WHEN IT SHOWS HOW LONG-TERM CHANGE COMES FROM THE UNDERLYING ECONOMY AND FROM THE ACTIONS OF SOCIAL CLASSES.
It then offers a mental tool that shows how things work and implicitly, what it takes to change them.
But when it states that change comes from prominent individuals or from ideas and leaves out the practical context, it encourages passivity or following a leader, it too is political.* That slant coincides with the dominance of the right, as in the United States since the Cold War (with a lapse during the Vietnam war) and in France with the rise of the multinationals in the 1980's.
*Granted, some topics do not need to be placed in an economic context to enlighten, as with biographies. I remember Stefan Zweig's description of Magellan sailing past the future Straight of Magellen in the midst of a storm with a mutinous crew years after reading it, and it has nothing to do with the economy. But explaining why only a king could grant the funds for such navigation would deepen our understanding of his exploit.
It fits the docility that ads promote, particularly those that hover over great cities:*
*They too coincide with the rise of multinationals, appearing in Paris toward 2011.
Richard Nahem, Eye Prefer Paris, 2020
Union Square in Manhattan, 2025 / Elisabeth Rawson
They glamorize irrationality...
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| At the Châtelet crossroad in central Paris, June 2022 |
Isolation...
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At the top of the Hotel Lutetia in Paris's 7th district, 2015. |
And voids: Nothing outside the product exists.
The Opéra
So we do not see what should jump out at us: In Paris, the long, wide, straight streets that lead to voids that are much too vast for traffic, the references to Louis XIV at Napoleon's tomb, the painting of an orgy that covers the ceiling of a salon at the heart of the Opéra... .
Psychologists and anthropologists show how in cults and primal societies, all aspects of life combine. In more complex societies the same is true, though rarely said. Habits and beliefs are adopted spontaneously and are so deeply rooted as to be invisible. Take the underclass insult in Old Regime France, your father was a valet!"
Like those humble who did not realize that they were adding to their subjugation, even liberal historians adopt conservative history because the role of the economy has been so completely erased.*
*Personal memory: Classes in modern European intellectual history at Vassar College and Russian history in the Soviet Union Program at Harvard did not mention Marx's materialism even once.
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Old Regime acceptance of hierarchy changed when the economy did: "What gave you all that wealth? You took the trouble to be born." That may be happening now.
Take a huge panel on a métro wall made in 2024, which by recalling the victorious combat for the eight-hour day breaks in a is a spectacular way from the mainstream:
The station is part of the extension of the métro line that connects Orly international airport in the south with the stadium in Saint-Denis in the north. Built for the 2024 Olympics, thousands of soccer fans pass it at every game.
Dark colors express that fight...
Bright ones celebrate a victory that improves lives now.
It was commissioned by the Social-Democrat government of working-class Saint-Denis — woken up from its sleep? — and coincides with continuous protests. These three, arbitrarily chosen, took place over the weekend of November 29-30, 2025, dates also arbitrarily chosen:*
*They were when I was writing this page.
Pro-Palestine demonstrations in Paris, London, Geneva, Lisbon, Dublin, Rome...
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Status Coup News, Saturday, November 29, 2025 / zoom |
Al Jazeera, Sunday November 30, 2025 / zoom
In Manilla, demands that the President resign because of graft.
Local factors are the immediate reason for all, but globalized capitalism underlies them: It destroys an entire society to build a riviera for billionaires in Gaza and colonize the area behind it, reinforce oligarchs' control of the economy by heightening racial tension in the U.S., takes corruption to unimagined levels in the Philippines as elsewhere. Universally, it blows away the most deeply held beliefs and most basic social ties:
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| Harald Wolff |
The struggle is increasingly between über-capitalism backed by far-right parties and democratic socialists providing solutions to the problems that face us all.
Showing what's said and what's left out is the reason for writing these blooks. Please tell me what you think via the space below — including if you have another point of view.
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| Harald Wolff |
If you find these pages useful,
please pass them on.
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