I’m reproducing here an exchange below a post yesterday by Professor Richard Murphy: MMT advocate, tax specialist, Quaker, bird watcher and much else. His clarity on how money works – hence on how the cruelties of decades of UK neoliberal ‘austerity’ can at best be described as economically illiterate – is much appreciated on this site.
His forays into geopolitics, however, eschew research in favour of homespun platitudes. Three years ago I critiqued his superficial understanding of America’s proxy war on Russia in Ukraine and, while his take on what is being done to Iran is less resoundingly wrongheaded, it betrays the same false equivalence I accused Owen Jones of back in January: CIA/Mossad fingerprints are all over this!
I take no exception to much of what Richard writes in yesterday’s post – Rarely have we ever marched into the unknown so ill-equipped to manage the consequences – but it houses a sentence …
… Israel and the USA are much more likely to run out of weapons than Iran is, leaving Iran with the potential capability of controlling this region militarily, which is just about the last thing that anyone would wish, given the nature of the regime in that country and its apparent indifference to imposing suffering through loss of human life.
… which places us at odds. The outcome he fears is assuredly not the last thing I wish but, since I don’t take this author seriously outside his area of expertise, on most days I’d let it pass.
So why didn’t I yesterday? Because someone known to this site, Margaret O’Brien, 1 commented below the line that:
I get it, you’re condemning Iran, I also condemn Iran for what’s euphemistically called human rights abuses, but you appear to also then condemn the US and Israel merely as an afterthought, which implies that you think Iran are the worst of the worst. Please correct me if I’m wrong on that. I don’t wish to argue in a childish way about who’s the biggest bad guy in the world, in these frightening times we’re all living through. I’m fearful for my children’s safety and future as much as you will be for yours. But, it is beyond question, to me, that the USA is the most destructive, violent, bloodthirsty, murderous, criminal entity that has existed in human history. Nazis were hanged after world war II for less than the carnage the US has spread around the world. Does Iran have around 800 military bases across the globe? No. Have they slaughtered countless millions? No. How many were slaughtered by the British in the days of empire?
To which Richard replied:
I am treating them all as fascist. They all have differing faults. I condemn all three.
At which point I weighed in:
As an atheist I dislike theocracies but that’s a personal view. Margaret O’Brien is right: Iran is not as dangerous as the US; doesn’t come close. To damn both is false equivalence. In an alternative universe it might be acceptable to cry “plague on both houses”. In this one, given today’s geopolitical realities, to call for an end to the Iranian government, with no credible third party able to assume power, is to desire an expansion of a US empire bent on global dominance at all costs, including the risk of nuclear Armageddon.
US rape of the Middle East in the wake of 9/11 isn’t new to Trump. See US General Wesley Clark’s 2007 revelation that as early as November 2001, the US empire was planning for regime change in seven ME states, starting with Iraq and ending with Iran. See too the Brookings Institute’s 2009 report, “Which Path for Persia?” 2
Prior to the 1979 Revolution, US and UK interference installed a puppet Shah in a nation not just oil-rich but straddling east-west land routes linking China to Europe, north-south routes linking Russia to the Persian Gulf, and commanding the Hormuz choke point. In 1953 it overthrew a prime minister elected with a mandate to nationalise Anglo-Persian Oil. Since 1979 the US has pursued lethal economic warfare, armed Saddam’s war in the 80s, sought to foment Iraq/Libya style collapse by CIA (including cut-outs like National Endowment for Democracy), Mossad and MI6 infiltration, while arming separatist groups. How on earth could such siege realities give rise to liberal pluralism?
That’s before we even get to the truth that our understanding of what it’s like to live in Iran comes occasionally from tiny and skewed samples of Iranians now in the West but mostly from Western military intelligence briefings, CIA cut-out NGOs, and media whose ad-reliant business models, state ownership and/or Zionist ownership prevent their being honest – more by lies of omission than commission – on empire-critical matters.
To which Richard replied:
Authoritarian regimes are authoritarian; let’s not pretend otherwise. Iran is an authoritarian theocracy. The United States can also behave in authoritarian ways in its foreign policy. Both things can be true.
But that does not mean we should fall into crude false equivalence. The US has vastly greater military reach and a long history of intervention across the Middle East, from the 1953 coup in Iran onwards.
Nor is it realistic to imagine that the collapse of the Iranian state would automatically produce democracy. History suggests it would more likely produce instability and conflict. That is not a good ourtcome.
I think you need to take your blinkers off. Look at the world as it is. You aren’t. There can be failings and abuse on all sides.
On his site Richard gets the last word. 3 I detect no facility for replying to his reply. But even had I been able, I doubt I’d have bothered: we’d each aired our points.
Help me out though. Does the professor, who lectures on the need to see the world as it is, answer the question at the end of my penultimate paragraph – How on earth could [Iran’s] siege realities give rise to liberal pluralism?
Or does he just bang out the simplistic mantra: authoritarianism is always bad – end of?
* * *
- To be clear, Margaret O’Brien and I were not in cahoots. Though we’ve had a few BTL exchanges on this site, the last one was many moons ago and we’ve never met.
- In my comment on Richard’s site I saw no way of linking to Brookings or Wesley Clark, other than the tedious and error prone method of manually adding html with no second shot. I simply added the here omitted words, “both are easily found online”.
- Richard’s control of the debate is more flexible than I’d realised. I’ve just looked again, to see if I’d misrepresented things. In some of his replies he offers a Reply option, but not in my case.
No, he doesn’t answer your question. But I would hardly expect him to. His entire rhetoric is steeped in that false equivalence mode which frankly looks to me like he is on autopilot. I wouldn’t waste your time. “There can be failings and abuse on all sides” is student union stuff. It recalls what Marx once said about Proudhon:
That Mr Murphy effectively, i.e. very decisively, terminates the discussion at this point is hardly surprising. I’ve seen this manoeuvre on twitter whereby someone argues and then blocks you from further comment. Clearly the actions of a coward.
Thanks George
The problem here is a kind of intellectual laziness endemic in imperial circles. Iran has been under siege since 1979. It has been subjected to the most extreme economic sanctions, constant military attacks from US backed/trained/armed/financed forces inserted over its borders, ranging from Iraq’s chemical weapons plus attacks in 1988, through MEK, Kurdish and Balochi guerrillas to the recent assaults, last June and currently, by Israel and the United States.
This is pretty well what happened to the Soviet Union after 1917 and the result has been similar: merely to ensure their survival and possible future development these states under siege are forced to take what Murphy call authoritarian measures. And then, when they do so- controlling their borders, curtailing freedom of movement, disqualifying foreign agents from participation in elections, refusing to allow the organisation, by agents of its enemies, of ‘colour revolutionary’ meetings and propaganda- they are denounced as having deliberately chosen to have adopted these policies not out of observable necessity but out of religious or ideological dogma and propensity.
States under siege like Iran have a very simple choice, either to surrender to their enemies and allow the establishment of comprador facist dictatorships of the most brutal kind or attempt to hold the fort until their enemies inadvertently over stretch themselves and become vulnerable.
The truth is that the Iranian regimes since 1979 have been extraordinarily-almost suicidally- liberal and unauthoritarian. The current President being merely one among many in the leadership over the years committed to seeking good relations with imperialism and neo-liberalism. He began his term of office with a trip to the UN in New York in which he made every effort to reach terms of surrender with Iran’s enemies.
In the current situation, a war which arose out of sneak attacks and betrayals of the sort that would have made Macchiavelli whince which has, from the first shown an utter and entirely racist disregard for civilian casualties in Iran. And, most importantly for the likes of Richard Murphy, carried out under the smokescreen of a ‘western’ propaganda narrative which has been thoroughly discredited -in the ears of any one with the most rudimentary political senses, in the period since October 7 of famous memory- this is a time in which those standing up to be counted are either on the side of the aggressor or the victim.
To refuse to choose sides on the grounds that the victim has been accused by the aggressor of vague, undocumented and largely mythical crimes against its citizens is to line up with the aggressor.
Who, it might be noted, is the major dispenser of patronage and power in the society in which we live. Once again. as in 2003, intellectuals have the opportunity to condone the slaughter of a nation on the grounds that the Saddam (or Hamas) of the hour is said to have been a cruel chap for whose character quirks the fates of millions of children and ordinary working folk are condemned to die without dissent on our part.
Intellectual laziness is right, bevin. While there are aspects of this man’s style peculiar to him, you nail the thing common to all such liberal commentators: a blindness to empire.
Your analogy with the Russian revolution and following ‘civil war’ is apt. In the dominant narrative I – like you a baby boomer – grew up with, the USSR chose, since communists love evil, to be repressive. In the context of the dirty war on Syria I criticised Owen Jones and George Monbiot for that same laziness, dressed up as “univeralism” – in the sense of holding all ‘regimes’ to the same Western liberal standards regardless of their situation in empire’s cross-hairs – in my post eight years ago: Monbiot, Syria and Universalism.
Hi Phil.
I know it’s been ages. I still read and appreciate loads of your insightful writings but don’t comment much these days. I also have learnt and benefitted from some of Richard’s offerings regarding the economy, government spending and stuff, on which he’s an undisputed authority. I now tell family and friends that taxes don’t pay for public services/government spending.
I responded yesterday on his piece on Iran because I felt so strongly about his take on this and felt I couldn’t let it go without saying something. I recall that you’ve critiqued some of his stuff on geopolitics and the like and find this spot on.
He really doesn’t see the big picture! The overarching fact of western colonial mindset, with our “leaders” tagging along behind the US like tame dogs, to the detriment of all of us, which takes the form of non stop brutality, death and destruction across the globe against any state that disobeys and any leader or government they don’t like. I find this failure to grasp what’s right in our faces so childlike and unfathomable. Caitlin Johnstone is a hero of yours and me too. Can’t remember who but someone referred to her as a force of nature. Don’t somehow think our friend Richard reads her analyses.
I was pissed off at his short and terse responses to me, showed a fit of pique and maybe a fragile ego. I resolved not to bother going forward, as there are none so blind and all that…..
Anyway really appreciate you citing my comments. I actually sent two responses and got two short sharp repostes.
I see you got a much more detailed reply. I’m sure you feel honoured :).
Anyway I hope this makes up for lost time.
I see you’re moving house. All the best. I have found moving stressful, knackering but exciting all at the same time.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Thanks Margaret for the personal felicitations. You’re right of course, moving is stressful but exciting.
Zero need to explain your relative radio silence. Commentators like you are always much appreciated, but there’s really neither obligation nor expectation. And thank you for your kind words.
When I first encountered Richard I found his crisply no-nonsense ripostes to time wasters and narcissistic pedantry refreshing. I fear though that the power of discussion control has gone to his head. Dave Hansell (below) is right. As with Susan Webbar (aka Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism) it often crosses the line into rude intolerance of dissent.
PS – no, apropos your tongue-in suggestion, I do not feel honoured by his reply to me! I did copy him into an emailed alert for this post but that was as a courtesy.
Yes I was obviously joking about you feeling honoured, but I do think he has more time and therefore more respect for you given that you have your own site for your scribblings. And he really doesn’t like people like me challenging his wisdom, even though I have a reasonably good insight into how the world works, which is more than can be said for him. I’m a really opinionated person but I like to think if I get something wrong I’ll hold my hand up.
I’ll keep reading yourself and others.
Triangulate; make it your motto day and night.
Triangulate, and it will lead you to the light.
Mr Murphy falls into the trap of the kind of economists he often critiques fall into. That of pre-assuming what he aims to deduce.
He fails to even bother making an evidence based case for his assumption that Iran is an authoritarian State. Falling back on lazy tropes he would not let anyone get away with in the field of economics.
As Margaret alludes to, Murphy has a fragile ego which brooks no contradiction. Like Susan Webbar, the moment he is challenged he goes into censorship mode and blocks anyone having the temerity to question him on anything.
Which is a shame really because it simply turns a forum for debate into little more than a vanity project and echo chamber.
As we are wont to observe in this part of the world, he’s a mardy arse.
I too detect a fragile ego, and as I said to Margaret (above) your comparison with Susan Webbar (aka Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism) is on target.
My internet has been down for nearly a week so am playing catch up.
Used to visit Murphy’s site but found his responses to enquiries or any kind of reasoned debate about certain aspects of his work were all too often downright rude.
I found him to be unyielding, unable to meet people halfway and an egotist, because you see, he’s always right, don’t you know.
Sadly what he knows about things beyond his scope of expertise is somewhat lacking, shall we say? When you are dealing with a mind so closed to dissent and opinionated on subjects unexplored or unknown, there is little point in view sharing because his is the only view with any merit and his myopic view is all he can see.
Can I suggest, in future, unless you want to fire salvos of insults at the man, you just ignore his silly outpourings of puddled drain water. What if anything would he know of Iran? You already have the answer.
Hope all is well with you
Regards, Susan
Thanks Susan.
I’ll take your advice. I haven’t time, energy or desire to fire salvos at a man who thinks he’s right on matters where we who do our homework know he’s wrong. But in his own field of expertise I’ll still follow the good work he does in exposing both the cruelties of neoliberalism, and understandings of money as widespread – and fallacious – as flat earthism.