Comments on: The Challenge of the New Statism

By: Kim Petersen

Kim Petersen — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:37:14 +0000

LeiLani, It is at bottom of home page: Subscribe to the DV RSS feed

By: LeiLani

LeiLani — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 07:24:25 +0000

Can you help me? I’m trying to subscribe to your RSS feed, but can’t seem to figure it out. Did you have that option in your blog? Really like it, BTW.

By: Dan Lieberman

Dan Lieberman — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:57:43 +0000

I rarely reply to comments of my articles, but Michael kenny’s comments and offensive manner forced me to ask myself, “Is that what I wrote?” and reread my article. Whew! I didn’t write anything remotely representing Michael Kenny’s criticisms.
Mr. Kenny. please regard some sentences you wrote:
(1) Statism is “just the opposite” of democracy, he tells us.
Where is that said in the article?
(2)“State planning has not entirely disappeared”, he intones disapprovingly.
Where is the ‘disapproving’ tone shown?
(3) He takes all the “bogey men”, Russia (“authoritarian”, ruled by Putin, not Medvedev), Venezuela, Bolivia, China, calls them “statist” and contrasts that with “democracy” and “free market economies”, and the former, of course, “has not flourished” (as if Chavez wasn’t elected!).
I called them ‘New Statist’, a big difference with Statist. Where is this contrast with democracy? Don’t they contrast with “free ?market economies?” Where are the words: “bogey man,” and “has not flourished’” in the document ? I actually claimed the New Statist nations have been successful. And where is it intimated that Chavez was not elected?

Almost of your comments have no relation to the article.
Perhaps you are confused with definitions. We are discussing New Sttaism, not statism.
Statism – The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy.
New Statism – A mix of centralized and free market operations. with some authoritarian aspects.

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By: James Budha Gandi

James Budha Gandi — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:46:07 +0000

Satanism and Religion are the same. The whole world government either democracy or communism is run by axis of evil Religion, Business and Politics are Satanic Evil Government, System and Law.
Religion and Poltics are very very big business only promising, decietful and evil words are only capital. We need good, great, holy, honest, kind, intelligent, pure and care Government for all people in the whole world not only for rich country cause all human being or people in the whole are angel from the very start and children of GOD Almighty forever & ever. We are all one we need to unite , love each other, respect everyone, and we need to good, great, holy things for our all brothers and sisters in the whole world.

By: bozhidar bob balkas

bozhidar bob balkas — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:54:52 +0000

is nationalism dying or already dead in capitalistic lands? it seems the world plutocrats have in the past used nationalism in order to keep or expand their wealth.
today world plutocrats are united; they don’t fight each other for world goodies.
they used to in ww1, ww2, and other wars. there is no longer nationalism or history. history will be written by plutocrats for plutocrats and mythology for working people.
my advice tp parents: don’t send your kids to elementary schools. teach your kids yourself.
actually, all kids need to learn is to read and write and some mathematics.
the rest is optional. hnx.

By: Michael Kenny

Michael Kenny — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:32:43 +0000

This is a very amusing piece of neocon propaganda! Mr Lieberman is obviously trained in agitprop techniques! Basically, if you substituted the word “communist” for “statist”, you’d have the classic cold war propaganda line; the world divided into two rival camps, the “goodies” lead by the US, with other unspecified countries meekly submitting to its valiant leadership, and the “baddies”, lead by Russia and China and such fellow travellers as have dared to defy their American betters. He takes all the “bogey men”, Russia (“authoritarian”, ruled by Putin, not Medvedev), Venezuela, Bolivia, China, calls them “statist” and contrasts that with “democracy” and “free market economies”, and the former, of course, “has not flourished” (as if Chavez wasn’t elected!). Statism is “just the opposite” of democracy, he tells us. “Statist nations” might become less reliant on “western democracies” i.e. two mutually exclusively exclusive categories. The “autocratic Statist paradigm” is an “alternative to liberal democracy”.

“State planning has not entirely disappeared”, he intones disapprovingly, as if economic planning wasn’t, and still is, the normal practice all over the western Europe he so carefully avoids mentioning. Same thing for Russia which “overwhelmingly participates in defense industries, controls some banking enterprises, dominates in oil and gas resources, and owns several television stations and print media”. As if that was anything unusual in Europe!

And, of course, he never says” American”, he says “western”. “[W]estern grumblings” over Iran. “[W]estern nations are stagnant …” China rivals “the western world’s banking system” (not “systems”, there’s only one!). “[T]he industrialized western world [singular] finds itself reliant upon the New Statist nations” [plural].

And so on and so on …

Finally, he “enrobes” the whole thing in a welter of impressive sounding bla-bla-bla so as to create the impression that he knows a lot about all this and bog down readers in the details.

If I was a professor of journalism, I would use this article as a perfect example of how very simple propaganda techniques can be used to make an article appear to say the very opposite of what it actually says.