Several weeks ago, Butler Shaffer described the modern State in the following way:
My oft-used metaphor of the just-beheaded chicken can also help describe the condition of the modern state: it flaps about in a pattern of automatic reflexes spewing blood in its path, making a mess of whatever gets in its way. It no longer serves any life-enhancing purpose, having become little more than a mass of reactive energy. [...]Compare that to Julian Assange's description in his interview today on The Ron Paul Channel:
...the state may be said to be functioning at no higher level of intelligence than that of its reptilian brain with its reflexive, knee-jerk “see/act” behavior. Its behavior is dominated by contradictions, conflicts, falsehoods, corruption, violence, and other traits that work against a peaceful and orderly world.
What is happening to the world now is not some Henry Kissinger-esque figure making secret plots...That happens a little bit, and those people like to think that they're in charge. But it seems to me that what is actually going on is a pretty much out of control bureaucracy involving The State and Big Corporations, the National Security Agency now. Eighty-percent of its budget goes to Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin...As Eric Margolis pointed out in his fantastic book American Raj:
I liken it to a Mongul horde. Yeah, there are some people trying to be in charge of it in some ways, but its basically an unthinking, unreasoned process. And all the secrecy means that no one has the proper oversight of what is going on...This is not some bad people making bad decisions, who understand what's going on. This is bad people, good people, all mixed up into a system where they're blind and blinkered in secrecy in an unthinking, marauding State/Corporate bureaucracy.
After the death of Genghis Khan, his empire, briefly the largest in history, simply vanished into dust.Let's hope, whenever the current horde reaches it's limit, that it disappears just as quickly. An added bonus would be the ideas of liberty rising from the ashes.
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Sorry but I guess Eric isn't aware that the Mongol empire lasted well after Genghis Khan's death (1227). It did though break into pieces permanently after the death of Kublai Khan in 1294. Although some say the empire was permanently split after the death of Mongke Khan in 1259AD.
ReplyDeleteThe Il-Khanate in the Middle East vanished in 1336 when the Khan left no heir.
The "Golden Horde" in Russia began to splinter in the 14th century.
The Jagatai Khanate also began to splinter in the 14th century.
Kublai Khan's "Yuan Dynasty" in East Asia collapsed after the last yuan emperor was driven from Beijing in 1368AD. It officially ended in 1380AD when the Mongols were defeated in Mongolia itself.
Eric needs to get his history straight.
It's a shame that Austro-libertarian, Anarcho-capitalists tend to have such a derogatory view of anything "Marxist". Orthodox Marxists ('pure marxist'), such as Nicos Poulantzas (read "State, Power, Socialism"), have given us a much more sophisticated and intricate understanding of the modern State than the rather vapid and shallow remarks from Shaffer.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say that all of the libertarian crowd so quickly write off any thinker from a Marxist perspective. I've seen a lot of deep thinking about the State, its iterations and its puzzle pieces from the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org). But then again, they're considered "left-libertarian", so I guess it makes sense.