Two Books, Two Sets of Eyes, Two Brains

Over the winter I read two books which, while they aren't directly in opposition, certainly are diametrically opposed in terms of the way the authors approach "the world" and its current situation.

One, "American Marxism," is by the conservative commentator and yes, "firebrand," Mark Levin, and the other, COVID-19: The Great Reset," by World Economic Founder and Executive Chairman, Klaus Schwab, along with Thierry Malleret, Managing Partner of the Monthly Barometer. 

In simplest form, Levin's book is a warning that whether it's called "progressivism," "democratic socialism," "social activism," or some other "ism," the United States is facing a sweeping political change - and the other book agrees, but suggests that it's not just the US but the world, and that the pandemic is the world's opportunity to initiate "The Great Reset."

"COVID-19: The Great Reset" was published in mid-2020, and "American Marxism" was published in 2021. Clearly, the pandemic was at least a prompt to the authors, seeing as they did that it is very likely the world will emerge from the pandemic greatly changed. The question is, for the better? Or at the very least, "as what?"

Given the approach of the two books, it makes sense that Levin's book focuses on the United States. He is a conservative, and as such, his "stage" is smaller. His concern is for the country and where it's headed. Schwab's scope is the planet, and in fact, beyond its people and markets to its climate, population density and distribution, as well as the "equity" among those who will remain after the reset.

Each book is concerned with where we are, where we're headed and why. And each author is convinced that we are at a tipping point. If you recall, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the concept in his book, "The Tipping Point," in which he theorized that small things, even imperceptibly small, add up tiny fraction by tiny fraction until they reach a point of no return - the "straw" that broke the camel's back. The weight the camel was carrying wasn't noted until one final straw, a tiny thing all by itself, finally added enough to the total load to break down the whole "system" of the camel.

As noted, Levin works from the idea that the United States, as a unit, must address this potential for and on its own, and also from the position that if we, the people, don't take control the trajectory is downward. Schwab's thesis is that the dangers confronting the world are the very opportunity to unite everyone and everything in a single, unified system.

Since I read it first, though it was released later, I will start with Levin's book, "American Marxism." He begins with his conviction that America is exceptional. This is central to conservative thought: America was born in revolution, and grew up in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He also suggests that there is a force at work to redirect the ship of state, one that believes in a Utopia, "whether in the form of Marxism, fascism, or some other form of autocratic statism...a paradisiacal future and the perfectibility of man, if only the existing society and culture are radically transformed and abandoned altogether..."

What modern technology, and an (unfortunate) opportunity like a pandemic provide is the ability to create an "impassioned mass, every individual of which feels himself in touch with the infinite numbers of others..." Change is promoted by dissatisfaction - why change if you feel things are going well? "Social movements," he quotes Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward (sociologists and political activists who advocated for a form of universal basic income) as writing, "thrive on conflict." The "never let a good crisis go to waste" theory of political change. While crisis has the potential to push people apart, and conflict is the very definition of fragmentation, Levin suggests that the brain trust of the American Marxism movement have laid the groundwork for seizing the moment, and providing a unification structure that only had to wait for its opportunity. 

Levin devotes a chapter to the history of "hate America," in which he walks us through a history of this movement, which he says has been embedded in the American academy and public thought for a long time. It would be overwhelming to list all the philosophers, writers, academicians, politicians and scholars who have turned the soil in preparation for the season to change but suggests that Marxism, genderism, and racism have been the primary tools used to convince Americans that something isn't right with our country. He spends some time with philosopher Herbert Marcuse, "credited with hatching the Critical Theory ideology from which the racial, gender and other Critical Theory-based movements were launched in America." Important to this theory is the idea of oppression. Wrote Marcuse, "I believe that there is a 'natural right' of resistance for oppressed and overpowered minorities to use extralegal means if the legal ones have proved to be inadequate." 

For any "ism" to succeed in America, Levin suggests, the "melting pot" vision of America must be undermined, with its "fusion of diversity and cultural assimilation..." considering "all issues in the context of past societal imperfections - regardless of enormous struggles and efforts in creating a more perfect society, including a civil war, massive economic redistribution, and groundbreaking legal changes." We must not see one another "individual to individual," but "bloc-to-bloc," with "each person assigned to an identity or economic bloc..."

A tool for both managing and promoting this is something akin to the "social credit score" of China, in which persons are assigned points based upon their behavior. Think of a GPS system for human activity. How much did you spend on groceries? How many miles did you put on your car, and is it an electric or gas fueled car? How many square feet do you live in and what temperature is your HVAC set to? 

Levin devotes a chapter to climate change, and how both fear, and control, can be used to advance the idea of "Degrowth," which must clearly be aimed primarily at first world nations, like the United States, as they are most responsible for growth - growth dependent upon fuel, farming, and families, all of which drive climate change. Is man in Nature, or anti-Nature? Can human beings actually achieve and adhere to the list of behaviors that would have to be managed to live within the demands of "net zero" effect on the globe? Levin spends a great deal of time on the formulas and figures of such a challenge.

He moves on to the means by which the message is carried to the public, and anyone who has been paying attention will certainly be aware of the "cancel" wars, and the "fact-check" social media. "Every story, every decision about what to cover, is based on some (usually unspoken) assumption about how the world is supposed to work." (Emphasis mine.) We watch in real-time as pundits and networks and elites and scholars battle it out for our time, attention, and trust. 

Levin wraps his book up with a call for liberty. "If we expect others to rescue our nation for us as we go about our daily lives as mere observers to what is transpiring, or close our eyes and ears to current evets, we will lose this struggle. And yes, it is a struggle."

And that would be, possibly, the one point of agreement between Levin, and Schwab and Malleret. The latter two don't deny for a moment that America is engaged in a struggle. They would just add, "as is the entire world." 

Where Levin walked us through a linear examination of where we (Americans) are, how we got here, and where we might go, Schwab uses a framework of conditions that enable a "reset." If your computer is in a certain state of overload, sometimes the best choice is simply "reboot it." This dumps whatever it had been doing that was slowing down or limiting access, and allows you to start again. Sure, you may lose some data, but sometimes it's your only real alternative.

The book is divided into three primary parts: a "macro" reset (the world); a "micro" reset (industry and business); and an "individual" reset (us and how we manage such a sweeping change in our daily lives). 

First, though, how we got here: interdependence, velocity, and complexity. And before that, even, the very concept of how something like what we have been experiencing these last two or so years has "reset" the world before: pandemics. The Black Death, the writers remind us, killed off a huge portion of the world's population, and demanded that whole empires re-form themselves. And even something as far in the rear view mirror as the Black Death depended upon interdependence (moving around the greater world rather than limiting oneself to a small town), velocity (how fast can a vector move), and complexity (how quickly and thoroughly can we wrap our minds around a challenge?). 

The writers suggest that, given the Covid-19 pandemic, these three factors are deeply at work: we have never had such a volume and speed of movement of goods and people from place to place throughout the world. The speed of communication and change are mind-boggling. In 1950, we could call from country to country, but it was a lengthy and expensive business. Now, any one of us can be online with video from one hemisphere to another, literally in the moment. And needless to say, the world has become a highly complex environment - as Levin pointed out, we have difficulty even choosing our sources of information as they are so many, varied, and conflicting. 

In the section on "macro" reset, the WEF (of which Schwab is Chairman) supplied a fascinating diagram of a globe, not Earth so much as interdependencies and risk events - how a water crisis can lead to involuntary migration which leads to social instability and that exacerbates involuntary migration which can lead to unemployment, a fiscal crisis, and eventually a state of collapse (not necessarily everywhere at the same time, but more along the lines of one leading to another pushing a third and influencing yet a fourth somewhere else). All of which made me think of the famous "butterfly effect." A butterfly flaps its wings, creating a small disturbance in the air, which pushes another bug slightly off its original course, and on and on the chain of events until a disease is introduced to a place that had never experienced it before and therefore has no defense.

The writers are not, at least at first, suggesting that the Covid-19 event is an opportunity as much as a calamity of huge proportions. They discuss the numbers of people effected, how isolation and limited movement have cost jobs, income, lives, a generation entering the job market in 2020 and there being no jobs at all for them to take. They forecast to the post-pandemic era (perhaps now), when whole social systems will have to reflect on what is worthy of our time and engagement, let alone resources, as we limp back toward the proverbial "new normal." "The deep disruption caused by COVID-19 globally," they write, "has offered societies an enforced pause to reflect on what is truly of value. With the economic emergency responses to the pandemic now in place, the opportunity can be seized to make the kind of instinctual changes and policy choices that will put economies on a new path toward a fairer, greener future." 

They emphasize that, given that the world will be "restarting," why not restart it with an eye toward "equality, social mobility, and inclusive growth?" Here the writers use a term that was referenced in Levin's book: "degrowth." "More than 1,100 experts from around the world," they write, "...release(d) a manifesto in May, 2020, putting forth a degrowth strategy to tackles the economic and human crisis caused by COVID-19...leading to a future where we can live better with less." 

The authors predict a post-pandemic world in which the US, and the dollar, play a significantly less important role in the world than they did pre-pandemic - if any at all. Possibly, they write, "digital currencies may dethrone the US dollar supremacy." They also predict that COVID-19's aftermath will "usher in a period of massive wealth redistribution, from the rich to the poor, and from capital to labour." It is also likely to sound the "death knell of neoliberalism, a corpus of ideas and policies that can be loosely defined as favouring competition over solidarity, creative destruction over government intervention and economic growth over social welfare." 

Here, the writers make a case for big government, and not just big national government, but big world-wide government. The power to make the changes necessary to bring the world into alignment post-pandemic lies in the hands of government. "The COVID-19 pandemic has made government important again. Not just powerful again, but vital again... Acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state." 

As various nations have responded to the pandemic, it has become clear to the writers that not only were less favored and developed nations at a disadvantage, but a powerhouse like the US was brought to its economic and social knees, and might never, perhaps should never be restored to its previous position of power and responsibility. Not only that, but time is of the essence. Global institutions need to step into the void created by nations failing to do what global institutions can, or should. "If we do not improve the functioning and legitimacy of our global institutions, the world will soon become unmanageable and very dangerous. There cannot be a lasting recovery without a global strategic framework of governance."

If you have stayed with me thus far, bravo. These two books are dense, disturbing, and demanding reading. Though the two points of view would be difficult to push further apart, taken together, they provide a panorama of viewpoint, and thought. And to my way of thinking, the more you walk around a subject as you study it, the better your understanding.