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On charisma and greyness under communism
Several years ago in a conversation about politics and history, a friend asked me something about the durability of Tito’s regime in Yugoslavia (35 years). I cannot remember what was my answer, but I remember that he summarized it by saying that Tito must have been a charismatic leader. That statement struck me as odd. […]
Capitalists, the state and globalization
“The tendency to create the world market is directly given in a concept of capital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome…In accord with this tendency, capital drives beyond national barriers and prejudices as much as beyond nature worship, as well as all traditional, confined, complacent…reproductions of old ways […]
The comprador intelligentsia
In “Orientalism”, Edward Said spoke of an orientalist as an interpreter of local custom and knowledge to the foreign intellectual. A common term in neo-Marxist literature of the 1960-80, for the absence of articulation between the domestic areas that interacted with the rest of the world, and the hinterland that was cut off from it, […]
Statistics as a philosophy and art
The statistical work during the first fifteen years of the People's Republic of China can be usefully, if somewhat simplistically, divided into three periods as the excellent book “Making it Count” by Arunabh Ghosh argues. The first goes from the foundation of the People's Republic in 1949 to approximately 1956. During that period the Chinese statistical […]
Why I think that Argentina 1985 is not a very good movie
Now when the passions have receded a bit after I got an incredible number of critiques and insulting emails because I did but think that Argentina 1985 is a very good movie I would like to explain my reasons. First, let me say that the critique of a film or a book is totally separate […]
The Madoff enigma
I watched a four-part excellent documentary on Bernie Madoff’s“scam of the century”. (The series is not exactly a documentary because most scenes are re-enacted, but this is done in a very good, and rather discrete, way, combining the actual footage with the enacting, so that we can still call it a documentary). The film […]
Distinguishing incomes from capital and labor
When I recently received my copy-edited chapter dealing with Adam Smith (from my forthcoming book "Visions of Inequality"), I noticed that in several instances the editor changed my “the rate of profit on capital” to the “rate of profit on investment” or “profits on invested capital”. I changed it back to the original, but […]
Not a new Xi
In today’s Financial Times Ruchir Sharma has a very nice article about the recent readjustments in China’s policies: discontinuation of zero-covid restrictions, stronger support for globalization, and a nod toward the private sector. As the title (“The Xi nobody saw coming”) says, Sharma sees them as a sudden and […]
The book of the dead: Victor Serge's Notebooks 1936-47
Born to Russian anti-Czarist emigrés in Belgium in 1890 => engaged in revolutionary anarchist activity as a teenager in France => condemned to five years in jail at 17 => expelled to Spain => exchanged for French soldiers held by the Bolsheviks in 1919 => joined the Bolsheviks => participated in the Civil […]
Four historico-ideological theories about the origin of the current war in Ukraine (Part II)
The third view about the origins of the conflict looks at the roots of the current nationalism. It starts from the historical events of 1989-1992 which led to the fall of communism. The fall of communism was not precipitated by democratic revolutions as is often claimed in the popular narrative in the […]

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A blog for Econ students, by Econ students.