{"id":17144,"date":"2024-01-25T21:26:38","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T19:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=17144"},"modified":"2024-01-25T21:26:38","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T19:26:38","slug":"the-new-leninist-normality-that-adapts-to-today-and-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=17144","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;new Leninist&#8221; normality that adapts to today and tomorrow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Famously, &#8220;tavaritch&#8221; Lenin led a workers&#8217; revolution leading five million people to their deaths. Stalin&#8217;s successor, killed twenty million people. In Davos, the German finance minister Lindner declared that we are experiencing a new &#8220;Marxist normal&#8221;. However, he is wrong: it is not Marxist, but Marxist-Leninist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the new &#8220;Marxist normal&#8221;, the good times are only for the bourgeois, capital is concentrated in the few and the pressure is on the lower socio-economic tectonic plates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After all, this is what we saw pre-Covid with &#8220;lower for longer&#8221; interest rates and asset bubbles with &#8220;fictitious capital&#8221; air. In this environment, Wall Street&#8217;s Dow Jones surpassed 38,000 points. hitting a new record high, and markets discounted successive rate cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In any case, in the new &#8220;Marxist-Leninist normality&#8221;, political violence reigns supreme. In the words of Lenin, &#8220;Sometimes history just needs a push&#8221; (for one to fall off the cliff), &#8220;One man with a gun can control 100 without&#8221;, and in the media &#8220;A lie told often enough it becomes true&#8217; and in education &#8216;Give us the child for eight years and he will be a Bolshevik for ever&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So after nationalizing thriving businesses at gunpoint and trying to crush the power of capital by printing money (and learning the hard way that &#8220;to crush the bourgeoisie you have to grind it on the millstones of taxation and inflation&#8221;), the Lenin turned to a New Economic Policy of state capitalism, with a currency backed by gold &#8211; a &#8220;deal with the devil&#8221; that was to be overturned by a vengeful Stalin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When it came to foreign policy, the dominant narrative was this: \u201cYou probe with bayonets\u2026 If you find mush, you drill. If you find steel, you retire.&#8221; It&#8217;s just that this scenario doesn&#8217;t like &#8220;lower for longer&#8221; (including interest rates) and asset bubbles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>&#8220;Dexit&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In Germany, the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese leaders of the AfD, who promise a referendum on &#8220;Dexit&#8221;, exceed 30%. If we also add the votes of the two left-wing parties with which he has collaborated, the percentage he collects exceeds 40%.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Yes, Brexit is a failed model. However, so is everyone else around us.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>With German and French farmers on the streets, the protest vote will dominate the next European elections.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>At the same time, it seems that the USA will not avoid a new term of Trump in the presidential office.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The market believes that it will not be caught out of the blue like in 2016 and is preparing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>However, The Street is so deeply buried in Cantillon&#8217;s doorstep that it fails to see that Trump&#8217;s neo-Hamiltonian policy is focused on domestic production, not financialization.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If the 10% tariffs he&#8217;s considering imposing don&#8217;t work, he could raise them as much as necessary to trigger a realignment.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>But Wall Street&#8217;s DSGE models can&#8217;t show the fragmentation of the world system into separate spheres because they don&#8217;t work that way.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And the Davos elite will never admit that the West cannot deliver what US President Hoover promised in 1928: &#8220;A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.&#8221; Have you seen the price of chickens and cars \u2013 and garages?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Is it a &#8216;Marxist&#8217; or &#8216;Leninist&#8217; geopolitical era?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The war in Ukraine continues.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>West Africa sees coups and violence in the Sahel.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>North Korea is threatening.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The South China Sea and Taiwan are experiencing turbulent times.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Venezuela claims parts of Guyana.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And the Red Sea crisis is getting worse: marine insurance rates have increased 70 times.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Direct Asia-Europe fares reportedly reached $10,000.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And, as pointed out last week, we are now seeing a global container shortage as a result.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In response the US is now preparing a long (special?) military operation against the Houthis that &#8220;will not last for years&#8221;.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In this context, on the evening of January 22, a missile attack was carried out on Sana&#8217;a, the capital of Yemen, by the USA and the UK, with the support of Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The ships of all these nations are now targeted by the Houthis, who have already declared that they are more determined than ever to sink maritime trade.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Meanwhile, the US admits that Iran supports the Houthis, but is unwilling to confront Tehran.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They are warmongers\u2026 and even if they hit Iran with new sanctions, they will need to impose secondary sanctions as well &#8211; something the West is failing to do against Russia &#8220;because of profits&#8221;.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As Lenin cryptically noted, &#8220;The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang ourselves.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A Leninist realizes that a weaker West means a less stable world and less stable markets: Western markets do not &#8220;gasp&#8221; for Leninism and bayonets looking for pulp or steel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But all this was obvious:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Deindustrialization would plague the US military over time.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Iran was never going to be a friend of the &#8220;Great Satan&#8221;.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>China and the US will always have geopolitical differences as much as economic relations (for now).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And even in the 1990s, President Yeltsin told President Clinton, &#8220;Just give Europe to Russia.&#8221; Clinton replied: &#8220;I don&#8217;t think Europe would like that very much.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Surprisingly, in 2024 Western Europe still doesn&#8217;t quite dislike the idea of spending money on defense, even if US support dries up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;An era of idealism has been replaced by an era of hard-nosed realism. Old enemies are revived. New enemies are forming. The battle lines are redrawn. Tanks are literally plowing through the Ukrainian lawn of Europe. And the foundations of the world order are being shaken to their core.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Famously, &#8220;tavaritch&#8221; Lenin led a workers&#8217; revolution leading five million people to their deaths. Stalin&#8217;s successor, killed twenty million people. In Davos, the German&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,991],"tags":[5134,184],"class_list":["post-17144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-feuilleton","tag-vladimir-lenin","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17146,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17144\/revisions\/17146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}