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ZOMBIES: A Review/Essay of
"THE UNCONSCIOUS CIVILIZATION"
by John Ralston Saul (1995)
© H. J. Spencer [21Oct.2021] < 10,000 words; 15 pages>
ABSTRACT
This 200-page short book examines the superficial claim that our modern civilization is based on
individualism and democracy: but increasingly, it is conformist and corporatist; a society in which
legitimacy lies with specialists and interest groups, so political decisions are made through constant
negotiations between these groups. The paradox of our situation is that knowledge has not made us more
conscious but we have sought refuge in a world of illusion, where language is cut off from reality. Saul
proposes a return to equilibrium by reconnecting language to reality, clarifying the real meanings of
individualism and democracy: making these realities central to each citizen's life by identifying ideologies
so as to control them. This dense, polemical book that grew out of his 1995 Massey Lectures, which won
the Canadian Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction Literature, has continued to make an impact. The
strength of this book is the power the author brings to his analysis of the problem; the tragedy is that he is
overwhelmed by it and cannot offer any realistic solutions.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Ralston Saul (born June 19, 1947) is a Canadian writer, political philosopher and public intellectual.
Saul studied at McGill University, Montreal (BA in History and Politics). He then attended King's College,
London, where he wrote his PhD thesis (1972) on the modernization of France under de Gaulle, entitled:
The Evolution of Civil-Military Relations in France after the Algerian War. He helped set up the national
oil company Petro-Canada in 1976. Between the years of 1990 and 1992, Saul acted as the president of the
Canadian center of PEN International. In 2009, he was elected president of PEN and re-elected for a second
and last term in 2012, remaining International President until October 2015. He has been awarded 13
honorary doctoral degrees. Saul is also the husband to the former governor general Adrienne Clarkson
(making him Viceregal Consort of Canada between 1999 and 2005).
Saul is most widely known for his writings on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good;
the failures of technocratic-led societies, leadership versus managerialism, freedom of speech, culture,
economics. He is also the co-founder and co-chair of '6 Degrees' (the global forum for inclusion).
AUTHOR'S BIBLIOGRAPHY
Saul has written seven novels and thirteen books of non-fiction, including:
(1992) Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West.
(1994) The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense.
(2001) On Equilibrium: Six Qualities of the New Humanism.
(2008) A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada.
(2014) The Comeback: How Aboriginals are Reclaiming Power and Influence.
REVIEWER'S WEBSITE
All of the reviewer's prior essays and other reviews (referenced herein) may be found, freely available at:
https://jamescook.academia.edu/HerbSpencer
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1 INTRODUCTION: THE GREAT LEAP BACKWARDS
Saul eventually (p.37) gets around to explaining this chapter's heading. He says that it is "our leap into the
unconscious state beloved of the subject who, existing as a function in any one of the tens of thousands of
corporations - public and private - is relieved of personal, disinterested responsibility for his society." At the
end of this first chapter, Saul analyzes the ephemeral phenomena of self-interest: - "personal gain, violence for
personal advancement, clever manipulation to get and hold power." He also makes the claim: "I would argue
that confronting reality - no matter how negative and depressing the process - the first step towards coming to
terms with it." This allusion to being unconscious, led me to title this review "Zombies". I now see that there
are billions of zombies operating today: anyone who is a committed Corporatist and/or anyone who takes
their information on the world only from mainstream television.
1.1 CORPORATISM
Saul announces immediately (p.2) of the hijacking of Western civilization: a process involving a portrait of a
society addicted to ideologies - a civilization tightly held at this moment in the embrace of a dominant
ideology: corporatism. Its ideology claims rationality as its central quality. The overall effects on the
individual are passivity and conformity in those areas which matter and non-conformism in those which do
not. One of the related characteristics of this unconsciousness is the rise of illusion - in particular, the growth
of fantastical descriptions of ourselves. The neo-corporatists have the same problem and even more success.
The corporatist movement was born in the nineteenth century as an alternative to democracy. It proposed the
legitimacy of groups over that of the individual citizen. The early manifestation of this new way of governing
came 200 years ago with the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte, who did more than invent more heroic leadership;
he invented heroic leadership, which fronts for specialist and interest groups. Democracy and individual
citizen participation were replaced by a direct, emotive relationship between the heroic leader and the
population. The new specialist, bureaucratic and business elites were thus left in peace to run things. Hegel
was one of the first to give this approach an intellectual form, as early as 1821 in The Philosophy of Right [see
my essay GermanPhilosophers]. This early form of corporatism gradually emerged as the only serious
alternative to democracy; being proposed by the Catholic elites of Europe. They could accept the Industrial
Revolution, so long as individualism was replaced by group membership. These corporations were not to
function in conflict with each other: through ongoing negotiations, they were to be non-threatening and nonconfrontational bodies.
Saul writes, "In his battle against Corporatism, from the 1870s on began laying in the idea that liberalism was
guilty of a great sin because (quoting Colin Morris) it had granted political and economic equality to
individuals who were manifestly unequal; they were reviving the medieval hierarchical order. To prove his
point, Saul quotes the 1891 papal encyclical (Retrum Novarum) came out against Class Struggle and proposed
a modern version of the medieval Scholastic dream [see Ethics essay] of the perfect social order. In reality, it
was a rejection of humanism, democracy and responsible individualism in favor of managerial power-sharing
by interest groups. Contemporary corporatism has a more professional approach, and yet it is focused in an
eerily familiar manner on training, meritocracy and organizational structures, which are inevitably pyramidal.
What counts is what they have in common: their assumption as to where legitimacy lies: it is always with the
group, not the citizen. Saul is suspicious that in a corporatist society that uses democracy as little more than a
pressure-release valve by allowing the citizens to occasionally succeed in imposing a direction upon the elites.
Saul concludes the first chapter with his confession that he takes a 'delight in mankind' seeing an idea that was
re-launched in the twelfth century by forces of humanism, as the awoke society from its Dark Ages.
1.1.1 MANAGEMENT
Saul points out that Management (of large corporations) believe they are 'doing' equals 'making' (changing the
world) when they are the Parasite Pyramid. Today, the glorification of the service economy, the focus on
financial speculation and the canonization of the new digital, communications technology.
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The famous Adam Smith clearly identifies too many of the idle - those not engaged in 'useful' labor - live off
the industrious. This was before the corporations but there have always been lazy parasites, like: the
aristocracy, the courtiers, the professionals, and rentiers (those who lived off rental income or interest). Now,
the managerial class may be as big as 30 or 50%; with about one-third to one-half of the working population of
Western countries is today employed in administering ('managing') the public and private sectors. The reaction
of sophisticated elites, when provoked by their own failure to contribute to society, is to build walls between
themselves and reality by creating an artificial sense of well-being on the inside. They are part of a separate
large population; everything turns on internal references: statistics created by their own biased professionals.
Saul points out that most of these managers are incapable of solving various real crises because that would
require thinking while almost all of the managers only 'manage'. These people have been selected because they
have good memories [see my Memory essay] but lack imagination and weak intuitions [see Intuitions]. They
have been taught managerial and technological skills that edge out the basics of learning.
1.2 ECONOMICS
Up until 1945, humanity has faced a severe shortage of natural resources; this has driven too much of human
violence (mass warfare) [see Violence essay]. Indeed, mass democracy emerged only after the Industrial
Revolution that was influenced by the minority that encouraged individualism since the Renaissance [see Split
Minds]. This situation was dressed up by the pseudo-science of Economics, that was invented by second-class
minds, who wanted the prestige of mathematics that were placed on the highest pedestal at Trinity College,
Cambridge University (the home of Isaac Newton); [see Economics]. Saul extends his contempt (as I do) to
Professor Freedman and his corrupt Department of Economics at the University of Chicago (founded by
Rockefeller) [see Shock essay].
1.3 TECHNOCRACY
Saul argues that the West entered its crisis in 1973, triggered by the oil supply crisis that was not responded to
sufficiently because the view from inside the public and private technocracy is one of relative calm, as the
structure continues to grow in the internationalized private sector, [see Technopoly].
1.3.1 THE TRUE BELIEVERS
Those who have the "truth" can only be a small minority; they are the elect. The aim of the ideologue is thus to
manipulate, trick or force the majority into acceptance of their truth. This was the self-justification of Ignatius
Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits), who adopted the Protestant methods thereby adding a firm rational
structure to Catholicism; this enabled the Counter-Reformation [see Jesuits essay].The Jacobins of the French
Revolution, the Bolsheviks, the Fascists and now the Free Marketeers, are all direct descendants of the Jesuits.
They are the chosen few - the minority, who believe they have the truth and therefore have the right to impose
it by whatever means.
1.4 GLOBAL CRISIS
The statistics of our crisis are clear and unforgiving but do not trigger action. A handful of small conflicts in
the early 1960s escalated to over fifty around the world today such that 1,000 soldiers and 5,000 civilians die
each day, for a total of 75 million deaths over the past 35 years. Saul claims that much of the responsibility for
such violence lies with the international arms traffic - the largest international trade good of our day. It was
launched in its modern form by the United States; France and then Britain joined in the early 1960s. Add to
this, the 200 million children (aged 4 to 14) are forced into the Third World work force, which still has a 30%
unemployment rate among adults. Third World debt is now around $1.5 trillion. The OECD estimates that the
unemployment in the West is about 35 million (or about 10%). Even so, governments (across the political
spectrum) have been elected on a platform of job creation but they have no idea how to achieve this. Worse,
the US now has 1.5 million in jail; double the number in 15 years. It is no surprise that panic is spreading
through the heart of the American Empire, [see Columbia].
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1.4.1 GLOBALIZATION
Globalization and the limits it imposes are the most fashionable, miniature ideologies today, as politics leaders
blame the global market for overwhelming their options. These economic ideologies are almost always meanspirited and egotistical: there is no choice - accept the will of the market or go bankrupt. Saul sees the parallels
with the Middle Ages, as the scholastics presented a choice between order and disorder. The common thread
is that acceptance implies passivity.
1.5 ILLUSIONS
1.5.1 IDEOLOGY
Saul is convinced that all of us have a common fear of reality. We suffer from an addictive weakness for large
illusions: a weakness for ideology. We share an unshakeable belief that we are on the trail to truth, which
prevents us from identifying this obsession as an ideology. The key is to understand the relationship between
what we know and what we do. Our actions are only related to tiny narrow bands of specialist information,
usually based on a false idea of measurement, rather than upon any understanding of the big picture.
Specialized, technocratic elites are shielded by a childlike certainty for as Cicero said: "He who does not know
history is destined to remain a child." Lying at the core of many of our beliefs is the long tradition, going back
to the Athenians, of individualism, the clever manipulation to get and hold power and the use of violence for
personal advancement, [see Violence]. Knowledge is more effectively being used today to justify wrong being
done than to prevent it.
2 FROM PROPAGANDA TO LANGUAGE
2.1 KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
Saul is focused on the power of language to affect people. He begins with the Bible to retell the temptation of
knowledge where the devil confuses Adam and Eve with disobeying the rule not to learn. He sees a pattern of
authorities not being challenged by seeking one's own understanding. For the ideologue, it is language itself
that becomes the message because there is no doubt since in a more sensible society, language is just the tool
of communication. In a Corporatist society, where knowledge is power, the elites reward the millions of
specialists whose knowledge is fragmented into unrelated information. Our elites either act like medieval
courtiers or the Schoolmen, who became experts in tying down debate in minutiae, as a way of making
themselves relevant to power. The actions of the private sector are obscured in a world made increasingly
opaque by the unending quantities of information (rhetoric and propaganda) which flow down on those
outside the interest groups. Free speech and democracy are closely tied to an active practical use of memory
[see Memory] - or History - as well as an unbroken sense of the public good. Saul adds that commerce has no
memory; it's great strength is its ability to constantly start again. Commerce also has no particular attachment
to any particular society: it is just about making money.
2.2 THE CORPORATE USE OF LANGUAGE
Corporatist language is attached to power and action; it can broken into three types: rhetoric, propaganda and
dialect. Rhetoric describes the public face of ideology; propaganda sells it: they are both aimed at the
normalization of the false.
2.2.1 RHETORIC
Saul traces this use of rhetoric to the sixteenth century Jesuits [see Jesuits]. Their aim was to gain credibility
by suggesting intellectual authority; the same is true in the twentieth century. Rhetoric is formalized, received
wisdom that is readily remembered by the many, who have jumped numerous education hurdles as they
demonstrate their excellent powers of memorization that our education systems both test for and reward. This
desire to imitate intellectual authority also involves creating abstract notions that obscure real events.
The Nazis were masters of this technique, giving unpleasant tasks engineering or business descriptions:
extermination camp victims were subject to "special handling"; today, getting rid of employees is called
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"downsizing", the French call it degraissage - 'degreasing'. So much of the conversation only benefits the
special interest groups; even Think Tanks speaking out, we are not hearing thought but rhetoric in defense of
those who finance them. Language is essential for rhetoric because the words and their structure ('logic') are
used to set out the false parameters. Competing schools of rhetoric hide competing corporatist forces seeking
power in the public sphere. Saul believes it was the fear of misinterpretation that motivated the key thinkers
(or conscious thinkers) like Socrates, Christ, Buddha that kept them from writing down their message, so
expressing themselves orally.
2.2.2 PROPAGANDA
Saul treats propaganda exactly like commercial advertising. He reminds us that both were invented by the
fascists in Germany and Italy in the 1930s and 1940s. He re-quotes Mussolini, who said that "The crowd does
not have to know: it must just believe. ... Always be electric and explosive; belief over knowledge, emotion
over thought." Saul recommends that one of the key features of propaganda is that wherever possible, music
and images must replace words. This why TV is so powerful, whereas radio could never transmit the image.
He tells us that advertising production costs are high multiples of those devoted to programming: a twenty
second spot for McDonald's would finance hours of regular TV broadcast, while the money paid for printing
editorial (or news) is a fraction for print advertising. So, it was no surprise in 1995, when only one of the three
US national TV networks broadcast President Clinton's formal press conference (the first in eight months); the
other two networks continued with their regular sitcoms.
2.2.2.1 EDUCATION
I have placed education here as part of propaganda because so much of the information content of teaching is
now secondary to getting the young to conform to the social ideologies. As well having the most exposure to
TV, the United States has what is now widely viewed as the worst public education in the modern world for
children under nineteen. Saul is deeply dismayed at the decay of public education in the USA as he views the
first 12 years exposure as the key to a democracy where legitimacy lies with the citizen; so low quality here
undermines democracy. The new emphasis in education, at all levels, is with aligning education with the job
market [see Professionals]. Worse, the universities have become the hand-maidens of the corporatist system,
made worse by adopting the corporatist business model for their actions with senior administration becomes
interchangeable with corporate CEOs as governments cut back on their funding, while students are encouraged
to get deeper into debt to pay off a lifetime of servitude. If all the universities cannot teach the humanist
tradition as a basic layer of their narrowest specialization, then they are sinking back into the worst of
medieval scholasticism. The danger here is that a university society that does not teach the elites to rise above
self-interest and the narrow view has itself fallen into the worst of self-interest traditions of the corporations,
while it is not building a solid foundation for a democratic society.This results in a crisis in the universities
that are losing their grip on language, thinking and communications. We are left with a society of specialists,
dealing with each other by dueling with references and definitions that become a means of control, not clarity
that improves understanding. Even our obsession with schools of Business Management (certifying their
graduates with MBAs) could be more effective if they were funded and run directly by industry as independent
apprenticeship institutes, as they have no social role, being part of any university. Saul views higher
education's role to be to teach thinking first. He sees anyone who graduates with mechanistic skills and not
able to think, as NOT being educated.
2.2.3 DIALECT
Dialects are here used to refer to over-specialized sub-sets where only the "informed" can understand the
process. Each profession constructs their sub-set to limit the dialogue to their group, such as: social sciences,
medical experts, etc. This reliance on specialist dialects has become a universal condition of our contemporary
elites. Some of the worst are now the social scientists; the humanities are increasingly infected by both the
social science method (pseudo use of mathematics) and its approach to language.
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Over-compensation is one explanation, with the worst offenders being economists, political scientists and
sociologists. These specialists have deliberately attempted to imitate scientific analysis through the growth of
circumstantial evidence and their parodies of the worst of the scientific dialects. Obscurity suggests
complexity, which hints at importance. The dialects are thus more or less conscious weapons of self-protection
and the unconscious tools of self-deception.
2.3 THE PUBLIC USE OF LANGUAGE
In contrast to the self-serving results of Corporatist use of language, the enhanced usage of public language
can strengthen our society by refining the levels of social dialogue by sharing our common grip on reality.
Without a language that functions as a general means of useful communication, civilizations slip off into selfdelusion and even romantic fallacies, both aspects of unconsciousness. With our enhanced methods of
communication we have the opportunity to improve our lives with better online access to information to
spread knowledge and understanding, rather than relying on experts [see Experts]. Saul is convinced that one
of the signs of a healthy civilization is the existence of a relatively clear language in which everyone can
participate in their own way. The sign of a sick of a sick civilization is the growth of an obscure, closed
language that seeks to prevent communication. This was the case with those medieval university scholars
known as schoolmen, who were trying to blend Christianity and the knowledge of Classic Athens. They were
never able to blend the fundamental opposition between Plato and his best student, Aristotle when their
writings re-emerged in twelfth century Europe. Saul's hero is Socrates: oral, questioning, obsessed by ethics,
searching for truth (without expecting to find it), democrat and believing in the citizen. Meanwhile, Plato in
contrast, was an aristocrat committed to exploiting the frozen power of writing, obsessed by power, in
possession of the truth, anti-democratic, contemptuous of the citizen. Plato, the father of ideology so that his
greatest flaw was his secret of political success (after setting up schools to brainwash the next generation of
the sons of the aristocracy) was to merge Homer's inevitably of the "Gods and Destiny" with the new tools of
linear rationality (philosophy). The problem was that after describing Socrates' demise (at the hands of the
mob), Plato selectively used the image of Socrates' life to push his own elitist agenda of authoritarianism,
justified by superior intelligence and deep learning to make Socrates an implicit supporter of Plato's autocratic
views on the world. Thus, by the end of the Middle Ages, Plato's (alter ego) Philosopher-King was mixed with
Christianity to produce the god-blessed absolute monarch.
2.3.1 MYTHS
Saul recognizes the role and power of myths in a culture, so he spends several pages on Freud and Jung's
myths. Saul sees Jung as being concentrated on the myths around "Gods and Destiny", while Freud's own
obsessions were only slightly different: sex plus "Gods and Destiny". Here, Saul justifies this diversion as he
sees that all civilizations are fixated on "Gods and Destiny" that re-appear in all ideologies: they are the totems
of inevitability. Saul sees western civilization beginning two-and-a-half millennia ago, when thinkers such as
Solon and Socrates broke the Homeric myth according to which the Gods and Destiny ruled all. Homer's
message was that no matter how intelligent, strong, talented or beautiful you were, your life was
predetermined by Gods and Destiny. This much later got incorporated into the mechanical causality of science
[see Determinism]. Homer's stories were accepted as literal truth just like the Bible text in the next 2,000
years. The Great Escape, that made western civilization possible, was based on the growing conviction that
humans, within the limits of reality, could give direction to its society, just as citizens within that society could
give directions to their lives. Sadly, Saul now sees the influence of re-emerging Gods and Destiny as we feel
compelled to not resist the power of an abstract mechanism called the MARKET, the fascination with the
power of Technology [see Technopoly]. We have escaped, so far, the ultimate destruction of nuclear weapons
[see Violence] and this book was written before so many fell into the grip of the FEAR of viruses but too many
fall into powerlessness, leading to public passivity. Saul does criticize Jung for his emphasis on the Hero;
using Napoleon as an archetype, whereas Saul views him as the first modern dictator; the model for all the
other crazy men who saw themselves as "Great".
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3 FROM CORPORATISM TO DEMOCRACY
3.1 CITIZENS
3.1.1 INDIVIDUALS
The most powerful force possessed by individuals is their own government. Each individual has no other
large organized system that cab be called their own. There are other systems but they reduce the citizens to
the status of a subject. Government is the only organized system that makes possible that level of shared
disinterest, known as the public good. Without this greater interest, the individual is reduced to a lesser,
narrower being limited to immediate needs. He will then be subject to other large groups that will come
forward to fill the void left by the withering of the public good, as those forces will fill it with some other
directing interest that will serve their purposes, not the larger purposes of the citizens. The individual lives in
a society: a primary characteristic of individualism. The form of society turns upon where legitimacy lies: the
priests, the king, groups or individual citizenry acting as a whole. Since there will always be a government to
direct a society; it is critical that citizens exercise the powers conferred by their legitimacy, otherwise others
will do so.
Saul describes the breakthroughs in individualism that occurred in the twelfth century renaissance that freed
the liberation from the status of a subject. During the preceding 1,000 years, the confessing of sins had been
done rarely and, in general, as a group absolution (like before a major battle). Suddenly, religious confession
was something done frequently by the individual. It was recognized that not only do individuals sin but they
have the right to individual forgiveness. It did not even require the priest's absolution but on an automatic
absolution from God, if the sinner had good intentions (as only he and God knew). This rise of the idea of
intent was central to the subsequent rise of individualism and democracy. The same century saw the rise of
personal portraits, not just stereotypes, while artists began signing their names. Juries appeared, so citizens
took responsibility for justice being done. The original guilds led to increased public services; for example, the
first public hospital was founded in the eleventh century. In this same era, love poetry grew to celebrate the
single male-female relationship. Eventually, this humanist renaissance of the individual faltered before the
onslaught of a bureaucracy of Catholic lawyers, who began to reorganize the papacy. Royal families also
began to steal away the power of their citizens in an attempt to centralize their kingdoms.
3.2 GOVERNMENT
3.2.1 BUREAUCRATS
Many individuals, in identifying government as their enemy, have focused almost exclusively on the
bureaucracy of government, who seem to have taken over. Nor is it particularly useful to worry too much
about the dubious intentions of bureaucrats as most of them at lower levels are just trying to do their job. But
both government and private corporations are too top heavy with dead-beat managers. Indeed, Saul even
suggests that both groups suffer from a lack of creativity, in contrast to innovative, high-risk owner-based
leadership. Another curse is that the cost the vast managerial superstructure is now far too heavy for the
producing sub-structures. Too many managers are weighing the economy down. In their attempt to appear
more 'business-like', public officials are referring to the citizen now as a 'customer'; a better term would be
'owner' as these civil servants are just the employees of the citizens. Saul recounts the story of infamous
Robert McNamara, who tried to manage the Vietnam war with statistics. Sometime later, he moved from the
Pentagon to the World Bank, where he played a major role in creating the Third World debt crisis. Earlier he
had boasted that running the Department of Defense is not different from running the Ford Motor Company or
the Catholic Church; Saul notes his career illustrates that this remark was not true. Bureaucracy inevitably
appears in large, older institutions; it is like a cancer that finally kills its host - they contributed to the demise
of the Roman Empire.
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3.3 ARISTOS
It always the few at the top who are convinced that their superior bloodlines qualify them alone to run society;
we call these people aristocrats (or aristos). Indeed, if man is governed by interest , then those who succeed
(the 1%) have no obligation to worry about the 99% living at various levels below them.
Although David Hume was a crypto-atheist, has been adopted by many neo-conservatives. In fact, he was
keen to identify how civilization could best limit the negative effects of self-interest. Throughout his writings,
the common theme was teaching people to seek happiness in the world of common life, not in the life
hereafter, and to pay attention to their duties to their fellow citizens, rather than to a superstitious god.
Adam Smith was very clear about the monied class (or the 'Masters' as he called them). "Masters are always in
a sort of combination, not to raise the wages of labor above the actual rate. Violating this tacit agreement will
engender a reproach among his neighbors and equals." The process that Adam Smith describes since in
modern times the argument in favor of dropping wages is they are too high against global competition. Smith
saw through this self-serving views: "High profits tend much more to raise an item's price than high wages."
3.3.1 CORPORATIONS
Corporations arose in America after the Civil War demonstrated that the actions of thousands of men could be
co-ordinated when managed properly. Their ideology does not extend back through the history of mankind but
begins with the Industrial Revolution; by then mass markets were evolving: both benefited from the private
ownership of property and production. Corporatism readily creates a conformist society; it is modern form of
feudalism that has been fully exploited by the modern societies of Japan, Korea and Singapore. Increasingly,
our society does not see social obligation as the primary obligation of the individual because this has been
superseded by loyalty to the corporation. Today, virtually every politician portrayed in film of TV has been
venal, corrupt, opportunistic, cynical if not worse. Whether this a true portrayal or not is irrelevant to the
corporatist system as it wins either way: directly through corruption and indirectly the damage done to the
citizen's respect for the representative system.
3.3.2 REASON
Many conservatives see economics as a rational science because it uses mathematics that is always true. This
over-rides the normal human experience, where variety makes quantification difficult. Saul clearly denies that
he is attacking reason per se but he is opposed to the dominance of reason, or reason promoted to an ideology.
Reason knows no doubt: it knows it knows the answers. Technocrats have inherited the Platonic marriage of
reason and ideology. Corporations have alluded to economics for justifying "downsizing" when it is simply
trivial accounting. Large companies, like IBM, GM and Sears, have followed this strategy for fifteen years,
laying off tens of thousands of workers: this failed to deliver the expected results - in fact, he even killed off
some of them. This should not have surprised the astute observers, who predicted that serious corporate
cutting would eliminate creativity and risk taking. Considering how much effort went into building the
modern society we have engaged in an unconscious process which can be best described as masochistic
suicide. Conservatives love to conflate industrialism, capitalism and corporatism, when each of these arose at
different times in various societies but they do all share deep roots in private interests. In fact, corporatism
evolved into Fascism in Italy, Germany and France in the 1920s.
3.4 DEMOS
Democracy was always about the role of the majority of citizens in organizing their affairs. It is about the
legitimacy to rule without rulers; they will be the ones to initiate actions that impact their lives. Markets and
technology both have useful roles in complex societies but they are not Gods that determine the Game.
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4 FROM MANAGERS AND SPECULATORS TO GROWTH
4.1 HAVE WE ACHIEVED PROSPERITY?
It is obvious that most people in the West have a better life style than 200 years ago but now the 'Growth' (or
Real Improvement) seems to have seems to have stalled. Much of this ongoing improvement has stalled since
1980. Certainly, our civilization has brought prosperity to a new class of owners and managers but until 1950
they represented only a tiny percentage of the population. Until 1914, it was common for children to begin
work as early as age seven and to work 14 hours a day in very unhealthful conditions. Those awful conditions
have now spread around the whole world, as industrial employment has shifted from the western proletariat to
displaced, impoverished rural workers.
4.2 REAL GROWTH - Really?
The modern economy is characterized by Industrialism, Corporatism, Technocracy, Free Markets, Free Trade,
Globalization and Financialization.
4.2.1 INDUSTRIALISM
Machines have created Goods ('stuff') far more efficiently than by human muscles alone. We have exploited
energy sources (coal, oil, electricity, nuclear) to drive all levels of machines to transform material into useful
products. Humans were first needed to manage the machines, adjust them and reset them in large enough
numbers on a regular basis that a whole level of people (managers) were needed to organize and control their
behavior (to make sure they are doing what is wanted of them). As production quantities expanded there were
needs to administer all this activity (assign numbers to completions, failures, exceptions etc.); this led to an
army of clerks to first do the arithmetic by hand and then feed the raw data into computers to automate the
trivial mathematics. This growing army of the non-useful had itself to be managed, creating a vast and costly
bureaucracy. There used to be a need for specialists (engineers, designers, etc.) to evolve the product line or
just improve the quality but over time their numbers have been cut back, as western factories are being
allowed to decay and be replaced by oversees production. None-the-less, the bureaucracy grew, with multiple
levels of senior executives being rewarded better and better, as they competed to climb the ambitious GreasyPole of the company.
4.2.2 CORPORATISM
It is a useful exercise to compare business companies in Germany with those in the USA and UK. In Germany,
we still find very many successful businesses selling their high-priced, quality products in global markets but
many of these firms are still run as family businesses, saving capital from their annual profits and occasionally
borrowing needed capital from local banks with which they have long-term relationships. In contrast, the US
and UK, large family companies have long disappeared, merged or taken over by mega corporations that are
financed on publicly-traded stock-markets and judged every quarter on their recent profitability and dividends.
In Germany, there is vigorous competition, happy workers and long-term stability, while in the AngloAmerican Business Empire there is steady decay, fearful workers and short-term fluctuations and loss of
business. Interesting, when we compare how these two alternatives are managed: the German companies still
rely on finding committed family talent for their senior executives, with junior members 'learning the ropes'
over the years, across many parts of the company. In Anglo-land, clever people are taught management theory
to get their MBAs, they are then hired by the speciality (accounting, marketing, etc.) where they work up that
part of the corporate tree until they reach the junior executive level, where the Real-Game (blood-sports) are
played as they aim for the Vice-Presidential positions on their way to the corner office as CEO. On this
journey, they are continually exposed to the ideology of corporatism that consists of promotion of capitalism,
free markets, personal initiative and politics.
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But these people have been selected for their talent for management and have honed their skills in a
bureaucracy, where you do as you are told and avoid risks. Real capitalists, as in Germany, have more use for
other human qualities - common sense, intuition, creativity and skeptical of theory: recognizing that
management is about people; it is NOT a science.
Many of the largest corporations are owned by large investment firms (like Vanguard, Black Rock, etc.),
banks and pension funds. These enormous funds are themselves administered by the same sort of narrow, risk
averse managers. Indeed, most sectors are oligopolies with only two or three firms dominating the sector (like
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo) but both of these are owned by the same investment giants. These CEOs often live in
over-paid fantasy worlds, where they fly around making speeches and glad-handing politicians and perhaps
other CEOs. Wearing the Cloak of Capitalism, the charlatans lecture governments on risk and incentives, while
paying themselves gigantic sums as if they were a business owners, while the shares been given to them
(within attractive tax schemes) for simply increasing the share price of the corporation: even if by sharebuybacks. So, the manager replaces the real production decisions of the owning capitalist and plays in the
M&A Game, where he buys (Merges) with other large firms or Acquires smaller (often privately-owned)
smaller companies that have created useful products. Although they are buying creativity, this rapidly vanishes
in the large bureaucracy, as the new talent soon quits (with their millions). This competition for talent has bid
up the market values of innovative companies making it hard for owners of small companies not to sell out,
while removing an opportunity for the nation to develop a new innovative, major company.
4.2.3 TECHNOCRACY
Technocracy is the belief that technology is the secret to business success. It results from a misreading of
history. Most new technologies have had a wide and deeply disruptive impact on earlier parts of the economy.
The innovators do not give a damn for their negative effects, just like industrialism never cared about external
costs, such as pollution, clean up, social disruption, waste, etc. Managing complex change in today's complex
societies is a tough challenge and requires sensitivities to many factors and a long-range vision and concerns.
Bureaucratic management are the last people qualified to handle this process.
The Corporatist-ideologues blow the horn of privatization of government services but most of the target
industries are natural, national monopolies, like water, electricity, roads, etc. So, privatization takes steady
industries and makes them sources for greedy investors, who add NO value to their operations while jacking
up costs to citizens. Any cash received is rarely re-invested but used to make political, short-term tax-cuts.
Private capital is just moving into rentier-opportunities instead of being invested in newer, higher risk
schemes. Observers have only to examine the British experience with Margaret Thatcher's wild ideological
inspired denationalizations to see the folly of this approach that produced little change or value.
Saul lists the features that technocrats fear are incapable of efficiency: risk, thought, doubt, admission of error,
research and development, long-term investment, commitment to reality. Saul points out the quantitative part
of efficiency (that is easier to measure) than the subtler aspects of quality to contribute to human success.
These 'threats' lead Managers to seek out service industries for the servile and non-concrete character of such
businesses - in contrast to the tough world of manufacturing things. When we look at the track record of the
technocrats (and their Economic Theories) over the last 40 years; it has been one disaster after another in the
UK and USA [see my Columbia]. A major reason for technology is that it can be patented for a number of
years to produce monopoly profits. No wonder corporations bid fearlessly to buy out the patents on new
technology that they can embed in their operations to distribute excess Usage Fees across the world in LowTax havens to offset costs. Technology not only threatens mass-unemployment but also the easy
implementation of a Police-State, where everyone must carry and use a digital device for every transaction,
even going into a free museum.
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4.2.4 FREE-MARKETS
Free-Markets imply greater efficiencies but really produce opportunities for ruthless capitalists to exploit local
conditions driving down labor rates and increasing profits. The classic example of free markets is real estate,
where large speculators make mega-killings by throwing scraps to personal speculators. The deal here is that
there is a strongly regulated use of land (often by local governments) that limits land availability to larger
developers (who can afford to assemble large parcels and bribe local politicians). Land values usually go up
(as Mark Twain advised: "They have stopped making it.") so there is little risk in property speculation and
land loans (mortgages) are readily available. Indeed, a Land-Tax could be readily implemented that captures
the increase in land-value while the homes depreciate; this could be used in many communities to reduce the
annual property taxes on most home-owners. In reality, the shortage of homes leads to a higher market rentals
and this attracts many to seek out rental income. Saul quotes Adam Smith: "Landlords love to reap wherever
they never sowed, resulting in widespread idleness." When this poor use of capital is used to build fancy office
buildings to house the Corporate Elites, it is no surprise to see so many major national capital cities filling up
with "one royal palace after another."
4.2.5 FREE-TRADE
Technocratic management, produced mainly by business schools and departments of economics (i.e.
theoretical academics, not those with real-world experience), works best for those planning to 'work' in large
management structures, like large national corporations or even better, in global multinationals. They have
little linkage to capitalist companies operating in local, national markets. In fact, they are re-incarnations of
17th century royal monopolies (the true grandfathers of all corporations). The second half of the 19th century
shows some mixed results: Germany drew back in disorder (hence their large number of smaller, family
companies); Japan ended in military dictatorship (encouraged by the USA, see Diplomacy]. Even Britain, the
leading proponent of free trade, found its economy grinding ever slower as the century ground down. Today,
Singapore is experimenting with tariff-free industrial zones on Batam Island (near Indonesia). The first park
will employ 50,000 low-paid Indonesian workers on a two-year contract. This avoids all expensive social
infrastructure implied by hiring Singapore citizens with very good health care, education and housing.
4.2.6 GLOBALIZATION
Globalization has been negotiated between governments on behalf (and due to the active encouragement) of
large national corporations. They were encouraged by academic economists, who would quote Adam Smith at
the semi-literate politicians, forgetting that Adam Smith was talking about local tradesmen, in local markets,
where both factories and workers were strongly constrained to small geographical areas. He was NOT talking
about global markets with no limits. We have been experiencing a continual growth in global trade as capital
has freely flowed to countries with very low-cost labor costs to reduce their payroll costs, especially in
manufactured items. This has kept prices low in western countries but little increased prosperity where
Walmart-style companies import almost all their products from China and other low-paid countries, while
providing minimal wage opportunities in a few communities that have lost most of their local retail outlets.
Online shopping has further accelerated these trends, wiping out more of the local retail outlets.
The elimination of so many well-paid blue-collar jobs has forced governments to shift the tax burden onto the
middle class (as Corporations have adopted many 'legal' tax avoidance schemes - see TaxHavens]. As income
taxes dried up, this trend moved to sales taxes on goods and services, with large government deficits being
funded by banks, and other bond traders. Effective tax rates on large corporate profits throughout the West is
now about 12%. This has produced massive increases in publicly organized gambling. The billions of dollars
raised come in large part from the most discouraged part of the population, who are least able to afford their
addiction, reinforced by their miniscule chances of winning a fortune to solve their financial problems.
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4.2.7 FINANCIALIZATION
The finance industry has exploded since 1990, with this low-value, speculative activity rewarding its own
players with huge rewards. Speculative share-trading has now gone global, so when Wall Street 'catches a
cold' the whole world suffers, as in the 2008 Financial crisis. These massive increases in funding has spurred
the privatization of national resources and companies; inevitably this involves bribery to local officials and
political friends (of the government party in power) such as lawyers, accountants and brokers. This level of
corruption has been well documented by Naomi Klein in her Shock Doctrine book [see my Shock review].
Now everyday, currency traders move over $5 million around the world. If a small transaction tax, say 5%
were made on each of these trades then our public-financing problems would be solved within 12 months. As
these trades are all speculative (i.e. pure gambling by the Rich) their taxation would have minimal impact on
the real world economy. The post-war Bretton woods agreements showed that these types of international
regulation are always possible, while the unregulated money markets (much controlled from the ultra secretive
City of London) have produce over twenty years of crisis, instability, gratuitous speculation, tax-avoidance
and NO REAL GROWTH.
4.2.8 CHAPTER SUMMARY
This chapter has shown what a mess the current social, political and economic trends have produced in the last
forty years. We have produced minimal growth while our economy sucks, producing few life-satisfying jobs.
The vast concentrations of cash have corrupted most countries, as it attracted the wrong people into politics
who expect to make a fortune from illegal bribes. Democracy is in danger of being destroyed, as desperate
people are ground down to operating in pure survival mode, while the self-serving sociopaths only care for
themselves as they boost corporatism and its ideologies. Even the market enthusiasts suspect that they cannot
keep the present 'Game' going much longer when there are about 50 million unemployed in the West. Some
even believe the far-sighted intellectual supporters of Capitalism have introduced the Covid Crisis to effect a
global economic reset or even a global massive depopulation. The German Miracle has shown the value of
real, family-based capitalism, indicating we need to break up ALL mega corporations and stop promoting
mathematical business education and the value of MBAs.
Unfortunately, Saul ends here with a need to imagine a new mode of economic / political activity but offers
NO practical suggestions.
5 FROM IDEOLOGY TOWARDS EQUILIBRIUM
5.1 STABILITY
One of Saul's principal objectives is to achieve a state of equilibrium; he clearly rejects death and even rejects
a commitment to ideology as falling into permanent delusion. He also seeks active consciousness versus the
comfort of remaining in the unconscious. He delights in responsibility rather than passivity. He can
accommodate doubt instead of certainty. Overwhelmingly, he delights in the human condition or sympathy
for the condition of others and vigorously rejects self-loathing and cynicism, regarding the qualities of others.
He reminds us that sympathy for others is not only the essential characteristic of the human condition but it
was also central to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), a treatise that is rarely mentioned by the
false disciples of his economic theories. They limit themselves to The Wealth of Nations (1776) and then apply
their limited views to the general organization and conditions of society, whereas Saul says there is no
indication that was what Smith intended. Since his theory of sympathy rejected self-love as the basic motive
for human actions. He also defined virtue as consisting of three elements: propriety (the appropriate control
and directing of our affections), prudence (the judicious pursuit of our private interest) and benevolence (the
exercise of those affections that encourage the happiness of others). He concludes by saying: "How poor
Adam Smith got stuck with disciples, like the market economists and neo-conservatives, is hard to imagine; he
was in profound disagreement with their view of society."
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I agree strongly with Saul when he recommends that we accept Time, instead of fearing it, as it plays upon our
fears of death or of ceasing to exist, which are largely unconscious. These convert time into an ongoing
bogeyman of the most practical aspects of the human condition; time is limited - there is no time to lose. The
recurring delusion of a safe haven in both the grandiose and microscopic aspects of our lives is tied to
defeating time or at least to controlling it. The whole discourse of necessity and inevitability that surrounds
corporatism down to the payment of debts is constructed around a 'now or never' threat. Time (the great
enemy) will defeat us, if we hesitate to think or doubt; panicked, we flee towards certainty.
At the very core of management theory lies the falsely scientific Taylorist time/motion model of the
mechanistic human. The uncertainty of time, is to be removed by encasing us in a structure fit for machinery.
Machines may depreciate but they do not fear death. The static hierarchical structures of corporatism create
the illusion of timelessness, with the function being fulfilled by an unending series of replacements. Ironically,
in the late twentieth century, Westerners have added some 25 years to their life expectancy: we now have 50%
more on time in which to do whatever we wish. We could be using some of that extra time to think more and
replace the race to certainty with a more relaxed approach towards doubt. However, the effect of having a lot
more time means that many of us have had to retreat further into those unconscious fears that make us
susceptible to the menace of time. He then introduces how we organize our approach to education and our
careers. We rush desperately through everything with the result that increasing percentages of our population
end up with 25 years of inactivity called retirement; some is welcome but not 25 years! So, it must be the
pressures of corporatism that is causing us to front-end load our lives (fixed upon a rush to use machinery
before they suffer any depreciation) without any interest in or commitment to the shape of our society.
5.2 RIGHTS
Saul is very nervous about this topic because he sees the manner in which we have come to use them is a
severe deformation of these concepts, so contributing to a repetitive, sterile debate, which confirms the reign
of corporatism and facilitates the victory of those who wish market forces and technology to lead our
civilization. He includes the Left in this criticism as they ignore the existence of society and the public good.
Similarly, on the other side, the debate is limited to law and order, defense and morality. Both sides ignore the
shared role of the citizen in the maintenance of the public good; as both view individualism as self-absorption
or selfishness. Meanwhile, the Conservatives' view of individualism is the product of naiveté or cynicism. As
isolated individuals, only a few (and their hangers-on) are in a position to do well in such conditions of
unbalanced confrontation.
The reality of obligation today is therefore one of loyalty - or obedience - to the corporatist structures. Saul
traces this back to the birth of the corporatist movement around 1870, when religious leaders and established
hierarchical interests were looking for a way in which to accept industrialization while denying individualism
and democracy. Their solution was to combine and restructure the old concept of the faithful servant of God
and the dutiful subject of social authority in order to create the obligated subject of rational corporatist
structures. On the Left, the struggle has gone on for over 800 years to liberate ourselves from their artificial
status as subjects. They focused on taking rights away from the established order while they were using the
language of natural rights. Tragically, the leadership on the reform side have consolidated their idea of rights
into their own acceptance of corporatist structures. Now, the great philosophical voice of humanist decency is
absent from the public debate because most of its exponents are caught up in the complexities of philosophical
professionalism: a world of narrow specializations and impenetrable dialect - a corporation of philosophy. Too
many liberal and social democratic thinkers have all too often chosen what they see as the high ground of
specialization and professionalism. Again too many of the reformist leaders have been infected from the
beginning by the Platonist distrust of the populace (or 'mob'). The reformers saw the social control as being
exercised in the name of justice, but their approach has left us undefended before the forces of self-interest.
Thus, for example, is the general thrust that general schooling should be restructured to act as a direct conduit
to the managerial economy. "We must produce citizens who can find jobs." These changes will usually help
individuals in the work-place but they will always prepare the young to accept the structures of corporatism.
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5.3 INDIVIDUALISM
Saul claims that the very essence of individualism is the refusal to mind your own business. He writes that
criticism is perhaps the citizen's primary weapon in the exercise of her legitimacy. That is why, in this
corporatist society, conformism, loyalty and silence are so admired and rewarded; why criticism is so
punished or marginalized. It is not surprising that in an atmosphere of professional conformism that we should
seek release in what Saul calls 'false individualism' or perhaps "superficial self-satisfaction". The problem is
not that looking after our personal desires is innately wrong: many of these can be agreeable diversions. The
problem is that these agreeable moments are increasingly identified as the expression of individualism: as
individualism itself.
The private-sector managerial class and the neo-conservatives complain that the poor have been given selfserving rights; yet they themselves embrace the self-serving rights of pleasure with enthusiasm. Saul admits
that in any society we must expect to find a fraction of the population, who wish to walk away from any
involvement whatsoever. That freedom of that fraction is a sign of society's health but we should know that
when the virtual totality of the elite adopts a public silence and private passivity on the professional level, then
walks away from society to blow off accumulated steam on private pleasures then a society is in trouble. Our
problem is not choosing whether to abolish pleasure or to embrace it, but toe find ways that might help release
the individual from the conformity of the corporation. Saul concludes that we are not going to defeat,
overthrow or even abandon the corporatist structure, in spite of its failures.
Corporatist society has structured itself so as to eliminate citizen participation in public affairs, except through
the isolated act of voting and through voluntary activities. This suggests that in a corporatist society,
democracy is formally discouraged; it is marginalized into volunteerism. A modern heretic (one who publicly
disagrees with the orthodoxy) is no longer burned at the stake but finds his career shattered and himself cast to
the margins of corporatist society. This requires us to confront the nonsense factor in official language. The
seamless web of corporatism means that specific battles for justice end up as isolated victories, which are
often then easily marginalized. Emile Durkheim described the process of using symbols as propaganda, while
Jung said that "the psyche consists essentially of images and we are now drowning under an impact of
images."
Saul warns us not to look for salvation from the universities as they too are in crisis and are attempting to align
themselves with various corporatist interests. They are in crisis, he claims, because the historic process of
learning has slipped back into comfortable cubbyhole of sophism and scholasticism. In 5th century BC, the
Athenian Sophists aimed not at producing wisdom or goodness but efficiency and cleverness.
Saul targets the philosophers, political scientists and economists (three areas he sees as relevant to democracy)
as hiding behind claims of complexity. He says this is why the educated citizenry feel they have been
abandoned by their thinkers; a sense of being betrayed by an intelligentsia which does not take the humanist
experience seriously, especially the drama of the citizen-based democracy.
Saul recommends that universities to turn away now from its self-interest in order to take on a leadership role
in the movement to reinvigorate and broaden pre-university education. Universities have fallen too deep into
the trap of too much specialization, as their graduates are optimized for the requirements of the job market.
When universities graduate 21-year old specialists equipped with no memory of their civilization's experience,
no ethical context, no sense of the larger shape of their society then it is no surprise that society views social
education as a liability, not an asset. This should feed their ability to think instead of clinging onto process.
Turning to politics, Saul condemns the role of money in distorting politics. He is equally critical of our blind
obedience to technology, where we allow new innovations to devastate huge sectors of society in the dumb
pursuit of new profits.
The four cardinal virtues of Hellenistic thought were also adopted by Thomas Aquinas as the political or
human virtues; they were justice, temperance, prudence and fortitude but Saul prefers a more humanistic list
of human qualities, like: common-sense, creativity (or imagination), ethics (not morality), intuition (or
instinct), memory and reason. Although these qualities cannot be defined they are directly applicable to
reality.
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These qualities can be exploited individually as a justification for ideology or imprisoned in the limbo of
abstract concepts. Saul prefers that we view them together, in some sort of equilibrium, as the filters of public
action. Finally, he wraps up the book with the following cheer for permanent psychic discomfort. The
corporatist system depends upon the citizen's desire for inner comfort. Equilibrium is dependent upon our
recognition of reality, which is the acceptance of permanent psychic discomfort that is the acceptance of
consciousness. Far too many generalized ramblings to be of value in spearheading real change.
6 CONCLUSIONS
This book gives the impression that Ralston Saul spoke directly, off the top of his head, into a radio
microphone and these words were captured on tape and later transcribed directly into a book. This explains to
me the wildly unstructured form of this book and its apparent, random presentation of the ideas, even in each
chapter. That it later won the Governor-General's award suggests political bias in the selection process.
6.1 BOOK WEAKNESSES
This book really needs an index to tie together the very diverse ideas that keep re-appearing across the whole
book. This is a very difficult book to read as ideas appear in a near random order, with related fragments reappearing many times. I have tried to enforce structure here by looking for the sub-headings implicit in the
text. I suspect that it suffers from its production history: a set of spoken lectures were just transcribed directly
into print without the benefit of a strong editor. The book concludes with a pessimistic set of ramblings.
6.2 BOOK STRENGTHS
Hiding behind the confusion of Saul's presentation are many powerful thoughts worth sharing here. I trust that
I have captured most of them here, at least while maintaining his chapter structure, where they first surface.
He delivers a cogent, devastating criticism but fails to offers any positive directions forwards, such as the use
of the transaction ("Robin Hood") tax, banishing corporate chieftains from their country of origin for tax
evasion, eliminating excessive charges for trademark usage (setting a maximum of 0.01% of sales price).
6.3 REVIEW RECOMMENDATIONS
I cannot recommend this book as it is poorly organized, seeming-like a set of Top-of-Head ideas padded to
fill out the broadcasts. However, I do recommend his later book (Voltaire's Bastards) where he continues his
attacks on Corporatism in a far more coherent presentation. I am glad I read this book although I was left
confused as to whether there is any hope for resolving the many problems. Any positive suggestions, like the
Robin Hood Tax were my additions.
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