The long, rich and despotic history of Iran in Empire of The Mind

From The Week of May 1st, 2014 Though pride insists that we have the right to act as we choose, our wills unfettered by the shackles of anyone else's desire, we are, inescapably, beings shaped by history. History is the gestalt of our experiences, the joys and traumas, the victories and the defeats, that, by individually imprinting themselves upon us, collectively influence our futures. We can try to recognize these influences in hopes of minimizing them, or perhaps even with an eye towards completely weeding them out, but how can we mitigate something we can't even measure? How can we extricate the fallout from something that has already happened to us? As much as individuals struggle with answering these questions, nations are equally subject to them. For what is a nation if not the collective will of human beings who share geography, culture, history? What scars the people scars the nation as well and leaves behind marks that take centuries to fade. The experiences of many nations provide evidence of this truth, but few more vividly, or tragically, than Iran. Michael Axworthy elaborates in his piece of narrative history of this consequential country. Home to one of the world's oldest human civilizations, Iran is a nation as fascinating as it is troubled. For millennia, it has produced poets and scholars, theologians and mathematicians, whose insights and revelations have both enriched the world and advance the scope of human knowledge. It has hosted dynasties and religions, groundbreaking universities and defined entire disciplines of science. Without it, the world, and the peoples that populate it, would be exceedingly different. And yet, for all of this glorious history, for all that its culture makes the Ancient Greeks look like Johnny-come-latelies, its recent past has been ravaged by the plagues of corruption, colonialism and conflict, all of which have taken its toll on this proud nation. Made a pawn in the Great Game of the 19th century, in which the British and Russian empires vied for regional dominance, and made a slave to oil interests in the 20th century, during which its politics and its institutions were ruthlessly manipulated by foreign governments and foreign corporations, it has become a suspicious theocracy, one that seeks, through the favor of god, to wrestle back its rightful place, as one of the world's premier nations, the first amongst younger equals. But the world is not what it was when Iran was a center of culture and knowledge. And it may well be that Iran cannot return to the prominence it claimed for so long. An exploration of the long history of a singular nation, Empire of The Mind is a riveting portrait of a country transformed by the insights of science and by the vicissitudes of geography. Mr. Axworthy, a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Exeter, transports us back millennia, before the Romans, before even the Greeks, and gradually marches us into the present, introducing, along the way, religions, scientists and kings that have characterized this place of mountains and faith. The reader witnesses the fall of Zoroastrianism and the rise of Islam, the decline of tribalism and the assembly of the nation state, the destruction of pluralism and the elevation of theology. But for all these potent forces, none prove as consequential as colonialism. The world is not short of examples of colonialism's cruelties. It seems, at times, that half the world has suffered beneath its ruinous shadow. And yet, Iran has escaped most of the obvious consequences, instead, bearing up under more subtle and insidious damage. Perhaps, this is owing to the fact that Iran was more of a client state than a colony, its interests, and therefore its policies, torn between the various western powers fighting for dominance in the 19th century. This subservience certainly engendered a sense of humiliation within such a proud culture. And yet, this anger would be but a rehearsal for the outpouring of betrayal and rage that would come later, during the 20th-century's thirst for oil, when Wilsonian promises of self-determination gave way to the ruthless politics of necessity that undermined their governments, manipulated their intellectuals and empowered their dictators. For those of us fortunate enough to have been reared in countries spared the indignity of being subjected to the merciless will and the selfish whimsy of other nations, this shame is difficult to relate to. The West looks at Iran today and sneers at its theocracy and expresses incredulity over the insanity of its nuclear weapons program. But while the convergence of these forces is certainly cause for dismay, they should be properly understood as the consequences of meddling, of manipulation, of exploitation. For in the minds of a people, whose culture has been forgotten and whose sovereignty has been toyed with, what could possibly germinate but distrust? Put in this situation, we would all want the security of knowing that we would never again be someone else's tool. While maintaining an admirable neutrality, Empire of The Mind conveys not just the history of Iran but the powerful ways in which that history has informed the problematic present. This is no mean feat, particularly for a work that strives to be much more than an ideological weapon with which to chastise one's enemies. It is far easier to descend into the language of victimization and or excusemaking. That Mr. Axworthy avoids this while delivering an engaging read on a consequential country makes this one of my more thoughtful reads this year, only marred by the fact that its publishing, coming in 2007, denies the author the opportunity to read Iran's history into the failed Green Revolution and the events of the Arab Spring. Quality work... (4/5 Stars)

The problem of income inequality in Capital in The 21st Century

From The Week of May 1st, 2014 Wealth has become one of society's most enduring obsessions. Its acquisition preoccupies our musicians, its distribution fascinates our economists, and its possession enables our powerbrokers. Perhaps, this is unhealthy. After all, to ascribe so much value to something is to virtually guarantee that it will become a point of serious societal contention. But while some may successfully convince themselves to deny its seductions, wealth, and the money it represents, is much too deeply embedded in human civilization to simply shrug off. For it not just conveys prestige, its pursuit has endowed our greatest minds with the will and the drive to strive against all risk, a truth that has revolutionized our world and brought us wonders our agrarian ancestors couldn't have imagined. But for all of its unimaginable influence, wealth still starts more arguments than it ends. How much is too much? How much should be freely given away? How much should be taxed? How much should be invested? Wealth is hardly a new invention, and yet, even after all these centuries, it remains controversial, a state not at all alleviated when it is examined by the inquisitive regard of Thomas Piketty who attempts to explain wealth, in all its forms, in his dense and sprawling work. For centuries, economists have understood that economic growth comes in two basic varieties: income and capital. The former is any wage that one might receive for services returned, money that one can then spend on wants and needs. The latter, meanwhile, is the equity that one has invested in what one owns, anything from shares in companies to the roof over one's head. Over time, both of these forms of wealth can accumulate value; technological advances can make products cheaper and thus cause one's money to possess more buying power than it once did while land can become more scarce, as the human population expands, increasing its value sometimes overnight. These forms of growth have allowed human civilization to rise beyond subsistence farming and into the rarified air of industry and technological innovation. Traditionally, economists have equally connected the value of capital and the value of income to the health of national economies. After all, it seemed safe to assume that, in the event a national economy fell into recession, the value of a factory would suffer as much as the value of one's wage. Conversely, should a national economy grow at an auspicious rate, the values of both capital and income would grow equally. But on this vital point, Mr. Piketty begs to differ. Drawing upon 300 years of economic data from numerous western nations, he has reached the conclusion that the growth of capital, thanks to its greater durability, its capacity to weather purely financial shocks, and its concentration in the hands of the wealthy, is considerably more than the growth of income which is not only far more destructible, its value is much more subject to the fluctuations of national fortune. Charged with this insight, Capital In The 21st Century becomes more than a 700-page slog through a veritable forest of charts and research. It becomes a work of disturbing intensity that coalesces around a single, compelling argument, that capitalism is fundamentally flawed. Drawing on centuries of data, Mr. Piketty, a decorated French economist, argues that because the value of capital is more stable than the value of income, and because most of the available capital is owned by the rich and not by the many, the wealth of the few is accelerating away from the wealth of everyone else and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In this way, the author has set himself in opposition to prevailing opinion, that the fortunes of capital and income are linked, rising and falling together. This bold stance is no doubt part of the reason for such a lengthy laying out of his case. There's no doubt that Mr. Piketty's argument is intriguing. He contends that economists have been tricked into believing growth of capital and income are linked because of the peculiarities of the 20th century which experienced two colossal world wars which destroyed much of the capital of Western Europe. Additionally, this blood-soaked century also labored through decades of Left-leaning governments whose socialist tendencies caused them to implement steeply progressive income taxes which harnessed the profits of the wealthy, thereby precluding their wealth from racing away from the pack. After Europe recovered from WWII, and once the policies of these governments were rolled back in the 1970s and 1980s, the growth of capital returned to its more typical state, of outstripping income growth two to one. If Mr. Piketty is right, and assuming the 21st century avoids capital-destroying calamities like those experienced by the 20th, then the chasm between the haves and the have nots will only continue to dangerously widen. But however much we may be exercised by his assertions here, there is far less excitement for his proscription, a global tax on wealth, between one and two percent, aimed at redressing the imbalance between capital and income, thereby narrowing income inequality. Only a fool would declare this an impossibility, but neither would anyone but a fool think it probable. The United Nations doesn't even harbor a full complement of the world's nations. And if a body designed to unite the world in a single, diplomatic congress can't even agree on membership, how are we to implement a truly global tax on wealth that would undoubtedly prove even more controversial than a global tax on carbon emissions which are arguably just as consequential to civilization? The hope for such movement seems dim unto darkness. In some respects, it is foolish of me to have penned this review; I am by no means a trained economist. And it is clear, to anyone who reads even a dozen of the pages herein, that no less a figure is required to properly assess Mr. Piketty's case on economic grounds. But as a work of literature, it is profound. Yes, it is difficult, yes, it is stifling, but when one comes to understand the man's contention, the implications elevate the text into something well worth exploring. A fascinating and disturbing slog... (3/5 Stars)