AURELIEN - on the PROFESSIONAL, MANAGERIAL CLASS (THE PMC) and its utter failure. With reference to Ukraine.

There is a lot to recommend this article by Aurelien - in the analysis that the PMC has a shared belief system that transmits itself - it needs critical reading. What he tends to miss out is the 'material forces' at play and how the blinkered approach of PMC thinkers completely fails to analyse and understand them.

Here is a bit - my underlining....

'In the West as a whole, we haven’t really had that kind of coherent context since the Reformation, but at least it was possible until recently to identify shared patterns of belief, and understand why a party of the Left would generally behave differently from a party of the Right once in power. That’s no longer the case, but neither has there been a blanket replacement with an organised ideology of extreme social and economic liberalism, even though that’s part of it. Rather, the current western ruling class, like the Party in 1984, has no ideology in the traditional sense. It is interested in power and wealth, and it has factions which are obsessed with various social objectives and causes, but it is incapable of thinking in a coherent fashion, and doesn’t really see the need to do so. Today’s ruling class thinks of itself less as Ruling than as Managing, complete with its yellowing MBA textbooks. Party leaders may publicly talk about “our values” in an attempt to justify their actions, but these pronouncements seldom go beyond banalities, and rarely reflect the traditions and ideologies of any particular party or movement. Indeed, most parties of the Notional Left, for example, are embarrassed about their past beliefs and actions, and try to distance themselves from them as far as possible......It’s common to describe the expansion of university education from the 1980s as an increase in opportunity, but in reality it was often the opposite. It accompanied, and in some cases led directly to, a reduction in professional and technical training, and the fetishisation of three years of ersatz elite education instead of actually learning to do something. It led to a de-skilling of society as a whole, and in due course the arrival of a generalist, credentialed but not-really-educated ruling class.......The result is that decisions are taken and influenced today by people who live by sets of vague ideas unpolluted by actual experience......Moreover, as good Liberals, western thinkers prized correct ideas and beliefs above all: a society is “modern” if it has embraced homosexual marriage, even if its people are starving in the streets. The success of China in lifting its people out of poverty, for example, should never have happened according to Modernisation Theory, or at least not in the way it did. Thus the grinding of teeth you hear from the development lobby......The belief that there was a single, inescapable, road to progress, and that the West had mapped it and was already far advanced, ran into three massive obstacles, which still have profound implications today......The PMC cannot cope with the idea that there are problems that have no solution, and can at best only be managed. Their ethos is that of the Law and financial negotiations, where a solution is by definition possible. Of course, there are “extremists” and “nationalists” and “human rights violators” who must be removed from power first, but once Saddam, Milosevic, Gaddafi, Assad, and now of course Putin, have been disposed of, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Modernisation Theory will triumph, and all of these states will be on their way to looking Just Like Us. And when a state ostentatiously turns its back on Modernisation Theory and decides to make its own way, and what is worse succeeds, then the hatred of the PMC knows no bounds. Thus Ukraine, which for the PMC is a holy war between those who want to be like us (we think) and those who don’t....And then, once “Putin is gone,” normal service will be restored, and negotiations can start. The PMC will be happy again. But as far as I can see the Russians aren’t having any of that. They are not interested in negotiations at this stage, and from their point of view they are right not to be. This is not a problem with a negotiated solution, but one which can only be settled by a military victory. When that happens, the PMC’s corporate head will explode.'






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