In the 1980, the gloomy dystopian, Paul Ehrlich, gladly took a $10,000 bet ($35,000 in 2022 dollars) from Julian Simon that the real prices of a basket of five commodities would be lower in 1990 than in 1980. Ehrlich picked the commodities and the future date, and he lost $10,000. In 1968 Ehrlich had written a book called The Population Bomb predicting massive shortages of food and other commodities resulting in large scale starvation by the year 2,000. His worldview was based on an incorrect model of the world because he discounted the immensely creative ability of free human agents. Worldview counts if you want to win a $36,000 bet.
In 1854, France and England allied with Turkey against the Russians due a series of punch-ups between Orthodox and Catholic priests over the care of the holy sites in Jerusalem. These spats were the pretext rather than the cause of war, of course, but it allowed the French Emperor, Louis-Philipe Napoleon III, to deflect his domestic pressures following the revolution of 1848 and the risorgimento of Italy. Failure has many fathers, and this war was a failure at every level as Engels said,
The war and its causes were a single, colossal comedy of errors in which at every moment the question was asked: ‘Who is being swindled here.’”
The British ambassador to Turkey, Stafford Canning, was an Islamophile who put diplomatic pressure on the weak British government of Lord Aberdeen to support the Turks even as England had a military pact with Russia1. For the second time in the century, Europeans attacked Russia on its own territory. The worldview of the civil servant, Mr. Canning (who famously dressed in the robes of a pasha), overwhelmed the wishes of Lord Aberdeen, the elected Prime Minister. The existence of an administrative or “deep” state is not a new phenomenon and, as they do, the British made the phenomenon into a funny television series.
One can legitimately argue that the Crimean War was caused by a clash of worldviews that played out as “politics by other means”, to use the words of Clausewitz. While it gave impetus to many things like the birth of the Red Cross, the introduction of the rifled musket, and the motive forces for the successful Italian risorgimento and the unification of Germany, nevertheless it was a dreadful waste of human lives.
The dreams of Otto von Bismarck to unify the Germanic peoples under Prussian governance was given a push by fears of the newly armed, post Crimean war Europe. The unification effort had stalled during the violence of 1848 but in 1862 he galvanized action with his famous “Iron and blood” speech.
“Prussia must concentrate and maintain its power for the favorable moment which has already slipped by several times. Prussia's boundaries according to the Vienna treaties are not favorable to a healthy state life. The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions – that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.”
In 1870 Bismarck united the northern German states and, to convince recalcitrant southern German states to join, he started a war with France. In a frenzy of patriotism inspired by the edited and leaked Ems Dispatch between King Wilhelm of Prussia and the French ambassador, the southern duchies of Germany agreed to union and the violent seeds of the 20th Century were born. The Franco-Prussian war was fought in August of 1870 and hostilities ceased when Emperor Napoleon was captured at the Battle of Sedan. The 19th century ended with a united, warlike Germany, an embittered and financially weak France, an outward looking England, and a troubled Russia.
Mark Mazower in his history, “Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century”, argues that the events of the 20th century were a fight over three major worldviews: democracy, communism, and fascism/Nazism. Some will say that the outcome of the fight was solved in 1992. I think the war has just shifted to different battlefields.
The devastation of World War I led to the nihilism of the existentialists. The economic and social frivolity of the Roaring Twenties was ended by the economic and environmental collapse of the Dirty Thirties. The continuation of world war in the 1940’s was built on the socialist authoritarianism of the Nazis and the encroachment of the communists. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and then Russia in 1941, the success of democracy and communism was in the balance. Was Friedreich Nietzsche correct? If God is dead, do we need to fear the superman? Longstanding and formerly successful worldviews no longer seemed to have answers, and everything was in flux.
The United States, a late entrant to the war, was “last man standing” and became the world hegemon at the end of the hostilities. Cities, countries, lives, and economies needed to be rebuilt and the Americans, to their great credit, financed the rebuilding. The Bretton Woods economic formulation to rebuild the postwar world, ensured that economic power resided in North America.
Understandably, many were seeking a solution to the worldview issues that spawned a bifurcated war that resulted in the deaths of two hundred million people. Powerful people created non-governmental organizations to propose solutions that did not necessarily require the participation of the nation states. Organizations like the United Nations, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the World Economic Forum, the Council on Foreign Relations, and others were established to provide platforms to discuss economic and social stability in geopolitical relations.
A cursory review of the membership of these organizations reveals, unsurprisingly, that many names are common across the groups. If humans can fix problems, then smart humans can do that job better and faster and so began the mobilization of an elite class all over the world. Unfortunately, narcissistic confidence in their capacity to fix problems ignored their greater capacity to cause problems.
The worldview battles of the 20th century have not gone away but have been reorganized on different battle lines. The argument is no longer whether “ordinary” people will prosper more under communism than democracy because “ordinary” people are no longer even in the equation. Have the elite politicians and corporate leaders indicated any interest in my well being in the past thirty years? Of course not. They have been looking for alliances with other elites to increase their power and wealth. As a worldview strategy this is very short sighted but if you don’t think families have societal value or that there is an afterlife then it is a perfectly rational strategy.
Who are the elites and what do they believe? I think we can narrow them to a few recognizable groups of people:
The Chinese Communist Party has self-identified as the future world hegemon and is pushing a corporate-state fusion model based on a materialist worldview that is both traditional and transactional. The Party is allowed to control power in the Middle Kingdom for as long as it enjoys the Mandate of Heaven. And the Mandate of Heaven rests on the Party for as long as they can prevent a rebellion. That involves destroying the religious inclinations of the people, controlling the family, and making personal well being subject to a state program. Will the rebellion come as the Chinese government drowns in its own debt and as the social credit system becomes more intrusive? It is going to be interesting to watch.
The Atlanticist groups in the United States and Europe believe that Western governments have a right to economic and political hegemony in a unipolar world. Their authoritarian stamp was on full display during the covid lockdowns and mandated inoculations. The worldview of this group is based on a Marxist scientism that is dedicated to the dead end of intersectionality, destruction of the family and belief in the transcendence of science. Its proponents think that the human genome is a computer code that can be manipulated at will, that machines are on the verge of being sentient with human consciousness and that the elites will be able to live forever – just follow the science! These groups include the neocon / neoliberal groups in the US that haven’t found a war they don’t like, the Biden administration, the George Soros Open Society folks and the European Union mandarins who are using the Green movement to destroy nation states like Germany.
The final major player is the World Economic Forum and groups like them who are hoping to feast on the carcass of whoever loses the larger worldview battle. These groups are atavistic in that they want to recreate a feudal society in which the masses are controlled by the beautiful people. You will own nothing and be happy! I include the woke capitalists in this group because they are the ultimate parasites that see advantage in mandated injections, ESG scores, carbon taxes and paying for abortions and sex change surgeries. They don’t believe in the causes to which they donate, but they will join any line that promises more money.
All three elitist groups are flirting with each other for ultimate hegemony in the way that the Soviet Union and Germany conspired over Poland, and I think the results will be similar. The covid epidemic was a surprise to each of the groups, but they all saw advantage in a similar, controlled narrative hoping to build their individual launch pads for a final, decisive push to dominance. Like Hitler and Stalin, everyone is a friend until suddenly they are not.
With covid over, we can expect to see a lot more economic elbowing in the corners of the market. Things like OPEC+ reducing production by two million barrels per day. The epidemic exposed the game plan of each of these groups and massive money printing destroyed the economic base they need to launch phase two. Ms. Truss of England gave a us a live action demonstration of what happens when elite hope meets economic reality. We will see if she remains prime minister beyond this week.
It turns out that modern monetary theory is as foolish today as it was in 1720. It turns out that the smart elites are actually pretty dumb. It turns out that the large masses of people don’t want to become serfs again and that elections do indeed have consequences. Just ask the Swedes, Italians, Canadians, and soon maybe the Brazilians and Americans. I think that we are in for some economic pain as the dumb ideas of the elite are worked out of the system, but the economic cleansing is also going to involve some political and worldview cleansing. I have hopes that we are going to return to sanity following all this cleansing.
Two final points. The first is that I don’t yet know where Russia fits in all of this. I thought that President Putin was inextricably aligned with President Xi but perhaps he is less aligned and is also pushing back at serfdom - at least for Russians. The second point is that I remain optimistic for the medium term. Covid caused the cards to be turned over and now strategies to overcome these toxic, competing worldviews are flowering in wild and abundant colours. I was encouraged by the actions of the Canadian truckers and have heard from two sources that German industrialists are investigating the transfer of their operations from energy starved Germany to energy rich Alberta. You can’t stop the innovative impulses of motivated creators. It is a worldview truism taught repeatedly in history.
Troubetzkoy, Alexis, A Brief History of the Crimean War, Robinson, 2006 The author was born in France and raised in Canada.