Thursday, April 4, 2019

History Of Oligarchy

Exploited,

I am linking to parts 1-3 of Economist, Michael Hudson's recent interview, describing the competition between economies with periodic forgiveness of slavery and debt, "Jubilee", and those with lending-at-interest by an oligarchic class, with the remainder of the society choked to debt peonage without property, or outright slavery. The Oligarchy at interest format was an aggressive and expansionist format, requiring resource extraction through conquest. It typified the Roman Empire, which collapsed for multiple reasons when it could not expand. It typifies the current financial regime.
In the debt-at-interest scheme of oligarchy, an oligarchic class collects rent and plunder from all others, and clear-cuts forests rather than manage them for centuries. It is a short-term extraction scheme, which depletes the underlying economy or economies.
Such extractive oligarchy is vulnerable to the natural collapse of the economy, to the French Revolution, and to the rise of a populist tyrant, more powerful than the other oligarchs, who aligns with a restive populace against the other oligarchs, to restore economic viability.
Hudson gives clear historical examples. 
He also gives insights into how the concept of "Jubilee" was a reform presented as a conservative act of restoration in antiquity. 
The concept of history was different then.
We are currently, globally, at a crossing of many roads. The USSR collapsed, and it is rising steadily with populism supported by the Putin government, and the oligarchy ceding a certain amount of power, in order to foster the stability and prosperity which has come with some rule of law.
China is perhaps peaking in a populist economic boom, with rapid growth of wealth in recent decades. China is trying to rein-in the corrupt practices of local mafia-type organizations, to prevent collapse.
The US and Western Europe have reached some limits to external colonial extraction, and are now consuming themselves through internal colonization (Greece) and self-digestion (student loans and bubble markets). Each exploited country and region has a particular story, and it is mostly variations on colonialism and debt/currency extraction of value, with as much fear and murder as required...
"Mixed Economies" have some hard limits to the power of oligarchs, and this typified the US economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (with exception for railroad oligarchs). Classical Economics, culminating with Marx, viewed "economic freedom" opposite to neoliberal economics.
Reading the history makes the present so much clearer, I think.

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos, Part 1:

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos, Part 2:

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos, Part 3:

The Post WW-2 oligarchy tightened up the connections between the financial and military arms by use of the "Deep State", while maintaining the semblance of rule-of-Law, which exists as a baseline, with exceptions for those "more equal" (Clintons, Bush family, Rockefeller...) Thanks Eleni.
The CIA Takeover of America in the 1960s Is the Story of Our Times. The Killing of the Kennedys and Today’s New Cold War

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