1914, he concludes that our declared war aims were lies and that ‘we declared war on Germany because
we wanted to sink their ships & bottle their navy up in the Baltic. You have to declare war before you are allowed to do so.
if she won her war against France and Russia she
could conquer England
would become master of all Europe, and strong enough to help herself to British colonies’.
They were far away. England is close to the Continent. Fat ladies were swimming across the Channel all the time.
Why else did we go to war this time?
Same reason. You have to be at war to sink ships. The Royal Navy kicked ass.
It seems that it was equally wicked to oppose Germany in the decade before 1914
we offered them an alliance. They told us to fuck off.
and to appease her in the nineteen-thirties,
that was the French & the Poles. We needed a casus belli to have an excuse to sink German ships.
and that we ought to have made a compromise peace in 1917,
With whom? The Kaiser was bat-shit crazy.
whereas it would be treachery to make one now. It was even wicked, in 1915, to agree to Germany being partitioned
There was no such plan. Perhaps the Ottoman Empire is meant.
and Poland being regarded as ‘an internal affair of Russia’:
which it would be if it occupied it- not otherwise.
so do the same actions change their moral colour with the passage of time.
Breaking a treaty is immoral- unless you are dealing with darkies.
The thing Mr Zilliacus leaves out of account is that wars have results, irrespective of the motives of those who precipitate them.
If you break a treaty or violate neutrality, the result will be that people don't trust you. Their options are surrender or to fight to the finish.
No one can question the dirtiness of international politics from 1870 onwards:
It was clean enough- if you were West European.
it does not follow that it would have been a good thing to allow the German army to rule Europe.
Sinking German ships was a good thing. That's what Britain focused on. However, the efficiency of the Expeditionary Force in 1914 came as a shock to the Germans.
It is just possible that some rather sordid transactions are going on behind the scenes now, and that current propaganda ‘against Nazism’ (cf. ‘against Prussian militarism’) will look pretty thin in 1970,
Orwell was wrong about that.
but Europe will certainly be a better place if Hitler and his followers are removed from it. Between them these two books sum up our present predicament. Capitalism leads to dole queues,
No. Capitalism leads to jobs. No country can offer a 'dole' if there are no fucking jobs.
the scramble for markets,
what were the Soviets scrambling for?
and war.
Very true. The Trojan war was caused by Greek Capitalists seeking to enter the Trojan olive oil market.
Collectivism leads to concentration camps,
Britain & the US used them in South Africa & the Philippines respectively.
leader worship, and war.
Trojan War was caused by Greek Socialists seeking to overthrow the Trojan feudal aristocracy.
There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect,
put Old Etonians like Keynes in charge. Orwell too was an Old Etonian.
which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.
Churchill & Atlee had no such concept. That is why they sodomized Aneurin Bevan incessantly.
Both of these writers are aware of this, more or less;
Nobody was aware of stupid shit which only existed in Orwell's brain.
but since they can show no practicable way of bringing it about the combined effect of their books is a depressing one.
Out of Orwell's depression came some immortal works of literature. But, au fond, he was a silly ass.
Tagore’s enormous celebrity among Germany’s ‘intellectual elite’
He was liked by ordinary people. This is because he was 'spiritual'. Indeed, he was the hereditary head of a Brahmin sect of a mystical type. He had won the Nobel prize. The Brits had given him a knighthood. More importantly, his melancholy poetry struck a chord. Many Germans had lost family members during the Great War. Since he had suffered frequent bereavements, Tagore had fashioned a consoling personal philosophy for himself. It was vaguely theistic but ecumenical. Great mathematicians & physicists like Brouwer & Einstein rated him.
is one of the cultural scandals occurring with ever greater intensity again and again
Lukacs, at that time, represented a fucking fiasco. Anyway, Tagore was 'Aryan' & aristocratic. True, Thomas Mann described him as a nice elderly English lady but Mann, unlike his elder brother, had chosen the wrong side during the Great War.
— a typical sign of the total cultural dissolution facing this ‘intellectual elite’.
Culture didn't matter. It was hyperinflation which fucked them up. Mann had been foolish to buy War bonds.
For such celebrity indicates the complete loss of the old ability to distinguish between the genuine article and the fake.
Tagore was genuinely 'old money' and the third generation leader of a prestigious sect in the 'second city' of the last and greatest of the European Empires.
Tagore himself is — as imaginative writer and as thinker — a wholly insignificant figure.
He was doing very well for himself at that time as an Oriental 'guru'.
His creative powers are non-existent;
He was primarily a poet & a prolific composer of songs.
his characters pale stereotypes;
Lukacs could have no knowledge of the originals. In any case the novel reflected on bhadralok society as it had been over a decade previously. By 1922, a lot of the 'Jugantar' revolutionaries were Communists. M.N Roy was much more important than Lukacs. The Comintern sent Roy to China to foment an agrarian uprising. Incidentally, Maugham had written a story based on 'Chatto' who either starved to death or was killed during one of Stalin's great purges.
his stories threadbare and uninteresting; and his sensibility is meagre, insubstantial.
In the opinion of a Commie shithead.
He survives by stirring scraps of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita
sacred texts of his Brahmin ancestors
into his works amid the sluggish flow of his own tediousness — and because the contemporary German reader’s instinct has become so unsure that he can no longer recognise the difference between the text and quotations.
Hilarious! This cunt wants to be taken as an expert on Hindu Scripture! Why not simply say, 'Tagore has never even been to India. He is actually a Jewish Lesbian who works as a seamstress in Cracow.' Meanwhile, Lukacs himself was the Dalai fucking Lama but was too modest to draw attention to this fact.
As a result these scanty leftovers from Indian philosophy
Religion. Tagore was a Brahmin, not a Lesbian seamstress from Cracow.
do not annihilate the unworthy material which frames them; on the contrary, they give it an esoteric sanction of profundity and of wisdom from afar.
There isn't much religion in the novel. The protagonist is an old fashioned Gladstonian liberal who might think Surendranath Bannerjee an extremist. The other chap appears 'Jugantar' but is actually on opportunist. The wife comes from a poor family. We suspect that hubby isn't giving her a good poking- which is why she doesn't have a baby.
That is not surprising. When Germany’s educated public is accommodating itself more and more to intellectual substitutes,
like Einstein?
when it is incapable of grasping the difference between Spangler and classical philosophy,
Spengler was a shithead. That's true enough. But he wasn't a philosopher. I suppose Lukacs thought Marx had the right 'theory of history'.
between Ewers
a patriot who had been interned as a German agent after the US entered the war. He was quite a good horror writer
and Hoffmann or Poe and so forth, how is it to perceive this difference in the far remoter world of India?
Germans understood that crazy shitheads could drag their country into a war or a revolution. Come to think of it Ewers had published a novel on this topic in 1910 (the Sorcerer's apprentice).
Tagore is the Indian Frenssen,[1]
A crazy neo-pagan who believed in free love. Tagore was a member & later the leader of a Puritanical sect with a strict moral code.
whom he faintly recalls in his unctuous tediousness, although his creative powers even fall short of Frenssen.
Did Lukacs know Bengali? No. The translation might be shit, but only Bengali speakers can speak to the quality of the original.
All the same, his great success has some significance as a symptom of the German mentality today.
No. Tagore was successful everywhere at a time when many suffered bereavement either because of war or the Spanish Flu or the crazy antics of nutters like Lukacs & Kun.
A possible response to this sharp rejection of Tagore is to invoke an international fame (or rather, fame in Britain).
Tagore was big in China & Latin America.
The English bourgeoisie has reasons of its own for rewarding Mr. Tagore with fame and riches (the Nobel Prize):
awarded by the Swedes. It must be said, the Brits did encourage vernacular Indian languages but they had acquired a momentum of their own by the 1880s.
it is repaying its intellectual agent in the struggle against the Indian freedom movement.
Did you know that the Brits are using mind-rays to get Germans to buy Tagore's books. This is because a guy who returned his knighthood is actually a British agent. Communism rots the brain.
For Britain, therefore, the scraps of ‘wisdom’ from ancient India,
They had taken the trouble to subsidize its translation. British (& then Germans) savants spent a lot of time ensuring that much more than 'scraps' were available. This happened before Lukacs was born.
the doctrine of total acquiescence and of the wickedness of violence — only, of course, when it relates to the freedom movement
in a place where Muslims will slit your throat & take your property if the Brits fuck off. There was a good reason Tagore's grandfather spent a goodly sum lobbying Westminster to permit unrestricted European migration to Bengal.
— have a very concrete and palpable meaning.
Everything had a very concrete and palpable meaning to Lukacs. Thus when people said to him 'you have shit for brains', what they really meant was 'you are a friggin' genius, mate. Wall Street trembles when you speak.'
The greater Tagore’s fame and authority, the more effectively his pamphlet can combat the freedom struggle in his native country.
Tagore was seen as a patriot in India. That is why the Indian national anthem is written by him. Lukacs, of course, thought no country is truly free unless it is a puppet of Bolsheviks in the Kremlin.
For a pamphlet — and one resorting to the lowest tools of libel
If anybody had been libelled they would have brought a case against him. He had lots of money.
— is what Tagore’s novel is, in spite of its tediousness and want of spirit.
i.e. it isn't Commie propaganda. The truth is nobody can do tediousness like a Commie.
These libels seem all the more repugnant to the unprejudiced reader the more they are steeped in unctuous ‘wisdom’ and the more slyly Mr. Tagore attempts to conceal his impotent hatred of the Indian freedom fighters in a ‘profound’ philosophy of the ‘universally human’.
Indians understood that the dude would lose his estates in the East. Ireland had been partitioned on religious lines & there had been a Civil War. Also, there was now a Communist threat. But, what concentrated minds was the prospect anarchy in the rural areas. Rent rolls would collapse. There would be a 'scissors crisis' for the cities. What would come next? Warlordism with different Princes recruiting battle hardened mercs from around the world? Anyway, the Brits were transferring power albeit in a grudging matter. That is why, though Egypt & Ireland & Afghanistan gained independence in 1922, the Indians were content to delay matters till they could be sure Provincial administrations could be safely Indianized. Dyarchy was like training wheels on a bike. You might resent them because you are a big big boy, but the safer thing would be not to complain too much about them.
The intellectual conflict in the novel is concerned with the question of the use of violence.
No. Tagore's readers understood that violence was futile. Tegart had killed 'Tiger' Jatin. Even if the German Crown Prince sent arms shipments, the Indians would meet the same fate as the Boers with this difference. The guys mowing them down would be Indian. They would get pensions. The 'Ghaddarites' would get nothing even if the Brits fucked off. Why? There would be no Treasury to pay them.
The author portrays the beginnings of the national movement: the struggle to boycott British goods, to squeeze them out of the Indian market and to replace them with native products
i.e. to benefit Hindu & Parsi industrialists but harm Muslim weavers & small businessmen. But that was a theme in 'Gora', Tagore's earlier book.
. And Mr. Tagore broaches the weighty question: is the use of violence in this struggle morally admissible?
Fuck morality. Would violence lead to your having more money or security? If not, the thing was simply stupid unless the people collecting money for it were swindlers or sociopaths.
The hypothesis is that India is an oppressed, enslaved country,
People like Tagore might have agreed with Santayana 'the world never had sweeter masters'. The big thing about the Brits was that even if they took your land, they wouldn't rape you wife. Also, if your brother killed you, he wouldn't get to keep the ancestral property no matter how big a bribe he offered the Judge.
yet Mr. Tagore shows no interest in this question.
Because Indians were not interested in it. In law & morality, the question was settled. If you can gain independence by violence- go for it. If the result would be anarchy- don't.
He is, after all, a philosopher,
Radhakrishnan thought so and did well for himself as a result. Other Indians considered him a poet & the head of a perfectly respectable religious sect.
a moralist only concerned with the ‘eternal truths’.
Lukacs had shit for brains. That's an eternal truth. Still he made a bit of money out of his shitty Marxist schtick.
Let the British come to terms as they wish and in their own way with the damage done to their souls through their use of violence:
Like Brigadier Dyer? The problem is that, after the Moplah uprising, Hindus were clamouring for the 'smack of firm government'. Moreover, Dyer helped defeat the Afghans a few months after Jallianwallah Bagh.
Mr. Tagore’s task is to save the Indians spiritually and to protect their souls from the dangers posed by the violence, deceit etc. with which they are waging their struggle for freedom.
That was Gandhi. Tagore was more practical. He was telling his fellow bhadralok zamindars they would lose their estates and maybe also their lives if they let their sons- or, increasingly, their daughters- into revolutionary mishegoss.
He writes: “Men who die for the truth are immortal; and if a whole people dies for the truth it will achieve immortality in the history of mankind.’
Tagore didn't write that. Maybe it was there in the German edition. Brahmos believe that the soul is immortal. If you die for the truth or, in other ways, live righteously, you are re-absorbed into the Godhead. Otherwise, maybe there is rebirth. As for the 'history of mankind' it gets expunged every so often if not by 'pralaya', then by barbarian invasions or epidemics or economic collapse. Indians were aware that a lot of their own history was little known- or not known at all- by anybody now living.
This stance represents nothing less than the ideology of the eternal subjection of India.
Tagore's family had served Muslims & they had served the Brits. They preferred the Brits.
But Tagore’s attitude is even more blatantly manifest in the manner in which he shapes this demand in the action and the characters of his novel.
Not really. The Indian reader understands that Sandip is a scoundrel. They knew plenty of Jugantar revolutionaries had been of the highest calibre. This fellow was a bombastic opportunist- nothing more.
The movement which he depicts is a romantic movement for intellectuals.
Bengalis knew that 'gau raksha' & 'swadesi' were a vehicle for poorer rural youth- not intellectuals. Interestingly, a lot of Jugantar revolutionaries were from such backgrounds though some had gotten a fair amount of education in Calcutta.
It strongly reminds us — without taking the analogy too far, since the social circumstances are entirely different — of such movements as the Carbonari in Italy and indeed, in certain aspects (particularly the psychological aspects), the Narodniks in Russia.
It didn't remind Tagore's readers of any such thing because they had never heard of either. On the other hand there had been a cult of Mazzini at an earlier time.
Romantic Utopianism, ideological exaggeration and the crusading spirit are an essential part of all these movements.
Whereas Communism was about killing lots of 'class enemies' & 'left adventurists' & 'right adventurists' & people who looked a bit Jewy.
But this is only the starting point for Mr. Tagore’s libellous pamphlet.
It's quite a long book. Does it accurately reflect domestic life in the mansions of the bhadralok? Sadly, yes.
He turns this crusading romanticism, whose typical representatives were without question motivated by the purest idealism and self-sacrifice, into a life of adventure and crime. His hero, a minor Indian noble
landowner. As a 'kulin' his ancestors may have enjoyed a degree of pre-eminence amongst Brahmins a century previously. But he didn't belong to the Princely or aristocratic caste.
who advocates the current doctrine,
He doesn't advocate shit. He wants his wife to stop being 'purdah nashin' & to attend public meetings where progressive ideas were discussed.
is destroyed both inwardly and outwardly by the rapacious excesses of such a ‘patriotic’ criminal band.
Not really. His wife comes to her senses. But it is too late. The Muslims are attacking a neighbouring Hindu landlord. He rides to his death at their hands in a doomed attempt to save them.
His home is destroyed. He himself falls in a battle that was sparked off by the unscrupulousness of the ‘patriots’.
Fuck off! Muslims don't need a reason to kill 'kaffirs' more particularly if they have stuff you can steal & daughters you can rape. Admittedly, this is true of agriculturists of all religions.
He himself is supposed, according to Mr. Tagore, to be by no means hostile to the national movement; on the contrary, he even wants to promote the nation’s industry. He experiments with native inventions — provided, though, that he does not pay for them.
He pays his bills. Brahmos were very good that way.
He gives shelter to the patriots’ leader, a contemptible caricature of Gandhi!
Gandhi was in South Africa at that time. He, like the protagonist, would be a Gokhale type moderate. Sandip is a 'Bal-Pal-Lal' type. But he isn't Jugantar. The guy didn't acquire bulging muscles in the Anushilan Samitis. Instead he is a bullshit artist concerned with swindling money for himself. He fears the Muslims have got wind of this & will kill him for his cash.
But when the affair becomes too hot for him, he protects everybody afflicted by the violence of the ‘patriots’ with his own instruments of power and with those of the British police.
Nonsense! He had some money, but no power. Lukacs makes him out to be a Prussian baron or a Magyar magnate.
This propagandistic, demagogically one-sided stance renders the novel completely worthless from the artistic angle.
If so, all Commie novels are worthless.
The hero’s adversary is not a real adversary but a base adventurer who, for instance, when he wheedles a large sum of money out of the hero’s wife for national ends and talks her into theft, does not hand the money over to the national movement but feasts on the sight of the gleaming pieces of gold.
A real revolutionary would have been robbing banks- like Bagha Jatin.
No wonder the men and women whom he has led astray turn away from him in disgust the moment they see through him.
Guys like him have to stay on the move. Is he also an agent provocateur or informant? Maybe. The reason the nation turned to Gandhi was that he kept careful accounts of money given to him & kept kids out of trouble. He even broke up Nehru's sister's marriage to a Muslim.
But Tagore’s creative powers do not even stretch to a decent pamphlet.
The novel is limited in scope. I think it is better than Gora. The question is whether Bengali readers found it useful. I think many did.
He lacks the imagination even to calumniate convincingly and effectively, as Dostoyevsky, say, partly succeeded in doing in his counter-revolutionary novel ‘Possessed’.
Let's face it. The Rooskis were as smart as fuck. Indians have an IQ slightly higher than cows- which is why they worship them.
The ‘spiritual’ aspect of his story, separated from the nuggets of Indian wisdom with which it is tricked out, is a petty bourgeois yarn of the shoddiest kind.
No. It is about a traditional, pious, joint-family facing the stresses and strains of modernity. One might say there is a domestic calamity parallel to the much greater international calamity that was the Great War.
Ultimately it boils down to the ‘problem’ of the standing of the ‘man of the house’: how the wife of a ‘good and honest’ man is seduced by a romantic adventurer, but then sees through him and returns to her husband in remorse.
Oddly enough this was also the plot of Ulysses. I firmly believe that Molly decides, at the end of the book, that Blazes Boylan can go to blazes. She appoints Leopold her theatrical agent & conducts a successful American tour. The couple invest the profits in the new 'motion picture' industry. Stephen Daedalus writes the script for 'Matcham's master stroke' & is hired by United Artist. He converts to Reform Judaism & marries Samuel Goldwyn's daughter. He gives up booze & takes to Sarsaparilla/
This brief sample will suffice to give an impression of the ‘great man’ whom German intellectuals have treated like a prophet.
Germans liked Tagore because he was spiritual, irenic & an 'internationalist' at a time when German needed the help of the international community to overcome pariah status. His novel could be seen as prescient because the Bolsheviks took power the very next year. Landlords & the urban bourgeoisie were well and truly fucked. So was everybody else including most of the Old Bolsheviks.
To rebut such totally dismissive criticism, of course, his admirers will point to his other, ‘more universal’ writings. In our view, however, the significance of an intellectual trend is evident precisely from what it can say about the most burning contemporary questions
What Tagore was saying was that Nationalism & Socialism & other such shite can lead to plentiful ters being shed before bedtime. He was right. Lukacs was wrong about Communism. It was utterly shit.
_if it presumes to point the way in an age of confusion. Indeed the value or worthlessness of a theory or outlook (and of those who proclaim it) is evident precisely from
how many of their own people they kill. Lukacs had killed some of his own soldiers.
what it has to say to the people of that age in their sufferings and their strivings.
Fuck that. A theory is valuable if it raises total factor productivity relatively non-coercively. Marx was supposed to be an economist.
It is difficult to assess wisdom ‘in itself’ in the vacuum of pure theory
Not if you are Einstein level smart.
(and within the walls of an elegant salon).
Shitty salons are fine.
But it will reveal itself the moment that it comes out with the claim to act as men’s guide.
Sensible Bengalis who read Tagore's book, gave their wives a good seeing-to & threatened to break the legs of any smooth-talking loafer who glommed onto them.
Mr. Tagore has come out with that claim in this novel.
When Ireland was partitioned on religious lines, the wisdom of his claim was realised by Bengalis with property in the East.
As we noted, his ‘wisdom’ was put at the intellectual service of the British police.
Tegart had no need for Tagore's services. There were plenty of Indians willing to earn a bit of money as informants. If Sandip survived, he was probably one of them.
Is it necessary, therefore, to pay any closer attention to the residue of this ‘wisdom'?
It wasn't necessary for this cretin to write this shite. Hopefully, he got paid decently to do so. That's how 'print capitalism' works. Tagore too was making money which he ploughed back into his Art School. He was a thoroughly decent man. Lukacs was loo-crap.
Scroll.in has an article on a new book by a young scholar- Ankit Kawade.
How did the Manusmriti bind Friedrich Nietzsche and B.R. Ambedkar in a tangle?
It didn't. Ambedkar was a barrister who needed to know what Manu, Yajnyavalkya, etc. had said on various matters of Hindu personal law. Manusmriti neither bound him, nor tangled him. Nietzche was a syphilitic, Wagnerian, cunt babbling nonsense- albeit in a manner which verged on the mantic.
Ambedkar had zero interest in Nietzsche though he was aware that Iqbal had taken him up as the foundation for his doctrine of 'khuddi'- self-development- but there was an elitist 'Aryan' element to this. Ambedkar developed a 'broken man' thesis whereby 'chandalas' weren't indigenous people with inferior technology driven into the forests or margins of society by fair skinned 'Aryans'. Instead they were members of defeated tribes of the same race & stage of technological development as the victors. The victors dispersed them, so as to prevent their joining together once again. & reduced their ritual status, so as to demoralize them.
Ambedkar adopted the theory of Ayothee Dasan- viz. that Dalits were Buddhists who had been defeated by a revived Brahmanism- who, in turn, was influenced by the American Colonel Olcott who had resided in Sri Lanka where there was evidence that the 'untouchable caste' was descended, on the distaff side, from defeated princes whose lineages were disgraced by forcible marriage of daughters to those of the lowest strata.
How and why do they come to radically different conclusions about the Manusmriti?
Ambedkar came to the conclusion that all smart Maharashtrians- Chitpavan, Deshastha, Puryakayasth as much as Mahar- had already come to viz. ritualistic casteism belonged in the fucking crapper mate. The thing is a nuisance & imposes a high cost on poor people seeking occupational mobility. The rich can do what they want because they can hire a priest to do the necessary ritual expiation to restore ritual purity.
| Where Maharashtra & Bengal led, everyone followed. Nehru, in his Autobiography, expatiates on the absurdity that his younger sister had to pretend to convert to Brahmoism because she was marrying a rich Bania of the Jain sect. This was because it was against the law for Brahmin girls to marry non-Brahmins. Indeed, Parsees (Zoroastrians, descended from refugees from Iran) gleefully pointed out that, from the legal point of view, Nehru's daughter, Indira, was the concubine, not the wife, of Feroz Gandhi. Clearly stupid shite of that sort- including the illegality of 'svagotra' marriage- had to be done away with by legislative means. That is why Ambedkar was Nehru's Law Minister. Sadly he resigned. Perhaps he thought he could get re-elected as an independent. But other Dalits didn't like him. They thought he had sold his soul to Whitey. Also, he was married to a fucking Brahmin! Doesn't our own community have enough beautiful & smart girls for you to pick from, Barrister Sahib?
While Nietzsche bestowed glowing praise on this text in 1895,
He had gone utterly mad in 1889. He couldn't praise shit in 1895. All he could do was drool incontinently.
Ambedkar consigned a copy of it to flames in 1927.
Nobody cared then and nobody cares now. Manusmriti had no application to Mahars or numerous other castes. It was burdensome only to the twice-born. The smart play would be to demand a quid pro quo in return for legislating against its provisions.
In The Ambedkar–Nietzsche Provocations: The Genius of the Chandala and the Gospel of the Superman,
There was no such 'provocation'. During the Great War- when Ambedkar was completing his post-grad education in America- German philosophy had come into severe disrepute. Nietzsche was considered a prophet of the 'blonde beast' who, in the words of Thomas Mann, opposed Western Culture because theirs was an essentially pagan and utterly savage culture similar to that of Atilla the Hun.
author Ankit Kawade, recipient of the Navayana Dalit History Fellowship,
i.e. too stupid to do STEM subjects.
comes to terms with these contradictions.
Where was the contradiction? Ambedkar was an American style pragmatist with a deep affection for Dewey. Like other Anglo-Saxons (save racist nutters) he considered German philosophy to be shit produced by coprophagous savages.
Here’s an edited excerpt from the Introduction, where Kawade explains how and why he came to yoke the two contrarian thinkers.
During my time as an undergraduate in Pune from 2013 to 2016, I often walked past a plush duplex house named “Manusmruti”. This homage to the ancient Brahmanic lawbook, Manusmriti or Manavadharmasastra, was unusual.
No. For 'twice born' Hindus, Manu is the spiritual son of Lord Brahma. It is usual, not unusual, to honour him.
The owner named on the plaque was a high-caste Hindu woman.
Dalits are a minority in Pune. There is a substantial Brahmin population.
What may have caused her to name her house after a 2000-year-old text notorious for its derogatory treatment of women and non-Brahmins?
Manu says Brahmin women should be given the sacred thread, albeit at a lower tariff of Vedic education. Why would a Brahmin woman honour Manu? The answer is he is self-born- i.e. is his own mother & progenitor of our race. This points to Non-Duality as undergirding the material appearance of gender dimorphism. Perhaps the lady was a 'vidushi' exponent of Smriti or had been so in a previous life. In that case, her action is self-explanatory to others of her religion but not to 'undergraduates' of a different religion who are studying worthless shite.
The disparaging views expressed in the Manusmriti about a large section of humanity are no longer a secret.
Nor are Ambedkar's disparaging views of people of his second wife's community.
In November 2022, Tamil Nadu’s Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi,
a 'Dalit Panther' party inspired by the American 'Black Panthers'. It supported Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka, but its real enemy was the anti-Brahmin Dravidian parties dominated by agricultural castes who need Dalits to accept low wages as agricultural labourers. This means they may attack 'uppity' Dalits earning good money in the Cities.
an anti-caste political party from southern India,
Everyone is anti-caste, though, if they own land & want cheap agricultural labour, they may also perpetrate atrocities against Dalits. But this is done by the dominant non-Brahmin castes.
Also, if we kill a Brahmin priest because he says he can't officiate at our wedding because he has been pre-booked, you should understand that we are protesting against Manusmriti. On the other hand, if we rape Dalit women who are hinting they would like to be paid for their labour, we are standing up for Backward Castes denied education & even basic human dignity by Aryan invaders like Narendra Modi. Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand, is all right. Soniaji is pure Dravidian.
distributed 100,000 copies of a 32-page booklet containing excerpts from the Manusmriti for free. Thol. Thirumavalavan, the leader of the party,
He is smart. He has 2 seats in the Central Parliament. I bet the BJP is trying to woo him away from his DMK allies. Kharge too might be interested in bagging him for Congress. I think he should stick with Stalin. There is a feel-good factor being created by the son of Karunanidhi. Moreover, he himself has a son to take over from him. Hope it won't be anytime soon. Stalin is ten years older than me. He looks 15 years younger. Fuck you Stalin! Fuck you very much!
wrote a concise introduction to this booklet. The purpose was
to say 'Aryan' Buddhist Sinhalas have put Sri Lankan Tamils in their place. There's nothing we can do about it. But the Buddhist 'Shraman' & the Tamil Dalit can make common cause against 'Brahmanism'- though the two top Brahmins in Indian politics are Rahul & Mamta. Modi & Shah & Yogi aren't Brahmins.
to “expose” the origins of the Hindutva ideology.
Fuck caste in the ass. Become as cohesive as the Brits or, better yet, the egalitarian Americans. Stop Sectarian mud-slinging. Ecumenicism is the way to go. That's why the BJP appoints Scheduled Caste & Scheduled Tribe people to the highest political office- viz. the Presidency. Ambedkarites aren't happy that Dalits prefer to vote for the BJP rather than one of the very many Ambedkarite splinter groups.
He referred to this campaign as a political stand and described the Manusmriti as the “political manifesto of [the] RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh]”,
Did you know Narendra Modi is actually a Brahmin from Britain (real name Nicholas Maugham) whereas Soniaji is a Dalit who can speak only Tamil?
The RSS succeeded because it successfully broke down caste-barriers by appealing to Nationalist sentiment. Ambedkarites are anti-national, which is why they are given affirmative action in the West.
the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization.
Created by Dr. Hegdewar because the Congress Seva Dal, created by his pal Dr. Hardikar, could be banned at any moment as a 'political' rather than 'social' organisation.
For Thirumavalavan, contemporary Hindutva was simply the bearer of the historical legacy of discrimination against non-Brahmins and women of all castes inaugurated by the Manusmriti.
No. This is a smart dude. Like Stalin he is worried about 'delimitation'- i.e. Hindi belt gaining more seats in Parliament. Let us see how this plays out. After all, in 2024, Modi was hinting that if he got a majority he would do what Vaypayee did and freeze the thing for another 25 years. Sadly, that is no longer an option. The census is going ahead & delimitation will be implemented on its basis.
More than 200 years have passed since this ancient lawbook was first translated into English in 1794 by the British Orientalist scholar, philologist, and jurist Sir William Jones (1746–1794), and a little less than a hundred years since modern India’s most revolutionary intellectual, BR Ambedkar (1891–1956), publicly burned a copy in 1927 in Mahad, a small municipal town in western India.
Neither event mattered at all. Manusmriti, Yajnyavalkya, Mitakshara etc. were getting incorporated into British Indian law in any case. After 1917, British officials were encouraging 'Depressed Class' leaders to demand countervailing power against the High Caste Hindu Congress party. Still, Ambedkar's stance had some significance- of a negative sort. The guy had a PhD from Columbia on Indian fiscal policy and another from the LSE in monetary policy. By indulging in histrionics, he had neutralized himself as a weapon in the hands of the Nationalists. Otherwise, this dude could have been Finance Minister of Bombay in 1937 & Nehru's Economic Tzar in the Fifties.
Sadly, Ambedkar was a hysterical fool & proved utterly useless to everybody. He ended up as the 'Boddhisattva' of a religion which had broadcast untouchability as far as Japan. Since Lord Buddha, in Hinduism, is an incarnation of Vishnu, Ambedkar is now worshipped by all castes of Hindus in the big temple complexes constructed by Mayawati when she was CM of UP.
In that time, the Manusmriti and its elusive (or even absent) author “Manu” have come to enjoy a religious and symbolic revival.
No. Actual Mimamsakas, like Chief Justice Gajendragadkar, had been saying, since the Thirties, that nothing less than a comprehensive Hindu Code Bill would do. Nehru did deliver this which is why the Dynasty kept its hold on the Hindu vote till 'assassination tempered autocracy' &, more importantly, Rahul turned out to be a cretin widely believed, by me, to have been incessantly sodomised by Mahua Moitra's dog. Why else has the dynast not gotten married and sired an heir? That's the only 'mission critical' function of an heir by primogeniture.
In 1989, a ten-foot-tall statue of Manu, the progenitor of mankind according to Hindu mythology, was installed in the premises of the Rajasthan High Court in Jaipur.
Because Manu is the Hindu law-giver par excellence. Guess which religion is 88 percent of the population of Rajasthan? You are right. Jews are the majority there.
Never officially inaugurated, it was ostensibly built as part of a “beautification” drive. The statue prompted multiple protests and contestations. Within months, the Rajasthan High Court ordered its removal.
Rajiv Gandhi was still alive then. Sri Lankan Tamils killed him. Talk about an own goal!
The pioneering political organiser, strategist, and founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Kanshi Ram
who was useless. The BSP owes everything to Mayawati. Why is this misogynist cunt not mentioning her?
– who can be credited with lending the term “Manuwadi” (follower of Manu) popular and political currency – protested against it.
Mayawati, becoming Chief Minister of UP, built bigger & better statues of Ambedkar, Phule & herself
However, due to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Acharya Dharmendra, a leader of the militant Hindu right-wing organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP),
Ambedkarites have innumerable anti-Hindu organisations. But they aren't left-wing. They are useless.
the court order for the removal of the statue was stalled in 1989. This PIL, pending for more than thirty years, is said to be the oldest writ petition filed in the Rajasthan High Court.
It isn't. The oldest pending cases date back to the Seventies.
The last hearing in this case in 2015 was disrupted by a protesting group of around four hundred Brahmin lawyers, who feared the removal of Manu’s statue due to renewed protests by Dalit rights activists.
Nobody fears them. Either they can protect agricultural labourers in the hinterland or they are just 'performance artists'.
In October 2018, Kantabai Ahire and Sheela Pawar, two Dalit women from Aurangabad, Maharashtra, travelled to Jaipur and sprayed black paint on the statue. They were arrested on charges of “hurting religious sentiments”.
Nobody cared. These two ladies will have to end up supporting Sharia law & triple talaq & hijab & so forth. Still, maybe they made some money out of the stunt.
In December 2022, the Congress leader Jairam Ramesh
an Iyengar- i.e. Tamil Brahmin
said that such a statue within High Court premises was wholly inappropriate in a nation governed by Ambedkar’s Constitution.
Like the Burmese Constitution, it was written by Sir B.N Rau- a Konkani Brahmin. Ambedkar dismissed his own contribution as 'hack work'. Still, he married a Brahmin. If not one of us, he is a 'sambandhi'.
However, the Congress party, which is in power in the state at the time of writing, has yet to show any interest in removing the statue.
The BJP are now in power.
In February 2023, the Supreme Court dismissed a PIL demanding the removal of the statue, on the grounds that a similar PIL was pending before the Rajasthan High Court.
How is this relevant? Public interest litigation is a nuisance merely.
Growing up in an Ambedkarite family in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, the names of Manu and the Manusmriti were familiar to me.
But what they signified was not. Similarly, Hitler grew up in a household where the word 'Jew' was familiar to him. Sadly, killing Jews turns out to be a terrible idea. Jews are smart. Some may be shitheads, but lots of them make great contributions to STEM subjects.
A frayed, worn-out Marathi copy of The Buddha and His Dhamma in my grandparents’ house marked my first foray into the thought-world of Ambedkar.
It was paranoid shit. Ambedkar knew that there were Brahmins in Bali but no untouchables. There were no Brahmins in Japan but there were untouchables. Buddhism is the ultimate 'Aryan' religion which spread untouchability far and wide.
When my siblings and I were handed this text, we were told how “Babasaheb”, as he is fondly called in most Ambedkarite households, had written this work after his decades-long study of Buddhism.
This is unfair. He was a busy man. He had studied Econ but was shit at it. He hadn't studied Indic religion but could use secondary sources just as well as any other paranoid nutcase or hate monger. What matters is that he contributed zero to Socialist thought in India. This is why we cherish him. Socialist thought is shit.
We were told that his study yielded the judgment (phaisla) that the Buddha’s dhamma was the most rational (buddhimatta) and the most ethical (nitimatta) of all world religions, especially contra Brahmanic Hinduism.
Though all the great commentators & elucidators of Buddhism were Brahmins. None were Dalit.
For my grandparents,
who were ignorant of Brahmin religion & culture
the text that epitomised the Brahmanic worldview was the Manusmriti.
They were wrong.
They had never read it, but knew a few verses (in Marathi translation) from memory. We were also told how a man like Ambedkar, who had around fifty thousand books in his personal library, had publicly burned a copy of this book in order to reclaim our manuski (human dignity), something that was denied to us by the Manusmriti.
It was the Brits who decided to stop recruiting Mahars into the Army. They were impressed by Brahmins. They weren't impressed by 'pariahs'. True, there were some exceptions. Wavell found Jagjivan Ram was the one Minister who understood his portfolio.
Later in my undergraduate years, as a student of German
Hitler was from Germany. He killed Jews- who come from the Middle East- & Gypsies- who come from India. He didn't like darkies though he was cordial to high caste people like Bose & Nambiar.
in Pune, when I encountered the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900),Who said 'You go to women? Do not forget the whip!'
I was shocked.
Why? The man was mentally ill.
Why had Nietzsche bestowed glowing praise on the Manusmriti in his 1895 text The Antichrist?
Because, for the previous century, everybody had lavished praise on it- including dudes like Emerson.
Why was he using a term like “Chandala”, which I had previously known (and heard) only as an abuse used generically against all Dalits or against something or someone perceived as “lowly” or “disgusting”?
Why do English speakers still use the term 'pariah' which refers to a particular Dalit community from Tamil Nadu? Why is the word 'Pundit' considered honourable? How come there are 'Boston Brahmins'? The answer is that Brahmins make a good impression on foreigners. Dalits don't. Still, if this can secure them tenure in shite subjects on the basis of their being more abject than thou, let some cretins prosper in that way.
This set of early encounters
i.e. stupidity & ignorance this cunt displayed when he was a kid, entitles him to remain stupid & ignorant all his life.
has led to The Ambedkar–Nietzsche Provocations, a comparative investigation of how Nietzsche and Ambedkar interpreted the Manusmriti in their writings.
Just let 'Co-pilot' do it for you. After that, you can get it to write a book for you on 'Ambedkar & Adorno' or 'Mayawati & Merleau-Ponty' or whatever.
Widely regarded as the most authoritative compendium of Hindu law,
Not since 1955-56 & the passage of the 4 'Hindu Code' Bills.
the Manusmriti is part of the Dharmashastra tradition of ancient Brahmanic thought,
Which Brahmins knew about because it applied to them. Dalits didn't because they have their separate customary law.
which, along with the Dharmasutras, constitutes a body of texts dealing primarily with jurisprudence. Set in metrical verse consisting of shlokas of thirty-two syllables, the Dharmashastras recorded the normative mapping of ancient Brahmanism, a sweeping worldview of how things and beings ought to be.
Only for the 'twice born'. It had no application to others. Similarly Sharia only applies to Muslims & Canon Law applied to Christians.
The Sanskrit scholar and philologist Patrick Olivelle
not recognised as any such thing by twice born Hindus
says: “Composed probably in the middle of the second century CE, [The Laws of] Manu represents a watershed in the history of Dharmasastra when the scholarly tradition of debate and disagreement of the previous centuries was abandoned … and the authoritative voice of the author rises to drown out all dissent.”
This is clearly false. Manusmriti was the text of one of a number of competing schools of Law. As under the Mughals, who would pick & choose which 'Mazhab's' ratio should apply in a particular case, Hindu (or Buddhist or Jain) rules would pick and choose from different law books. But Law is, as Hume remarked, merely a service industry- its aim is utility. Everything was defeasible by reference to 'best practice amongst the best people'.
Ambedkar could have been a Coasian 'Law & Econ' guy avant la lettre. At the least, he could have kept abreast of what Abba Lerner & Koopmans etc were getting up to. But he descended into paranoid hate politics after returning to India. Why? The Brits didn't really want their protege's to do anything to reform India's fiscal or monetary policy. They had a dog in the manger attitude. They wanted things to get worse once they left. Thanks to their stooges- they achieved their aim.
The Manusmriti is also the Dharmashastra which has produced the most textual engagement in Brahmanic literature, with nine commentaries written by authors from circa the 7th (the earliest known commentator, Bharuchi) to the 17th century CE (the last known commentator, Manirama).
This is because Manu, from the Islamic p.o.v, could be seen as a 'kitabi' (i.e. one who provided a written text) prophet. This was important when Muslims ruled the roost because it meant Hindus could be considered 'dhimmi' rather than utter 'kaffirs'.
Against this lineage of laudatory reception, Nietzsche and Ambedkar enter the scene as its modern interpreters.
No. Neither were Sanskrit Pundits or 'twice born' Hindus. One may as well say 'Hitler & Barbara Streisland, in Yentl, emerged as modern interpreters of 'kashruth'.'
Their interpretations are undergirded by what the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls a “hermeneutics of suspicion”.
One could equally say 'Straussian'. But this hermeneutic, when turned on Ambekarite raving, cashes out as 'the cunt was propped up by the Brits to divide & rule. Like his pal, J.N. Mandal, he went into the political wilderness soon after they departed.'
Ricoeur distinguishes between “recollection of meaning”,
e.g. remembering that Beyonce took out a restraining order against you
constituting one pole in the practice of textual interpretation, and the “exercise of suspicion”
Beyonce loves me! She wants me to stalk her. She becomes erotically aroused when she finds my little presents of decapitated Barbie dolls. Evil Jewish Lawyers are preventing me from being with my beloved. She herself may have been brainwashed, by Neo-Liberalism, into thinking she would not greatly benefit by being skinned alive by me. But that is the fault of what Habermas calls 'mental colonization' & which Chomsky stigmatizes as 'manufactured consent'.
inaugurated by the writings of Karl Marx, Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud
all of whom were ignorant shitheads. To be fair, Nietszche didn't make money gaslighting people the way Fraud did. Also, Marx was genuinely poor.
in the European philosophical tradition.
Which is shit.
While “revelation”, “reminiscence”, and “restoration” are the primary modes of handling meaning in the hermeneutics of faith,
Not for Hindus. You have to find 'apoorvata'- something novel- otherwise you have failed as a hermeneut.
“demystification” and “deciphering” constitute the fundamental characteristics of the hermeneutics of suspicion.
Fuck that! Just tell stupid lies. Did you know that when Trump refused to say he didn't want the Pope to fuck him in the ass, what was implied was that he wanted the Ayatollah to fuck everybody to death?
These antipodes distinguish a believer from a critic.
What distinguishes them is Faith. This boy is a cretin.
In my estimation,
which is worthless
Nietzsche and Ambedkar are two of the most consequential modern practitioners of the hermeneutics of suspicion.
Dalits may, one day, vote for Ambedkarite cretins. But they don't give a fuck about 'Oopar ya Nietzsche'.
While Nietzsche seeks to “transvalue” the fundamental tenets of Christian morality, Ambedkar tries to exhume the violence buried within the Manusmriti.
No. He genuinely didn't want the Dalits to suffer the same fate as Muslims in Nehru's India. He needed to pretend that Dalits were 'broken men'- i.e had the same genetic & cultural heritage as the majority community. The RSS welcomed this. Why? They want Dalits to be fully incorporated into mainstream Hinduism. Ambedkar did them a favour by pushing them towards Buddhism- which is all about vegetarianism & giving up alcohol & getting ahead through thrift, enterprise & education.
The text surfaces in both their writings at different historical junctures and for disparate purposes. While Nietzsche looked at it from a distance with an exoticising – perhaps even an Orientalising – eye,
He looked at it in Racialist, Wagnerian, terms. So did Iqbal whose version of the 'Hammer's song' involves Himalaya saying to Ganga 'become strong! Outlast the ages'. The cunt didn't get that agricultural India depends on its rivers.
The truth is, Iqbal was a stupid cunt- a barrister like Ambedkar with a Western PhD. Rajendra Prasad's was home grown. Back then, even non-STEM Indian PhDs weren't worthless. Now all such credentials are equally shitty- as this shithead amply demonstrates.
finding in its rigid hierarchies a sign of strength against the turgid egalitarianism of modern Europe,
There was no fucking egalitarianism in Nietzsche's Europe.
Ambedkar saw it as the blueprint for an apparatus of hierarchy and domination that he intimately knew and suffered.
No. He pretended it was because he was a shithead who would only have salience so long as Brits wanted to fuck up Indian fiscal & monetary policy out of pure 'dog-in-the-manger' malice.
Nietzsche and Ambedkar exert an unparalleled force in the history of what Marx called “criticism of religion”.
Ambedkar founded a religion- admittedly a shit one- but then he also married a Brahmin Doctor in the belief she would help him manage his diabetes. Sadly, female Doctors of that description- back then- tended to be utterly shit.
The depth with which the value of the dominant religions of their respective contexts is probed and challenged in their works is perhaps unmatched in the history of modern philosophy.
Says a guy who doesn't know shit about 'modern' philosophy or, indeed, anything else. Still, we get that he is a Dalit & thus is deserving of affirmative action because he is stupid & useless.
One explicitly declared himself the “antichrist”,
because he had gone crazy
while the other swore that he shall not die as a person who calls himself a Hindu,
He could call himself anything he liked. The truth is, the Muslims didn't want him & after his fiasco in Punjab, neither did the Sikhs. Christians had already been denied affirmative action under the British GoI Act of 1935. Interestingly, some South Indian Dalits are converting to Judaism & emigrating to Israel under the Law of Return. It turns out, they make sturdy soldiers & good citizens.
and led the largest recorded religious conversion in 1956 to Buddhism.
Nobody cared. The truth is, Ambedkar was lazy- not crazy- and that is the reason he was so utterly useless to his own community. Meanwhile, Jagjivan Ram was rising by merit to better & better portfolios. Had JP made him PM in 1977, Indian growth would have taken off before China.
No wonder US academia will give space to shitheads like Ankit. Those racist cunts don't want India to challenge Yankee hegemony the way Chairman Xi is doing.
This book seeks to fulfil three interrelated aims. First, it tries to associate two significant moments
They had zero significance. Manusmriti & Yajnyavalkya etc. had salience in India till the 4 'Hindu Code Bills' were passed. Ambedkar shouldn't have resigned prematurely. He should have piloted that through, thus earning the gratitude of the 'twice born'.
in the history of the modern reception of the Manusmriti and ancient Indian thought, where Nietzsche and Ambedkar constitute two of its significant world-historical readers and interlocutors.
One was mad. The other shat the bed- like J.N Mandal- & is now subsumed under the rubric of Woke 'Grievance Studies' though he had double PhD in Econ.
This engagement becomes even more significant since Ambedkar had read at least two of Nietzsche’s books, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) and The Antichrist (1895), and most of his references to Nietzsche directly relate to his reading of the Manusmriti. This book is the result of a certain “entanglement” between the history of modern Indian and German political philosophy.
There was no 'entanglement'. German 'political philosophy', like German Economic theory, was utter shit. Look at Habermas!
Second, it aims at providing an understanding of the central conceptual concerns of Nietzsche’s and Ambedkar’s philosophies through their interpretations of the Manusmriti.
Nietszche identified with muscular Brahmins. Ambedkar was a Dalit with a strong martial heritage. Neither could 'interpret' a text whose language they did not know.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this book demonstrates the global salience of what can be called, in its broadest sense, “Dalit history”.
Sadly, Kamala lost. Banging on about her Brahmin mother won't help Trump or anybody else.
Nietzsche’s and Ambedkar’s interpretations of the Manusmriti take this sacred text
It was 'secular' because British courts decided to rely on it.
out of the hallowed and puritanical confines of intended readerships and authorships,
the thing only applied to the twice born. In a court case where a woman performs an abortion or marries again while her husband is still alive- both of which actions are frowned on by both Manu & British law- it would be sufficient to show that her community's customary law permitted such outcomes for the woman to be exonerated.
and work towards breaking the hermeneutics of innocence that have historically characterised popular and academic receptions of the Manusmriti in South Asia.
This is pure fantasy on the part of a shithead who knows nothing about Hinduism- because he wasn't raised in that faith.
While Nietzsche’s appropriation of the untouchable name “Chandala” from the Manusmriti for his own purposes is an example of t
ignorance. Around about that time, the archaeological marvels of the Chandelas were being uncovered.
he global or European reach of “Dalit history”,
shitheads like this cunt getting tenure in worthless University Departments.
Ambedkar’s refutation of Nietzsche’s reading of the Manusmriti in his late writings gives us reason to think through the multiple and contradictory intellectual and political consequences of Nietzsche’s anti-egalitarian thought outside Europe.
Nietzsche did inspire Iqbal- poet-prophet of Pakistan. Interestingly Hindu Dalits (but not Sikh Mazhabis) were not allowed to leave Pakistan for India. Why? They cleaned the toilets. In a country whose new leaders are full of shit, carrying away 'night soil' is important.
But that is the task Western Academia has imposed on young Ankit.
I hope he is properly grateful and will denounce India for not supporting Iran at every convenient opportunity.
The Economist claims that
War in Iran is making Donald Trump weaker—and angrier
Trump turns into a lame-duck the moment people feel sure he will lose the mid-terms. Two Supreme Court judges have already turned against Trump. A Dem controlled Congress could push for Biden type reforms of SCOTUS which, by itself, would cause the Bench to draw in its horns. Obviously, the Dems will launch investigations & impeachment hearings against Trump & his pals. Maybe everybody will have to resign to get a pardon from Vance. But who will pardon Vance? If he resigns, a Dem would become President.
By diminishing the president’s political superpowers, his reckless campaign may make him more dangerous
Presidents only have super-powers if neither SCOTUS nor Congress will check them. Still, Markets can turn against them, in which case his party loses the mid-terms. Thus everything comes down to the mid-terms which in turn comes down to the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index.
NEVER BET against Donald Trump.
Unless you want to make money as happened in 2020. Don't bet on a diversity hire like Kamala.
No politician can defy political gravity like the man whose supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6th 2021, only for him to be re-elected in 2024 with a bigger share of the vote. And yet it is hard to imagine a crisis more precisely engineered to intercept the trajectory of his presidency than his ill-judged, heedless war against Iran.
He would lose anyway based on cost-push pressure from tariffs. The other thing is, Israel sees Iran as an existential threat. If they go in alone things could escalate to the nuclear level. Iran, under its 'Mosaic' doctrine of autonomy for local commanders, would shut down the Straits of Hormuz in any case. If the big dog is part of the operation, financial markets remain calm. What is happening is mere 'mowing the lawn' so long as it is US led. Don't forget Israelis are from the Middle East. Them guys be kray kray.
Even a short war will alter the course of his second term.
His second term turns to shit if the Dems take both Houses.
One that lasts months could bring it crashing to earth.
Not necessarily. Lots of Americans don't like rag-heads. Taken together with ICE biting the faces off migrant children, the Republicans may get the iggnirint racist vote (which, I fondly believe, represents the vast majority of decent, gun-toting, inbred, American folk)
The reason is that the fight against Iran diminishes Mr Trump’s three political superpowers: his ability to impose his own reality on the world,
Kamala truly was shit. Biden truly was senile. That was the reality which enabled Trump to return to the White House.
his remorseless use of leverage and his dominion over the Republican Party.
both of which are predicated on the same thing- viz. his ability to win elections. We think 'it is the economy, stupid.' We may be wrong. Americans may be xenophobic sociopaths who jizz in their pants when Muslims are killed or darker skin kids are deported.
Even without Iran, the potency of these Trumpian strengths was likely to wane after the midterm elections. Wars accelerate change.
No. You don't swap horses mid-stream. But Iran isn't really a war. It is 'mowing the lawn'. The US is ten years ahead of China in terms of force projection. The Americans are sending an unmistakeable signal. Trump thinks this gives him a better bargaining position relative to Xi. After all, China loses most from nuclear proliferation. There is a domino effect if Iran goes nuclear or is accepted as being at that level. Japan & Taiwan & maybe the Philippines follow suit. Also, Iran's asymmetric naval tactics could be imitated by other littoral states or insurgent groups threatening other 'choke point' straits. Maybe the new G2 can make a deal based on US having force projection capability of a type China may only gain in a decade's time. A foreign policy win of that type gives Trump a 'super-power' nobody has ever attributed to him- viz. being an honest to God statesman of the highest calibre.
Start with Trump v Reality. In politics, the president has shown a remarkable ability to twist facts
rather than whine about how 'facts' are totes misogynist and racist and don't understand that diversity hires need to be told they are beautiful and smart and actually surprisingly tall given they are short & dumpy.
and, sure enough, he insists that he has already triumphed in Iran. Yet the war tells a truth of its own. Iran’s regime cannot win in any conventional sense.
Nor can lose in the conventional sense. Nobody wants to put boots on its ground. Also, nobody would think any agreement they accede to is worth the paper it is printed on.
But despite widespread destruction of infrastructure and the assassinations of senior leaders—including the security chief, Ali Larijani—Iran’s regime survives for now and its 400kg or so of near-bomb-ready uranium remains at large.
Why aren't wars over in 15 minutes? The answer is the only such wars are nuclear wars. That's what the US wants to avoid.
What is more, Iran is waging its own parallel war against the global energy industry.
It is bombing its neighbours- even former friend Qatar.
As it strikes shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the infrastructure of its neighbours, the markets are keeping score. With Brent crude spiking to more than $110 a barrel on March 18th,
In 2008 oil reached the equivalent of 200 dollars. That's what Iran is aiming for.
following an Iranian missile attack on a Qatari natural-gas hub, the regime will conclude that its strategy is working.
Israel is laughing its head off as Qatar mulls expelling Hamas. To be fair, Hamas has appealed to Iran to stop targeting Qatar.
If anything, time is on Iran’s side.
Time is on the side of the rich. If Israel & US- maybe also Saudi Arabia- start targeting Iran's export capacity & even domestic gas consumption- then what is on Iran's side is abject poverty & more intensive brain drain & capital flight.
America and Israel will gradually run out of useful targets to strike from the air, or run low on interceptor batteries to see off Iranian weapons.
What matters is whether local commanders find they can't restock inventories because of supply chain disruption. When that happens they become more thrifty in their use of missiles & drones. This means de facto de-escalation.
By contrast, Iran appears still to have plenty of drones. For as long as it restricts traffic in the strait, oil prices will climb and the damage to the world economy will grow.
Damage to oil importers will grow. Oil exporters outside the Gulf are laughing all the way to the bank. What matters is how China reacts. It may do a deal with the US whereby there is a partnership to protect the freedom of the Seas & ensure neither crazy despots nor insurgents can close down vital maritime se lanes. After all, China is the 'workshop of the world'. It is the world's biggest ship builder. It wants stable commodity prices. It doesn't want to be in bed with crazy jihadis.
Mr Trump’s second superpower is leverage.
Carrying a big stick is leverage provided you speak quietly. If you scream your tits off you don't have leverage. You are merely a mugger.
Now that other countries’ leaders have come to expect rough treatment, they are learning how to resist.
Not Iran. It is getting the shit kicked out of it. Why have there been no 9/11 type attacks? Fuck is the point of funding terror if your terrorists are terrified of the TSA?
When the president called on America’s allies to help open the strait,
if the US can't do it, nobody can.
warning that NATO faced a “very bad” future
true enough
if they refused, they turned him down.
What choice did they have?
He quickly reversed course, pretending he had never needed help.
Because if the US can't do it, no one can.
Likewise, Iran is opposing Mr Trump by accumulating leverage against him.
Israel is their enemy. They need to cool it with the 'Death to America' schtick.
In recent days it has signalled that it will grant safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz to ships from friendly countries—a sign that it means to use access as a bargaining tool.
It will need to charge.
Even if Mr Trump wants to end the war, Iran could continue to fire at ships. If the waterway remains closed until the end of April, the oil price could reach $150 a barrel.
& Iran's oil & gas fields may go up in flames.
Given that leverage, Iran may hold out for more than just a return to the status quo before the war. It may ask for sanctions to be lifted, or an American commitment to abandon some bases in the Middle East or to restrain Israel.
Coz demanding America nuke itself might be considered over-reach.
If recession looms in America and stockmarkets start to fall, would Mr Trump escalate by, say, seizing Kharg island, home to Iran’s export terminals? Or would he buckle?
Either way he loses the mid-terms. He might as well go for broke. America is a net oil exporter. Let the rag-heads bomb each other to buggery & laugh all the way to the bank.
The answer depends partly on the last of his powers: his hold on his party.
He has made the party his bitch too often for him to start doubting himself now.
Mr Trump was elected on promises to spare voters from war and inflation.
No. He was elected because the alternative was cackling Kamala. No politician promises voters he will start wars & raise inflation
So far, 13 American service personnel have died; ground operations inside Iran, to recover that uranium, or on Kharg would put many more in danger.
So, don't do it. Just drop bombs.
Average prices of petrol and diesel have reached $3.88 and $5.09 a gallon, compared with $3.11 and $3.72 at Mr Trump’s inauguration. Republican support for the war is strong, but softening. A vocal faction of MAGA, notably Tucker Carlson (interviewed on “The Insider”, our video show, this week), talks of betrayal.
Because they are paranoid. Also, did you know Jews crucified Baby Jesus? Guess who is running Israel? Jews! It's a fucking conspiracy is what it is.
In private many elected Republicans are seething.
Being Trump's bitch can have that effect.
Mr Trump’s failure to heed warnings about the Strait of Hormuz
the warning would be 'if we don't go in, Israel will do some evil shit all on its lonesome. Anybody can mine the Straits.
is typical of his contempt for strategy and his hubris in thinking he knows better than people who really do.
Nobody knows shit. Will the Gulf be radioactive five years from now. Possibly.
Republicans are now highly likely to lose control of the House in the midterm elections in November. Their chances of losing the Senate too have risen by ten points, to about 50%.
More to the point, there will be an increasing number of Republican Senators whose vote can't be relied on. If even Gorsuch & Amy Coney Barrett have defected, how likely is it that Rand Paul or Susan Collins (assuming she beats her Democratic rival) won't flip?
The worse the defeat, the lamer a duck the president will be and the less influence he will have over who inherits the party.
Either he wins big or he goes home- in a fucking casket. The only way he doesn't lose the mid-terms is if there is a silent majority of xenophobic sociopaths who hate immigrants & Muslims wherever they might live.
Were the war to drag on, leading to very high oil prices and tumbling stockmarkets, Mr Trump could seek a way out and look for a win somewhere else—in, say, Cuba.
Russia is sending oil & gas tankers to Cuba. Maybe that's not the place Trump can get a win.
Markets would doubtless register relief if the fighting stopped. But Mr Trump is not in full control of this war.
Because he isn't in full control of Israel.
Iran’s attack on the gas hub in Qatar shows it still has cards to play.
At the moment, it seems Trump has restrained Israel- but for how long.
And even if the fighting ended tomorrow it could take four to six weeks to restore oil production, four to eight weeks to settle oil markets and two months to normalise shipping. The risk of renewed Iranian action would remain. Prices may stay high for months. Every day they do weakens the president.
Currently, futures markets think oil will remain near the 100 dollar mark. But they expect 60 next year.
Mr Trump’s politics depends on the strength that comes from winning.
No. It depends on his rival being shit. But you can't rely on the Dems fucking up.
If he seems a loser, expect him to exact retribution.
Losers can't exact shit. If Trump can't strong arm the Spanish, fuck can he do.
A weaker president could become a more dangerous one.
No. A weaker president faces stronger checks & balances.
Tanking
Mr Trump is freest to act abroad. He may abandon NATO.
Not unless he can magically rehouse 100,000 American military personnel currently based in Europe.
He may cut Ukraine loose to punish Europe.
Europe has prepared for this. More to the point, so has Ukraine.
He could bully Latin America in the name of fighting crime and drugs.
Europe has done a deal with Mercosur.
He may demand money for defending Japan and South Korea.
It is easy to agree to pay. Getting the money is the hard part.
He will be maximalist on tariffs.
which pushes up inflation
Even if he does not succeed, that will further erode America’s alliances, to the glee of China and Russia.
Weak Presidents get bypassed. There is such a thing as a 'Deep State'.
But Mr Trump is also liable to lash out at home.
That's when you get the real pushback. The fucker ends up impeached & in jail.
He has already endorsed the idea of withholding broadcasting licences from media outlets that criticise the war.
A double edged sword if ever there was one.
He wants the Federal Reserve to slash rates, but his war makes that less likely—expect further clashes with the central bank.
There may be an international consensus to do so more particularly if there is a flight to the dollar.
He could target perceived enemies or send immigration agents to more Democratic-run cities.
That hasn't worked out well for him. I may be wrong.
He could threaten to meddle in the midterms, either as theatre to rile his opponents, or because he intends to influence the results. It is hard to see how Mr Trump ends up a winner in Iran.
Unless he ups the ante & takes out Iran's export capacity. Why not bottle up the Persian Gulf & let all the rag-heads go down together?
Be warned: he makes a very bad loser.
No. He makes a bad winner but a merely sore & self-pitying loser. The Statesman-like thing, which secures his legacy, is to take Iran permanently off the chessboard. Seal off the Straits & let the Gulf go back to herding camels or whatever. China may agree that Political Islam has had its day. If Trump can do a deal with Xi, then he has a legacy- albeit of a Nixonian type. Still, this may keep him from a Federal prison even if the proposals Biden made for Judicial Reform are enacted by a Democratic Congress.
There is a theory that initial reverses in the Boer War exposed British military weakness & caused it to seek alliances thus ending post-Napoleonic 'splendid isolation'. This isn't true. After the Fashoda incident (clash with France over Sudan) the Brits started negotiating with Germany for an alliance. This happened a year before the Boer War began. Britain's first alliance was with Japan in 1902, to check Russia. The Royal Navy, though bigger than all its rivals combined, was overstretched, while the British Army was half the size of the German army. However, if they mobilized their reserves, the ratio fell to one sixth. My point is that the UK would have sought allies even if there was no Boer War. Haldane continued the work of Caldwell & Childers neither of which was prompted by a military debacle.
The truth is, the Boer War was brutal, but successful. Britain had displayed its financial and naval might as well as its ruthlessness. The clear message was sent that Imperial pro-consuls- Curzon, Milner, Cromer etc.- would take the lead and anyone who objected would see their families perish in concentration camps. Sadly, Britain didn't really want pro-consuls. Curzon came a cropper in his bust up with Kitchener who also advised Smuts to yield to Milner & then get everything back when the Liberals came to power. Egypt, initially, appeared a different story. The 'Veiled Protectorate' appeared to be becoming more solid as the economy boomed. Then, Britain defeated the Turks. Would it become the hegemon of the Arab lands under a Hashemite puppet? No. After 1917, it was obvious that the age of multi-ethnic Empires was over. As women & the lower working class gained the vote, Imperialism ceased to be a vote winner. 'Geddes axe'- cuts to the military budget- concentrated minds. Crushing the Iraqi revolt cost 40 million pounds & the deployment of 100,000 troops. Had Gandhi, in India, not unilaterally surrendered in Feb 1922, the UK would not have had the troops to garrison its expanded Empire. Thus Egypt (on Allenby's insistence) & Ireland & Afghanistan all got independence in 1922. The Imperial game wasn't worth the candle. The Royal Navy remained important but the Air force would be Britain's first line of offence & defence. Meanwhile, South Africa had become a reliable ally because the Boers were in the driving seat.
Larry Elliott writing for the Guardian takes a different view
Iran could be the US’s Boer war:
i.e. the US will turn it into a valuable military ally & source of economic profit for the next sixty years
a hollow victory
British victory wasn't hollow. South Africa was very profitable. But appeasing the Boers turned out to be a good idea. Smuts became a British Field Marshall. Had Churchill been killed, he would have been appointed head of the Imperial Defence Council.
that marks the beginning of the end of empire
The fall of the Tzar did that. True, Britain retained a 'King Emperor' but the Settler Colonies were effectively independent by the end of the Twenties. India could have got formal independence in 1924, when Labour formed a coalition government. But it would keep a British admiral till 1958- in other words, the Commonwealth would retain an incentive to cooperate with the UK.
US leaders anticipated a walkover.
No. They overestimated the chances of a popular uprising if the regime's high command was taken out with surgical strikes. Otherwise, this was just a case of what the Israeli's call 'mowing the lawn'.
Now they’re embroiled in a conflict that could hasten the end of US economic dominance
Conflicts don't affect economic dominance or subordination. That has to do with productivity & dependence on particular imports or export markets. But if you are innovative enough, the latter isn't a binding constraint. Thus, only relative productivity matters.
Nobody gave the Boers a prayer when the war in South Africa began in 1899.
They lost. Get over it.
It was farmers ranged against the might of the British empire,
once the wives & kids of those farmers started dying like flies in Concentration Camps, the farmers gave up. Smuts, a barrister, didn't want to even though he alone, among the Boer leadership, knew that defeat was a foregone conclusion. That's why Kitchener had a soft spot for Smuts. It is worth conciliation a man of that calibre.
and the expectation was that resistance would quickly crumble.
The expectation was that the guy who won the First Boer War would also win the second. The problem was, there was no First Boer War. There had been a bit of skirmishing. That is all. About five years later the discovery of gold meant that the Transvaal Republic could begin importing superior German artillery & Mauser guns. That's why they were able to inflict high casualties at the start of the war. But Britain was very very much richer & was bound to take an ample revenge.
Eventually, might did prevail. Britain won the Boer war, but it was a hollow victory that took the best part of three years to achieve and came at a high cost.
A cost the UK could easily afford. Income tax went up from 8 pence (there were 12 pennies in the shilling) to 1 shilling & 3 pence (there were 20 shillings to the pound). In other words, the tax rate was about five percent. The benefit to the UK from South African gold & diamonds etc. was so much greater that most tax payers were better off as a result of the War.
The blow to British prestige –
The Brits had shown their ruthlessness. This raised their prestige. When it comes to gold, don't mess with 'a nation of shopkeepers'. They have the capital to pay for the annihilation of their enemies. What was truly cool was their willingness to watch Boer women & children die like flies. Some American Irish people turned up to fight for the Boers. That was fucking hilarious.
coming at a time when its global hegemony was under threat from fast-growing countries such as the US – was severe.
Germany mattered. The US was importing capital from the UK to the tune of 100 million or so (the Boer War cost twice that). It was in the American interest that the pound remain backed by plentiful South African gold.
Far from highlighting the extent of Britain’s power, it exposed its limitations.
No. Winning a war highlights the fact that you have lots of money & can afford to spend it killing women & children & farmers with hunting rifles.
Britain's alliance with Japan turned out to be a master-stroke. Few thought a bunch of rice-eating peasants could defeat an European super-power. The big mistake made by the Germans was not to ally with Britain. Partly, this was because the Kaiser hated his Uncle Teddy.
A century and a quarter later, the US risks being embroiled in its equivalent of the Boer war.
Fuck off! It got embroiled in Iraq but failed to make a profit there. They aren't going to make the same mistake in Iran. There will be no 'boots on the ground'.
What should have been a walkover threatens to become a prolonged conflict.
No. Either there will be a negotiated peace or Israel & the US will 'mow the lawn' for a month of so every year.
The Iranians are using guerrilla tactics, just as the Boers did, with much success.
No. There is no occupying army. The Iranians are firing off missiles just as Saddam did during Gulf War 1. He was left in place for a dozen years, though there was 'mowing the lawn' from time to time.
There is little doubt that, in the end, superior US and Israeli firepower will prevail, but at what price?
A price both can afford- in America's case because it is rich, in Israel's case because the alternative is death.
The oil market tells its own story.
The 2008 peak was 200 dollars (in current terms). Iran says it can send prices back to that level. Futures markets don't believe the Iranians. They think 100 is likely short term but it will fall to 60 or 70 by next year.
However, there are other commodities which may be impacted- e.g. fertilizers.
The war in Iran has spilled over into the wider Middle East
No. Israel has upped its aggression in Lebanon but that was always on the cards after Gaza simmered down.
and shows no sign of ending anytime soon. Fears of a global recession are growing – and they are justified. Oil and gas facilities in the Gulf states have been hit by Iranian missiles. Tankers are unable to pass through the strait of Hormuz. The price of a barrel of Brent crude has risen by 50% since hostilities began. Gas prices are up by a similar amount.
All this has happened before on a bigger, more consequential, scale. We think Trump will declare victory in a couple of weeks so as to focus on mid-terms.
We have been here before. The long postwar boom was brought to an end by
the 'Nixon shock' which in turn meant that OPEC would want a better deal. The problem with the 'Golden age of Capitalism' was that Capitalists weren't getting much benefit relative to workers. That couldn't last. Capitalists are sneaky bastards. They soon got plenty of money recycling petrodollars. This is a good reason to support Israel. Wish I'd bought Defence stock in 2022. Share prices have doubled.
the quadrupling of oil prices that followed the Yom Kippur war in 1973, and every subsequent sustained surge in the cost of crude has had serious knock-on effects.
There are no sustained surges.
The pattern is clear. The initial impact of rising energy prices is on inflation, with the hit to growth coming later. Ultimately, oil shocks cause recessions.
Recessions reduce demand for oil which results in a price fall. But Covid had the same effect. In 2020 oil was at 20 dollars.
Unless the conflict ends quickly, it will be the same this time.
Maybe. AI might be a bubble. Alternatively, everything which isn't AI may be a bubble. If have both cost-push inflation plus a Stock Market crash (due to the Wealth effect) you could have a full blown Depression.
Despite the increased use of renewable energy, oil remains vital to industrial societies. The effects of the conflict are already evident in the price of petrol, aviation fuel and fertilisers. Dearer transport costs will push up food prices. Businesses will lay off workers as they struggle with a combination of weaker demand and rising energy bills.
The US is a net exporter of oil. Why should it worry? Russia, it is true, benefits but the US has no real beef with that country.
The idea that the attacks by the US and Israel would be relatively risk-free was based on a series of assumptions, all of which have proved to be questionable. The theory was that Iran would have no answer to a lightning air war.
It could fire off missiles at Saudi etc. just like Saddam did. But that would lead to pushback.
Even if the regime in Tehran clung to power, it would have no choice but to sue for peace.
Only if it has something to trade. Otherwise it should just de-escalate & let Trump declare victory.
Either way, any disruption to the global economy would be short-lived. Oil prices would quickly revert to their prewar levels.
That's what futures markets believe. Will Larry mortgage his house to bet otherwise?
Financial markets had one further reason to take comfort – namely Donald Trump’s record of backing down at the first sign of trouble on Wall Street. So regular have the U-turns become that there is even an acronym for them: Taco, short for Trump always chickens out.
Nothing wrong with that. You don't want the guy with the nuclear football to have a death wish.
Things, though, have not gone according to plan.
I think Trump took a gamble on taking out the top leaders. It was theatrical & reminded voters of Duby and his 'pack of cards'- i.e. senior Iraqi Ba'athists on his hit list. Otherwise, the thing was just 'mowing the lawn'. American tax payers want to know that bombs they paid for are finding a good home.
To be sure, the US and Israel have demonstrated their military superiority, but Iran is still fighting back.
Is it though? Firing missiles at third parties was Saddam's signature move. But he was as stupid as shit.
Its attacks on neighbouring Middle East countries have led to cuts in oil and gas production. It knows that the longer the war goes on, the greater the economic damage will be.
It is spreading the pain- sure. But it is still getting the lion's share of it.
As the economist Freya Beamish notes, it takes two to Taco.
Nope. It just takes one dude who looks at the Share price index to chicken out of sticking with a stupid program.
And Iran is currently not prepared to dance to Trump’s tune.
Grass doesn't dance to our tune. But we can mow the lawn well enough.
It is not just supplies of energy at risk from the effective closure of the strait.
Which is why it makes sense to help the US defeat & defang Iran.
Qatar
used to be a great pal of Iran which is why Saudi & UAE tried to strong arm Doha during the 2017–2021 Gulf blockade. Iran came through for Qatar back then but now the relationship has completely collapsed. It turns out even your friends don't like it when you fire missiles at them.
is one of the world’s leading exporters of helium – used in products such as semiconductors and electric vehicles – and sulphur, used in fertilisers, chemicals and batteries. Supply chains will be affected by bottlenecks, adding to upward pressure on inflation
Quite true. Maybe the UAE & Saudi Arabia will work with Israel to establish a rail or pipeline route to the Mediterranean (e.g. the so called 'Peace Railway,” that would connect Abu Dhabi to the Israeli port of Haifa through Saudi Arabia & Jordan).
The short-term costs of the war can be mitigated if central banks cut interest rates,
Coz pushing on a string is very effective- right?
but in the longer term, the war in Iran reinforces the message from the Covid-19 pandemic: global supply chains are inherently vulnerable.
No. It reinforces the message that Islamists be kray kray. Supply chains aren't vulnerable or at risk of sexual abuse or cyber bullying. Poorer people dependent on particular supply chains are vulnerable- more particularly if they start dropping dead.
The conflict in the Middle East makes the strongest possible case for greater self-sufficiency, especially in renewable energy.
Because becoming dependent on China for Solar is a great idea. They are very sweet and lovely people and wouldn't dream of twisting our arm to handover 'dissidents' or people who say Chairman Xi looks like Winnie the Pooh.
It is always unwise to write off the US, a country with a seemingly endless capacity to reinvent itself.
It is wise to write off anything published in the Guardian.
But the warning signs are there. China is comfortably the world’s leading manufacturing power and poses a growing threat to US economic hegemony.
It is its equal. Trump speaks of the 'Group of 2'. In military capacity, the US is at least a decade ahead. It makes sense to 'use' your military superiority before you lose it.
There is no guarantee that the US dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency for ever.
There is more non-dollar bilateral trade. To be frank, countries like India are relatively sheltered from arm-twisting based on 'exorbitant privilege'.
At the dawn of the 20th century, London was at the heart of the global economy.
London was twice as big as Paris which was bigger than New York.
Free movement of capital was based on
gunboats being able to take over Customs Houses till the capital was repaid.
the gold standard – underpinned by sterling –
The pound was convertible into gold as was the Franc & the currencies of Japan & Germany etc.
while the Royal Navy ensured trade routes remained open.
What was important was that it could close trade routes & try to starve Germany into submission.
But Britain’s days of unrivalled supremacy were numbered,
Not really. It remained the biggest Naval power till 1942.
and a new era of protectionism, nationalism
The US was protectionist & nationalist since the late Eighteenth Century. Germany adopted 'Listian' policies in 1879. France did so three years later.
and war was about to dawn.
Sadly, Imperial Cousins liked fighting with each other. But war was no longer the 'sport of Kings'. The victor was the one which had the better industrial proletariat.
So Trump faces a tricky choice.
Not really. If the war lasts longer than 4 or 5 weeks, he loses the mid-terms. His life turns to shit because there will be a new impeachment hearing every other week. His entire administration, including himself, resigns so as to get a pardon from Vance. Sadly, if Vance resigns, the Democratic speaker becomes President. Vance is fucked. That's why people say he isn't happy with Trump.
He can end the war now and claim the US has achieved its war aims, though that would mean leaving the regime in place in Tehran.
No. The leader is somebody different. Give him time to mess up & then go after him the next time you 'mow the lawn'.
Or he can prolong the conflict, thereby increasing the risks of economic pain – and a political backlash – at home.
Fuck that. He loses the mid-term. He has to resign to get a pardon from Vance. His life turns to shit because there will still be civil suits & investigations
The former is the better option, though even then it would be a pyrrhic victory,
Mowing the lawn isn't a pyrrhic victory. It's just a chore like any other.
demonstrating both the US’s strengths and its weaknesses.
The US upgrades to the most powerful brand of lawn-mover every year. Meanwhile, Iran is running out of grass.
