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SWITZERLAND--THE BOURGEOIS ELDORADO ‘Neutres dans les grandes revolutions des Etats qui les environnaient, les Suisses s’enrichirent des malheurs d’autrui et fondèrent une banque sur les calamités humaines.’ (Chateaubriand) ‘Switzerland does not exist’. (André Gorz) From a political point of view, Switzerland represents three things: a haven for international capital, the embodiment of the petit-bourgeois spirit, and an apparent challenge to Marxist theory on the national question. Though these phenomena are swiftly conjured up by the word ‘Switzerland’, they are not seen as forming an essential unit. Yet Switzerland is all these three things precisely because it is not an ordinary nation-state: it was created, by both internal and external forces, against the nation-state at a strategic moment of history. Switzerland is a unique construct—an international mercenary state, first of feudal militarism, and now of world capital. If Engels was correct (Der Schweizer Bürgerkrieg, 1847)—t...

JAPAN, THE WORLD BANK, AND THE ART OF PARADIGM MAINTENANCE: THE EAST ASIAN MIRACLE IN POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE To what extent is the World Bank an actor, an ‘autonomous variable’ in the international system?footnote1 Or to what extent are its objectives and approaches the mere manifestations of competition and compromise among its member states? Several writers have argued that the Bank has a relatively large amount of autonomy—from the state interests of its overseers, and that its staff have some autonomy from the senior management. They have traced this autonomy to variables such as ‘lack of clarity of the priorities of organizational objectives’, ‘the difficulty and complexity of accomplishing the organization’s mandate’, ‘bureaucratized structure’ and ‘professionalism of staff’.footnote2 But there is something strangely bloodless about this approach. It manages to discuss autonomy without conveying anything of the political and economic substance of the field of forces in which the ...

The Press Cries Wolf The post office is at the center of the latest moral panic, but how can readers tell what’s worth a real freakout anymore? Matt Taibbi 10 hr 305 180 Suddenly, the Postal Service is the biggest story in America. Donald Trump’s latest “assault on our democracy” jockeyed for the lead theme on the first night of the virtual Democratic National Convention. Multiple speakers used the phrase “defund the post office” to describe efforts by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy – the latest in a long line of Trump acolytes occupying the Oil Can Harry role in news coverage – to pull a seeming postal slowdown. Hashtags like #SaveThePostOffice are flying around social media. John Ratzenberger, the actor who played beer-drinking mailman Cliff Clavin on Cheers, recorded an Instagram video on behalf of the beleaguered service. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis described seeing a man wearing a “red cap” with “white letters” towing a postal truck away, which made her wonder: Conspiracy? Outrig...