Book Review: "The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism" by Martin Wolf

The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (2023)
Martin Wolf (1946)
474 pages

“Almost a quarter of respondents in a new [October 2023] poll say American politics have gotten so far off track that “patriots may have to resort to violence” to save the United States … [including] one-third of Republicans surveyed … 13 percent of Democrats … and twenty-two percent of independents.”

More in New Poll Say ‘Patriots May Have to Resort to Violence’ to Save US

These recent polling results make manifest the disturbing depth of the political and social divisiveness that has spread in the US since at least the Great Recession of the late 2000’s. Antipathy, and increasingly even anger towards those with whom one disagrees politically has not only deepened distrust in government institutions fundamental to the stability of the country, but indeed fostered violent attacks against them.

Liberal democracies globally face similar challenges, notes economist Martin Wolf in his timely book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. The heady days of the early 1990’s, when the West celebrated its victory in the Cold War as an end of history moment in which the combination of liberal democratic politics and free-market capitalist economics had seemed to prove itself successful, feel like a distant memory. Instead, we now face an internal crisis, one that Wolf argues has arisen not from outside threats, such as alternative political-economic regimes, but rather due to inherent characteristics of democratic capitalism itself:

The health of our societies depends on sustaining a delicate balance between the economic and the political, the individual and the collective, the national and the global. But that balance is broken. Our economy has destabilized our politics and vice versa. (xix)

It is this delicate balance between the economic and the political in democratic capitalism that Wolf explores in his book: how it first emerged; what has destabilized it in our present moment; and, finally, which reforms could help reestablish an equilibrium.

He opens with the observation that throughout history politics and economics have been deeply intertwined as “symbiotic twins.” This remains true for democracy and capitalism, he notes, but with the additional characteristic that the two systems are fundamentally dependent on one another: “capitalism cannot survive in the long run without a democratic polity, and democracy cannot survive in the long run without a market economy.” (13)

To demonstrate this profound interdependence, he notes that a key element in the development of capitalism was the shift to permitting individuals to participate in a marketplace in which they could sell their labor for money. This led to “an economic and social revolution that … was brutal and exploitative, [but] also transformative” (22): as ever larger groups were allowed to participate in the marketplace, it became politically untenable to withhold suffrage from them. Admittedly, it was a slow process; the shift to universal suffrage took well over a century in Western democracies, and particularly long in the US: “when George Washington was elected president, only 6 percent of the population of the United States could vote” and more than a dozen countries granted universal suffrage before “the US in 1965.” (42-43)

The emergence of democratic political systems in turn supported capitalism, by establishing and maintaining a rule of law that enabled a market economy to thrive. Wolf argues that a capitalist economic system can, in fact, only survive in conjunction – symbiosis – with a democratic governing system. So dependent are the two systems on one another that “democratic capitalism … is the only form of democracy we are likely to see.” (31)

Even as democracy and capitalism play critical roles in each other’s success, however, they exist as “complimentary opposites” in a marriage Wolf describes as “always fragile”. If independence between the systems is not maintained, the “delicate balance between politics and market can be destroyed, [through either] state control over the economy [or] capitalist control over the state.” (29)

In his elucidation of this delicate balance, and the risks to maintaining it, Wolf highlights a crucial point: the profound symbiosis between the two systems “does not mean that economic and political freedoms are the same: the freedom to transact is different from the freedom to act politically.” (31) Historians Naomi Orestes and Erik M. Conway explore this critical distinction in depth in The Big Myth, describing how wealthy US business owners waged a decades long propaganda campaign in the 20th century to dissolve it, attempting to persuade Americans to believe that the two freedoms are indeed the same – that any loss of economic freedom inherently leads to a loss of political freedom. Business’s goal was to tilt the playing field in its favor, by having the country adopt a free market fundamentalist belief that viewed any kind of regulation on business as a step toward socialism or communism. (My review of their book linked to at right.)

Orestes and Conway document the ultimate success of this campaign, and how it has led since the 1980’s to precisely the outcome Wolf describes in his book as:

the rise of rentier capitalism, in which a relatively small proportion of the population has successfully captured rents from the economy and uses the resources it has acquired to control the political and even legal systems, especially in the US, the world’s most important standard-bearer of democracy. (173) 

Referencing one of market fundamentalism’s own heroes, Wolf notes that “a good part of what has gone wrong is what Adam Smith warned us against – the tendency of the powerful to rig the economic and political systems against the rest of society.” (119) (In The Big Myth, Oreskes and Conway expose the selective editing market fundamentalists have done with Smith’s work, to make it appear that he supports their extreme interpretation of the free market.)

Wolf presents a range of economic indicators that make evident the destabilizing rise in inequality in recent decades, but the following observation perhaps best crystalizes the situation:

The ratio between average chief executive pay and employee pay in the UK was 129 to 1 in 2016, an increase from 48 to 1 in 1998. In the US, the corresponding ratio was 347 to 1 in 2016, up from 42 to 1 in 1980. (90) 

For a more in-depth examination of how the US and other Western democracies have recently returned to levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age, French economist Thomas Piketty provides a detailed and engaging account in both Capital in the 21st Century and A Brief History of Equality. (My reviews of these works linked to at right.)

This increasing inequality has fueled the recent rise in populism in the US, Britain, France, and other high-income democracies, according to Wolf, which autocrats have then exploited to justify disregarding and eventually dismantling democratic institutions, helping tip democratic capitalism, in the US and elsewhere, toward authoritarian capitalism. Although autocrats focus popular attention on issues such as trade, immigration and globalization, Wolf concludes that these are not the true culprits in the rise of populism; for example, he notes, “the dominant cause of the decline in the share of industry in employment has been rising productivity, not [global] trade.” (94) Instead, he claims, the driving force of populist anger comes from people feeling that they have been “losing control over their livelihoods, status, and even country,” (85) disrespected and ignored by the wealthy elite.

The essayist Pankaj Mishra makes a similar case for the origins of populist frustration in his book Age of Anger. (My review linked to at right.)  Mishra argues that large segments of the global population have come to feel that a successful elite has rigged the system against them, resulting in

their natural rights to life, liberty and security[,] already challenged by deep-rooted inequality, [now further] threatened by political dysfunction and economic stagnation, [leading to] an existential resentment of other people’s being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness, … [which] poisons civil society and undermines political liberty, and is presently making for a global turn to authoritarianism. (14, Age of Anger)

Mishra’s argument is that such frustration did not exist in feudal or other earlier political-economic societies, since people, essentially, knew their place. This changed in the 18th century, as Enlightenment philosophers argued for rationalist reforms, and for a shift from aristocratic hierarchies to a meritocratic society. This laid the groundwork for the rise of capitalism, which planted the seeds of frustration, Mishra argues, leading to “the most fateful event of human history: the rise of an industrial and materialist civilization, which … ushered in a new era of global consciousness” (50-51, Age of Anger) in which each individual felt that they had as much right to wealth and power as anyone else; and, when they found it denied them by an elite few, they not surprisingly became frustrated and angry.

In one sense, the distinction between the arguments of Wolf and Mishra could be considered slight, with Wolf’s fragility of democratic capitalism due to the ever-present tendency toward increasing inequality leading to the frustration that Mishra makes clear is poisoning civil society. However, there remains a fundamental and critical difference between the two: while Mishra provides no path out of our civilization’s current predicament – the frustration and anger may recede for periods, only to return because it’s a fundamental characteristic of our economic system – Wolf claims that a fragile balance can be reestablished that allows democracy and capitalism to coexist successfully.

In the final portion of his book, Wolf makes the case for how to restore this balance, offering a string of recommendations for, as he titles the section, Renewing Democratic Capitalism. He presents ideas for both our economic and political systems, and they certainly all seem quite reasonable. But even Wolf acknowledges that “the obstacle to any of this is the power that corporations and wealthy people have over governments, not the inability of governments to get their way … if they wanted to” (309) This, however, is precisely the rub, and what makes it difficult not to lean toward Mishra’s view.

Yes, capitalism has lifted many across the globe out of abject poverty; yes, it has driven innovation on many fronts, including medications and technologies that make life easier; yes, a competitive, market-based economy seems so much more effective than the other forms that have been tried over the past several centuries. And, to all that, one can add Wolf’s argument that capitalism played a central role in getting us to universal suffrage democracy.

But.

Even in the moments when Wolf’s fragile balance has been achieved, this success appears to have come at great cost. One could consider, for example, the 1950’s as such a period, and even argue that the resulting economic stability allowed the civil rights movement of the 1960’s to gather just enough support to be successful legislatively (as Wolf’s argument for capitalist economics supporting universal suffrage suggests.) But, at what cost? The effective – stabilizing – regulatory and tax structure in the 1950’s grew out of reaction to Gilded Age excesses and the pain of the Great Depression, as Wolf notes, but also the financial needs of governments to fight World War I and World War II, and the subsequent rebuilding, as Piketty describes in Capital in the 21st Century. And even then, stability was relatively short-lived: beginning in the 1980’s, after an extended period of relative peace, the regulatory infrastructure and progressive tax rates instrumental to maintaining Wolf’s fragile balance were dismantled, enabling the rising inequality, and crisis of democratic capitalism now apparent.

Even if we could implement some number of Wolf’s suggestions, and so renew democratic capitalism’s stability, the very nature of capitalism is to create wealth for a few, and human nature then tends to lead those economic elite to want to corrupt the political system to their will, to legislate a regime in which they can further increase their wealth. Can the long arc of history continue to bend toward periods of increasing justice in the presence of a capitalist system that actively undermines it? How many times can we oscillate through this cycle between fragile stability and wild excess before populist anger explodes in a revolution that destroys the system completely?

Perhaps, however, if we believe democratic capitalism is indeed the best political-economic system for our civilization, as Wolf clearly does, occasional populist violence is simply the risk we must abide. Because, to give Thomas Piketty the last word, the history of the past two centuries has shown that significantly reducing inequality in our current system will likely take a revolution:

Long-term movement toward equality [since the end of the 18th century] … is a consequence of conflicts and revolts against injustice that have made it possible to transform power relationships and overthrow institutions supported by dominant classes, which seek to structure social inequality in a way that benefits them, and to replace them with new institutions and new social, economic, and political rules that are more equitable and emancipatory for the majority. Generally speaking, the most fundamental transformations seen in the history of inegalitarian regimes involve social conflicts and large-scale political crises. (10, A Brief History of Equality)

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Book Review: "The Nature of the Chinese Character" by Barbara Aria

The Nature of the Chinese Character (1991)
Barbara Aria
Calligraphy by Russell Eng Gon
Illustrations by Lesley Ehlers
96 pages

I have long enjoyed the puzzle aspect of languages, in particular the etymology and construction of words. In German, famous for its many compound words, a simple example would be that the word Stift means ‘writing instrument’ and Blei means ‘lead’ (the ore), and they came together at some point in history to form the word for ‘pencil’: Bleistift: a lead writing instrument. I recall a native German teacher warning our class to not try and create such compound words ourselves – that it’s not a free for all – but the temptation is indeed hard to resist.

Given this background, it is perhaps not surprising then, that when I discovered author Barbara Aria’s book The Nature of the Chinese Character, I couldn’t resist reading it. Aria’s text, with calligraphy by Russell Eng Gon and illustrations by Lesley Ehlers, goes right to the heart of my interest. As someone who only knows perhaps a half dozen Chinese characters, and a (different) half-dozen or so words, I have long been intrigued by the apparent connection of at least some Chinese characters to objects in the natural world.

In the book, Aria presents forty Chinese characters, exploring for each its origins and evolution. Although apparently only a small portion of the Chinese written language has pictographic origins, her intimate and thoughtful prose paints lovely portraits of the history of a selection of such characters. The word nature in her title in fact serves double duty: the characters she includes all relate to the natural world, and, through her descriptions of their origins and evolution, she introduces us to the nature of the Chinese language more generally.

For anyone fascinated by Chinese characters and the artistry of their earliest origins, Aria and her collaborators provide a gorgeous introduction.

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Book Review: "The Big Myth" by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market  (2023)
Naomi Oreskes (1958) and Erik M. Conway (1965)
565 pages

By promoting a false dichotomy between laissez-faire capitalism and communist regimentation, market fundamentalists [have made] it difficult for Americans to have conversations about crucial issues, such as appropriate levels of taxation or the balance between federal and state authority, or even how to appraise the size of the federal government objectively. (118)

Truer words never spoken. Most anyone in the US who has ever brought up the pitfalls of free market capitalism or questioned its sustainability has likely had the conversation quickly shutdown by the comeback What, you prefer communism?, as if that constitutes the only conceivable alternative. And not just from free market fundamentalists: even many Americans who lament capitalism’s excesses have become convinced that trying to correct them will only lead us onto a slippery slope to a Soviet-style regime – nuance, and the half century plus lived experience of those in many European nations, be damned.

Historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, in their thought-provoking work The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market, provide a detailed analysis of how business leaders have worked aggressively and persistently for over a century to persuade Americans to believe this dichotomy, to accept that any loss of economic freedom will inevitably lead to a loss of political freedom.  In their introduction, they make clear that it is this extreme view of free market fundamentalism that warrants concern:

We think what's at issue is not capitalism <i>per se</i>.  Contemporary conservatives, libertarians, and market fundamentalists are not really defending capitalism, even if they think they are.  They are defending a certain <i>idea</i> of capitalism, a vision of growth and innovation by unfettered markets where government just gets out of the way.  ... To the extent that it once did (approximately) exist, it was a disaster: a world with little or no workplace safety, no constraints on pollution, no limits to the trees that could be cut down or the dangerous products that could be sold. (13)

The campaign by business to push through this fundamentalist view originated in the opening decades of the 20th century, according to the authors.  It arose in response to a Progressive social and political movement born from the excesses of the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s, one that successfully lobbied for restrictions on child labor and the implementation of worker’s compensation.  Business owners, looking to head off further such laws threatening their profits, banded together to plot ways to fight back.

A key early battle in this regard took place in the 1920’s, according to Oreskes and Conway, over the issue of rural electrification. Cities had largely been electrified by this point, but much of rural America had not, as private utilities found it unprofitable to build out the necessary infrastructure. When both the federal government and state governments tried to step in to fill the gap, however, these same utilities fought aggressively against it – opposing even plans that tried to strike a reasonable balance between public and private ownership. As a governor of that time who attempted to develop one such program lamented:

If the people of the United State ever turn to the nation-wide public ownership of electric utilities … it will be because the companies have driven them to it … [having] opposed and prevented reasonable and effective regulation by the States and the nation. (43)

Already in this period, the authors note, industry groups moved beyond just lobbying for or against specific legislation or promoting a particular business or industry. Instead, by targeting newspaper editors, educators, and the public directly, their “goal – expressed outright in numerous documents – was to change the way Americans thought about private property, capitalism, and regulation.” (51)

These early efforts by industry groups were often ham-handed, the authors note, and when the details eventually came to light a decade later during congressional hearings, it caused the business community significant embarrassment. Combined with the disastrous impact of the Great Depression, the revelations resulted in the political influence of business reaching a nadir during the 1930’s and early 1940’s.

Out of this period, however, arose a new, more politically savvy group of business owners who developed more refined approaches for pushing their agenda, their efforts focused on reversing the many aspects of the New Deal that undercut their profitability. Oreskes and Conway term the core message they propagated as the indivisibility thesis – a claim that political and economic freedom were intimately connected, and that “anything less than total business freedom was a step on the road to socialism or worse.” (118) Using these arguments, business groups rejected any regulation, any tax, any government involvement in the economy at all, thereby

transmogrify[ing] a self-serving argument for business privilege into a seemingly virtuous defense of cherished American values … [and] spend[ing] the ensuing decades bolstering its intellectual credentials and embedding it in the bedrock of American culture, to the point where the myth would be mistaken for age-old truth. (119)

Having established the central narrative that market fundamentalists sought to promote, the authors explore the many and varied approaches industry organizations and wealthy individuals pursued and funded to promote it throughout the mid-20th century. Having learned from the mistakes of earlier groups, their new methods tended focus on direct pressure, and more on using money to underwrite those who were either already pre-disposed to support the desired message or were in a sufficiently precarious financial situation that they would be willing to align their thinking with that of their patrons. This again involved working through educators and editors, but also included seeking out supportive preachers who could bring the message to their congregations, and sponsoring radio and TV programs that were little more than paid propaganda for business.

The extreme position free market fundamentalists staked out with the indivisibility thesis becomes clear through the ways in which they repeatedly had to curate reality to promote their message, editing out anything that could undermine it. Thus, for example, Oreskes and Conway note that even as market fundamentalists built up Adam Smith as the ur-capitalist, they also quietly excised his comments in The Wealth of Nations that supported government engagement in the economy, such as his argument that the financial industry needed regulation to achieve a durable and healthy capitalism.

Similarly, when market fundamentalists brought Austrian economics professor Friedrich von Hayek to the US to add academic rigor to their message based on his book The Road to Serfdom, they ignored his calls in that text for a government social safety net, for example, and went so far, Oreskes and Conway point out, as to published an alternative version of the book that better aligned with their message. (Some years ago, I read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, thinking I should get to know a text that so many conservatives have touted as undergirding their views. As can be found in my review (linked to at right), however, I was struck reading it by how Hayek, while clearly a believer in markets and capitalism, expressed the need for government assistance programs and explicitly distanced himself from conservatism.)

The authors also include a fascinating exploration of the multipronged media blitz undertaken by business leaders in the mid-20th century, through print, radio, and television. Here again, the details often force us to confront the history we had been taught in school or absorbed from cultural messages. Perhaps most shocking is the real story behind the The Little House on the Prairie series, relative to what appears in the novels and TV series. Striking too is the story of Ronald Reagan’s rise to fame as the spokesman on a series of TV shows sponsored by GE in the mid 1950’s to extol the virtues of business and free markets: Reagan’s views shifted strongly rightward, the authors note, as he aligned his thinking with that of his employers at GE, and a decade later he came to benefit politically from the significant public visibility he gained through the show.

Reagan, in fact, goes on to play a central role in the final portion of the book, as the time and money business associations and wealthy individuals spent spreading the gospel of the indivisibility thesis finally paid off during the final decades of the 20th century. By the 1970’s, the authors note, even Democrats spoke about the need for deregulation: when the authors write that an administration “pushed laws through Congress removing the New Deal-era price and service regulations from commercial air travel, trucking, and railroads … [and] target the nation’s vast energy sector for sweeping reform” (309) I found it surprising that they are talking about Jimmy Carter, and not Ronald Reagan.

In fact, however, the authors draw clear distinctions between the economic agendas of the Carter and Reagan administrations around rewriting regulations. They describe the Carter administration as pursuing necessary and careful deregulation for “the creation of competitive markets where they did not previously exist …[and] removing controls that were counterproductive or no longer justified” (331-332) in the interest of 

enabling the economic growth necessary to pay for [quoting economist Alfred Kahn of the Carter administration] ‘continued progress in humanizing our society,’ but … not ... throwing workers (and consumers) to the wolves.

Reagan’s broad and sweeping deregulation approach, in contrast, focused on “aggressive de-unionization [and] the weakening of environmental, health, and safety statutes.” (331)

In Reagan, free market fundamentalist had created a true believer, who pursued deregulation aggressively; what he couldn’t accomplish in Congress in terms of deregulation, he achieved by starving regulatory agencies of funds. The authors note that

Reagan presented markets not merely as a place where people expressed their interests and satisfied their desires, but as the embodiment of freedom. … [Thus, he] proclaimed the solution to high oil prices was to let ‘freedom solve the problem through the magic of the marketplace.’ (357)

They document Reagan’s repeated use of this idea of the “magic” of the market in his speeches, and how this conceptualization allowed him to promise that free markets could solve any problem, without having to provide any supporting evidence – it was just magic.

The authors note that the reign of free-market fundamentalism has continued after Reagan, whether Democrats or Republicans have controlled government. It impacted, for example, both Clinton’s failed attempt to enact National Health Care, and his successful deregulation of the financial industry. And they document the destructive impacts that have resulted – in the Clinton examples, the former left tens of thousands of Americans uninsured, and the latter has been directly implicated in causing the Great Recession of 2008. As William Greider noted in One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism:

When law and social values retreated before the power of markets, then capitalism’s natural drive to maximize returns had no internal governor to check its social behavior. When one enterprise took the low road to gain advantage, others would follow. (341)

This last part of the book, covering the past 50 or so years, is perhaps the most shocking part of the story. That business leaders in the mid-20th century aggressively tried to further increase their profits and power by tilting the social and political field in their favor is hardly surprising – although admittedly the full extent of their activities is discouragingly impressive. But, for readers who have lived through the events of the last half century, Oreskes and Conway tear away the veil put up by the free-market fundamentalists. It becomes like seeing behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz – the statements once taken at face value about the “magic of the market,” or about what Adam Smith or Friedrich von Hayek wrote and argued for, or about the indivisibility of economic and political freedom, or so many other claims suddenly become so much unsupported propaganda.

Perhaps the most important take away from The Big Myth, however, is that understanding how the US has come to this point could enable us to recognize that, as Oreskes and Conway note:

Our choices are not confined to oppressive communism or heartless capitalism. To suggest that they are is a dangerous failure of vision. But that is precisely what market fundamentalism has achieved: it has blinded its adherents to the realities around them, while making it hard for all of us to see the range of options that have worked in the past and could work again in the future. (424) 

By seeing behind the veil that has been draped around us for so long, perhaps we can finally find a path to a more economically sustainable economic system.

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Other notes and information:

An engaging and wide-ranging interview of Naomi Oreskes by Brooke Gladstone for the program On the Media can be found here.

In a blog post from 2020, I comment on a fascinating discussion Krista Tippett had on her On Being podcast with biological and evolutionary anthropologist Agustín Fuentes that ventured onto the topic of the societal implications of our current economic system.

Further quotes from William Greider’s One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism can be found here.

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Book Review: "Children of Dune" by Frank Herbert

Children of Dune (1976)
Frank Herbert (1920-1986)
609 pages

[Note: although I make it a point to avoid spoilers in my reviews, this is the third in a trilogy, and it's not possible to write about it without including some context from the earlier books, Dune and Dune Messiah. So, if you haven't read those first two yet, I suggest you jump back to my reviews of them, linked to from the titles.]

At the end of the second book of the Dune trilogy, Dune Messiah, the Emperor Paul Atreides, Muad’Dib, wanders off into the desert to die, having been blinded during an uprising against his rule. Shortly before, he learned that his wife had died while giving birth to twins, who he has named Leto and Ghamina.

The third book, Children of Dune, opens with the twins now nine years old. Though still children in appearance, both are pre-born – filled since in their mother’s womb with awareness and access to the lives and knowledge of all their ancestors, going back to long-forgotten Earth. Beyond that, they also share the profound connection that exists between so many twins.

Though young, the pair already face a host of dangers. Their aunt, Alia, has succeeded her brother to rule Dune for House Atreides, and schemes to keep her brother’s progeny from weakening her position on the throne and eventually taking it for themselves. Their grandmother, as representative of the Bene Gesserit order, arrives back on Dune for the first time since her son’s death, wishing to be reunited with her grandchildren, though her true intentions remain a mystery. In a distant star-system, the House Corrino, which Paul had overthrown in his rise to become Emperor, looks to restore their leadership, targeting the twins as an impediment to their desires. And, finally, a mysterious, blind preacher wanders the capital of Dune, questioning the ruling order.

Unsure of whom they can trust, and witness to the chaos that has begun to grow around the rule of Alia, the twins have their own plans for the future of Dune and the Empire. But, can they survive the forces arrayed against them to make their visions a reality?

This third book in the Dune series lies somewhere between the first two in terms of the balance of action and rumination. In the opening novel, Paul grows into his powers amid a heady mixture of intrigue and war that eventually lead to a decisive victory and his assumption of power as Emperor of the federation of planets. This sets the stage for the second book, in which Paul struggles as Emperor with the choices he has made and the violence they have wrought, as well as with the delicate, seemingly impossible task of using his prescience to navigate the Empire toward a peaceful future, even as conspiracies, plots and general human inconstancy complicate his task. Largely foregoing the action-adventure elements of the first book, Herbert spends significant portions of the second taking readers inside Paul’s head, reflecting on, and grappling with, the inherent and profound challenges of rulers from time immemorial.

Now, in Children of Dune, with power up for grabs after Paul’s departure, the action picks up again a bit. Nonetheless, with the palace intrigues and groups grasping for power – whether the twins themselves, their aunt Alia, their grandmother Jessica, or the heads of House Corrino – Herbert again has readers inside the heads of a variety of conspirators, as they consider the ends they wish to achieve, and the perilous paths they pursue.

Ultimately, the action and adventure present in all three of these books serve mostly as a vehicle for Herbert’s true goal: exploring the challenges of leadership, the complex and ever shifting motivations of those who pursue it, and the ceaseless struggle they have to hold on to it once they have it. These stories may be set in a distant future, when humanity has spread far from their Earthly home, but the tale Herbert tells goes back to the earliest kings – and resonates strongly too with the power struggles we witness in the present day.

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Book Review: "Palimpsestos" by Christina del Río Fuentes

Palimpsestos: Las Huellas del Tiempo en la Arquitectura (2022)
(Palimpsests: The Traces of Time in Architecture)
Christina del Río Fuentes
Prologue: Alfonso Carvajal
93 pages

If when you wander down a street, whether in your hometown or somewhere half a world away, you tend to find your attention captured by evidence in the buildings of earlier structures or uses – incongruities in facades along a block, differences in the style from the street level to higher stories, or fading, wall-painted ads for former stores – then architect Christina del Río Fuentes has written a book that will speak directly to your heart. Her marvelous essay Palimpsestos: Las Huellas del Tiempo en la Arquitectura (Palimpsests: The Traces of Time in Architecture) invites us to seek out such accumulations of architectural changes in a place, and to consider what they reveal about that location’s inhabitants and the evolution of their hopes and dreams.

She opens by explaining her use of the word Palimpsests, describing it as coming from the Greek palimpsestos ‘scaped again’, originally meaning a writing material (such as a parchment or tablet) that has been used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased. But the word has also come to mean, quoting from Merriam-Webster, “something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface.” Del Río Fuentes ultimately finds both of these meanings applicable, as the diverse layers of architectural style in a place often result from earlier structures that have been repurposed or built over.

After first acknowledging the evidence of lasting human impact on the natural world (we do, after all, live in an age that some have labeled the Anthropocene), del Río Fuentes focuses for most the book on the kinds of palimpsests found in the evolution of cities. She describes three types of such impacts on a city’s architectural style: scars, “vestiges of the past that have remained present,” (36) say after a place has been rebuilt in the wake of a catastrophic fire; strata, groups of architectural elements that have become integrated with other groups that come before or after, as cities evolve to reflect changes in their inhabitants’ needs and desires; and, collage of time, in which buildings remain from the past but have been renovated to reflect a changed cultural vision of a city’s inhabitants, for which she provides a particularly vivid example of the present-day Roman-catholic cathedral in Cordoba that was originally a mosque build by the Moors. She closes her essay with examples from cities that exhibit each of these architectural histories.

By integrating cultural and historical considerations with the physical reality of the architectural styles, del Río Fuentes brings cityscapes alive in her essay. What at first glance appear as mute collections of buildings reveal themselves as

[not] a constructed territory, but rather an accumulation of distinct transformations. They appear as dynamic cities in which their development, their changes, give rise to unforeseeable models. (47)

By demonstrating that these transformations have analogues in the work of artists, she reveals how the evolution of the structure of a place is driven by its inhabitants, and that the dynamism of the architecture comes out of their evolving cultural norms and priorities.

After reading Palimpsests, you’ll surely see your hometown differently, becoming attuned to the mixture of styles present, the scars sometimes left as new replaces old, and the variety of surprising layers hidden often in plain sight.

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While I was in the middle of Palimpsests, I happened to read Jacinto Antón’s interview of the photographer Isabel Muñoz in El País Semanal (9 July 2023, The Dawn of Civilization, Pictured at Night) LINKLINK regarding her stunning pictures of the Turkish site Göbekli Tepe, which triggered a direct connection. Göbekli Tepe is described as “a meeting place built by groups of hunter-gatherers in the dawn of the Neolithic age (Neolithic preceramic, 9600-7000 BC), during the transition to the first permanent settlements.” In the article, a Turkish archaeologist, Necmi Karul, comments that 

They are spaces of socialization and memory. In the pillars, we see images, for the large part of animals, that must have formed part of a collective memory. The buildings are architecture living and renewable (we see that the reliefs were replaced), they are living constructions, that indicate to us a new style of living. (italics mine)

To my understanding, Palimpsests is only available in Spanish. But it’s a relatively short essay, and if one knows some Spanish, and is willing to proceed with a dictionary at one’s side, it can be tackled. (Translations of the quotes above from the book, as well as from the magazine article, are mine.)

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Bewilderment" by Richard Powers

Bewilderment (2021)
Richard Powers (1957)
278 pages

Some seventy years ago, during lunch with several fellow physicists, Enrico Fermi suddenly posed a question that has become known as the Fermi Paradox: if intelligent life is at all common in the universe, then “where is everybody?”  One hypothesis, among many that have been put forward, is that perhaps intelligent life inevitably self-destructs – that technological progress overwhelms the ability of its creators to cope with its implications.

In his novel Bewilderment, Richard Powers makes a convincing case – ripped from present-day headlines – that such a bleak hypothesis is in fact supported by observed human behavior. Referencing both the mounting evidence of environmental damage and the political partisanship and dysfunction that actively frustrate attempts to build on what little progress has been made to reverse it, Powers persuasively portrays humankind’s steadfast belief that we sit above nature and can do with it what we please. As a species we remain perilously blind to the dangerous consequences of our actions for our future, unable to view ourselves as intimately a part of the natural world.

The story opens as a father, Theo, and his nine-year-old son, Robin, enjoy a camping trip in the Smoky Mountains. Theo has pulled his son out of school for a few days after yet another incident between Robin and his classmates – Robin struggles to fit in, and some among his fellow students cruelly exploit his difficulties, badgering him until he reacts. Theo describes the often-conflicting diagnoses that doctors have offered for his son’s behavior, and the variety of medications they have prescribed to address it. By this point, Theo notes: “Watching medicine fail my child, I developed a crackpot theory: Life is something we need to stop correcting. My boy has a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom. Every one of us is an experiment, and we don’t even know what the experiment is testing.” (5) And, he notes, the death of his son’s mother the year before in an accident only magnifies the boy’s struggles.

Theo, in his work as an astrobiologist at a university, models and simulates potential exoplanets – how life could develop in wildly different ways in dramatically different environments. He shares these worlds with Robin through what seems to be a kind of advanced virtual reality interface, allowing the two of them to pretend to spend time on the simulated worlds. These experiences lead both father and son beyond the parochial limitations and assumptions of human life; clearly, too, they come to inform Theo’s concept of his son as a “pocket universe,” and that “every one of us is an experiment.”

For his part, while Robin struggles to concentrate on tasks that don’t interest him, when a subject or activity catches his attention he becomes deeply focused on it, to the exclusion of all else. This plays out in the story through his interest in nature, which he has picked up from the work of his mother, who had been an environmental activist, lobbying and testifying to government officials in pursuit of a more caring and protective stewardship of the natural world. From watching his mother, including now on old social media clips of her in action, Robin too has developed a strong sense of the importance of caring about nature, and a deep frustration at how he sees it being mistreated – a passion that can, for him, quickly turn into compulsion and anger.

Further incidents involving Robin at school put increasing pressure on Theo to medicate his son, a step he desperately seeks to avoid. In his search for alternatives, he turns to a colleague in the neuroscience department who has been developing a radically new treatment. Robin begins this treatment, and it dramatically transforms his behavior for the better, making him calmer and less reactive. But when events beyond their control interfere, father and son find themselves navigating challenging and uncertain territory.

Although Powers builds the story around developments in astrobiology and neuroscience that lay at least some years in our future, they seem convincingly plausible. And, at any rate, these technologies are not the point of his story; rather, they serve as plot devices through which he explores and highlights humankind’s increasing separation from the natural world. This disconnection, he makes clear, lies at the heart of our willingness to allow it to be plundered and degraded, with what he feels are existential implications.

These themes build upon his previous work, the masterful novel The Overstory, which focuses on how our misunderstanding and neglect of forests leads us to miss out on not only the beauty and wonder they contain, but also on their fundamental importance to human life. (My review linked to at right.)  In Bewilderment he broadens this concern to the entire natural world, including the brutal treatment of animals both in the wild and farmed, and our inability to recognize the danger this behavior toward them poses for our survival.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given how loss of trust in science has accelerated during the political upheavals of the past half-decade, Powers incorporates present-day political realities into his story, as challenges both father and son must face. Looming over their lives, an unnamed president disparages science and creates a climate in which voicing one’s opinions – scientific or otherwise – has become increasingly fraught; and, disruptions in battleground states during a presidential election lead to increasing political turmoil and uncertainty. Though the book was published in 2021, the story makes no mention of COVID, although it does describe the rise of a deadly pandemic that threatens to spread in a deeply partisan climate that makes addressing it a challenge. Not a hard scenario to imagine in the year 2020, given what was happening…

If this book had been written even a decade ago, such plot elements would have likely been considered hyperbolic fearmongering; today, to not believe the potential for the consequences Powers imagines seems naïve.

While The Overstory was monumental in its scope, its sobering message was also softened somehow by that breadth, as well as by the more amorphous and non-specific social ignorance of nature it portrayed. Bewilderment, in contrast, takes a much more intimate and direct tone, with a father and son struggling in private and personal ways easy for most any parent to identify with, and the growing climate and political concerns that aggravate their situation seeming all to believable. Together these elements make this story hit harder, and leave readers little hope for a better way forward.

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Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Severance" by Ling Ma

Severance (2018)
Ling Ma (1983)
291 pages

An illness originating in China with initial symptoms similar to the common cold spreads to become a global pandemic; workplaces provide masks and bring in disinfection services before eventually shifting their employees to work at home; groups of protestors not wearing masks enrage the public; cities empty out as their populations flee in fear: author Ling Ma’s novel Severance has all the hallmarks of a Covid-era tale.

Then you check, and discover it was published in 2018…

Ma’s fictional pandemic does differ in its transmission path and, critically, in having significantly more devastating consequences. As the story opens, our narrator, Candace Chen, has left a nearly deserted New York City behind, and met up with a small group of survivors who are headed for a site on the outskirts of Chicago, where the group’s unofficial leader has a large mall that he owns, and that he proposes they make into their home base.

The novel tells Chen’s story by weaving together three separate timelines: one tracks her experiences with the group as they head west toward their destination; a second provides flashbacks to the days pre- and post-pandemic in which she struggles to make a life for herself in New York; and a third, recollections of her childhood with her parents, who both passed away some years earlier. Rather than telling a sequential story, the flashbacks skip around – the way we often recall a memory of a particular moment or period in our lives, triggered for reasons that may remain inscrutable.

Her parents’ death during college left Chen floundering – isolated by both distance and cultural experience from the rest of her extended family still in China. After graduating, she followed her friends to the city, but, with no immediate employment prospects, she lives off funds inherited from her parents, while watching her friends transition ahead of her into the expectations of adulthood, with jobs and relationships. Finally, after what seems to her a disconcertingly long wait, she too finds work and a boyfriend, and settles into the life she feels is expected of her.

Then, in the immediate run-up to the pandemic, she separates from her boyfriend. Soon after, the pandemic spreads, and with no connections and nowhere to go, she agrees to remain working on-site for her company in downtown New York, becoming one of a small cadre asked to keep an eye on things in-person. As she watches the city, and civilization more generally, grind to a halt, inertia keeps her doing the job she has promised to do, the routine blinding her to the increasing futility of the work. Eventually reality breaks through, however, and she flees the eerily vacant city, eventually meeting the group she comes to travel with.

It is interesting to consider how differently this novel will tend to be read in the wake of readers’ experience with the Covid pandemic, relative to someone who read it in the before-times. I can imagine that, if I had read it then, I would have found it a story that used the plot device of a pandemic apocalypse as a means to explore idiosyncrasies of human behavior; in particular, the challenges for first generation immigrant families, and also the many unspoken expectations and numbing ruts of working life. This was, for example, how I read Emily St. John Mandel’s brilliant Station Eleven, and Edan Lepucki’s California – the particulars of the apocalypse in each case were not the point; the depth of these story lay in the human experience the pandemic revealed. (My reviews of these other novels linked to at right.)

But, we can’t go back and, reading Ma’s novel today, in the immediate aftermath of the depths of the Covid pandemic, I found it difficult not to focus on and identify with Chen’s experience of the evolution of the pandemic, from the earliest days of it being a rumor of a disease in a faraway place, through the stages of denial, the vane belief that it couldn’t be that bad, to the realization of the deadly reality. However striking and moving I found Ma’s descriptions of the struggles of Chen’s parents as they tried to make a new life in the United States, or of Chen’s own feelings of disaffectedness as she tries to find her way growing up, or maturing into an adult with an apartment and a job, or even surviving in the post-pandemic world – a world many orders of magnitude worse than what happened with Covid – it was the portions of the story that traced the gradual, never quite accepted descent into the pandemic that held my attention most powerfully. They simply felt too close to reality.

And, as New York City shut down around Chen, gradually but inexorably, I had a bit of a post-traumatic stress reaction, a mental shift back to the early period of the Covid pandemic, when store shelves were suddenly not so well stocked, and the realization dawned that it wasn’t something that was going to go away in a few weeks.

Clearly civilization has survived Covid. But there remains now this period, if hopefully transitory, when what we experienced leaves some residual fear that it could have been so much worse – and that the next one could be so much worse. And that lingering uncertainty and disquiet will tend to color a present-day reading of Ma’s novel, diverting attention away from her trenchant exploration of the immigrant experience as well as of the working world experienced by so many who work as part of fitting in to the social expectations, not because they have necessarily discovered their passion.

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Other notes and information:

More quotes from this book

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf