In Chapter II of "The Great Global Transformation" I discuss opinions of key authors on whether trade (and thus globalization) lead to peace or war. I begin with Montesquieu who is famous for his doux commerce. Then continue with Smith whose views are much more complex and definitely worth reading. Then Schumpeter who in his early work believed that capitalism and trade generate peace in order to change later when he saw monopoly capitalism with its predatory behavior and struggle for markets as a more efficient, "normal", capitalism. And I end with Hobson, Rosa Luxembourg and Lenin who regarded competition for foreign markets & raw materias as leading to wars.

I mentioned most of this (informally) at a Europa conference in Madrid several days ago.
Europe should stop living in the 1990s. There is no End of History anymore. Things have changed.
EU's economy is declining but it continues to dispense gratuitous lessons to the world. Latvia teaches China--a country that has performed the greatest economic miracle in history--what it should do. In foreign affairs, EU results are negative to disastrous.
It started the war in Libya and left the country in permanent ruin & civil war.
Most of EU members participated in the illegal war on Iraq which, like the Russan war against Ukraine, was in clear violation of the UN charter. It is bizarre that they now complain.

Every couple of years, a fundamental misunderstanding between the East and the West of Europe reappears re. the WW2. In the occupied Western parts, life went on as before. Sartre continued writing & his plays were shown in theaters. Simone kept on sipping coffee at Les deux magots. Literary soirees were celebrated. People went to their jobs. Some food items became unavailable, and people listened to Radio London. Life in Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen, Amsterdam went on as before except for occasional raids on Jewish people. In countries that were Nazi allies, things were even better: Italy, Austria (Anschluss), Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Vichy France: things were broadly normal. Many more joined Nazi militia and Waffen SS than resistance.

A strange disease has taken hold of the left: to bemoan loss of wealth of billionaires, The billionaires' commander-in-chief has decided to cut to size other billionaires. He has driven the stock market down. It is understandable that other billionaire and their think-tanks decry such a policy. But why should the left do the it? Esp. if you know that in the US and other advanced economies 60% of households have 0 or trivial amount of income from financial wealth. Moreover, financial income for the other 40% is so heavily concentrated that the losers are only 3-4% of the population--the richest ones. The measure is clearly super progressive.
(My next Substack on this theme.)

What were the great revolutions I witnessed in my life?
The first & really big was the Iranian revolution. I had many Iranian friends. They were all anti-Pahlavi. But quickly they split into two or three camps. The revolution had global resonance: I remember that my father disagreed with my mother over it. In Belgrade! They had no dog in the fight. But it was big. Reagan's revolution was also big. He upended things. Pushed back against the USSR that foolishly invaded Afghanistan the year before & not only went into a war it could not win, but challenged the basis of the Cold War order. Reagan was a Cold Warrior who wished for peace.

Consider income composition in socialism and developed capitalism. They are fairly similar. The differences are in the lack of income from K, greater family-related transfers, and quasi-absence of direct taxes (other than proportional flat wage taxes) in socialism. Then extremely low skill premium of 3-5% vs 18-70% for West European countries (and even more in the US).

This is the second year that in my teaching I spend two hours discussing income inequality under socialism, the way it was, not normative stuff. The most important thing is to tell students that socialism is not capitalism with less inequality. The logic of the system was entirely different. The salient points.
Nationalization of capital & end of incomes from K reduces inequality directly.
Wage compression: very low skill premium. Explained both by free schooling and ideological preference for less skilled workers.

After reading @pseudoerasmus excellent thread on the evolution of devt thinking and the role of institutions and @ingridharvold, Kesar, Dutt paper on the same topic (both published within the past 48 hours) I asked myself the following Q: Why did I like AJR early work so much & then lost interest? I liked both their "Origins.." and "Reversal..". The reason is that I found in these papers the themes with which I was already familiar from reading neo-Marxist literature, including S Amin and G Arrighi. But I always felt dissatisfaction with that literature's "sporadic" use of empirical evidence.

15 reviews of books on neoliberalism:
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation

Clinton Fernandes, Subimperial Power
branko2f7.substack.com/p/living-throu…
branko2f7.substack.com/p/powerful-but… Krishnan Nayar, Liberal Capitalist Democracy

Peter Turchin, The End Times
branko2f7.substack.com/p/capitalism-u…
branko2f7.substack.com/p/the-chronicl…

We shall never know if the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was intentionally targeted or not.
Here are some arguments why I find accidental bombing highly unlikely.
-This was the only building targeting mistake in 78 days of very precise bombing. -The ostensible target was a financial institution (bank giving loans, for, among other things, old SRFY's sales of armament). But that bank no longer worked; Serbia was bankrupt; it was not giving loans to anyone.

-It is the only fin institution having been ostensibly targeted.

In 1974, it made sense to speak of the Three Worlds, as among themselves, and treating China that never belonged to the Third World apart, they accounted for 98% of world GDP (in PPP terms).
Capitalist core 62%
Socialist countries 13%
Third World 24%
China 2% But now we have a different situation. The capitalist core has shrunk despite its geographical extension to E Europe. The socialist world has disappeared. The 3rd world is more important thanks to the rise of Asia.
Core 44%
China 22%
Politically heterogen. periphery 31%
RUS 3%

When in my recent talk in Edinburgh I claimed that Adam Smith could be seen as "a man of the left" (these terms btw are not used in the Visions of Inequality) this was based on the following: Smith's extraordinary strong critique of how the rich have acquired their wealth (plunder, corruption, collusion, trade companies, monopoly, colonialism). That critique is often stronger than Marx's critique of "primitive accumulation".

My new paper "The three eras of global income inequality 1820-2020, with the focus on the past 30 years" is just out in World Development. Access is free for 50 days.
Here is the link:
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… It is an important paper. Not only because it gives calculations of global inequality over 200 years (following Bourguignon & Morrisson seminal work) but because it looks at the political implications of the three eras: the rise of the West, the Three Worlds & the rise of Asia.

Much has been written about China's train system. But not enough. I think that it will be seen, with the system of canals and the Great Wall, as one of the most important contributions of China. One can see it as a proof that China excels in network industries. The speed, punctuality and cleanliness of the system are absolutely remarkable. But even more striking to a visitor is how apparently simple and well-organized is everything so much that one cannot but wonder why other countries have not done the same thing.

Somebody asked me for book recommendations re. the classics, capitalism etc. (I am not exactly sure what b/c it is hard to judge what people are interested in from just a couple of sentences). Nevertheless, I sent a list of books. First, those published in the past 3-4 years... Darrin McMahon, Equality
David Lay Williams, "The greatest of all plagues"
Glori Liu, Adam Smith's America
Marcelo Musta, The last years of Karl Marx
Krishnan Nayar, Liberal capitalist democracy
Fritz Bartels, The triumph of broken promises

Some of my slides for tonight's discussion:
Smith Ricardo

Long thread. One or two sentences, or direct quotes of economists studied, from each of the 7 chapters of Visions of Inequality." We start with Quesnay.

The Balkans, and Serbia in particular are, for obvious reasons, often mentioned in connection w/ WW1. But there is another important, if less discussed, connection w/ the outcome of WW2. The Operation Barbarossa was supposed to begin in the Spring of 41. Hitler was unpleasantly surprised by Italian invasion of Greece and even more unpleasantly by their inability to win there. Hence his full-court pressure on Yugoslav Royal Govt to join the Axis and allow German military to transit in order to help the Italians.

Soloviov's itinerary seems to conform to the following (common) pattern:
upper middle class family w/ good connection and ability to afford elite Soviet education,
readiness to join the Soviet elite, interest and love for the US,
[Gorbachev comes to power]

https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/1706080760908619785

change of direction: unbounded love of democracy.
ideolization of the United States,
participation in the plunder of Russia w/ attendant contempt for the people (who are stupid and thus incapable to steal),
purchase of many properties in the West,

A few thoughts on Beria.
I was for a long time puzzled by why US historians of the Cold War (and Gaddis in particular) have such a soft spot for Beria. I thought he was the worst criminal of all.
And indeed he was. But he was the Soviet McNamara: efficiency (body count?) above all. Devoid of moral scruples. This is why Stalin put him in charge of delivering nuclear weapon; and Beria did it. On time. Nobody dared to touch the best scientists. He did not care what their political views were.

An excellent article which shows how hopeless is the migration situation and how (as my global inequality work indicates) it will get even worse.
elmundo.es/internacional/… EU does not want more migrants & it is closing itself off (Nordics were the first to do it). It pays Maghreb countries to stock migrants there. But Maghreb does not want Africans either. So the solution is: growth in Africa, But then EU goes against Chinese Belt and Road