The pursuit of reason
News
The Economist. Saturday, 4 September 1993.
Pages 25-27. Vol 328, issue 7827.

I found it in The Economist Historical Archives, via Cengage with my uni’s ezproxy.

I can’t find the original with a simple search; I don’t think WW2-era editions of The Economist are digitised (yet).

(And here of course I object to Jack Boot’s ridiculous proposition that Franco’s regime led to democracy – that’s tantamount to arguing that Nazi-Germany led to democratic Germany. That’s true, but only chronologically speaking. Franco performed a successful coup (initially as third in command) against a democratically elected government because he belonged to a conservative establishment that couldn’t bear see the influence of the Church and the landed and/or industrial elite diminish as rapidly as was the case in Republican Spain. So he started a civil war that led to the death of half a million people and the destruction of entire cities. Yes, clearly the saint of Spanish democracy, and its ultimate instigator.)

At any rate, the point was that Mark Aves has (had?) a poor understanding of the definition of fascism and would do well to either rectify or stop dressing down others for a lack of understanding. Although I agree on the Economist being a magazine for little spitfucks, of course.

Are you *for* anything?

I wish I was a Jew. That’s why I obsess over them so much.

A few points, if I may:
“Fascism” is simply a governing system organised along one-party, corporatist, and ethnic-nationalist lines – a sort of right-wing Communism. By this definition, Putin & Co. would appear to qualify.

Please note that Fascism does not necessarily entail world war and genocide; indeed, only its extreme Nazi and State Shintoist mutations can be so accused. The great majority of Fascist dictators (Franco, Park Chung Hee, etc) did no such thing. In the long run, some arguably did more good than harm. For example, today’s democratic, prosperous Spain is largely Franco’s doing.

So; is Putin another Franco, or another Adolf? All will be revealed…

One last thing: I am hereby outing myself as an Economist subscriber. Agree with it or not, it’s parsecs better written than Grime or Newspeak.
And, it’s foursquare in favour of drug legalisation.
Surely that must count for something…

The question

You might want to check out the UK edition of The Economist; it’s printed on a slightly thicker stock that might not chafe as much.

Have to admit, I don’t mind The Economist either though. It’s full of odious, scummy views but gives a pretty good insight into what the people who own most of the wealth and control your lives are thinking at any given time.

Right now, it’s actually pretty entertaining reading as they’re desperately trying to sound relevant and deny all responsibility for the economic carnage they’ve colluded in creating.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1826858.ece

If anyone has any doubt about the journalistic integrity of the Murdoch empire, read the articles above. Apparently Al Q. is sending coded messages in child porn images. That the Times even prints this rubbish speaks volumes.

I used to have only one criticism of the Economist magazine (or newspaper as it calls itself). And that was the quality of the paper it is printed on. Which would seem a minor criticism, except that the criticism consisted in that the paper stock is very poorly suited to the only use it would seem fit to provide, that is, as bathroom tissue – or as they say in Britain, ‘arse-wipe.’

Why such a caustic response? Well, one reason is that the magazine uses enthusiastic blurbs from the New York Times and Henry Kissinger to sell itself. It is a very bad sign, in my mind, when a publication considers the endorsement of an academic whose main accomplishment was the thoughtless application of the theories of hundred-year-old and more European war and political strategists to modern conditions (with spectacular results, like guiding a superpower to a loss in a war with a third world peasant army) – to be a good thing. To say nothing of the Times.

But, I am going to have to lighten up a bit. I have just discovered a non-chafing use to which the Economist can be put. It serves brilliantly as the object of critique by writers who do not subscribe to the most discredited economic and political ideologies in existence. (Neoclassical economics and neoliberalism have been, however – much like Stalinism in this respect – fully discredited only by reality, and not, alas, in theory.) These critics, in the words of the Economist’s contents page, represent “intelligence, which presses forward … in a severe contest … [with] an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress” – which would represent, of course, the Economist itself.

Another example of the critics: http://www.blackcommentator.com/203/203_left_margin_bell_curve_bloice_ed_bd.html

There is only one thing I would add to this article. That is how much I love the way the Economist uses John Rawls’ philosophy of a just capitalist society the same way neoclassical economists use their abstract economic models – creating an exhaustive description of a situation that does not exist, and using it to make prescriptions in the world that really exists. In the former case, to justify gross economic inequality in our really-existing society by positing the existence of phantasms like equal educational opportunity and fluid social mobility; and in the latter, to justify reducing taxes on the rich (because in theory more money provides incentives to work harder, producing economic growth) and reducing welfare payments to the poor (because in theory less money provides incentives to work harder, producing economic growth).

(although I will concede, it must be infuriating when “mainstream” corporate media ho’s steals you stuff, and worse, dumbs it down, weeks later.)

Fuck man, the exile and the economist are cousins. Attack the fucking poseurs first.

And speaking of Hitlers, in the mid-1930s, The Economist even found time to praise you-know-who: “Herr Hitler is showing encouraging signs of statesmanship.” Yes, they really did write that.

Link is broken.

Otherwise, excellent article – a true eXile classic.