Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Lethal Chambers of Hardened Hearts

 

"The essential characteristic of a good and healthy ruling elite, however, is that it views itself not as a function of the monarchy or the commonwealth, but as its very meaning and highest justification, and that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886

‘The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man. A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.”

George Bernard Shaw, Lecture to the Eugenics Education Society, The Daily Express, March 4, 1910

"The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it.  If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions.  If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way.  Is it any wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in modern populations?"

George Bernard Shaw, Prefaces, 1934

"As everything in what used to be called creation becomes a commodity, human beings begin to look at one another, and at themselves, in a funny way, and they see price tags. There was a time when people spoke, at least occasionally, of 'inherent worth'— if not of things, then at least of persons. It is sometimes said that since everything is for sale under the rule of The Market, nothing is sacred. The Market is not omnipotent— yet. But the process is under way and it is gaining momentum."

Harvey Cox, The Market as God

"Fascism is capitalism plus murder."

Upton Sinclair

"Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As you may recall, George Bernard Shaw was a member of the Fabian Society, a far left organization, and an avid supporter of eugenics, which was quite popular in the US and UK in the early part of the 20th century.  He, like so many other of the elites, was an early admirer of Hitler and Mussolini.  He modified his views of course with age, but never apologized.  Truly, there is probably no more perilous habit than the sanctifying of success.

It is the theory of the political continuum that at the extremes of the left and the right, their perspective on the individual and the human soul become remarkably similar, and the outcomes and policies tend to be indistinguishable except in their wording and rationalizations.  They tend to denigrate democracy and the common public, and have a penchant for fascism.

Stocks were in rally mode this morning, for a number of reasons some of which were exogenous.  

The stronger than expected retail sales number was taken in stride, once you looked 'under the hood' and saw what constituted it.

And so things were clicking along happily.

But alas, an exchange of words and a threat of further escalation in the military situation in the Mideast turned the risk lever back to off.

Stocks melted, giving up all their gains and going out near the lows. 

Gold and silver rallied sharply.

VIX rose sharply.

I suspect that this new found respect will wear off if nothing occurs on the geopolitical front.

Wall Street can shift from fear to greed and back again with phenomenal speed.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Rough Seas Ahead Mateys - Political Continuum

The US markets were very sleepy today, with little serious conviction in any direction.

Gold and silver just drifted, held in their places after the excitement of the beginning of the week.

There was no delivery activity at The Bucket Shop yesterday, and just trickles of bullion out of the warehouses as shown below.

Let's see if next week brings us any surprised, most likely from overseas.

I do think that looking out six months that we will likely see a widening of the swings in volatility, as events drive real people to take certain decisions, and the Banks and their government associates seek to stabilize and maintain their status quo.

But why guess? Let us just take it as it comes. In particular we will be watching the volatility swings in stocks, and for the usual and important support and resistance levels on the charts.

In particular physical delivery of bullion is worth watching, especially since there is so much disinformation being spread around about it. What worries the financiers is always of interest to common people like us.

It looks like gold imports to India jumped 62.2% in July.

FOMC minutes next week.  I suppose we will have to endure the usual speculation and market antics associated with 'will they or won't they.'

The Fed will raise rates at least 25 bp off the zero bound in September or December at the latest unless the wheels are falling off the global economy.   It has little to do with any real recovery, but is just another manifestation of their bank-centric, one percent trickle-downism.

If you have a chance try to watch the full five part series about The Man Who Knew Too Much from The Real News.   I found the discussion to be fascinating.

Watching the conversations related to the political scene are a little more interesting now that the politicos are swarming the channels in anticipation of the big Election next year.   I have included an updated chart of the 'Political Continuum' below.

You can divert yourself on these hot lazy days by trying to place the various candidates on the charts, and perhaps even yourselves.    The toughest ones to place are likely to be opportunists, narcissists and sociopaths.

This is because they may have no inherent principles others than self-advancement or youthful experimentation.  I know that I moved all over the chart when I was younger, and spent quite a bit of time on right side of the circle, but as I grew and aged and raised a family I started settling in the center and then to slightly left of center in the 'progressives.'   There are tests online that will help to place you if you answer them honestly.

I am not surprised that with such a range of choices and so many candidates, that so many people feel alienated with no clear cut choice.  I would find myself very hard-pressed to vote for either of the two establishment candidates, Bush or Clinton.  And the rest of the broad range of the candidates seem to have been made from a cookie cutter, except for two.  And therein lies both opportunity and danger.  But it is still very early days and things may look very differently by Spring.

Reform is a lonely watch, because you are without a doubt running against the mainstream current of the powerful in a society.   One has to find some principle other than self-interest to sustain them.  It is a good time therefore for religious feelings, narcissist pre-occupation, banal greed, and political extremism.  People will always find something to worship, one way or the other.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Distorted Markets, Financial Sophistry, and Moral Hazard

There was intraday commentary here that included an interesting perspective from the audacious one percent and their enablers.

And there was another about the current state of political discussion in Britain, a recent awkwardly stated reflection by the Prime Minister that may have revealed the mindset of their powerful, and its possible relationship with the continuum of politics and 'statism' here.

Oddly enough, both seem to have some implications for another question that was raised by a reader who shared this from another site. It was in reference to a posting earlier this week at Le Café that showed that the number of potential claims on actual available gold at the Comex was back to a record high.  

 

And it is further related to a familiar theme about the relationship between a thing masquerading as a market, The Bucket Shop on the Hudson, and THE marketplace for precious metals in Asia and the Mideast.  And the potential longer damages implicit in their protracted divergences.

"It is not meaningful that there are 107.7 claims per registered ounce. you should consider that the ratio between paper SPY and real SPY is infinity.

You are making the fundamentally flawed assumption that you need a physical commodity to determine price. You do not.

It doesn’t matter how many physical ounces there are per claim. It can be 1 or 1000 or 107.7 or infinity and it simply doesn’t matter.

The purpose of commodity markets is not to trade commodities, it is to determine price. There are zero SPY physical contracts and the market works just fine.>

I was a commodities broker and part of the test is to ask the function of commodity markets. Every commodity broker understands you don’t need a physical product.

It’s not a broken system, it’s existed in one form or another for a longer time than currency in any form. But to use it you have to understand it and you do not.

Everyone who owns physical gold or silver bought it with paper. There is no difference, they are fungible. The only difference is the price you are willing to take or to give. Physical and paper are exactly the same.

Saying that financial markets are manipulated is about as meaningful as saying the sun rises in the East. Well, duh?"

What this person is saying is that price really has nothing to do with actual supply and actual demand for a physical thing.   And much worse, they seem to have a remarkable disregard for risk and leverage.  I was originally going to ignore this since it smelled like teen spirit.  But when they came back and announced their expertise, how could I resist using this as an occasion of some education.

Futures are derivatives, bets. They are wagers that are indicative of where professionals think that price is going, should be going, given a set of known and unknown factors with certain assumptions and other factors, including fraud and gaming the system with bluffs, etc.

These types of futures markets began as a means for people who actually used and supplied things like commodities to factor in the risk in the 'future' and to essentially spread the risk around.

The 'futures market' is not the market.   No derivatives market is the market.  It is a reflection of THE market, and that reflection or representation varies in its quality and efficiency from market to market and over time.   This is why we have rules and regulations and enforcement.

A derivatives market is a creature of risk arbitrage, and leverage, and it is a reliable indicator of price to the extent that risk is correctly perceived and priced, leverage managed, and these exchanges are REGULATED against the short term gaming that speculators are often wont to do. 

I really do not blame the guy who thinks these things in his statements above since he knows what he has been taught, and what the financiers think these days are distorted by moral hazard.

The notion that the paper markets can set prices as they will without regard to risk or leverage is a not uncommon assumption held by those in the pursuit of unearned wealth.  That is why we have market crises and crashes.

This willfulness of paper is at the heart of some interpretations of Modern Monetary Theory that enthrones the principle of fiat in determining value above all other considerations, including the willingness of actors in the physical marketplace to accept it at a stated value.  At its worst it is a reflection of a kind of statism.

This flawed assumption of the extensible power of fiat is the basis of every black market and currency crisis in history. 

Commodities are different than stocks, because a stock is itself a derivative wager, a share in the future profits, dividends, and losses of a company.   How can any broker fail to know that?  Pretty basic stuff.   That is the difference between buying bullion and a mining stock.  A futures contract is a promise to buy and sell a thing at some future date.  It is not the thing itself, but it is based on the promise that you CAN do what you say you do.

Like the famous short seller Daniel Drew once said, 'He who sells what isn't his'n, must buy it back, or go to prison.'   But it is not always just a matter price to someone who might really wish to have the thing with they think they are purchasing.

I understand the mindset.  I really do.  It is the same mindset that Kyle Bass calls out in his video below about the Comex about why he chose to take delivery of his gold out of a sense of fiduciary responsibility. 

Commodities are by definition a real thing, and are not totally fungible with paper money at any and all times at a set price.  I think this is the MF Global school of thought, and it is fraught with injustice and moral hazard.  And it is nonsense to think that paper can paper over any and all action or any excess, except in a nation of willful thugs acting in a web of lies that come crashing down periodically.

If you believe in the pricing of things without reference to supply, demand, time, and risk, I invite you to go for a very long and solitary walk into the Sahara Desert, with only the price of a couple of gallons of water and a hotel room in New York in paper dollars in your pocket. 

Enjoy the refreshing and thirst quenching crunch of paper and your comfortable bed of sand.

It is a broken system in which these types of wagers can set price without reference to a realistic set of expectations based on supply, demand, leverage, and risks.  This is where bubbles are born and frauds dwell.

Leverage is a component of risk, but given the state of things, I feel the need to call it out separately since it seems to be fashionable now amongst 'market professionals' to believe that leverage is irrelevant to the point of infinity.   Maybe it is when you are playing with other people's money, and there are no consequences for your actions.

Such a self-referential system does not properly allocate capital for future investment in supply.  It does not inform the planners of changes in consumer interest, and the state of their own needs and conditions.  It does not give consumers the surety that they can actually obtain what they need and when they need it, and not be forced to accept some substitute at a dictated 'price.'

This sort of nonsense used to be relegated to the intraday antics, in which markets are just a voting machine, but you could rely on markets on the longer term to obtain some greater efficiency. The breakdown is that the grift has completely taken over, thanks to the policy errors of the Fed and the regulators.

The financial markets are an enabler, and not an end unto themselves.   And when they lose their proper place in the bigger scheme of economic things where the real markets and people exist, it is because of the moral hazards of an outsized and over-leveraged financial sector. 

It may take some time to catch up with us, but we know that at some point there will be hell to pay in the real world.   And there are those who simply do not care, who are sure they can just take their loot and blithely walk away, if they ever bother to think that far ahead.

How can we not see this lesson now, after all that we have seen and been through over the past twenty years?

We seem to be relearning that lesson about every seven or eight years, and then forgetting.  And until the consequences of their actions are visited on these infantile masters of the universe, I suspect we will have to keep relearning them because they are certainly not going to stop on their own.

 

This is the point of madness to which the sophists of finance have brought us, for any variety of motives.  I don't really care to discuss it any further with these sociopaths and willful fools at this late stage and after the carnage they have created.  It makes me sick to even think any longer about it and where it may be bringing us.

If you do not get this by now, then you probably will not 'get it' until you are searching in the rubble for your face after the next financial crisis. 

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The Careless Few and Their Tower of Babel

Gold and silver marked time today, after the fairly heavy handed smackdown from last Friday in honor of our Non-Farm Payrolls report.

 

There was some small bleeding of bullion out of the bucket shop's warehouses as noted in the reports below, but little else of note. 

 

I am reassured by some very serious people that the West's gold is not flowing East.  It is merely disappearing from here, and apparently reappearing as imports into China, Russia, the Mideast, and India there. 

 

There is nothing to see here, so move along.  Our gold is going nowhere, and their gold is apparently just apparating, like Harry Potter.  Although Harry could not have managed such a nice lingering illusion of paper as he scooted off with our gold into the Vanishing Cabinet on the Thames.  Wingardium leviosa!

 

The trick is to concentrate intently on the details, to become mesmerized by them, and to ignore all the rest.  Remember the Three D's: Destination, Determination and Deliberation.  Germany can't get their gold back?  Gold is stupid, and they don't need it.  And so moving right along...

 

I am looking into this news that HSBC is closing seven of their customer gold vaults in London.  I am a bit behind the curve today for personal obligations.  I do not know if this signifies anything yet.  But I do suspect that this will open up quite a bit of useful closet space for the globally careless few who are simply flocking in droves to London real estate like flies to honey, or whatever other propensities that flies may have.

 

I have guest posted a rather good summary of the US economic situation by C. K. Michaelson titled The Minority Report which you can read here.

 

There was also intraday commentary about the state of economic and public policy thought here.  I made some revisions to the chart of the continuum of economic and political philosophy and you may wish to take a look at it, to see if it is now a bit clearer. 

 

Putting a great deal of information and concepts into a meaningful but simple and concise format is always the most difficult challenge.  Especially when the modern impulse is to expend the greatest amount of complexity and mostly irrelevant detail on the simplest of canards.  The currency and class wars are growing this into a thriving cottage industry in support of our export of frauds and domestic deceptions.

 

One thing that struck me today is that, although we may be in difficult economic straits, we are certainly blessed with some of the most skillful and ardent professional liars in the world, if not in all of history. 

Their artfulness in distorting the facts, and in sweeping inconvenient facts aside by exploiting relatively inconsequential details, is almost astonishing. And their shameless diligence in the pursuit of wealth through deception is almost herculean.

We truly excel in our treachery, and as a nation, we can certainly be proud of it, of making good look false, black as white, of murder as human kindness, and the most ruthless and self-serving plunder and repression as the finest expression of the human spirit.

 

As Michael Parenti said, 'The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.'

 

Never have so many, sacrificed so much, for such an undeserving and deceitfully careless few. 

 

Better call Saul.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Statism is Relativism With Reference Only To Itself

"If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity.

From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable. ”

Benito Mussolini, Diuturna

That philosophy described by Benito is fiat with a capital 'F.'  

In a fascist or more properly statist regime, the state is above all else.  All values, including money, are whatever we say that they are, to the extent that the state can back them up with whatever amount of fraud and force that are required.  Everything that a tyrant or tyrant state does is legal, because they hold their power as the ultimate source of the law, without the appeal to reasonableness or recourse to equanimity.

This is directly opposed to the principle of a higher justice that is embodied in the rule of law.   There can be no real independent justice if there is no value transcending human power.  If there is no standard of truth, then all ideas are equally meaningless and without inherent value unless backed by power and the will to decree 'let it be done.'  

A trillion dollars may be represented by market tested legal debt, by a finite store of gold, a single platinum coin, or the stalk of a rotting turnip, if we say that it is so.  All of these ideas are equally true says the sophist, and all value is arbitrary, to be decided by the will of the state.

This is the very blueprint for abuse from the extremes of both the left and the right, the statists of the Socio-Political Continuum who see power as the greatest good, whether their perspective is from the left or the right.

The great American innovation was to claim that certain values are self-evident, true without contingency to a counterparty, because they have been endowed as a part of nature by a transcendent power.   They may have made sometimes strong distinctions between human religions and that transcendent power, but the acknowledgement of the subordination of the law to certain higher values is unmistakable.  And because those values did not come from the state, they are 'inalienable' even by the state.

Yes, we can argue about the implications, dimensions and definitions of rights and freedoms.  But we can never cynically dismiss them as did the statists of the 20th century, most of whom also by necessity adopted a state religion, from state atheism to a vague neo-pagan mythology of the blood or some other state sponsored belief that was a tool of their official will.

I know this should be obvious, but it is remarkable how easily people can forget the basis for the great American experiment and the principles that inspired it.  It is the philosophical notion of the legal restraint of power and accountability of government to its source in the people themselves endowed with values and privileged by a power above the state.

Now, one can certainly argue how those standards will be incorporated into the law, and what those standards ought to be in practice.  But it is undeniable that there must be non-arbitrary standards, and that the law is not in any way sufficient to itself.  This is no form of legalism or a religion of the law. 

 

The law itself is answerable to those standards of authority granted by the consent of the governed with the bounds of recognizing that which exists transcendently.

"If there's no God and no life beyond the grave, doesn't that mean that men will be allowed to do whatever they want?'  

'Didn't you know that already?' he said and laughed again. 'An intelligent man can do anything he likes as long as he's clever enough to get away with it."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

And once again, I am not saying that there ought to be a gold standard per se. Not at all. There are many ways to set standards and maintain them, with gold having many of the key characteristics of a good external standard.  And so it can inform us by its historical example.

 

All things can be turned to evil, even inherently good things.  Our system is capable of corrupting almost anything including the word of God itself, and our own Constitution if we allow it.   Our hypocrisy knows few bounds, and our law has too often descended into a mere ritual of legality with little enough reference to justice.

But those things that are transcendent of human power and our pride at least remind us that we are doing evil, and that we are not sufficient unto ourselves as the arbiters of the universe. 

But I will go so far to say that virtually every would-be statist who wishes to set themselves up as an authority by fiat will almost certainly find gold to be troublesome, an impediment, and something to be feared and if possible, controlled.  

Like private conscience, and a belief in a power greater than the power of the state, gold whispers in the silence to us, that something is terribly wrong.

It was a quiet option expiration on the Comex today.  More on that tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - And Ah! Bright Wings

"When the people of any particular country have such confidence in the fortune, probity, and prudence of a particular banker, as to believe that he is always ready to pay upon demand such of his promissory notes as are likely to be at any time presented to him; those notes come to have the same currency as gold and silver money, from the confidence that such money can at any time be had for them...

The commerce and industry of the country, however, it must be acknowledged, though they may be somewhat augmented, cannot be altogether so secure, when they are thus, as it were, suspended upon the Daedalian wings of paper money, as when they travel about upon the solid ground of gold and silver."

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

By the way, from what I have been able to determine, Adam Smith never said, "The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money."

 

It is certainly popular on the internet, and quoted widely.  But I have never found even the use of the word 'fiat money' in any of his writings that I have examined closely, much less this particular quote. And his use of the word 'minority' seems to be confined to the context of someone who has not yet 'come of age' or their majority.

If you find an actual citation from his original works I would be glad to have it.  I spend quite a bit of time trying to search out the basis for various quotes.  I am not always successful, but am continually shocked at how many quotes there are that seem to be just constructed out of thin air. 

And this does not include the even more common practice of taking quotes selectively and out of context to support notions that the author could have hardly been expected to support given the body of their work and thought in context.

 

Related:  Paul Krugman Does Some Injustice to the Thoughts of Adam Smith on Gold, Silver, and Money

By the way, some of Krugman's acolytes later admitted the error.  If only his more vehement opponents would so willingly show such grace in a misstep, of which we are all capable.  But such is the undervalued status of truth at the extremes of the political continuum.  God is truly to be found in the ordinary things, and the exceptional, but as He defines such exceptional rarities in His economy.

 

The Political and Social Continuum - What About the Outliers? Does Sin Exist?

As you may recall I have constructed this model to help me conceptualize the 'continuum' of political and social thought.

One of the motivations for this particular form was to help me to understand why those at the extremes can 'cross over' so easily from one to the other.

And in practice, the two extremes seem identical in many ways.

But I have struggled for some time where a sociopath or psychopath might fit in this scheme of things.

Today it struck me that sociopaths and psychopaths can fit anywhere they like, although given their attraction to power and control over others they would be mostly found at the extremes.

They can move about most easily because they are 'outside the continuum'  and by definition  are exceptionally under-socialized.   For whatever reason, they do not 'fit' within a social structure, but are essentially outliers because of their pathology, the way in which they have rationalized themselves.

They are a mutated form of the self-actualizing person. They may seem quite personally powerful, but inside they are hollow, almost histrionic. They would be products of broken homes, and have marriages of convenience, mostly their own.

The narcissists are often highly verbally acute and talented at using speech, with high IQs.  But the tell is their lack of consistency.  And they thrive in places of upper management where performance and personal responsibility can be rationalized and diffused.  They are corrosive for the long term.

And the same off model status might be said to apply to misanthropes and hermits, the extreme form of self-imposed isolationism. At some point their social maturity has failed. And then there are the many socially immature who have never progressed beyond adolescence most likely because of some trauma or lack of support for their development. They lash out in anger because they know something is missing in their lives.

Politicians and certain types of public figures can be tough to place on this model because they are often poseurs, in that they are motivated primarily by power, and will assume various modes and guises to obtain it. They are most notable for the lack of consistency between their public and private lives, their very disingenuousness.

Indeed their private lives can often be quite distinct from their public reputations, and remarkably so.

I have known many 'driven' figures who from a public face would seem to be quite successful, and often remarkably so. But almost invariably they are unhappy to the point of being miserable, and they spread their misery to their family and all that come close to them. They are broken but functional and for some their obsession gives them a remarkable focus. They are not distracted by sincere feelings and abstract principles such as 'justice.' People are at best trophies to be collected and more often objects to be used and discarded.

Do not get me wrong.  No one is perfect, and the definition of normal is broad given the natural diversity of creation.  And at the end of the day, we are all imperfect and often broken people.  It is how we react to these things that makes us what we are.  Some must struggle more valiantly than others.

I cannot give you a precise definition of 'sin' without reference to personal belief, along with the usual classical references, although I do believe it objectively exists.   I think the best way to explore this is to ask a higher power, sincerely and with some persistence, to show our own sins to us.  And that might prove to be interesting, especially among those who think they are without it and beyond it.

And although I cannot define what normality and sin are, I think I know what hell is.  To paraphrase Dostoevsky, hell is the inability to love and to be loved, even when it is true and freely offered.  That is the terrible curse of Tantalus, and the source of much anger and discontent and oppression in the world.

So there is my slight modification to this model, and my pass at practical psychology for today.

Hitlerland: Making a Deadly Peace with the Devil

"We cannot look to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep."

Carl von Ossietzky, German editor of Die Weltbühne, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935


"It would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse."

William Dodd, historian and US Ambassador to Germany, 1933

I am reading a new book titled Hitlerland, by Andrew Nagorski. Thank you to reader Andrew for recommending it. He knows I am very widely read in this period of history and find it fascinating both from an economic, sociological, and political perspective.

I was prepared for a rehashing of things I have already known and read, and I must admit I was initially put off a bit by the title which sounds frivolous. I was pleasantly surprised, even a bit amazed.

The book is highly original, and extraordinarily factual, in that Nagorski spent an extraordinary effort investigating eyewitness accounts, many of them unpublished, by Americans who lived there during the period in Germany from the Weimar Republic to the rise of Hitler and the beginning of the Second War.

He inserts minimal personal opinion and analysis into the writing, being more the journalist than the historian. He does treat the after-the-fact accounts with the proper regard for posturing and self promotion. He does have some very charming vignettes as well that make it a highly readable book.

It is well done, a 'must read' for anyone who wishes to understand that period of time from the perspective of those who lived it.  It adds a new dimension to a much written about period of time.  Remarkably so.

If there is anything that was surprising, it is the abject misery and despair of the German people during the Weimar Republic with the hyperinflation, and how few people actually saw the worst to come politically, after a false economic recovery, with the Crash of 1929. One knows these things, but they do not really understand them, not having lived it.

 Personal accounts help in this. This is why I found the book, When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson so helpful in this regard, as well as Ken Burns masterful documentary, The Civil War.

The fear of the Socialists and the Communists in particular is a key driver for the events of that time, and is not to be discounted.  The cynical dealing and irresoluteness of the Weimar politicians is another factor.  There were open fights in the streets on a regular basis, although they were often surprisingly 'orderly' as this book relates. Some of the passages are quite amusing for those familiar with the German penchant for orderliness, even in the midst of urban warfare.

The capacity for self-delusion and a bad compromise is amazing, especially during periods of confusion, fear, and distraction. And the moral base in Germany at that interwar period was already notoriously relativistic and given to occultism, odd theories, and Nietzchean extremes.  And after war, hyperinflation, and a new Depression, their spirit and will to resist evil was simply exhausted, especially when it was backed by systematic terror and force.

We ought not to be too critical of those people, many of the Americans included, who did not see the worst coming. Did you see the recent financial collapse coming, and what has followed? Do you even understand it yet? History may be amazed at your ignorance. And yet all the signs of trouble were there during the period from 1999 to 2007.

Some people were warning of the credit bubble, the imbalanced financial sector, and widespread fraud.  And the American people were distracted by a 'war on terror,' and not the collapse of their lives and savings after the decimation from a brutal world war that left the flower of their youth dead, crippled, or broken.

And then in Germany there was another Crash, and the onset of Great Depression, and the people thought, no, not again. Anything is better than this. And so the bargain with the devil was made, and after a brief blaze of false glory, hell followed.

This is not to excuse anything that was done, or permitted to happen. Far from it. But it is to place this sort of tragedy within its human context, and to remind us that we are all capable of such confused cowardice and acquiescence in the face of evil.  We must remain steadfast and resolute against it, especially before resistance demands the type of heroism of which few are capable.

The consensus of those who met Hitler was that he was a most ordinary person, with little charisma or appeal.  Dorothy Thompson called him 'the very prototype of the Little Man.'  He seemed nondescript, but inwardly mad, illogical and ineffective, and they were incredulous that he could rise to power.

A key tenet of the Nazis was the rejection of objective fact and reason in favor of the passions of 'the blood' and of instinct.  Truth was not an impartial consideration or serious limitation to conclusion and action.  That is a familiar refrain amongst ideologues and the more extreme elements of both left and right on the political continuum.

There are a few heroic figures in this book, and prominent among them is the Pulitzer prize winning journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer, whom I had never heard about before this, which is a shame. I will let you read about him for yourself.

I had not realized how badly the prospects of the National Socialist party had fallen in the years after Hitler's imprisonment for the abortive putsch and before his sudden rise to power as chancellor.  They were essentially done.  But they served a purpose as a cat's paw for those wealthy bankers and industrialists who feared the Communists and Socialists, and for cynical Weimar pols who were too busy fighting for power amongst themselves to see the rising threat of fascism.

I had not remembered that during the Night of the Long Knives not only the SA leadership was taken on shot, but old political rivals as well, some of whom were retired from political life. Hitler's ruthlessness was exhaustive, and examples were often made. Again, we ought not to discount the regular use of domestic terror as party policy from the very onset of its ascendancy.

That rise to power was supported by the fresh fears and concerns brought on by the Great Depression which knocked Germany back off course, and the craven weakness of spirit of the politicians of his day. In the manner of Mussolini he gained power almost by default, and then secured it with a brutal iron fist. I am now convinced that without that terrible economic collapse after 1929 to provide a ready platform, he would have died a relatively forgotten crank.

One thing that I wonder about often is the attention given to Hitler because of his abominable atrocities, and the relatively little time spent on his role model, Mussolini. I have read a bit more on him, and he was despicable, a ruthless thug. The early Nazis were referred to by the Americans as the fascisti.  

Here is a brief excerpt from the accounts of the American journalist Edgar Mowrer. It is not anything I had not known from other readings but gives one a sense of the style in which Nagorski allows events to unfold through the words of his witnesses to history, and how he weaves their testimony into a rich tapestry.

Gold Daily And Silver Weekly Charts - Orwell's Final Warning

The endgame of deception continues.

Have a pleasant weekend.

See you Sunday evening.

Social Classes in 1984
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
by Emmanuel Goldstein (George Orwell)

"...if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would learn to think for themselves, become politically conscious and so depose the ruling oligarchy; therefore, in the long run, a hierarchical society is only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

Given that large-scale, mechanised production could not be eliminated once invented, the Party arranges the destruction of surplus goods, before that makes the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

Hence perpetual war is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. It is a deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another...

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors...

Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.”

The Socio-Political Continuum
By Jesse

A credibility trap is when the regulatory, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform or even honestly address the situation without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.

The status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even relatively honest reformers within the power structure become susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion.

And so a failed policy and its support system become almost self-sustaining, long after it is seen by the people to have failed, and in failing become counterproductive.  Admitting failure is not an option for those who receive their power from that system.

The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a blatant hypocrisy.





Point Zero of Systemic Collapse
By Chris Hedges

"...We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity.

The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages.

But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy."

Karl Polanyi On Liberal Economics and the Rise of Fascism

"Hobbes had argued the need for a despot because men were like beasts; Townsend insisted that they were actually beasts and that, precisely for that reason, only a minimum of government was required.

From this novel point of view, a free society could be regarded as consisting of two races: property owners and laborers. The number of the latter was limited by the amount of food; and as long as property was safe, hunger would drive them to work. No magistrates were necessary as hunger was a better disciplinarian than the magistrate...

The biological nature of man appeared as the given foundation of a society that was not of a political order. Thus it came to pass that economists presently relinquished Adam Smith's humanistic foundations, and incorporated those of Townsend...Economic society had emerged as distinct from the political state."

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 1944

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Only the percentages and the methods of sorting seem to matter to a certain type of ubermensch mentality. And of course force and fraud are indispensable to the accumulation and protection of their wealth.

I have spent the last day or two reading Karl Polanyi's landmark work of economic history, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

Polanyi's history is particularly good because he describes in some detail how the predominant economic thought changes and adapts itself to its cultural context, the changing attitudes and philosophies of people and particular historical developments. And how it even begins to shape history as a branch of political philosophy. What are people, and what is their relationship to society as a whole? What is power? What is moral?

It is a grave mistake to treat economics as a physical science like chemistry. Chemistry seeks to quantify and explain an essentially unchanging physical world in substance if not in incidentals.  There are real laws. Theory becomes verifiable fact, and new facts build to new theories. Chemistry evolves, in that it changes with a remarkably evident progression of one thing on another which can be seen against some objective standard.

Economics reflects the changing attitudes of politics and the other social sciences to the relationship among the individual, society, and nature.  That is not to say that there is no learning in a social science. There is plenty of learning, but also a strong tendency to have to re-learn the same hard lessons over and over again. 

If someone in astrophysics were to say that the sun revolves around the earth they would be laughed off the podium and booted out of their positions. But if an economist says even now that markets are naturally self-regulating and efficient if left alone, they might be given a large grant and the chairmanship of an economics department, even though this theory has been found wanting, or as some might phrase it, a howler. 

There is a remarkably poignant paragraph in Polanyi where he says that since self-regulating markets have been proven to be nonsense "we are witnessing a development under which the economic system ceases to lay down the law to society and the primacy of society over that system is secured." As John Kenneth Galbraith put it, there are no new financial frauds, just variations on the old familiar themes.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between monetary theory, which is more akin to finance, and macroeconomics, which operates more generally in the realm of broad relationships and what is essentially morals or public policy. It is well said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, because one does not understand the scope of the field and their own limitations.

A certain school of economics can, and often did as shown in this history, coolly observe that profits will be maximized if a large percentage of the workers are maintained on the verge of starvation and insecurity without any support or interference from society, in the service of a superior few. We can clearly see the descendants of that particular moral philosophy in the world today.

It should be understood that by 'liberal economics' is meant 'self-regulating,' or essentially unregulated markets, and not progressivism as we might think of it today.  Polanyi goes to some lengths to show that there are no self-regulated markets that are fair and efficient.  Mostly those markets that are called self-regulated are set up with a bias that favors the insiders that control them.  Or as I said the other day, naturally occurring self-regulated markets are as common as seals reciting Shakespeare.

It is a long book. I will almost certainly read it again in more leisure. I tend to read quickly online, and more carefully when holding an actual book. But it was enjoyable and those inclined might read it with some benefit.   It gave me a framework on which to hang quite of bit of independent thought and learning, providing some additional coherence.  I think I understand why certain things have happened in the way that they have.

Bear in mind that Polanyi is a man of his time. I disagreed with many of his thoughts on the gold standard for example, even though I am not even in favor of it today as I have said, for some of the same reasons he cites. I have seen another 60 or more years of history without a gold standard, and know that what he saw was not so much attributable to the gold standard but the inflexibility of a single currency system, much as we are seeing with a euro currency and a multiplicity of fiscal regimes in the euro zone today.   And for the dollar reserve currency in the world which is in a similar process of failing for similar reasons.  I still wonder at who conceived these monstrosities and what they were really thinking, except for an expedient solution that became institutionalized with a powerful set of adherents and beneficiaries, and so long outlived its usefulness.

I include here only key passages, by no means exhaustive or complete. I have left out whole sections of his thought on land for example. But the major progression of his thought is here.

A Utopian system leads to an impasse between the adherents attempting to sustain the unsustainable and those who are obliged to endure its conflicts with reality. Much in the manner of the Wall Street financialisation cartel and the real productive economy today. The system might function well during a spectacular growth period, but when some return to normal growth occurs the system fails and a standoff occurs.

Unless resolved by organic reform that impasse can lead to 'reform by other means,' or an extreme solution and with it a general unhappiness. This is in fact his thesis, that the failure of neoliberal economics and its unwillingness to relieve the deadlock in which it held the real world economy led to the rise of the extreme solutions of fascism, communism, and the second great war. He makes an interesting case.

Enjoy.

"A market economy is an economic system controlled, regulated, and directed by markets alone; order in the production and distribution of goods is entrusted to this self-regulating mechanism. An economy of this kind derives from the expectation that human beings behave in such a way as to achieve maximum money gains. It assumes markets in which the supply of goods (including services) available at a definite price will equal the demand at that price. It assumes the presence of money, which functions as purchasing power in the hands of its owners.

Production will then be controlled by prices, for the profits of those who direct production will depend upon them; the distribution of the goods also will depend upon prices, for prices form incomes, and it is with the help of these incomes that the goods produced are distributed amongst the members of society. Under these assumptions order in the production and distribution of goods is ensured by prices alone...

Nothing must be allowed to inhibit the formation of markets, nor must incomes be permitted to be formed otherwise than through sales. Neither must there be any interference with the adjustment of prices to changed market conditions—whether the prices are those of goods, labor, land, or money. Hence there must not only be markets for all elements of industry, but no measure or policy must be countenanced that would influence the action of these markets. Neither price, nor supply, nor demand must be fixed or regulated; only such policies and measures are in order which help to ensure the self-regulation of the market by creating conditions which make the market the only organizing power in the economic sphere...

A self-regulating market demands nothing less than the institutional separation of society into an economic and political sphere. Such a dichotomy is, in effect, merely the restatement, from the point of view of society as a whole, of the existence of a self-regulating market...

A market economy must comprise all elements of industry, including labor, land, and money. (In a market economy the last also is an essential element of industrial life and its inclusion in the market mechanism has, as we will see, far-reaching institutional consequences.) But labor and land are no other than the human beings themselves of which every society consists and the natural surroundings in which it exists. To include them (people) in the market mechanism means to subordinate the substance of society itself to the laws of the market...

To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity "man" attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation.

Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed. Finally, the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society...But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill...

But on the island of Juan Fernandez (an economic analogy described earlier) there was neither government nor law; and yet there was balance between goats and dogs. That balance was maintained by the difficulty the dogs found in devouring the goats which fled into the rocky part of the island, and the inconveniences the goats had to face when moving to safety from the dogs. No government was needed to maintain this balance; it was restored by the pangs of hunger on the one hand, the scarcity of food on the other. (This is the law of predator and prey).

Hobbes had argued the need for a despot because men were like beasts; Townsend insisted that they (people) were actually beasts and that, precisely for that reason, only a minimum of government was required. From this novel point of view, a free society could be regarded as consisting of two races: property owners and laborers. The number of the latter was limited by the amount of food; and as long as property was safe, hunger would drive them to work. No magistrates were necessary, for hunger was a better disciplinarian than the magistrate...

The paradigm of the goats and the dogs seemed to offer an answer. The biological nature of man appeared as the given foundation of a society that was not of a political order. Thus it came to pass that economists presently relinquished Adam Smith's humanistic foundations, and incorporated those of Townsend...Economic society had emerged as distinct from the political state...

To the politician and administrator laissez-faire was simply a principle of the insurance of law and order, with the minimum cost and effort. Let the market be given charge of the poor, and things will look after themselves...

What induced orthodox economics to seek its foundations in naturalism was the otherwise inexplicable misery of the great mass of the producers which, as we know today, could never have been deduced from the laws of the old market. But the facts as they appeared to contemporaries were roughly these: in times past the laboring people had habitually lived on the brink of indigence (at least, if one accounted for changing levels of customary standards); since the coming of the machine they had certainly never risen above subsistence level; and now that the economic society was finally taking shape, it was an indubitable fact that decade after decade the material level of existence of the laboring poor was not improving a jot, if, indeed, it was not becoming worse... (trickle down theory had not worked, mystifying economists.  The old canards are the best).

The acceptance of near-indigency of the mass of the citizens (roughly 47 to 99 percent apparently) as the price to be paid for the highest stage of prosperity was accompanied by very different human attitudes. Townsend righted his emotional balance by indulging in prejudice and sentimentalism. The improvidence (lacking personal responsibility) of the poor was a law of nature, for servile, sordid, and ignoble work would otherwise not be done. (born to be vile?) Also what would become of the fatherland unless we could rely on the poor? "For what is it but distress and poverty which can prevail upon the lower classes of the people to encounter all the horrors which await them on the tempestuous ocean or on the field of battle?"...

Robert Owen, in 1817, described the course on which Western man had entered and his words summed up the problem of the coming century...The organization of the whole of society on the principle of gain and profit must have far-reaching results. He formulated these results in terms of human character. For the most obvious effect of the new institutional system was the destruction of the traditional character of settled populations and their transmutation into a new type of people, migratory, nomadic, lacking in self-respect and discipline—crude, callous beings...

He proceeded to the generalization that the principle involved was unfavorable to individual and social happiness. Grave evils would be produced in this fashion unless the tendencies inherent in market institutions were checked by conscious social direction made effective through legislation...The Industrial Revolution was causing a social dislocation of stupendous proportions, and the problem of poverty was merely the economic aspect of this event. Owen justly pronounced that unless legislative interference and direction counteracted these devastating forces, great and permanent evils would follow...

The trading classes had no organ to sense the dangers involved in the exploitation of the physical strength of the worker, the destruction of family life, the devastation of neighborhoods, the denudation of forests, the pollution of rivers, the deterioration of craft standards, the disruption of folkways, and the general degradation of existence including housing and arts, as well as the innumerable forms of private and public life that do not affect profits...

Two vital functions of society, the political and the economic, were being used and abused as weapons in a struggle for sectional interests. It was out of such a perilous deadlock that in the twentieth century the fascist crisis sprang...

Economic liberalism (liberal in the sense of laissez-faire) was the organizing principle of a society engaged in creating a market system. Born as a mere penchant for non-bureaucratic methods, it evolved into a veritable faith in man's secular salvation through a self-regulating market. Such fanaticism was the result of the sudden aggravation of the task it found itself committed to: the magnitude of the sufferings that were to be inflicted on innocent persons as well as the vast scope of the interlocking changes involved in the establishment of the new order...

The global sweep of economic liberalism can now be taken in at a glance. Nothing less than a self-regulating market on a world scale could ensure the functioning of this stupendous mechanism. (one world government) ...No wonder that economic liberalism turned into a secular religion once the great perils of this venture were evident. There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course...The road to the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organized and controlled interventionism...  (At the end of the economic continuum, both extreme laissez-faire and communism meet, becoming almost indistinguishable in their destruction of the individual and their particular social institutions which inhibit centralized control).

Stabilization of currencies became the focal point in the political thought of peoples and governments; the restoration of the gold standard became the supreme aim of all organized effort in the economic field. The repayment of foreign loans and the return to stable currencies were recognized as the touchstones of rationality in politics; and no private suffering, no infringement of sovereignty, was deemed too great a sacrifice for the recovery of monetary integrity.  (austerity anyone?)

The privations of the unemployed made jobless by deflation; the destitution of public servants dismissed without a pittance; even the relinquishment of national rights and the loss of constitutional liberties were judged a fair price to pay for the fulfillment of the requirement of sound budgets and sound currencies, these a priori of economic liberalism...

The root of all evil, the liberal insists, was precisely this interference with the freedom of employment, trade and currencies practiced by the various schools of social, national, and monopolistic protectionism since the third quarter of the nineteenth century; but for the unholy alliance of trade unions and labor parties with monopolistic manufacturers and agrarian interests, which in their shortsighted greed joined forces to frustrate economic liberty, the world would be enjoying today the fruits of an almost automatic system of creating material welfare.  

Liberal leaders never weary of repeating that the tragedy of the nineteenth century sprang from the incapacity of man to remain faithful to the inspiration of the early liberals; that the generous initiative of our ancestors was frustrated by the passions of nationalism and class war, vested interests, and monopolists, and above all, by the blindness of the working people to the ultimate beneficence of unrestricted economic freedom to all human interests, including their own.

A great intellectual and moral advance was thus, it is claimed, frustrated by the intellectual and moral weaknesses of the mass of the people; what the spirit of Enlightenment had achieved was put to nought by the forces of selfishness In a nutshell, this is the economic liberal's defense. Unless it is refuted, he will continue to hold the floor in the contest of arguments...

To separate labor from other activities of life and to subject it to the laws of the market was to annihilate all organic forms of existence and to replace them by a different type of organization, an atomistic and individualistic one.  (a vision of Orwell's 1984).

This effect of the establishment of a labor market is conspicuously apparent in colonial regions today. The natives are to be forced to make a living by selling their labor. To this end their traditional institutions must be destroyed, and prevented from re-forming, since, as a rule, the individual in primitive society is not threatened by starvation unless the community as a whole is in a like predicament...

Now, what the white man may still occasionally practice in remote regions today, namely, the smashing up of social structures in order to extract the element of labor from them, was done in the eighteenth century to white populations by white men for similar purposes... (the economic hitmen come home again).

Mankind was in the grip, not of new motives, but of new mechanisms., Briefly, the strain sprang from the zone of the market; from there it spread to the political sphere, thus comprising the whole of society. But within the single nations the tension remained latent as long as world economy continued to function...

Eventually, the moment would come when both the economic and the political systems were threatened by complete paralysis. Fear would grip the people, and leadership would be thrust upon those who offered an easy way out at whatever ultimate price. The time was ripe for the fascist solution.

The fascist solution of the impasse reached by liberal capitalism can be described as a reform of market economy achieved at the price of the extirpation of all democratic institutions, both in the industrial and in the political realm. The economic system which was in peril of disruption would thus be revitalized, while the people themselves were subjected to a re-education designed to denaturalize the individual and make him unable to function as the responsible unit of the body politic.

This re-education, comprising the tenets of a: political religion that denied the idea of the brotherhood of man in all its forms, was achieved through an act of mass conversion enforced against recalcitrants by scientific methods of torture.

The appearance of such a movement in the industrial countries of the globe, and even in a number of only slightly industrialized ones, should never have been ascribed to local causes, national mentalities, or historical backgrounds as was so consistently done by contemporaries...

In fact, there was no type of background— of religious, cultural, or national tradition—that made a country immune to fascism, once the conditions for its emergence were given. Moreover, there was a striking lack of relationship between its material and numerical strength and its political effectiveness. The very term "movement" was misleading since it implied some kind of enrollment or personal participation of large numbers. If anything was characteristic of fascism it was its independence of such popular manifestations. Though usually aiming at a mass following, its potential strength was reckoned not by the numbers of its adherents but by the influence of the persons in high position whose good will the fascist leaders possessed, and whose influence in the community could be counted upon to shelter them from the consequences of an abortive revolt, thus taking the risks out of revolution.

A country approaching the fascist phase showed symptoms among which the existence of a fascist movement proper was not necessarily one. At least as important signs were the spread of irrationalistic philosophies, racialist aesthetics, anticapitalistic demagogy, (and procapitalist demagogy for that matter) heterodox currency views, criticism of the party system, widespread disparagement of the "regime," or whatever was the name given to the existing democratic set-up...

What we termed, for short, "fascist situation" was no other than the typical occasion of easy and complete fascist victories. All at once, the tremendous industrial and political organizations of labor and of other devoted upholders of constitutional freedom would melt away, and minute fascist forces would brush aside what seemed until then the overwhelming strength of democratic governments, parties, trade unions.

If a "revolutionary situation" is characterized by the psychological and moral disintegration of all forces of resistance to the point where a handful of scantily armed rebels were enabled to storm the supposedly impregnable strongholds of reaction, then the "fascist situation" was its complete parallel except for the fact that here the bulwarks of democracy and constitutional liberties were stormed and their defenses found wanting in the same spectacular fashion...  (or as Orwell put it, a revolution is the kicking in of a rotten door - Jesse)

Fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function. Hence, it was world-wide, catholic in scope, universal in application; the issues transcended the economic sphere and begot a general transformation of a distinctively social kind. It radiated into almost every field of human activity whether political or economic, cultural, philosophic, artistic, or religious. And up to a point it coalesced with local and topical tendencies. No understanding of the history of the period is possible unless we distinguish between the underlying fascist move and the ephemeral tendencies with which that move fused in different countries."

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 1944