Not only paradise lost …

That paradise is lost is well known and widely accepted. And we probably have to accept that finally politics is lost too.

Some speak at least still changing the imperial mode of life, pleading for vegetarianism and opposing the use of SUVs – of course especially the latter easily accepted by the unemployed …. [see in this context Peter Herrmann / Mehmet Okyayuz: What to do with the revolution – and what does the revolution do to us?]

Others rejecting political responsibility completely … – well, passing it on to incompetent night watch [wo]men.

[Von Julian Herzog, CC-BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43002116]

Some time ago, March 15th, 2018, the then designated Minister-president of Bavaria, stated in an interview

I will understand myself on the one hand as manager of Bavaria, but also as maker./Ich werde mich einerseits als Manager Bayerns verstehen, aber auch als Kümmerer.

His principle philosophy is Bavaria plus:

If the federal government decides something, ‘let’s put a scoop on it’./Wenn der Bund etwas beschließe, ‘legen wir noch eine Schippe drauf’. 

Schumpeter stated in his book on ‘Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy’

The conquest of the air may well be more important than the conquest of India was—we must not confuse geographical frontiers with economic ones.

At the moment it seems that exactly this applies to supposed

innovation, disruption, and organizational change

as for instance the GAFAs are selling us – HOT AIR, nothing more than extremely well paid gobbledygook, of course well displayed [BTW, habe a closer look at the logo on the mugs]

All this is even more remarkable when we consider that the top-CEOs are increasingly taking over politics as I elaborated in one of the recently submitted and accepted book-contributions, namely the one titled

The Comedy of Big Data – Or: Corporate Social Responsibility Today, while Corporations wither away?: in: Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance – a 21st Century Challenge; Mulej, Matjaž/O’Sullivan, Grażyna/Štrukelj, Tjaša (eds.): forthcoming

Some adjunct issues are also looked at in recent presentations of which the recordings can be found here.

books not only written for their own times

Of course, books are written at a specific period in time, reflect the era and contribute to their stabilisation or change. And they are reflected upon. One of the outstanding works is Thomas Paine’s

Rights of man

so much to be criticised and rejected, beginning with the title, not acknowledging the need for

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

(also here.) And still, there is good reason for acknowledging the greatness of Paine’s work, and in some ways – cum grains salis – its timelessness. Though history does not repeat itself, there is something that, in different forms, is not alien in different eras — sure, we do not have kings anymore …., but doesn’t this sound familiar, looking at what is going on today in so many countries:

It is time that nations should be rational, and not be governed like animals, for the pleasure of their riders. To read the history of kings, a man would be almost inclined to suppose that government consisted in stag-hunting, and that every nation paid a million a-year to a huntsman.

And isn’t there a certain irony of history when considering the following? In a bookshop I spotted recently a book, authored by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, looking at Why Nations Fail. The shortlisting-note caught my special attention:

Shortlisted for the FT and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

 The nearing “last call for flight …, passengers Mr. Herrmann … immediately …” told me that I should work against my personal failing to get on board, taking this somewhat more urgent than the failing of nations – the latter happened, the other could still be avoided, allowing to wok a bit more against “history does not repeat itself”. For instance by talking with students about the tricky link between this topic and its possible award by “FT and Goldman Sachs” – and though it is tricky, it is obvious that the huntsmen want to maintain their rides on the hobby horses that are so dear to us – and that they have to know some version of the answer of the question Why Nations Fail. And it is important to look at the historical dimension though it may be distracting the many from becoming aware of being treated like animals.

There is enough evidence – we know about pervers lives of the huntsmen, and we find the various facets of the causes of the ‘animalistic system’ – for instance looking with Robert Reich at Inequality for all and his notion of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, or woking at the stories about The four horseman ….

We surely have to be careful – making sure that issues are not individualised, avoiding the witch-hunt against a demonised finance capital as we know it from German fascism and any one-sided; in-systemtic analysis, in-systemic in the sense of isolating and de-historising facts out of a complex system. And it should be asked if a better capitalism is the real solution. But we have to take the good portion which shows the structural defects and also

* the germs for the solution of the problems: germs towards a new growth strategy as I outlined them together with Marica Frangakis in a contribution on The need for a radical ‘growth policy’ agenda for Europe at a time of crisis (in: Dymarski, Wlodzimierz/Marica Frangakis/Leaman, Jeremy: The Deepening Crisis of the European Union: The Case for Radical Change; Poznań: Poznań University of Economics Press, 2014);

* the germs that push towards new societal strategies

Herrmann, Peter: From 5 giant evils to 5 giant tensions – the current crisis of capitalism as seedbed for its overturn

and

Herrmann, Peter, forthcoming: Social Quality – Regaining Political Economy; in: International Journal of Social Quality;

* and the germs that move discussions about redistribution into a more radical direction

I this light, there is enough out there to be positive, instead of detailing the critique by new figure that do not change the substance anyway.