風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
金融殖民主義的終結
https://michael-hudson.com/2024/08/the-end-of-financial-colonialism/
作者：Michael 2024年8月7日 訪談 Dialogue Works 永久鏈接
Nima、Michael Hudson 和 Richard Wolff，“金融殖民主義”，Dialogue Works，2024 年 8 月 1 日。
“金融殖民主義終結背後的驚人真相！”
NIMA：讓我們從中東目前的衝突開始。你現在如何看待它？Michael，你認為中東發生了什麽？
MICHAEL HUDSON：我認為中東正在成為我們過去兩次聚在一起時談論的催化劑，世界分裂成兩半，美國、北約、西方對抗世界其他國家。
我認為美國和近東地區的行為向全球大多數人展示了美國和以色列在那裏所做的一切，包括暗殺個人、政權更迭以及右翼利庫德集團在美國右翼民主黨的支持下試圖在世界其他地區實施的暴力行為。
我認為，歐亞大陸得到的信息是，除非我們真正脫離，否則他們對巴勒斯坦人所做的事、歐洲對烏克蘭人所做的事，他們也會對我們做同樣的事情。
我認為這表明了緊迫性。我認為，自 1955 年萬隆會議以來，各國一直在討論如何脫離並建立一種不那麽剝削的世界貿易和投資製度。但當他們看到烏克蘭和近東發生的事情時，我認為這會發出緊迫感，告訴我們，我們真的必須團結起來，讓盟友加入我們的體係，為每個加入的國家提供足夠的支持，讓他們值得加入中國、俄羅斯、伊朗、上合組織（上海合作組織）的軌道，而不是保持與西方的聯係。西方所能提供的隻是賄賂和暴力威脅。
NIMA：理查德？
理查德·沃爾夫：是的，我想接著邁克爾說的話。真正讓我印象深刻的是中國崛起的跡象、金磚國家的崛起、我們過去稱之為第三世界、欠發達國家或新興國家的崛起，所有這些委婉的說法。
這種崛起現在很明顯。這是顯而易見的。邁克爾提出的統計數據、我提出的統計數據、以及我知道您與我們以及節目中的其他人討論過的統計數據都證明了這一點。
舉個小例子，我今天早上讀到優步公司，聽聽這個故事，優步公司今年早些時候與特斯拉進行了談判，談判的原因是他們想為全球大約 10 萬名優步司機提供廉價電動汽車。
他們在財經媒體上解釋了他們的目的。他們的目的是向公眾介紹電動汽車，讓公眾對電動汽車更感興趣，更適應電動汽車，這是一種標準的交易。
然後交易失敗了，今天早上他們宣布他們已經達成了交易，但不是與特斯拉，而是與比亞迪公司，後者是中國領先的電動汽車生產商。
好吧，為什麽？因為他們無法與特斯拉達成協議，因為埃隆·馬斯克在他的職業生涯中做了或沒做什麽，怎麽說呢，作為商人的起起伏伏，以及與西方的關係等等。
現在你不能繼續這樣做了，因為你可以看到基本上是一家西方公司，優步，在與另一家西方公司進行交易，讓中國占優勢。
正是資本家之間的競爭，將轉型推到了他們所謂的敵人手中。這是一個老笑話，你知道，資本家們競相看誰能把絞刑架賣給那些想絞死資本主義的人。你知道，這隻是一種奇怪的自我毀滅，它正在開始發生。
讓我給你舉第二個例子。根據國際記錄，伊朗零售加油站每加侖汽油的價格是10美分。這是美分，美國加侖。在法國和德國，每加侖汽油的平均價格超過 7 美元。
好吧，這是能源成本不可持續的差異。我的意思是，可能需要更長的時間，更短的時間，可能朝這個方向發展，也可能朝那個方向發展，但那裏的競爭已經結束。任何需要石油的生產都可以在伊朗進行，如果在法國和德國，一加侖汽油的成本是 7 美元，而這兩個國家的成本都超過 7 美元，那麽伊朗就不可能競爭。
我認為你現在看到的，也是我要支持邁克爾提出的最後一點的地方，讓我印象深刻的不是所有這些已經持續了一段時間並且現在正在加速的事情，比如優步和比亞迪等等，而是西方選擇了處理這個問題的方式，而不是在你還處於停滯狀態時坐下來達成協議
而美元雖然貶值，但仍然是世界第一大貨幣，等等。
不，他們沒有這麽做。他們決定以某種方式停止、逆轉或減緩這一進程，但他們做不到。曆史上沒有先例。他們做不到，他們的挫敗感和失敗正將他們推向令人震驚的暴力程度。
現在，我最後舉個例子來說明這一點，中東的暴力事件，邁克爾說得完全正確。這超出了預期。過去幾天，以色列就雞奸監獄中的巴勒斯坦囚犯的合法性展開了辯論。有正反兩方的辯論，讚成者很多。
你知道，以色列人怎麽了，他們現在變成這個樣子了嗎？這就像過去問德國人關於大屠殺受害者的問題一樣。這是對德國人提出的問題。現在以色列人提出這個問題是正確的。
邁克爾說得對，烏克蘭人民遭受的恐怖確實非同尋常。如果你了解曆史，我並不是想為普京先生和俄羅斯人開脫。他們入侵了。他們侵犯了邊界。我知道這是一個嚴重的問題。但我們都知道北約在 1989 年之後做了什麽。我們都知道。任何關注過這件事並且沒有迷失在宣傳戰中的人都不會明白，這場危機是由北約的計劃和俄羅斯的拒絕造成的。
俄羅斯人已經說過很多次了。這是他們的紅線。就在那裏。你不能這樣做。你不能這樣做。然後你在二月份開了這些會議，稍後在伊斯坦布爾又開了一次會議，等等。什麽都沒有結果。烏克蘭的苦難本來是可以避免的。無論這場戰爭的勝負，他們都將花費數十年的時間才能走出災難。
這種程度的暴力表明了西方人現在有多麽絕望，他們願意做什麽，願意指揮別人做什麽。他們還沒有準備好。
問題不在於你什麽時候和俄羅斯人坐下來談判。每個人都知道最終會有一次會議，他們會找到解決辦法。其他每場類似的戰爭都是這樣結束的。這場戰爭也會這樣結束。每個人都知道，隻要有人關注。
以色列人將不得不與巴勒斯坦人達成協議，除非他們真的想消滅他們，但他們無論如何也做不到。
所以，你所看到的是一種絕望的跡象，唯一更奇怪的是看到像拜登先生或特朗普先生這樣的領導人說話時，好像他們擁有美國在 20 世紀 60 年代和 70 年代擁有的權力。但這一切都過去了。但他們似乎認為，政治上的必要性是取悅美國人民，讓他們天真地以為他們仍處於原地。
我注意到，當我給出這個簡單的統計數據時，我也在討論中給出過，G7 的總 GDP 現在明顯低於金磚國家的總 GDP。但事實就是如此。
我注意到，當我向聽眾解釋這一點時，他們用一種悲傷的眼神看著我，好像我剛剛說出了他們真正希望保密的私生活。而我卻把這個不愉快的現實公之於眾。10 分鍾後他們就不會記得了，因為這太不愉快了。
現在暴力程度如此之高。你真的有一種感覺，我從我們各地的文化中都能感受到，我們正處於美國曆史上某個非常可怕的轉折點。沒有人知道它會走向何方。但是，我看到了，感覺到了，聽到了無處不在的不祥之感。
邁克爾·哈德森：我想談談理查德剛才提到的絕望和沮喪。我們知道美國一直在做什麽來緩解這種沮喪。它一直在對中國和俄羅斯實施製裁。
有趣的是，他們實施的幾乎每項製裁都適得其反。對另一個國家必需的東西實施製裁的效果是，你迫使該國自己生產這些商品。我們之前在這個節目中談到過美國如何對俄羅斯實施農業食品製裁。因此，俄羅斯不能再從波羅的海國家進口乳製品和食品。發生了什麽？俄羅斯隻是將生產轉移到自己身上。現在它獨立了。
一旦你獨立於某件事，並意識到，我們永遠不希望各國再次試圖通過製裁來中斷我們的供應鏈，你就會永遠失去這個市場。
因此，美國為了阻止全球大多數國家（85% 的國家）脫離北約西方而拚命做的事情就是強迫這些國家獨立，這樣它們就不再需要美國了。他們為阻止這一行為所做的一切都產生了完全相反的效果。
這是因為西方人的心態是欺淩，認為如果
如果你不按我們的意願做，我們就會傷害你。他們以為製裁會傷害你，卻不加思索，那麽其他國家會如何回應呢？他們沒有考慮到這一點。
如果他們想，好吧，我們要殺雞儆猴，用他們在烏克蘭和巴勒斯坦的所作所為來嚇唬猴子，這同樣會促使其他國家加速這一事實：我們最好在今年俄羅斯主持的金磚國家會議和明年中國主持的金磚國家會議上迅速采取行動。我們最好能夠與所有歐亞鄰國達成協議，我們將幫助我們形成臨界規模，這樣我們就不再需要依賴北約西方了。
北約西方能做什麽？它隻能加速暴力。它越加速，客人離去的速度就越快。
他們隻想獨處。而美國正試圖阻止他們這樣做，迫使他們做出選擇，要麽獨自行動，要麽最終成為德國和其他美國保護國。
理查德·沃爾夫：如果可以的話，讓我來談談邁克爾反複這樣做的情況。邁克爾的見解有趣且不同尋常地得到了一篇文章的大力支持。如果你還沒有遇到過，請讓我敦促你和所有聽眾和觀眾。
7 月 25 日，也就是幾天前，《華盛頓郵報》刊登了一篇絕對非凡的文章。它講述了美國前四任總統如何發起和組織了所謂的經濟戰爭的大規模加速。
但它真正意味著製裁，它就是這樣說的。它清楚地表明美國是製裁大師。它提到了拜登、特朗普、奧巴馬和布什。
當然，製裁可以追溯到很久以前。文章中的一個例子是古巴。我們對古巴製裁了半個多世紀。整個目的和重點就是要除掉菲德爾·卡斯特羅。這真是個失敗。
然後，有兩件事可以擴展邁克爾的觀點。這篇文章，我告訴你的一切都來自那篇文章，7 月 25 日的《華盛頓郵報》。不能錯過。
第一個統計數據。美國目前有 15,000 個未決製裁對象。個人、公司、整個國家。15,000 個。華盛頓郵報說，在這個位置上，美國排名第一。
排名第二的製裁對象較少，大約 5,000 個。所以，大約是美國的三分之一，排名第二，你可能會感到驚訝，世界上實施製裁的第二大國家是瑞士。對吧？換句話說，是美國。俄羅斯和中國沒有出現在《華盛頓郵報》的名單上。他們不這樣做。對吧？
所以，你要問自己一個五歲小孩都能想出來的問題。如果在這場所謂的偉大鬥爭中，一方，即西方，美國，到處實施製裁，而另一方卻什麽都不實施製裁，那麽，如何解釋這種奇怪的現象呢？你知道，他們有無人機，我們有無人機，他們有導彈，我們有導彈，他們有製裁，我們沒有。我們有製裁，他們沒有。
好吧，答案就是邁克爾的觀點，我想提出這一點。當你製裁一個國家時，該國的領導人，管理社會的人，幾乎總是免疫的。他們不會換衣服，不會吃不同的食物，不會停止開車。製裁可能造成的痛苦，也確實給遭受貧困的廣大人民帶來了痛苦，或者古巴無法獲得醫療、藥物和藥品等等。
那麽，當然，每個受製裁社會的領導人會做什麽呢？明確表示，作為該國領導人，這不是你的錯，不是你的政黨的錯，而是美國的錯，這是你的首要任務。製裁是動員全球輿論反對美國作為我們這個時代最大的製裁者的一種方式。
這是一個計劃，讓你把榴彈炮對準你自己的腳。這是一項瘋狂的政策。
忘記它的其他所有恐怖之處和它造成的真正痛苦吧。這是一個弄巧成拙的計劃，肯定表明，推行它的人可能會在當地政治舞台上獲得暫時的優勢，但他們正在為社會的未來和在日益孤立的世界中的生存能力付出令人難以置信的代價。
邁克爾·哈德森：我想客觀地看待理查德剛才說的話。他談到製裁正在動員其他國家自力更生，但產生了反彈效應。
製裁，尤其是針對中國的製裁，主要影響的是美國本身，即生產國。現在，理查德和我都相信曆史的唯物主義方法，我們的大多數方法一直是
嗯，各國所做的幾乎都反映了其商界、金融界或精英階層的利益。
但讓我們看看美國對向中國出售計算機芯片和信息技術實施的製裁。英特爾和其他國家表示，如果他們遵守拜登政府實施的製裁，尤其是如果他們遵守特朗普將要實施的製裁，他們的利潤就會消失。
美國商界的利潤主要來自出口到這些現在受到美國政府本身實施的製裁的國家。
現在，你如何調和這樣一個事實：新保守主義者和新自由主義者實施的美國製裁違背了美國主要行業、信息技術行業、汽車製造商和所有其他行業的利潤追求？
你可以說，製裁最終對美國經濟的懲罰比其他國家要大得多，因為雖然其他國家的供應在短期內中斷，但它們擁有長期的獨立性。
對於美國來說，這種長期影響，甚至是短期影響，就是奪走美國出口商、主要工業部門，當然還有股票交易所，奪走這個市場。它已經失去了。
所以美國人正在做的是自我孤立。多年來，我們都認為全球大多數人會以某種方式聚集在一起，製定一種獨立並幫助自己實現經濟利益的手段。
但具有諷刺意味的是，推動這一進程的是美國，而不是中國、俄羅斯或其他國家。他們對美國的反應本質上是實施經濟自殺政策。
理查德·沃爾夫：是的，我也注意到了這一點。例如，如果你讀過美國商會定期發布的聲明，你就會明白邁克爾在說什麽。
他們非常緊張。他們不想與中國發生衝突。他們代表了大量在中國投入大量投資的公司。他們不想失去這些投資。中國是全球最大、增長最快的市場。沒有人想被排除在外。每所商學院都教你想賺大錢。你去工資低廉、市場不斷增長的地方。你好，這就是世界其他地方。這就是正在發生的事情。遲早會超越西方。
他們這麽說，所以邁克爾的問題成立。到底發生了什麽？這是我能做的最好的回答。我隻是猜測，如果我犯了錯誤，我希望你或你的聽眾能糾正我。
他們真的不明白我們在說什麽。換句話說，當我之前有點嘲諷地說，他們生活在 20 世紀 60 年代和 70 年代，當時美國占據主導地位。也許這句話比我的嘲諷更真實。
他們確實相信這隻是一個暫時的挑戰，他們有能力、有意願、有能力消除這個挑戰。他們會去找這些公司說，是的，是的，我們明白，你知道，這種關稅對你們不利，這樣，那樣，再這樣。但是，請忍耐一下，因為我們真的會成功。當我們成功時，就在眼前，我們會打敗他們。
然後我們會瓜分俄羅斯，俄羅斯會變成 20 個小國，就像東歐其他國家一樣，我們所有人都可以輕易操縱。當我們搞定俄羅斯後，我們會對中國做同樣的事情。然後，哇，我們會有一個世界嗎？因為我們會把俄羅斯和中國納入我們的從屬安排。這是殖民主義和帝國主義長期以來的夢想。這是西方統治下的統一世界經濟。
對於那些從小就相信這一點、在二戰後度過了一段特殊時光的人來說，他們認為這個項目仍然可以實現，這並不奇怪。這比他們想象的要難一些。但這就是他們要做的。這就是他們要做的。我們都在這裏，你知道，浪費時間，邁克爾，你，我，還有所有像我們一樣的人，因為我們看不到更大的圖景。
這就是他們告訴公司高管的。是的，你會有一兩年或三年的時間，但當我們完成時，你會高興嗎？順便說一句，在我們等待的時候，我們會讓你們更輕鬆。你給人們植入芯片，你正在失去市場，我們會給你補貼，這是你做夢也想不到的。我們會給你這個或那個的優惠。換句話說，我們會像在經濟衰退、疫情或其他情況下一樣，為你的利潤提供支持。這是一個調整過程。
我看了我研究生同學珍妮特·耶倫的演講。我們同時就讀耶魯大學，有同樣的老師，獲得了同樣的博士學位，
我們讀了同樣的文章，都是邁克爾非常熟悉的人寫的。你知道，我們的宏觀老師是詹姆斯·托賓，我們的國際老師是特裏芬，等等。
她知道，但她是這個困難時期的熱情管理者，因為我們正在為下一個偉大的資本積累階段重組世界。
NIMA：邁克爾，你想補充一點嗎？好的，讓我們談談衝突，談談委內瑞拉的局勢。你在美國是怎麽發現的？他們試圖盡一切努力幹涉委內瑞拉的局勢。即使是埃隆·馬斯克，他也在左右逢源，以幫助委內瑞拉的局勢。
理查德·沃爾夫：是的，我能說點什麽嗎？因為對我來說，這裏有幽默，我確實試圖在這個黑暗時期找到一些幽默。
當唐納德·特朗普質疑選舉結果、否認選舉結果時，美國也有同樣的人對他做出回應。他因此威脅到了民主。
委內瑞拉那些質疑和威脅選舉結果並否認選舉結果的人是在維護民主。你需要一個魔術師來欣賞這種轉換，對吧？我們國家這裏的選舉，我們大概都知道。
選舉在千裏之外的另一個國家，有著不同的文化和不同的語言，我們都可以原諒自己不知道到底發生了什麽。
不，不，不。我們知道，當你質疑這裏發生的事情時，這是對民主的威脅，當你拒絕那裏的選舉時，這是對民主的維護。而且說這句話時很輕鬆。
你知道，當沒有人注意到我剛剛告訴你的諷刺時，當沒有人意識到這一點時，這是非常明顯的。如果沒有人意識到這一點，你就知道這種意識形態的胡言亂語是多麽令人絕望，因為它阻礙了那些顯然可以也應該更了解情況的人的大腦和視野。
邁克爾·哈德森：理查德之前提到製裁加強了選民對政府的支持，因為他們意識到經濟麵臨的問題是由美國造成的，委內瑞拉就是一個典型例子。
委內瑞拉的問題實際上是因為美國之前對該國實施的獨裁者之一，我不記得是佩雷斯還是其他人，他們做了兩件事。
他們用委內瑞拉石油工業的外國美元借款作為抵押，包括石油工業伸出援手，用其利潤購買美國分銷網絡，以銷售其石油和天然氣。
首先，美國人奪走了委內瑞拉在美國持有的所有資產。換句話說，它奪走了委內瑞拉的國際儲備。這就是現在所謂的國家儲蓄基金。
其次，美國指示英國奪走委內瑞拉的黃金儲備，並將其交給美國所描述的總統。美國說，看，我們有兩種世界民主模式，烏克蘭和以色列。這兩個國家都是民主國家。而委內瑞拉，我們想加入其中。我們可以提名誰來擔任民主國家的領導人或部署政權更迭反對派。
因此，委內瑞拉的對外協議都包含一條條款，就像阿根廷一樣。如果有爭議，則由美國法院解決。其他國家正在關注委內瑞拉，他們認為，無論如何，我們永遠不會有任何由美國法院解決的國際條款。
事實上，我們需要一個金磚國家法院。我們需要一個替代國際貨幣基金組織、世界銀行和國際法院的法院。這將是我們之間的金磚國家法院。它將不是基於規則的秩序，而是真正的法治。所以你們有這個功能。
我認為，這也表明，如果像委內瑞拉這樣的國家成為製裁對象，例如非洲國家和拉丁美洲國家，全球南方債務國受到製裁，這是美元集團為阻止它們賺錢償還外債而采取的行動。這成為拒絕償還債務的合法、合乎邏輯和道德借口。這才是最終的突破。去美元化的突破將成為全球成熟度與北約美國西方之間全球斷裂的標誌。
理查德·沃爾夫：我不能錯過這個機會。再次重申，我希望大家能享受其中的諷刺意味。世界上許多宗教——我不是專家，所以我不能說所有宗教——但世界上許多宗教都有一個與邁克爾剛才所說的非常接近的命題。
在基督教中，它被稱為禧年。這是一個非常古老的觀念，已經存在了數千年，即當一個社會開始變得如此嚴重分裂時，維係社區的粘合劑就會消失，社區的生活就會受到過去不平等的威脅，因為擁有一大片土地，而你的同胞卻沒有土地，等等。
定期采取的做法是，
債務被免除。所有債務都被免除，然後你就可以重新開始了。如果是土地，那麽土地就會被從擁有土地的人手中奪走，然後重新分配，也許會使用一種隨機係統，你得到這塊，你得到那塊，另一個人得到另一塊，然後我們看看情況如何。如果它產生了太大的不平等，那麽，10 年或 20 年後，我們會再次這樣做。
這是一種堅持現代語言的方式，美國過去喜歡用這種方式來描述自己是一個龐大的中產階級。你知道，沒有人非常富有，也沒有人非常貧窮，每個人都在中間。
嗯，禧年旨在做到這一點。邁克爾告訴我們，禧年也可能不是一項自願的、宗教認可的、定期的活動，但禧年可能是爆炸性的結局，因為沒有其他選擇來解決將巨額財富集中在債權人手中，而絕望的生活集中在債務人手中的荒謬製度。
到那時，絕大多數債務人將把禧年看作一個非常幸福的結果，債權人將無法阻止它。他們沒有資源，到那時，一切都結束了。這不再是法院的問題。這隻是一種承認，社會契約要求結束這種不平等，而債務減免是解決大部分問題的簡單直接的辦法。
邁克爾·哈德森：理查德所描述的實際上是歐亞文明和西方文明的區別。我的書《……並免除他們的債務》以及我和哈佛大學小組一起完成的有關古代近東的所有書籍都表明，從公元前 2500 年的蘇美爾，到巴比??倫，再到近東鄰國，所有社會，一直到猶太，都定期取消債務。
他們都有一個國王——教科書稱他們為神權，意思是國王向眾神許下某些承諾以維持穩定。世界其他所有國家的經濟觀點與美國人在學校學到的完全相反。
我們有公元前 1800 年巴比倫的數學模型。它們比美國國家經濟研究局使用的任何模型都更為複雜。巴比倫人認為，在每個社會中，債務的自然影響是使社會在債權人和債務人之間兩極分化。
他們非常清楚，如果不取消債務，就會出現金融寡頭。統治者的角色，無論是漢謨拉比還是其他近東統治者，都是要防止金融寡頭政權的發展。
正如聖經先知以賽亞和其他人所指出的那樣，寡頭政權將利用其金融權力讓民眾負債累累，接管其土地，最終將導致少數人擁有所有土地，他們一地一地、一戶一戶地地耕種，直到土地上不再有自由人口的空間。
好吧，古典希臘和意大利是西方最早建立西方文明的國家。他們沒有神聖的統治者，他們沒有取消債務。他們有一個金融寡頭政權。
我們都知道羅馬在 500 年的時間裏發生了什麽。發生了革命，最終崩潰了。最終出現了農奴製和封建製度。
當西方轉向羅馬基督教而不是君士坦丁堡的正統基督教時，出現了伊斯蘭教。而伊斯蘭教徒，通常情況下，當農作物歉收時，他們會取消所有債務。
例如，在伊斯蘭教統治下的印度，數百年來都是這樣，直到英國人到來。當英國人接管印度時，他們停止了取消債務的整個想法，經濟兩極分化一直延續到今天的印度，使其成為世界上最不平等的國家之一。
因此，你可以說，西方文明的決定性特征從一開始就是讓金融寡頭政治發展。
而其他所有非西方國家，從巴比倫蘇美爾到伊朗，再到伊斯蘭教，甚至日本，都有這種現象。在中國，也有這種現象。這曾經是歐亞文明和西方文明的顯著特征，我預計正在談判去美元化的金磚國家集團將重新發明輪子，重新發明同樣的想法，即任何國家都不應將支付債權人階級以建立寡頭政治置於社會平衡之上，而社會平衡使整個經濟增長、提高生產力和生存下去。
為了生存，避免陷入黑暗時代和農奴製，你必須擁有比取消債務的寡頭政治更高的權威。
而西方文明沒有更高的權威。正如亞裏士多德所說，許多國家的憲法都稱自己為民主國家。他們實際上是寡頭政治。過去 2000 年來，每個西方文明經濟體都是寡頭政治。
亞洲有著完全不同的
租曆史背景。正如俄羅斯總統普京一直強調，看，俄羅斯具有獨特的文明特征，我在等待中國和其他亞洲國家以及伊斯蘭國家說，是的，我們也有背景，而且不是羅馬基督教的背景。我們要把整體利益置於金融階層的階級利益之上。我在等待這成為我們真正看到的文明斷裂的一個顯著特征。
如果可以的話，讓我把它翻譯成最近的美國曆史。它的智慧延伸非常非常深遠。
直到 20 世紀 70 年代左右，你可以看到美國的生產力緩慢而穩定地上升，工資或多或少也在緩慢而穩定地上升。沒有人應該對此感到困惑。生產力是工人給雇主的，工資是雇主給工人的。它們一起很好地上升。雇主賺取了更多的利潤，工人賺了更高的工資。這種狀況持續了很長一段時間，使美國實現了顯著的增長，幫助人們形成了“每一代人的生活都比前一代更好”的觀念，諸如此類。
然後在 20 世紀 70 年代，由於各種原因，實際工資趨於平穩。不再上漲。生產率卻不斷上升。好吧，用英語來說，很簡單，這意味著工人給雇主的錢不斷上漲，但雇主給工人的錢卻沒有上漲。
這就是為什麽我們在過去 40 或 50 年裏利潤暴漲，股市繁榮。??但現在出現了硬幣的另一麵。如果你用美國夢來打動工人階級，這就是你成為一名成功工人的原因。你必須有車有房子。你必須送孩子上大學。你必須有幾個星期的假期。
如果你要求人們自尊，但卻不給他們漲工資來負擔得起，你該怎麽辦？你會讓他們負債累累，因為這是他們實現美國夢的唯一途徑，通過借貸和陷入債務災難。
這就是雙重諷刺。貸款人從何而來？貸款人是雇主，因為自從生產力上升而工資沒有上升以來，他們的利潤一直在上升。因此，他們有不斷增長的生產力來借錢給工人，因為對他們來說，這是理所當然的。我寧願給我的工人增加工資，還是給工人固定工資和一筆貸款，他必須償還？嗯，這很容易。我們知道我們要做什麽。所以這就是我們所擁有的。
在過去的 40 年裏，我們讓美國人民陷入了前所未有的債務水平。抵押貸款債務、學生債務、信用卡債務，我的意思是汽車債務。你把這些都加起來，我們說越來越多的家庭的債務超過了他們的年收入。我的意思是，這是不可能的。
與此同時，頂層的財富不僅是從生產工人身上榨取的剩餘，而且當你借錢給他們而不是支付工資時，他們還能獲得利息。我的意思是，這個係統注定會產生嚴重的不平等。
這正是邁克爾一直在告訴你的故事。無論你是回到古代蘇美爾，還是你現在在美國，在過去的 50 年裏，你看到的是不同的係統，但它們有一個共同點，那就是除非你對它們采取一些根本性的措施，否則它們將產生不斷加深和越來越嚴重的不平等。
幾年前，托馬斯·皮凱蒂在他的《資本主義》一書中記錄了這一點，然後它就爆發了。那麽問題是，我們是否正處於爆發點？我們是否正在接近爆發點？
而我懷疑，回到我們開始的時候，你在烏克蘭和巴勒斯坦看到的暴力程度，是真正絕望地堅持某種早已失去理智的東西的標誌。
邁克爾·哈德森：好吧，理查德描述了資本主義發生了多大的變化。他剛剛提到了工業資本主義如何使美國變得富有，他們意識到高薪、吃得好、受過良好教育、穿得好的勞動力對雇主來說比窮人勞動力更有生產力。這基本上就是工業資本主義的整個經濟哲學。
好吧，我們從馬克思那裏了解到，工業資本主義的獨特之處在於雇主會雇傭勞動力，然後他們會以超過他們必須支付的勞動力成本的利潤出售勞動力生產的產品。
但是現在，看看理查德和我所描述的，美國工薪階層欠下的債務——我不想稱他們為中產階級，因為實際上沒有中產階級，他們是工薪階層——對他們的主要剝削不再隻是讓工業雇主保留工薪階層創造的利潤，因為畢竟我們正在去工業化。
正在發生的重大剝削
大部分用於償還債務。最富有的 1%，也許可以說是 10% 的人口背負著 90% 的債務，而支付給最富有的 10% 的人的收入又以償還債務的形式從這 90% 的人身上抽走。
更重要的是，這 10% 的人用這些錢做什麽？他們不會把這些經濟租金、利息和金融收益都花在商品和服務上。他們購買股票、債券和房地產，或者將更多的錢借給家庭購買房地產，或者借給企業評級機構接管公司。
因此，你所看到的是，經濟精英不是通過雇傭勞動力賺取利潤並通過儲蓄利潤致富來賺錢，而是通過金融工程、資本收益。
理查德剛剛指出了股票市場、債券市場和房地產市場的大幅上漲。你把注意力全部放在資產價格通脹、所有權和債權人權利上，將經濟的其餘部分變成債務人和租戶的公民。
嗯，基本上這就是封建製度下發生的事情。不知何故，歐洲和美國的工業革命認為它們將演變成非常接近社會主義的東西。我們之前談到過，19 世紀的每個人都支持某種社會主義，許多不同類型的社會主義。
但第一次世界大戰後，這一切都發生了變化，地主、銀行家和壟斷者進行了反擊，他們反對政府監管。他們說，沒有不勞而獲的收入，也沒有經濟租金。一切都是掙來的，就像利潤一樣。銀行通過收取利息來賺錢，甚至比利息還多的是滯納金的罰款。所有這些都是勞動收入。
因此，你對財富和經濟的觀念發生了徹底的轉變。它不再是兩個世紀前的工業資本主義的觀念。這是完全不同的東西。這就是現在許多人稱之為新封建主義的金融資本主義。這是一種轉變。
這就是其他國家分裂的原因，因為是什麽讓中國變得富有？當然，是社會主義，但社會主義也遵循了 19 世紀美國、德國和法國致富的模式。這是工業資本主義和社會主義的結合，因為工業家想要一個活躍的公共部門。他們想要活躍的公共基礎設施，以保持生活和經商成本低廉，補貼他們的生產。
所有這些補貼現在都被反政府鬥爭、自由主義所打破。如果你禁止政府行動、政府監管和政府資本投資，因為每個經濟體都是計劃經濟，那麽計劃就會轉移到華爾街。而今天，你有華爾街資本主義，而不是工業資本主義。這是真正的轉變，我認為，這是北約西方與歐亞大陸發展最深層次的區別。
理查德·沃爾夫：正是由於這種財富集中，你才會看到財富集中一直表現出的反應。那些通過生產積累財富的頂層人士，在通過金融操縱和重組而財富逐漸減少時，他們意識到，隨著他們相對於大眾變得越來越富有，他們的財富處於危險之中，他們處於一個脆弱的位置。
他們可能無法克服這種諷刺。他們竭盡全力變得富有和強大，但他們在這種地位上感到比以往任何時候都更不安全。在一個像我們一樣重視普選權或類似權利的社會裏，這會讓你處於一個真正脆弱的位置。
雇主的數量非常少，雇員的數量非常多。普選權，你知道會發生什麽。工人們可以隨時投票消除資本主義經濟造成的不平等。
當人們討論累進稅時，無論他們被如何壓製，你都能聽到這種說法。當你聽到抱怨，我們的資本利得稅稅率低於勞動收入稅，等等。
那麽他們做了什麽？他們顯然已經做了一件不得不做的事情。他們必須中和政治體係，而他們通過購買政治體係來做到這一點。為什麽要購買政治體係？因為這是他們擁有的唯一資源。政客們可以變得需要錢。這很容易。現在你借錢給他們，或者你給他們錢，他們會給你比以前更多的特權。
因此，工業軍方擁有壟斷權，醫療人員也擁有壟斷權。現在，芯片製造商正在迅速努力組織他們的壟斷。因此，這又變成了一個古老的封建笑話，少數壟斷者能夠坐在必要的政客的頭上，讓政客們開發出讓這一切看起來自然而然的措辭，成為常態
等等，與技術有關，除了你如何組織工作場所的真正問題之外的任何事情。
當人們說，為什麽會朝這個方向發展？讓我，你知道，讓我當一會兒老師。資本主義製度的組織方式與封建製度和奴隸製度非常奇怪。它把一小群人放在很高的位置。主人、領主和雇主。
這就是為什麽我們如此失望，革命廢除了奴隸製。它實現了這一點。但它歡迎封建製度，雖然封建製度比奴隸製好，但並沒有把人變成牲畜一樣的物品。盡管如此，它還是有領主和農奴。
然後我們迎來了法國和美國革命，他們對自由、平等、博愛和其他一切都抱有巨大的希望。但我們所做的是建立了資本主義，它有雇主和雇員，這是頂層極小群體的複製品。
那麽，為什麽我們會對我們的金融體係，甚至我們的政治體係複製了一小群做決定的人感到驚訝呢？我們都知道，一小群人在任何地方做決定。我們對此表示哀歎，我們批評它，但它是資本主義在基層、在每個工廠、辦公室和商店組織方式的內在組成部分。它就是這樣做的。
隻有一群人擁有工人合作社或其他類型的合作社，這是個奇怪的例外。這些人不想要資本主義，但由於我們的意識形態和教育體係的運作方式，他們往往甚至不能說出這些話。
但如果邁克爾和我說的話有道理的話，那麽它就建立在一個經濟體係之上，這個經濟體係強加了這種奇怪的、完全不民主的安排，好像它是正常的必需品一樣。
我記得，在我們廢除國王之前，我們生活在這樣的社會中：大多數人認為，讓早已去世的人的孫子來統治我們是絕對合適的，因為他或她每個月的第三個星期四都會與上帝討論，如果不下雨，如何管理一切。
你知道嗎？我們廢除了國王，發現我們不需要他們。你猜怎麽著？你可以廢除首席執行官，你會發現我們從來不需要他們。
但在美國發展的這個階段，以及在世界許多地方，這太過分了。我們仍然需要努力打開這個空間，甚至思考這樣的想法，更不用說理性地評估替代係統了。
邁克爾·哈德森：所以，讓這一切繼續下去的是一種幻覺，正如瑪格麗特·撒切爾所說，沒有其他選擇（蒂娜）。
現在，理查德和我，事實上，尼瑪，你節目裏的所有嘉賓，都有一個共同點。我們都在說，還有另一種選擇，這就是為什麽你們節目裏的嘉賓沒有登上《紐約時報》和《華盛頓郵報》，我們也沒有上電視脫口秀節目。我們說，還有另一種選擇，那就是西方統治階級的噩夢和恐懼，而這個噩夢又回到了理查德之前所說的恐慌。
人們認為，金磚國家實際上可以擁有一個完全不同的經濟體係，這個體係建立在互利和經濟增長的基礎上。
你不能稱之為修昔底德陷阱。中國、俄羅斯和金磚國家並沒有試圖在他們自己的遊戲中勝過美國、英國和歐洲。他們不想玩那個遊戲。他們說，我們不會走那條路。我們不是和你們競爭。我們希望你們走你們的路。我們會走我們的路。我們正在創造一種替代文明。它不必是這樣的。這是他們對 TINA 的替代方案，我想這也是您節目中的所有嘉賓已經談論了一段時間的話題。
理查德·沃爾夫：他們一直在遭遇阻力。我同意邁克爾的觀點。他們遭遇阻力，因為掌權者在過去一個多世紀裏一直掌權，他們很難承認這種情況的存在。
諷刺的是，他們確信俄羅斯和中國想要通過心理學家所說的純粹投射來統治他們。歐洲殖民主義和帝國主義將任何其他人的崛起視為挑戰，因為他們無法想象有人不想對他們做他們知道的他們對世界其他地方做過的事情。
我認為你可以看到這一點。我認為你在烏克蘭、以色列和巴勒斯坦都看到了這一點。你在那裏看到了那些原本以各種方式文明的人的能力，他們墮落到我們曾希望在 20 世紀中葉不會再犯的行為水平。正如口號所說，再也不會發生這樣的事情了，但問題並沒有解決，而是角色互換了。
NIMA：邁克爾和理查德，為了結束本次會議，《經濟學人》上有一篇文章。文章說，中國正在秘密建立龐大的糧食、原材料和能源儲備，以備不時之需。
為未來可能出現的問題做好準備。你認為中國是在為與西方的大戰做準備，還是他們這樣說是因為他們想在西方人的腦海中描繪出這種畫麵？
理查德·沃爾夫：好吧，我必須告訴你，我顯然不能代表中國人說話，我不明白他們在這種情況下的動機。我沒有內幕消息，但我會告訴你這一點。
如果我是中國公民，如果我參與了這些討論，我會對自己說，考慮到特朗普先生的關稅戰和貿易戰以及拜登先生延續的大部分貿易戰對美國的製裁，考慮到整個台灣廢話的荒謬性，考慮到艦隊在南海的存在，你必須做好準備。否則，你就是一個不稱職的領導人。你必須保護自己。
他們可能有侵略意圖嗎？我不知道這些，但我不知道。我並不是聲稱知道。但你不需要有侵略意圖來證明你剛才說的話。
美國，這又回到邁克爾所說的事情，美國不僅給了中國這樣做的理由，更重要的是，全世界其他國家都像我剛才那樣推理。觀察家們，其他國家，他們看到你剛才說的他們正在儲存糧食之類的新聞。他們問自己，這是侵略嗎？他們會得出和我一樣的答案。他們當然可以從每天的頭條新聞中看到聯合國每次會議、每次關於烏克蘭還是其他國家的辯論中發生的事情。
美國正忙著批準 15,000 項製裁，試圖讓世界按照它想要的方式行事。這就是製裁的目的。沒有其他人有這麽大膽的想法。
美國非常憤怒地發現，它可以同時想到這一切。但它做不到。正如《華盛頓郵報》的文章所承認的那樣，製裁沒有奏效。邁克爾補充道，更糟糕的是，製裁沒有奏效，反而讓美國的情況更糟。
所以，這再次表明美國社會陷入了困境。
邁克爾·哈德森：正如理查德和我所說，我們不相信從《紐約時報》和《華盛頓郵報》獲取信息，但有一件事你確實能得到。如果你是中國人，這是《紐約時報》和《華盛頓郵報》上唯一值得一讀的內容，那就是日複一日，中國是我們的敵人。美國外交官去中國說，我們不希望你們為俄羅斯提供任何支持，因為如果你給他們食物，那可以養活士兵。如果你給他們布，他們可以把布織成製服。你不能幫助俄羅斯，因為我們希望俄羅斯失敗，這樣我們就可以和你作戰，對你們做我們對俄羅斯和烏克蘭做的事，對你們做以色列對巴勒斯坦人做的事。
他們每天都讀到這個。他們能讀懂美國的演講。我不相信美國人會讀普京總統或拉夫羅夫國務卿的演講，中國人不像俄羅斯人那樣直言不諱，但他們能讀懂美國媒體，他們認為整個美國經濟的目標，如果不是戰爭，至少是為軍工聯合體賺取高額利潤。即使他們的武器不起作用，至少在五角大樓資本主義下，他們也能獲得巨大的成本加利潤，這是我們還沒有談到的另一種資本主義形式。所以，是的，他們正準備單幹。
我不認為他們一定會儲存這些原材料，比如稀土和許多其他產品，氦，他們擁有的其他產品，但他們試圖利用這些來與他們擁有的其他歐亞鄰國交談，說，看，我們可以幫助你們獨立，成為歐亞大陸不斷發展的文明的一部分。我們有材料可以支持你們。你不再需要依賴美國、英國和德國能給你什麽。
我認為他們有一個地區性的想法，不僅僅是軍事防禦，還有經濟替代方案。他們的防禦將是，我們不想打仗。我們想要一個經濟替代方案。也許有一天，在一代或兩代人之後，西方會想，哎呀，歐亞大陸在前進，而我們沒有。也許我們應該接受歐亞文明，意識到西方文明並沒有我們被教導的那麽成功。
理查德·沃爾夫：你知道，就在幾年前，歐洲人聚集在一起，得到政府的支持，派出探險隊前往中國，發現他們比歐洲人更懂得如何做紡織，他們的飲食比歐洲人好得多。這不是第一次了。
我的意思是，西方存在一定程度的自欺欺人，這是衰落局麵的另一個部分，當你甚至無法敞開心扉麵對自己的曆史時。
NIMA：非常感謝你們今天與我們在一起，理查德和邁克爾。一如既往的榮幸。
理查德·沃爾夫：是的，而且這正在變得非常有趣，至少
對我來說，我們在這裏完成的三人組非常有趣。
邁克爾·哈德森：是的，我喜歡它。
尼瑪：非常感謝。再見。
The End of Financial Colonialism
https://michael-hudson.com/2024/08/the-end-of-financial-colonialism/
By Michael August 7, 2024 Articles, Interviews Dialogue Works Permalink
“The Shocking Truth Behind the End of Financial Colonialism!”
NIMA: Let’s start with the conflict right now in the Middle East. How do you find it right now? What’s going on, Michael, in your opinion, in the Middle East?
MICHAEL HUDSON: I think the Middle East is becoming a catalyst for what we’ve been talking about for the last two times we’ve got together, the world splitting into two halves, the US, NATO, West against the rest of the world.
And I think the United States, the Near East, is a kind of demonstration to the global majority that what America and Israel are doing there with their assassination of individuals, their regime change, and the violence with which the right wing Likud party, supported by the right wing Democrats in the United States, are trying to impose in the rest of the world.
And the message, I think, that Eurasia gets is what they’re doing to the Palestinians, and what Europe is doing to the Ukrainians, they can do it to us unless we really break away.
I think this gives a note of urgency. I think countries have been talking ever since 1955 in Bandung about how do we go away and make a kind of a world trade and investment regime that is not so exploitative. But when they see what’s happening in Ukraine and the Near East, I think this gives a note of urgency saying, you know, we really have to get together and get allies to join our system by offering every country that joins enough that it will make them worth joining the China, Russia, Iran, SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organisation] orbit, instead of keeping their links to the West. All the West has to offer is bribery and the threat of violence.
NIMA: Richard?
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, I would like to pick up on what Michael says. And the thing that has really impressed itself on me is the signs of the rise of China, the rise of the BRICS, the rise of so much of what we used to call the third world, or the underdeveloped world, or the newly emerging, all those euphemisms.
That rise is now clear. It’s obvious. The statistics that Michael has put forward, that I’ve put forward, that I know you’ve discussed with us and with others on your programs, all attest to that.
I mean, to give you a small example, I read this morning that the Uber corporation, and listen to this story, that the Uber corporation, which earlier this year was in negotiations with Tesla, and the reason it was in negotiation with Tesla is they want to provide cheap electric vehicles to about 100,000 Uber drivers around the world.
And they explain in the financial press their purpose. It is to introduce the public, to make the public more interested in, more comfortable with electric vehicles, which is a standard kind of deal.
Then the deal falls apart, and this morning they announced they have now made the deal, but not with Tesla, with the BYD corporation, which is China’s leading producer of electric vehicles.
Okay, why? Because they couldn’t reach a deal with Tesla, because of whatever it is Elon Musk did or didn’t do in his, how shall I put it, ups and downs as a business person, and with the West and so on.
You can’t keep doing this now that you can see basically a Western corporation, Uber, making a deal, advantaging China over and against another Western corporation.
It’s the very competition of the capitalists that is driving the transition into the hands of what they call their enemy. It’s the old joke about, you know, capitalists competing to see who gets to sell the hangman’s noose to the people who want to hang capitalism. You know, it’s just a strange self-destruction that’s beginning to take place.
Let me give you a second example. According to the international records, the price of a [gallon] of gasoline at the retail gas station in Iran is 10 cents a gallon. That’s U.S. cents, U.S. gallon. The average price in France and Germany for the same gallon of gas is over seven dollars.
Okay, that’s an unsustainable difference in the cost of energy. I mean, it may take longer, shorter, may go this way, that way, but the competition there is done. Any production that requires oil is able to do that in Iran, and it can’t possibly compete if it costs seven dollars in France and Germany, and it’s more than seven in both of them, to get a gallon of gasoline for the truck that goes back and forth and for everything else.
I think what you’re seeing now, and this is where I would come in to support the last point Michael was making, what strikes me is not all of that which has been going on for a while and is now accelerating, as in Uber and BYD and so forth, but that the West has chosen as its way of dealing with this, not sitting down working out a deal while you’re still strong, while your dollar, while weaker, is still the number one currency in the world, and so on.
No, they’re not doing that. They’ve decided they’re going to somehow either stop or reverse or slow this very process, which they cannot do. There’s no historical precedent to see such a thing. They’re not going to be able to do it, and their frustration and their failure is driving them to levels of violence that are stunning.
Now, my last example to try to drive this home, the violence in the Middle East, Michael is absolutely right. It’s off the chart. There was a debate in Israel over the last few days about the legitimacy of sodomizing Palestinian prisoners in jail. There was a debate, pro and con, with lots of pro.
You know, what has happened to the Israeli people that they are at this point? It’s like the questions that used to be asked of the German people in regard to the victims of the Holocaust. It was rightly asked of the Germans. It’s rightly asked now of the Israelis.
And Michael is also right that the horror visited upon the Ukrainian people is really extraordinary. And if you know the history, and I don’t mean to absolve Mr. Putin and the Russians. They invaded. They violated a border. I understand that’s a serious problem. But we all know what NATO did after 1989. We all do. And nobody who pays any attention and isn’t lost in the propaganda war would not understand that this was a crisis being built by the plans of NATO on the one hand and the refusal of Russia on the other.
The Russians said so enough times. It’s their red line. It’s there. You can’t do this. You can’t do this. And then you had those meetings in February, and again a little bit later in Istanbul, and so on. Nothing came of it. It could have been avoided, the misery of Ukraine. It will take them decades to crawl out of the disaster they’re in, no matter who wins or loses in this war.
This level of violence shows you how desperate the people in the West now are, what they are willing to do, what they are willing to preside over others doing. They’re not ready yet.
And the issue isn’t when do you sit down with the Russians. Everybody knows eventually there’ll be a meeting and they will work something out. That’s how every other war like this ends. That’s how this one will end. And everybody knows that who pays any attention.
And the Israelis are going to have to come to terms with the Palestinians unless they literally mean to exterminate them, which they can’t do anyway.
So, what you’re watching is a sign of such a level of desperation that the only thing more bizarre is watching leaders like Mr. Biden, or for that matter Mr. Trump, talk as if they had the power maybe the U.S. had in the 1960s and 70s. But that’s all gone. But they seem to think that the political necessity is to humor the American people in the naive imagination that they still are where they were.
And I notice when I give this simple statistic, which I’ve given you too on our discussions, that the aggregate GDP of G7 is now significantly less than the aggregate GDP of the BRICS. But there it is.
And I notice that when I explain that to my audience, they look at me with a kind of sad eye, like I had just uttered something about their intimate life that they had really hoped to keep secret. And there I am releasing this unpleasant reality. And they won’t remember it 10 minutes from now because it’s so unpleasant.
And now it’s going with this level of violence. You really have a sense, which I pick up in our culture everywhere, that we are at some very scary inflection point in American history. And no one knows quite what or where it’s going. But a sense of ominousness, I see it, I feel it, I hear about it everywhere.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I want to pick up on the point that Richard just made about desperation and frustration. We know what the US has been doing for frustration. It’s been imposing sanctions on China and Russia.
The interesting thing about this is almost every sanction they have imposed has backfired. The effect of sanctions on something that is necessary for another country is you force that country to produce these goods itself. We’ve spoken on this program before about how the US started with agricultural food sanctions against Russia. So Russia could no longer import dairy products and food from the Baltic states. What happened? Russia simply shifted the production to itself. Now it’s independent.
And once you become independent of something and realize, well, we never want countries to try to interrupt our supply chain again by sanctions, you lose that market forever.
So what the United States is doing in its desperation to try to stop the independence of the global majority, the 85% from the NATO West, is they’re forcing these countries to become independent so that they no longer need the US. Everything they’re doing trying to stop it has the exact opposite effect.
And that’s because the Western mentality is to bully, to think if you don’t do what we want, we’re going to hurt you. And they think that sanctions are going to hurt without thinking, what are the other countries going to do in response? They’re not thinking of that.
And if they’re thinking, well, we’re going to kill the chickens to frighten the monkeys by what they’re doing in Ukraine and in Palestine, that is likewise driving other countries to accelerate the fact that we’d better move quickly in this year’s BRICS meeting under Russia and next year’s BRICS conferences under China’s leadership. We’d better be able to make deals with all of our Eurasian neighbors that we will help us create a critical mass so that we no longer have to depend on the NATO West.
And what can the NATO West do? It can only accelerate its violence. And the more it accelerates it, the more it will speed the parting guests.
All they want to do is to be left alone. And the United States is trying to prevent them from this by forcing them to make the choice between either they go it alone, or they’re going to end up looking like Germany and other US protectorates.
RICHARD WOLFF: Let me pick up, if I can, on Michael doing this back and forth. Michael’s insight, interestingly and unusually, gets an enormous support from an article. If you have not encountered it, let me urge you and everyone listening and watching.
On the 25th of July, that’s a few days ago, the Washington Post carried an absolutely extraordinary article. It was about how the last four presidents of the United States initiated and organized a massive acceleration of what it calls economic warfare.
But what it really means is sanctions, and it says so. And it makes it crystal clear that the United States is the sanction master. It mentions Biden, and Trump, and Obama, and Bush.
Now, of course, sanctions go way back. One example in the article is Cuba. We sanctioned Cuba for over half a century. The whole point and purpose was to get rid of Fidel Castro. What a failure that was.
And then, here’s two things that sort of expand on Michael’s point. This article, everything I’m telling you, comes from that article, the 25th of July Washington Post. Cannot miss it.
First statistic. The United States currently has, outstanding, 15,000 sanctioned objects. Individuals, corporations, whole countries. 15,000. And in that position, the United States ranks number one, says the Washington Post.
And the number two is less, is around 5,000. So, about one-third of what the United States is, the number two, and you might be surprised, the number two country imposing sanctions in the world is Switzerland. Right? In other words, it’s the United States. Russia and China don’t appear on the list in the Washington Post. They don’t do this. Right?
So, you ask yourself, you know, a question a five-year-old would figure out. If one side in the so-called great struggle, namely the West, the United States, is imposing sanctions everywhere, and the other side in this great struggle is imposing sanctions nowhere, what might explain this odd, you know, they have drones, we have drones, they have missiles, we have missiles, they have sanctions, we don’t. We have sanctions, they don’t.
Well, the answer is Michael’s point, which I want to bring out. When you sanction a country, the leadership in that country, the people who run the society, are almost always immune. They’re not going to change their clothes, they’re not going to eat a different diet, they’re not going to stop driving their car. The pain that sanctions can and do impose is on the mass of people who suffer, you know, poverty, or Cuba didn’t have access to medical, you know, drugs and medicines and so forth.
Well then, of course, what does every leader of a sanctioned society do? Make crystal clear, as your number one priority, that it’s not your fault as the leader of that country, it’s not your political party’s fault, it’s the fault of the United States. Sanctions are a way of mobilizing global public opinion against the United States as the great sanctioner of our time.
This is a program in which you line up the howitzer so it is aimed directly into your own feet. This is nuts as a policy.
Forget all the other horrors of it and the real suffering it causes. It is a self-defeating program and a sure sign that the people who pursue it may get a temporary advantage in the local political theater, maybe, but they’re paying an unbelievable price in the society’s future and its very survivability in a world where it is becoming more and more isolated every day.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I want to put a sense of perspective on what Richard just said. He’s talked about the fact that the sanctions are mobilizing other countries to support themselves, but there’s been a backlash effect.
The major effect of sanctions, especially against China, have been on the United States itself, the producers. Now, Richard and I both believe in the materialist approach of history, and most of our approach has always been, well, pretty much what countries do reflects the interest of their business community or the financial community or the elites.
But let’s look at what’s happened in America with the sanctions that they’ve put on against selling computer chips and information technology to China. Intel and other countries have said if they obey the sanctions that the Biden administration has put on, and especially if they follow the sanctions that Trump is going to put on, there goes their profits.
The profits of the business community in the United States have largely been exporting to these countries that are now subject to the sanctions that the American government itself has been putting on.
Now, how do you reconcile the fact that the American sanctions that are imposed by the neocons and the neoliberals are against the profit search by the leading American sectors, the information technology sectors, the car manufacturers, all the others?
You could say that the sanctions end up penalizing the U.S. economy much more than other countries, because while other countries have a short-term interruption of their supply, they have long-term independence.
And for America, this long-term effect, and even the short-term effect, is to take away from the American exporters, the leading industrial sectors, certainly on the stock exchange, to take away this market. It’s lost.
So what the Americans are doing is self-isolating themselves. We all thought for years that somehow the global majority was going to get together and draft a means of becoming independent and helping their own economic interests.
But it’s the United States that is driving this, ironically, not China, not Russia, not these other countries. They’re reacting to the U.S. that is essentially committing policies that are economically suicidal.
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, well, I’ve noticed that too. If you read, for example, the statements periodically put out by the United States Chamber of Commerce, you get what Michael is talking about.
They’re very nervous. They don’t want this fighting with China. They represent a large number of corporations who have put large amounts of investment inside China. They don’t want to lose those. China is the biggest, fastest-growing market in the world. Nobody wants to be excluded. Every business school teaches you want to make a lot of money. You go to where the wages are cheap and the market is growing. Hello, that’s these other parts of the world. That’s where all that is going on. And that’s going to out-compete the West sooner or later.
They say all of that, so Michael’s question stands. What’s going on? And here’s the best that I can do. I’m guessing and I’m hoping you or your audience sets me straight if I’m making a mistake.
They really don’t see what we’re talking about. In other words, when I said earlier, a bit mockingly, they live in the 1960s and 70s when the dominance of the United States was real. Maybe there’s more truth to that than my mockery would leave anyone to understand.
That they really do believe that this is a temporary, momentary challenge, which they are capable, willing, and able to squash. And that they go to these companies and say, yes, yes, we understand, you know, this kind of tariff is bad for you, this way, that way, and the next way. However, bear with us because we are really going to succeed. And when we do, and it’s just around the corner, we will defeat them.
And then we will carve up Russia, which will become 20 little countries like the rest of Eastern Europe, easily manipulable by all of us. And when we’re done with Russia, we’ll do the same with China. And then, wow, will we have a world? Because we will have integrated Russia and China into our subordination arrangement. It’s the dream of colonialism and imperialism for a long, long time. It’s a unified world economy under the West.
And for them, who are brought up in this, believe in this, had that special time after World War II, it’s not so surprising that they think that that project is still achievable. It’s a little harder than maybe they thought. But that’s what they’re going to do. That’s what they’re going to do. And we are all here, you know, wasting our time, Michael, you, me, and all the others like us, because we don’t see the larger picture.
And that’s what they tell the corporate executives. Yeah, you’ll have a year or two or three, but when we’re done, will you be happy? And by the way, while we’re waiting, we’ll make it easier for you. You chip people, you’re losing your market, we’ll give you a subsidy, the likes of which you had never dreamed of. We’ll give you this break and that. In other words, we’ll give you supports for your profits the way we do when there’s an economic downturn or when there’s a pandemic or anything else. This is an adjustment process.
I watched the speeches of my fellow graduate student, Janet Yellen. We went to Yale at the same time, we had the same teachers, we got the same PhD, we read the same articles, all from people that Michael knows all too well. You know, our teacher for macro was James Tobin, and our teacher for international was Triffin, and on and on.
She knows, and yet she is an enthusiastic manager for this difficult time as we reorganize the world for the next great phase of capital accumulation.
NIMA: Michael, do you want to add something? Okay, let’s go with the conflict, with the situation in Venezuela. How did you find it in the United States? They tried to do everything to interfere the situation in Venezuela. Even Elon Musk, he was putting out right and left in order to help the position in Venezuela.
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, can I say something? Because for me there is a humor here, and I do try in these dark times to find some humor.
The same people who here in the United States respond to Donald Trump when he questions the election, when he denies the outcome. He is thereby threatening democracy.
The people in Venezuela who challenge and threaten the election and deny the outcome are upholding democracy. You need a magician to appreciate this kind of switcheroo, right? The election here in our country, presumably, we know it all about.
The election thousands of miles away in a different country, with a different culture, and a different language, we could all be excused for not knowing exactly what’s going on.
No, no, no. We know it’s a threat to democracy when you question what happens here, and it’s an upholding of democracy when you reject an election there. And the comfort and the ease with which this is said.
You know, when no one notes the irony I’ve just told you, when no one catches that, it’s very obvious. If no one catches it, you know how desperate the ideological nonsense must be, because it’s occluding the brains and the vision of people who obviously could and should know better.
MICHAEL HUDSON: What Richard mentioned before about sanctions reinforcing the voter support of the government because they realize that the problems the economy is facing are caused by the United States, Venezuela provides an object lesson.
The problem that is caused for Venezuela is really because one of the dictators that America imposed on that country before, I don’t remember if it was Pérez or someone else, they did two things.
They collateralized their foreign dollar borrowings by the Venezuelan oil industry, including the oil industry had reached out and used its profits to buy the American distribution network for sale of its oil and gas.
Well, the Americans first of all grabbed all of Venezuela’s holdings in the United States. In other words, it grabbed its international reserves. That’s what you could say what is now called a national savings fund.
And secondly, the United States directed Britain to grab Venezuela’s gold supply and give it to a president that the United States described. The United States says, look, we have two models of democracy for the world, Ukraine and Israel. Those are the two democracies. And Venezuela, we want to add it to it. We get to nominate who’s going to be head of the democracies or deploy regime change opposition.
So the Venezuelan foreign agreements all have a clause just like Argentina had. If there’s a dispute, it’s held in the U.S. courts. Other countries are looking at Venezuela and they’re thinking, no matter what, we will never have any international clause that is settled by the United States courts.
In fact, we need a BRICS court. We need an alternative court to the IMF, the World Bank, and the international court. And it’ll be a BRICS court among ourselves. And instead of the rules-based order, it’ll be the real rule of law. So you’re having that function.
And it’s also, I think, showing that if a country like Venezuela is the object of sanctions, such as the African countries and the Latin American countries, the Global South debtor countries are sanctioned, that is an action by the dollar bloc to prevent them from earning the money to pay their foreign dollar debts. This becomes a legal, logical, and moral excuse for repudiating the debts. That is really what is going to be the ultimate break. The de-dollarization break is what’s going to be the sign of this global fracture between the global maturity and the NATO U.S. West.
RICHARD WOLFF: I can’t miss the opportunity. And again, I hope folks enjoy the irony. Many of the world’s religions — I’m no expert, so I can’t say all of them — but many of the world’s religions have in them a proposition very close to what Michael just said.
In the Christian religion, it’s called the Jubilee. It’s a very old idea, been around for thousands of years, that when a society begins to become so bitterly divided, that the glue holding the community together dissolves, and the life of the community is threatened by inequality in the old days, by having a large piece of land when your fellow citizens had no land at all, etc., etc.
What was periodically done was that all debts were erased. All debts were erased, and you kind of start over. If it was land, then the land was taken away from whoever had it, and re-divided, perhaps using a random system of you get this piece, and you get that piece, and the other one gets the other piece, and then we see how that goes. And if it produces too great an inequality, well then, in 10 years or 20 years, we’re going to do it again.
And it was a way of holding on to what, in modern language, would be the way the United States used to enjoy describing itself as a vast middle class. You know, nobody very rich, nobody very poor, everybody in the middle.
Well, Jubilee was aimed at doing that. What Michael is telling us is that Jubilee can also be not a voluntarily, religiously sanctioned, regular activity, but Jubilee can be the explosive end when there’s no other alternative to resolve the absurdity of a system that concentrates vast amounts of wealth in the hands of the creditor, and desperate life in the hands of the debtor.
At that point, the overwhelming majority, who are debtors, will see in the Jubilee a very happy outcome, and that the creditors will be unable to stop it. They won’t have the resources, and at that point, it’s over. It’s not a question of courts anymore. It’s just a recognition that the social contract requires the end of this inequality, and debt forgiveness is a simple, direct stroke to deal with most of it.
MICHAEL HUDSON: What Richard has described is really the distinction between Eurasian civilization and Western civilization. My book, “… and Forgive Them Their Debts”, and all of the books that I’ve done with my Harvard group on the Ancient Near East, shows that from 2500 BC in Sumer, down through Babylonia, to their Near Eastern neighbors, all societies, all the way to Judea, cancel the debts regularly.
They all had a king— The textbooks call them divine kingship, meaning a king that had certain promises to the gods to maintain stability. All the rest of the world has an economic view that is the opposite of what Americans are taught in school.
We have the Babylonian mathematical models that they had in 1800 BC. They are more sophisticated than any model used by the National Bureau of Economic Research here. The Babylonians saw that every society, the natural effect of debt is to polarize society between creditors and debtors.
They were very aware that if you do not cancel the debts, then you’re going to have a financial oligarchy emerge. The role of the ruler, whether it’s Hammurabi or other Near Eastern rulers, was to prevent a financial oligarchy from developing.
As the biblical prophets Isaiah and the others all pointed out, the oligarchy is going to use its financial power to get the population in debt, to take over its land, and you’ll end up with a few people owning all of the land, who set plot to plot and house to house until there’s no room for the free population in the land anymore.
Well, classical Greece and Italy were the first countries in the West to found Western civilization. They didn’t have divine rulers, and they didn’t cancel debts. They had a financial oligarchy.
We all know what happened to Rome over a period of 500 years. There were revolutions, and you ended up with the collapse. You ended up with serfdom and the feudalism.
While the West was going Roman Christian, not the orthodox Christianity in Constantinople, you had Islam. And Islam, normally, when there was a crop failure, they would cancel, annul all of the debts.
So, for instance, this is what happened in India for hundreds of years under Islam, until the English came over. When the English took over India, they stopped the whole idea of debt cancellation, and you had an economic polarization that has gone down to India today, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world.
So, you could say the defining characteristic of Western civilization is, from the beginning, to let a financial oligarchy develop.
And all of the rest of the non-Western world, from the Babylonian Sumer, through Iran, through Islam, all the way, even in Japan, you had it. In China, you had it. This used to be the distinguishing feature between Eurasian and Western civilization, and I would expect that the BRICS groups that are negotiating de-dollarization are going to reinvent the wheel and reinvent the same idea of no country should put paying a creditor class to create an oligarchy above the idea of social balance that is enabling the entire economy to grow and become more productive and survive.
In order to survive and avoid falling into a dark age and serfdom, you have to have a higher authority than the oligarchy who is going to cancel the debts.
And Western civilization doesn’t have a higher authority. We have, as Aristotle said, many countries’ constitutions call themselves democracy. They’re really oligarchies. Every Western civilization economy for the last 2,000 years has been an oligarchy.
Asia has an entirely different historical background. And just as President Putin in Russia is pushing to say, look, Russia has a distinct civilizational characteristic, I’m waiting for China and other Asian countries and for the Islamic countries to say, yes, we have a background too, and it’s not that of Roman Christianity. We’re going to put the overall interests before the class interest of a financial class. I’m sort of waiting for that to be a distinguishing feature of what we’re really seeing as a civilizational break.
If I could, let me translate that into very recent American history. The wisdom of it extends very, very far.
Up until around the 1970s, roughly, you could see the productivity of the United States rising slowly and steadily, and the wages rising slowly and steadily, more or less. No one should be mystified by this. Productivity is what the worker gives the employer, and the wage is what the employer gives the worker. And they were going up nicely together. The employers were making more profits, the workers were making higher wages. It went on for a long time and gave the United States its remarkable growth, helped to develop the idea every generation lives better than the one before, and all of that.
Then in the 1970s, for a whole host of reasons, the real wages flattened out. They don’t go up anymore. The productivity keeps going up. Well, in English, simple, that means what workers give employers kept going up and up and up, but what employers gave workers didn’t.
And that’s why we’ve had a profit boom for the last 40 or 50 years, and a stock market boom. But now comes the other side of the coin. If you hammer the working class with the American dream, this is what makes you a successful worker. You must have a car and a home. You must send your kid to college. You must have a vacation for several weeks.
If you’re demanding of the self-esteem of people wrapped up, but you’re not giving them the rising wage to afford it, what are you going to do? You’re going to throw them into debt, because that’s the only way they can have the American dream, by borrowing and going into the debt disaster.
And here’s the double irony. Where are the lenders coming from? The lenders are the employers, because their profits have been rising since productivity rises and wages don’t. So they have the growing productivity to lend to the workers, because for them it’s a no-brainer. Would I rather give my worker a rising wage or a flat wage and a loan, which he has to pay back? Well, that’s easy. We know what we’re going to do. So that’s what we have.
And over the last 40 years, we have plunged the American people into a level of debt that nobody else has ever seen. Mortgage debt, student debt, credit card debt, I mean auto debt. You add it all up and we’re talking more and more families have a bigger debt than they have an annual income. I mean, this is impossible.
Meanwhile, the wealth at the top is a wealth not only of getting the surplus out of the worker in production, but getting the interest payment when you’ve lent them the money instead of paying them a wage. I mean, this is a system guaranteed to produce grotesque inequality.
And that’s exactly the story that Michael has been telling you. Whether you go back to ancient Sumer or you’re right here in the United States in the last 50 years, what you’re watching are different systems, but they have in common that unless you do something fundamental about them, they will produce an inequality deepening and getting worse and worse.
Thomas Piketty, a few years ago, documents it for Capitalism in his book, and then it blows up. And then the question is, are we at the blow-up point? Are we getting near the blow-up point?
And my suspicion is, to go back to how we began, that the level of violence that you see in Ukraine, in Palestine, is a sign of really desperate holding on to something whose rationale has long gone.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, what Richard has described is how much Capitalism has been transformed. He just mentioned how Industrial Capitalism made America rich, and they realized that highly paid, well-fed, well-educated, well-clothed labor was more productive for its employers than pauper labor. And this was essentially what the whole economic philosophy of Industrial Capitalism was.
Well, then we learned from Marx that what distinguishes Industrial Capitalism is the employers will hire labor, and they will then sell the products that labor produces at a profit over and above what they have to pay for the cost of labor.
But now, look at what Richard’s described, and what I’ve described, in debt that the American wage earners—I don’t want to call them a middle class, because there really wasn’t a middle class, they’re wage earners—and the major exploitation of them is no longer primarily just by having industrial employers keep the profits on what the wage earners create, because after all, we’re de-industrializing.
The major exploitation that is occurring is largely in debt service. The wealthiest 1%, maybe you could say 10%, of the population hold the 90% majority in debt, and the income that’s paid to the top 10% is sucked out of the 90% in the form of debt service.
And even more important, what do these 10% do with the money? They don’t spend all of this economic rent, interest, and financial gains on goods and services. They buy stocks, and bonds, and real estate, or they lend yet more money to families to buy real estate, or to corporate raters to take over companies.
And so, what you have is the economic elite not making their money by employing labor to make profits and get wealthy out of saving the profits, but by financial engineering, by capital gains.
And Richard just pointed out the immense rise in the stock market, bond market, real estate market. You have a whole focus on asset price inflation, on ownership rights, and creditor rights to turn the rest of the economy into a citizenry of debtors and renters instead.
Well, that’s just what happened under feudalism, basically. Somehow, the industrial revolution of Europe and the United States had this idea that they were going to evolve into something very close to socialism. And we talked before about everybody in the 19th century was in favor of socialism of one kind or another, many different kinds of socialism.
But all of that changed after World War I, and the landlords, and the bankers, and the monopolists fought back, and they fought against government regulation. They said, there’s no such thing as unearned income, no such thing as economic rent. Everything is earned just like profits. The banks earned money by charging interest and even more than interest, the penalty fees for late fees. All of that is earned income.
And so you have a whole transformation in the idea of what wealth is all about and what the economy is all about. And it’s no longer the idea that industrial capitalism had two centuries ago. It’s something entirely different. It’s finance capitalism that many people now are calling neo-feudalism. It’s a transformation.
That’s what is driving other countries apart because what has made China get rich? Of course, it’s socialism, but it’s also socialism that is following exactly the same pattern that made America, Germany, and France get rich in the 19th century. It’s industrial capitalism and socialism together because the industrialists wanted an active public sector. They wanted active public infrastructure in order to keep the cost of living and doing business low, to subsidize their production.
All of this subsidy has now been broken up by the fight against government, by libertarianism. If you disable government action, government regulation, and government capital investment, since every economy is planned, the planning shifts to Wall Street. And today, you have Wall Street capitalism, not industrial capitalism. That’s the real transformation that is on the deepest level separating the NATO West now from, I think, what we’re seeing evolve in Eurasia.
RICHARD WOLFF: Precisely because of this concentration of wealth, you have the reaction which concentrated wealth has always exhibited. The people at the top that are gathering all this wealth through production, and then when that fades through financial manipulation and reorganization, they realize as they become richer and richer relative to the mass of the population, that their wealth is at stake, that they are in a vulnerable position.
They probably can’t get over the irony. They’ve done everything to become rich and powerful and feel less secure in that position than they ever have. And in a society which values, as we still do, universal suffrage or something close to it, that puts you in a genuinely vulnerable position.
The number of employers is very small, and the number of employees is very large. Universal suffrage, you know where that can go. The workers could at any time vote to undo the inequality created by the capitalist economy.
You can hear it when there’s discussion, however repressed, of progressive taxation. When you hear the complaints, gee we tax capital gains at a lower rate than we tax labor income, and so forth and so on.
So what have they done? They’ve done the one thing that obviously they had to do. They have to neutralize the political system, which they do by buying it. Why buying it? Because that’s the one resource they have. And the politicians can be made to need money. That was easy. And now you lend them the money, or you give them the money, and they give you back even more privileges than you had before.
So the industrial military have their monopoly, and the medical people have their monopoly. Now the chip makers are quickly working to get their monopoly organized. So it becomes then the old, again, feudal joke of a handful of monopolists being able to sit on top by the requisite politicians, have the politicians develop the verbiage to make all of this seem natural, normal, having to do with technology, anything other than the real question of how have you organized the workplace.
And when people say, well why is it going in this direction? Let me, you know, let me be a teacher for a moment. The capitalist system organizes in the way the feudal system did, and the slave system did, in a very odd way. It takes a very small group of people and puts them in a very high position. The masters, the lords, and the employers.
That’s why we’ve been so disappointed that the revolution to get rid of slavery did it. It achieved it. But it welcomed in feudalism, which while being better than slavery, didn’t make people objects like cattle. Nonetheless, it had the lord and the serf.
And then we had the French and American revolutions with all their great hopes for liberty, equality, fraternity, and all the rest. But what we did was we built capitalism, which has the employer and the employee, which is a replication of the tiny group at the top.
So why are we surprised that our financial system, and indeed our political system, replicates a small group of people who make the decision? We all know that a small group makes the decisions everywhere. We bemoan it, we criticize it, but it’s built in to the way capitalism organizes at the base, in every factory, office, and store. That’s how it’s done.
It’s only the odd exception of a group of people who have a worker co-op, or some other kind of. And those are people who don’t want the capitalism, but yet can often not even say those words because of the way our ideology and our education system works.
But if anything that Michael and I have been saying has validity, then it is grounded in an economic system that imposes that odd, totally undemocratic arrangement as if it were the normal necessary.
I’m reminded that before we got rid of kings, we lived in societies where most people thought it was absolutely appropriate that the grandson of somebody who’s long dead should be in ruling over me because he or she discusses with God every third Thursday, if it doesn’t rain, how to run everything.
You know, what? We got rid of the kings and discovered we didn’t need them. Guess what? You can get rid of the CEO and you will discover we never needed them.
But that’s too much at this point in American development and in much of the world. We still have to push to open this space to even think such thoughts, let alone rationally evaluate alternative systems.
MICHAEL HUDSON: So, what keeps all this going is the illusion, as Margaret Thatcher said, there is no alternative (TINA).
Now, Richard and I, and in fact all of the guests you’ve been having, Nima, on your show, have a common denominator. We’re all saying there is an alternative, and that’s why the guests you have on your show are not featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and we’re not on the television talk shows. We’re saying there is an alternative, and that is the nightmare, the horror that the ruling class in the West has, and it’s that nightmare that gets back to what Richard said earlier, the panic.
It’s the thought that the BRICS can actually have a different economic system that is on a completely different basis of mutual gain and economic growth.
You can’t call this a Thucydides trap. China, Russia, and the BRICS are not trying to out-compete the United States and England and Europe at their own game. They don’t want to play that game. They’re saying, we’re not going to go down that road. We’re not competing with you. We want you to go your way. We’ll go our way. We’re creating an alternative civilization. It doesn’t have to be this way. That’s their alternative to TINA, and that’s what I guess all the guests on your shows have been talking about for quite a while now.
RICHARD WOLFF: They’ve been meeting the resistance. I agree with Michael. They meet the resistance that it is very difficult for the people in charge, who have been in charge for the last century or more, to admit that this could exist.
The irony, they are convinced that Russia and China want to dominate them in what psychologists call pure projection. It’s European colonialism and imperialism that looks upon anybody else’s emergence as a challenge because they can’t imagine anybody not wanting to do to them what they know somewhere they’ve been doing to the rest of the world.
I think you can see it. I think you’re seeing it in Ukraine and Israel and again in Palestine. You’re seeing there the capability of people who have otherwise been civilized in all kinds of ways, descending into levels of behavior that we had hoped to the middle of the 20th century would make us never do again. As in the slogan, never again, and yet here it is with only the roles reversed rather than the problem solved.
NIMA: Just to wrap up this session, Michael and Richard, there is an article in Economist. It says that China is building up huge secret reserves of food, raw materials and energy resources in preparation for possible future problems. Do you think that China is preparing for a big war with the West or they’re talking this way because they want to picture this in the mind of Westerners?
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, I must tell you, I can’t speak for obviously for the Chinese and I don’t understand their motivation in this situation. I have no inside information, but I would tell you this.
If I were a Chinese citizen and if I were involved in these discussions, I would say to myself, given the sanctions of the United States from Mr. Trump’s tariff wars and trade wars on through Mr. Biden’s continuation of most of them, given the absurdity of the whole Taiwan nonsense, given the presence of the fleet in the South China Sea, you have to make preparations. Otherwise, you are an incompetent leader. You have to protect yourself.
Might they have aggressive intentions? I’m not aware of those, but I don’t know. I’m not claiming to know. But you don’t need an aggressive intention to justify what you just said.
The United States, and that goes back to something Michael said, the United States is giving not just China the reason to do it, but here’s more important. The whole rest of the world reasons the way I just did. The observers, the other countries, they look at the news you just gave that they are storing food and whatever. And they ask themselves, is that for aggressive? And they’re going to come up with the same answer I am. They can certainly see in every day’s headline what’s going on in every session of the UN, in every debate over whether it’s Ukraine or anybody else.
The United States is busily sanctioning 15,000 sanctions to try to get the world to behave the way it wants. That’s what the sanctions are for. Nobody else has the sheer audacity to think like that.
And what the United States is discovering with great rage is that it can think it all at once. It just can’t do it. The sanctions, as the article in the Washington Post admits, do not work. And as Michael added, worse than that they don’t work, they make matters for the US worse.
So again, that’s a sign of a society in very deep trouble.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, as Richard and I say, we don’t believe in getting information from the New York Times and the Washington Post, but there’s one thing you do get. And if you’re Chinese, it’s the only thing worth reading about in the Times and the Post, and that day after day, China is our enemy. The American diplomats go to China and say, we don’t want you to give any support for Russia, because if you give them food, that can feed soldiers. If you give them cloth, they can weave that into uniforms. You can’t help Russia because we want Russia to lose, so then we can fight you and do to you what we did to Russia and Ukraine and do to you what Israel’s done to the Palestinians.
Well, they read this every day. They can read the American speeches. I don’t believe that the Americans read the speeches of President Putin or Secretary of State Lavrov, and the Chinese are not quite as explicit as the Russians are, but they can read the U.S. press and they think the whole U.S. economy is aimed, if not at war, at least for making high profits for the military-industrial complex. Even if their weapons don’t work, at least they’re huge cost-plus profits under Pentagon capitalism, yet another form of capitalism we haven’t talked about. And so, yes, they’re preparing to go it alone.
I don’t think they’re necessarily stockpiling these raw materials such as rare earths and so many other products, helium, other products they’re having for themselves, but they’re trying to use the possession of these to talk to the other Eurasian neighbors that they have and saying, look, we can help you become independent and part of a growing civilization in Eurasia. We have the material to support you. You don’t need to depend on what the United States, England, and Germany can give you anymore.
I think they have a region-wide idea, not simply a military defense, but an economic alternative. Their defense is going to be, we don’t want to go to war. We want an economic alternative. And maybe someday, in a generation or two, the West will think, gee, Eurasia’s going ahead and we’re not. Maybe we should adopt Eurasian civilization and realize that Western civilization has not been as successful as we’ve been taught.
RICHARD WOLFF: You know, it’s not that many years ago that Europeans gathered themselves together and got some support from governments and sent expeditions to China and discovered that they knew how to do textiles better than Europeans, that their diet was much better than, you know. It’s not the first time.
I mean, there’s a level of self-delusion on the West that is yet another part of a declining situation when you can’t open yourself even to your own history.
NIMA: Thank you so much for being with us today, Richard and Michael. Great pleasure as always.
RICHARD WOLFF: Yes, and it’s becoming a very interesting, at least for me, a very interesting trio that we are accomplishing here.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Yeah, I love it.
NIMA: Thank you so much. See you soon.
