“Fake news”: reaction to the end of the monopoly on the narrative

Very few people can make sense of the current “fake news” hysteria and almost nobody is willing to look at it in a historical context and to understand why the problem arose now.

The reason why the hysteria has spread, and especially so in the United States, is because this is (to some extend understandable) reaction to the loss of global monopoly power exercised by the Anglo-American media especially since 1989, but practically from 1945 onwards.

The reasons for the Western quasi-monopoly between 1949 and 1989 (call it Phase1) were manifold: much greater amount of information provided by outlets like BBC, and later CNN, than national outlets in many countries; much broader reach of large English-language media services: they were covering all countries when national media could barely pay correspondents to be located in  two or three top world capitals; spread of English as the second language; and last but not least, better quality of the news (say, greater truthfulness) than found in national sources.

These advantage of Western media were especially obvious for the citizens of the Second World where governments maintained tight censorship and thus the USSR had even to go to the extremes of jamming Western radio-stations. But even in the rest of the world the Western media was often better than local  media for the reasons I mentioned.

A careful reader will have noticed that so far I contrasted global Anglo-American media to national or local media only. This is because only the former had a global reach and the rest of the media (due  to lack of finances or ambition, government control or small languages) were purely national. So the US and English media fought a rather one-sided battle with small national newspapers or TVs. It is no surprise that the global Anglo-American media was then able to control, in many cases fully, political narratives. Not only were Western media totally able to influence  what (say) people in Zambia thought of Argentina or the reverse (because there was probably next to zero local coverage available to somebody living in Zambia regarding what is happening in Argentina; and the reverse); more importantly, because of Western media's greater openness and better quality, they were able to influence even the narrative within Zambia or within Argentina.

The global competitors that the West faced in that period were laughable. Chinese, Soviet and Albanian short-wave radios had programs in multiple languages but their stories were so stultifying, boring and unrealistic that people who, from time to time, listened to them did it mostly for amusement purposes.

The Western media monopoly then expanded even further with the fall of Communism (call it Phase 2). All the formerly Communist countries where  citizens used clandestinely to listen to Radio Free Europe were now more than willing to believe in the truth of everything being uttered by London and Washington. Many of these outlets installed themselves in the former Eastern Bloc (RFE is headquartered now in Prague).

But that honeymoon of global Western monopoly began to change when the “others” realized that they too could try to become global in a single media space that was created thanks to globalization and internet. Spread of the internet insured that you could produce Spanish- or Arabic-language shows and news and be watched anywhere in the world. Al Jazeera was the first to significantly dent, and then destroy, the  western monopoly on the Middle Eastern narrative in the Middle East. And now we enter Phase 3. Turkish, Russian and Chinese channels then did the same. What happened in the news was paralleled in another area  where Anglo-American monopoly was also total but then got eroded. Global TV series that were exported used to be only US- or UK-produced; but soon they got very successful competitors in Latin American telenovelas, Indian and Turkish series, and more recently Russian. Actually, these newcomers practically pushed US and UK series almost altogether from their “domestic” markets (which, for example, for Turkey includes most of the Middle East and the Balkans).

Then came the Phase 4 when other non-Western media realized that they could try to challenge  Western news monopoly not only outside but  on the Western media home-turf. This is when Al Jazeera-US, Russia Today, CCTV and others entered with their English-language (and then French, Spanish etc.) shows and news directed toward global, including  American, audience.

This was indeed an enormous change. And this is why we are now going through a phase of hysterical reaction to the “fake news”: because it is the first time that non-Western media are not only creating their own global narratives but are also trying to create narratives of America.  

For people from small countries (like myself) this is just something totally normal: we are used to foreigners not only appointing our ministers but being present throughout the media space, and even influencing, often because the quality of their news and scholarship is better, the narrative about country's own history or politics. But for many people in the US and the UK this comes as a total shock: how dare foreigners tell them what is the narrative of their own countries?

There are two possible outcomes. One is that the US public will have to realize that, with globalization on, even the most important country like the US is not immune from the influences of others; even the US becomes, compared to the world as a whole, “small”. Another possibility is that the hysteria will lead to the fragmentation  of the Internet space as China, Saudi Arabia and others are already doing. Then instead of a nice global platform for all opinions, we shall be back to the pre-1945 situation with national “radio stations”, local internets, bans of foreign languages (and perhaps even foreigners) on national NatNets—basically we shall have ended globalization of free thinking and gone back to unadulterated nationalism.

PS. You will not find pieces like that in your local news. And that’s why internet (and not NatNet) is great.

“I won’t go to Moscow until the revolution triumphs”, a review of Wang fan-hsi’s 'Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary'

These are the words that Mao said to a comrade in 1927 when the Chinese Communist movement was in complete chaos. They are mentioned at the end of the book by the Chinese Trotskyist Wang fan-his. The book is written in 1957 and covers one of the most tumultuous periods of Chinese history from 1919 and the May Fourth movement to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 and final defeat of Trotskyist opposition in 1952. Wang survived both physically and without being thrown in jail (as most Chinese Trotskyists were by either the Kuomintang (KMT) in the 1930s or CCP in 1952) thanks to being transferred to Hong Kong in 1947.

The book is very well and very honestly written, and I suppose also very well translated since the text flows easily. (Wang himself worked mostly as writer and translator in order to survive in the 1930s and 1940s—since his “job” of professional revolutionary paid no returns in cash; rather the “pay” was in terms of permanent poverty, precarious survival, and many years in jail, punctuated by torture by Kuomintang goons.)

Since the book covers a long period in Chinese and world history there are many things that one can discuss, but I will limit myself to three: Trotskyist movement, Moscow in 1927-29, and Stalinist international politics and Wang’s judgment on Mao. But before I go to these topics, I need to note a thing which is not surprising, but is worth mentioning: an extremely high intellectual and moral caliber of the left-wing, and especially Communist, activists in China in the first three decades of the 20^th century. This is not surprising because similar self-selection existed in many countries in those years. But perhaps that in China the self-selection was even stronger than elsewhere because China suffered not only from an unjust social system but also from humiliating colonialism.

The features of Trotskyism which appear in this book (partly thanks to very candid description  by Wang) are dogmatism, heavy emphasis on ideology as against practical action, and factionalism. For example, after a formal Trotskyist Chinese Communist party was founded in 1931, it immediately broke into four sub-parties,  each with hardly a hundred members, and despite a short period of “unification”, done at Trotsky’s insistence, the factions continues to exist. This made Trotskyists almost entirely irrelevant in the great struggle that opposed the Japanese, KMT and CCP. Wang mentions that other than for two small units, Trotskyists never managed to field any military force against the Japanese. Trotskyist activity during the war against Japan consisted in translations of Marxist classics and their distribution to Shanghai’s workers. It does not take much imagination to see that Shanghai’s workers might not have been in 1941 extremely keen to spend their time reading Plekhanov and Trotsky. The total failure of Trotskyist parties, frankly analyzed by Wang in the last section of the book, is rooted in that sterile intellectualism.

Wang spent two years in Moscow, sent there as a promising revolutionary  in 1927. His description of Moscow in 1927-29, seen through the eyes of a foreign Communist, is very interesting. There were more than 1000 Chinese “students”- revolutionaries attending two universities “University of the Toilers of the East” and “Sun Yat-sen”. Wang was in Moscow when the split between most of the leading Bolsheviks and Trotsky took place. But the Trotskyist Opposition was not easily defeated. At the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution,  the Opposition tried, and partly succeeded, to break into the ”official” rallies. Chinese students were divided approximately 50-50. Even Russian cadres who taught courses at the two universities were divided: many rowdy discussions followed, and sympathizers of the Opposition were gradually eased out, replaced by others, then jailed or exiled, but it took time and things did not at all move fast and easily.

Wang also shows in some details how the Stalinist line found its supporters among those who either wanted more stability and an  end to extreme left-wing policies as well as among those who directly benefited from bureaucratization, the opportunistic new class.

After 1929 when Wang returned to China, he could observe (and suffer) first-hand from the disastrous decisions made by Stalin that led to disarmaments of Communists while they “worked together” with KMT and before Chiang Kai- shek turned against them and massacred them. The Comintern line, here like in many other instances as Wang argues, was extremely timid, “petty-bourgeois” and directly responsible for the decimation of Communist parties. During the entire period that he was in power, Stalin’s international policy was always dominated by excessive caution, numerous mistakes and unwillingness to help indigenous  revolutionary forces. Only those, like Mao and Tito, who ignored his blandishments succeeded in taking power.

This is where Mao’s quote mentioned in the beginning becomes relevant. Mao, as Wang writes, was ideologically a Stalinist, but he was not a Stalinist cadre. That role was played by Wang Ming who was sent by the Soviets to China in 1929 with a group of “28 Bolsheviks” and who briefly managed to become  the leader of CPP until he lost out in intra-party struggle with Mao. Mao ignored Comintern's “suggestions” or orders, paid mere lip service to them, and fashioned the Party in such a way that it fitted Chinese conditions (including using peasantry, rather than workers, as the basis of the Party.) Mao, Wang argues, shared may features with the disgraced founder of CCP, Chen Dixiu: grounding in Chinese philosophy with European Marxism only a “rough superstructure”, dislike of “red compradors” and huge self-confidence and stubbornness.

Wang also worked for several years with Chou Enlai  whose administrative talents he praises. Every leader wanted to have Chou by his side since he was an excellent administrator but lacked ambition to be No. 1. Already in the early 1930s, Chou acquired the sobriquet of “pu-tao-wang”, the Chinese toy “old man that never falls down”—in every shake-up Chou would emerge on the winning side. This as we know, continued until the end of his life.

This is a precious, intelligent, candid and honest book for those interested in Chinese and global Communist history and the period of time when these two histories were tied to each other. Today, international workers’ movement no longer exists and China follows its path that is still in some aspects inheritor of the era discussed here, but in other aspects can be better understood within the long-run context of Chinese history.

The bitterness of Adam Smith

Under the influence of Amartya Sen, we have been “nudged”  towards a reassessment of the relative merits of “The theory of moral sentiments “ (TMS) and “The Wealth of Nations” (WN). Sen has done a lot to bring Smith’s early work out of relative obscurity where it was consigned by two centuries of success of the Wealth of Nations and to remind us of Smith’s reputation of a moral philosopher rather, or in addition to, being the founder of modern political economy.

Having recently reread WN (previously I had read only the first two books), I have no doubt that the Wealth of Nations is a vastly superior and more mature work. It is not, I think, because I am an economist and scarcely able to judge TMS. It is just that the underlying atmospherics in the two books are very different. In TMS, Smith, still in thrall, I think, to his professorial role of a moral (and to some extent religious or theistic) teacher, tries hard to put a bright gloss over the vicissitudes of the world. His rejection of Mandeville’s philosophy in the latter part of TMS is contrived and weak despite a strong language used (“pernicious system”, “ingenious sophistry”) and one senses a basic discomfort with the rejection of something that Smith has come, I believe reluctantly, to approve of, or at least to see some merit in. This will become clearer in the Wealth of Nations.

The atmospherics of the WN are entirely different. Not only is it a work of a more mature person (Smith was 53 when the book was published), but the atmosphere  there reminded me of Nirad Chaudhri’s definition of human’s third age as one of “stern, almost exultant despair”. For in the Wealth in Nations there are no “good guys”. It is almost entirely the “world of tyranny of evil men” (as Samuel Jackson would say in “Pulp Fiction”).

The government  comes, of course, for special criticism: its rapacity in putting up high tariffs, its foolishness in following mercantilist policies, its pettiness in constraining the system of “natural liberty”, its attempts to decide where people should live (the law of settlement, a hukou-like system was then in existence in Britain), its myriad rules and vexations are dissected with righteous anger.  

Next to it in terms of “badness” is aristocracy: ”Entails are thought necessary for maintaining this exclusive privilege of the nobility to the great offices and honours of their country; and that order having usurped one unjust advantage over the rest of their fellow-citizens, lest their poverty should render it ridiculous, it is thought reasonable that they should have another” (Book 3; Ch. 2, p. 491).

But businessmen are no better. As soon as they are given half a chance, perhaps just after having gotten rid of some particularly nefarious government regulation, they are back to plotting how to “restrain” the market, to pay suppliers less, destroy  competitors, cheat workers (see today’s IT companies, Walmart, Amazon). In the famous quote,  “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices” (Book 1, Ch. 8).  

In their mad ambition,  they try to rule the world (see Davos): “…the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind” (Book 4, Ch. 3, p. 621). Short of the world they try to rule countries: companies of merchants (the British and the Dutch East India Companies) grew immensely rich by mismanaging and exploiting India and Indonesia:  “The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever” (Book 4, Ch. 7, p. 722).

            And their profits are often a price for general impoverishment:  “Have the exorbitant profits of the merchants of Cadiz and Lisbon augmented the capital of Spain and Portugal? Have they alleviated the poverty, have they promoted the industry of those two beggarly countries?” (Book 4, Ch. 7, p. 779).

            Businessmen depend on lobbyists and politicians. Those who support them (read K Street and Mass Avenue in Washington DC) will be praised: “The Member of Parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance” (Book 4, Ch.2, p. 595).

Those who try to oppose their drive for monopoly profits will be destroyed:

            “If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists. (Book 4, Ch. 2, p. 592).

Are “do-gooders” and religious orders (read NGOs) any better? They are treated with implacable irony: “The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania to set at liberty all their negro slaves, may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great” (Book 3, Ch 2,  p. 496); or  “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it” (Book 3, Ch. 2, p. 572).

Adventurers and soldiers who conquered colonies attracted by the promise of quick gain (see military “contractors” today) “commit[ed] with impunity every sort of injustice in those remote countries” (Book 3, Ch. 7, p. 795). Led by their selfishness they destroyed a great occasion for the beneficial encounter of two civilizations: “The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries” (Book 4, Ch. 1, p. 563).

Human selfishness, rapacity, need for pillage crosses places and times: the crusaders were “the most destructive frenzy that ever befell the European nations” and they were spurred on by the merchant republics of Venice, Genoa and Pisa for whom the crusade “was a source of opulence” (Book 3, Ch. 3, p. 513).

There is no end of “badness”. Even  Smith’s most famous invention (the invisible hand) takes place despite the natural selfishness of men (“he intends only his own gain”). Note that through the invisible hand, we fulfill a project which was not part of our original design, i.e., our original intention was selfish but we could not satisfy it except by catering to the needs of others. And of course we do not count on “the benevolence of the butcher…but [on] his regard for own interest”. We do not count on butcher’s benevolence because Smith knows that that benevolence is not there, while we can be sure that self-interest is.

Market and the invisible hand indeed turn out to be the almost miraculous contraptions that transform this landscape of hard men, inured to bleakness, pursuit of self-interest and cheating, into a tolerably civilized society where people, on surface at least, treat each other with consideration. But, I think, there is no doubt to anyone who has read the Wealth of Nations that this is only a veneer.  Once it cracks, we are quickly back in the animal kingdom, as we indeed got there during wars, colonial conquests or crusades. And this is perhaps an additional, strong, reason for the importance of market economy, commerce and general economic accoutrements of civilization which. making use of our worst instincts, transform them into a tolerable or respectful behavior. I think that by the time he wrote the Wealth of Nations Smith must have come to agree with Mandeville about private vices and public virtue.

    

All page numbers are from "The Wealth of  Nations", Bantam Classic, 2003; edited with notes and marginal summary by Edwin Cannan; preface by Alan B. Krueger.